Chapter 41: Find The Child

Ronan turned the old seal over in his hand, studying the pressed wax mark under the archive’s dim light.

"This belonged to my father’s court," he said finally. "His inner council had authority over several sealed investigations during his reign."

"Do you remember this one?" Naya asked.

"No."

Darius glanced up from the register he’d been scanning. "That’s the part that concerns me. This authorization predates any connection between the Ripley and Veyr families. Whoever issued it knew about Naya’s existence before your marriage was ever arranged."

"Before I was even born to the world outside my own house," Naya said quietly.

Ronan set the seal down. "I don’t know why a royal investigation would concern a Ripley child. I don’t have an answer for that yet."

Darius returned to the register, flipping through pages methodically until his expression shifted.

"There should be a complete case file attached to this authorization," he said. "It’s missing."

He turned the register toward them, showing where the log jumped abruptly from one entry to the next, several pages cut cleanly away exactly like the earlier record they’d found.

"The gap covers the month of Naya’s birth," Darius said.

Ronan’s jaw tightened visibly. "Someone removed these deliberately."

"Could your father have ordered it?" Naya asked.

Ronan was quiet for a moment. "It’s possible. But I won’t accuse a dead man of something I can’t prove. Not yet."

Naya respected that restraint even as frustration built in her chest, and she turned back to the remaining documents scattered across the table, searching for anything the two men might have missed. Buried within a stack of older correspondence, she found a partial reference that made her breath catch.

Her name wasn’t written as Naya Ripley.

Instead, an old designation sat beside the entry, tied to the unfamiliar second bloodline they’d encountered before. Beside it, in careful handwriting, someone had written female child, surviving.

The date matched her birth exactly.

"Why would anyone record me as something other than a Ripley?" she asked, her voice unsteady.

Ronan studied the page, his expression giving nothing away. "I don’t know."

"We should stop and think this through before assuming anything further," he added.

"I’ve spent my whole life being told who I am," Naya said, sharper than she intended. "I’m tired of being told what I don’t need to know."

Ronan didn’t argue the point further.

He was quiet for a moment before speaking again, his tone shifting into something more reflective. "My father was obsessed with preserving old bloodline alliances. Maintaining the royal succession meant more to him than almost anything else. Several bloodlines disappeared during his reign, and I always assumed those records concerned territorial disputes. Land, borders, political leverage."

"Now you think differently," Naya said.

"Now I think some of those records may have concerned people instead."

"Could he have known about me?"

"I don’t know," Ronan admitted.

"Does that change how you see me?"

"No," he said, without hesitation. "It changes what I know about the people who came before us. Not what I know about you."

Naya let that settle, grateful for the steadiness in his voice even as everything else around her felt increasingly unmoored.

Back in Ripley territory, Godric had already learned that Naya’s investigation had reached further than he’d hoped. He stood alone in his study that evening, a sealed letter already prepared and waiting on his desk. He read through it once more before pressing his own seal into the wax, his hand steadier than his expression.

His concern wasn’t that Naya had found the old symbol, or even that she’d questioned Marissa about the night of her birth. What troubled him was far more specific. Ronan had seen the royal seal.

He summoned a servant and handed over the letter with quiet, precise instructions, ensuring it reached someone far outside the estate before morning. Whoever received it would understand exactly what needed to happen next.

Something tied to the night of Naya’s birth needed to be moved, and quickly, before the King’s reach extended any further than it already had.

Back at the palace, Naya sat with Ronan in his private study once the archive session finally ended, the weight of everything they’d uncovered pressing down on her more heavily than she wanted to admit.

"Maybe we should stop," she said, "until we understand more of what we’re actually dealing with."

"No," Ronan said. "But we’ll move carefully."

"What do you want?" he asked her.

Naya considered the question honestly. "I want the truth about myself. But I also want a normal life. With you."

"You can have both," Ronan said.

"What if the truth changes my position as Queen?" she asked. "What if I’m not who anyone thought I was, not even a Ripley?"

"Your position was never what made me choose you," Ronan said, steady and unwavering. "It never will be."

The words settled somewhere warm in her chest despite everything unsettling swirling around them, and for a moment the mystery felt slightly less crushing.

Darius returned the following morning carrying an old territorial map, unrolling it carefully across the study table. A section near the abandoned village bore the same symbol they’d found everywhere else, but the map revealed something none of them had known before.

The village hadn’t been isolated at all. According to the old markings, it had once sat directly along a route connecting three ancient bloodlines. One path led toward old Veyr territory. Another led toward Ripley lands. The third route simply disappeared into territory that no longer existed on any modern map, swallowed by time or deliberately erased along with everything else.

Naya stared at the intersecting lines, understanding beginning to take a shape she couldn’t yet fully grasp.

"My birth might connect bloodlines nobody thought were related at all," she said quietly.

"It’s beginning to look that way," Ronan said.

As Naya prepared to leave the archive that evening, Darius called her back, his attention still fixed on the old investigation register.

"There’s something else," he said. "This authorization wasn’t closed after the investigation began. It remained active."

"For how long?" Naya asked.

Darius checked the entry again before answering. "Eighteen years."

Naya’s stomach dropped. "That’s my exact age."

"Whoever ordered the search," Darius said slowly, "never stopped looking for you."

Ronan’s eyes shifted to her, something grim settling into his expression.

Darius turned the register toward them, pointing to a final line written beneath the original authorization, faded but still legible.

If the child reaches adulthood, initiate retrieval.

Naya went completely still, the word settling over her like ice.

"Retrieval?" she asked.

Ronan’s jaw hardened as the full weight of it registered. "Someone wasn’t trying to find you so they could kill you."

He met her eyes, and for the first time since they’d begun this investigation, Naya saw something close to real fear pass behind his usual composure.

"They intended to take you."