Chapter 44: Where did you find that?

"Where did you find that?" Godric demanded again, his eyes fixed on the envelope clutched against Naya’s chest.

She didn’t answer.

He stepped further into the room. "Give it to me."

"She doesn’t have to," Ronan said, his voice calm but unyielding.

"This is a private family matter." ℴℴ𝘮

"Then why are you afraid of me reading it?" Naya asked.

Godric’s composure cracked visibly at that, something desperate slipping through the careful control he usually wore like armor. "Your mother wrote that while she was ill. It contains confused memories, nothing more."

"I don’t believe you," Naya said.

She unfolded the letter fully, refusing to hide it or shield him from her reading it aloud if it came to that. Godric watched, his jaw tight, as she scanned the rest of the page.

Marissa had written that Naya was never meant to be raised as a Ripley at all, that Godric had taken her away from the people who had originally come for her as a newborn. She didn’t name them. She only wrote that Godric had warned her they would eventually return looking for what belonged to them.

"What does this mean?" Naya asked, looking up at her father.

Godric said nothing.

Ronan noticed immediately that his silence wasn’t denial. He wasn’t disputing a single word of it.

Naya pressed further. "Why was I locked inside during certain full moons? Why were healers forbidden from examining me? Why were the records of my birth altered?"

"Everything I did was to protect you," Godric said.

"From whom?"

Silence stretched between them, heavy and deliberate.

"From people who would have used you," he said finally.

"Who were they?"

He refused to answer, his jaw locked tight, and Naya felt the frustration building in her chest at yet another wall he’d erected between her and the truth of her own life.

Ronan stepped forward when Godric tried once more to dismiss the conversation entirely, waving a hand as though the matter had already been settled.

"You’re turning her against her own family," Godric accused, rounding on Ronan.

"Naya doesn’t need my help turning against people who refuse to answer her," Ronan said. "She’s asking questions because you never gave her the truth to begin with."

"Digging into her past puts her in greater danger than you understand," Godric warned.

"Then why didn’t you tell me any of this before I married her?" Ronan asked.

"Because you would have used her," Godric said. "As leverage. As a political tool, the same as everyone else who might have wanted her."

Ronan’s expression hardened, and Naya felt something cold settle in her chest at the realization. Her father had always assumed, without exception, that everyone around her would eventually treat her as a weapon rather than a person, including the man he’d forced her to marry.

Marissa appeared in the doorway then, her expression steadier than Naya had ever seen it.

"Stop," she said to Godric.

He turned toward her, surprised. Years of quiet obedience had never once produced this kind of resistance from her before.

Marissa crossed the room to stand beside Naya. "You were born with something we were instructed to protect," she said. "I still can’t tell you exactly what it is. But your father made a deal, years ago, to keep you hidden. Part of that deal required you to be raised as an ordinary Ripley girl, nothing more."

"And the rest of the deal?" Naya asked.

Marissa’s eyes flickered toward Godric before returning to her daughter. "Your father became obsessed, over time, with using what you are for his own purposes."

Naya’s stomach twisted. "Was my marriage to Ronan part of that?"

Marissa’s mouth opened, then closed again, no answer coming.

That silence told Naya everything her mother couldn’t bring herself to say.

Pieces began falling into place with sickening clarity. Her father’s letter demanding an heir. His fixation on Ronan specifically. His insistence, over and over, that she obey without question. His panic now at the discovery of a single hidden letter.

"You sent me to Ronan knowing what might happen," Naya said, her voice shaking with the weight of understanding.

"I did what was necessary to protect this family," Godric said.

"You didn’t send me to protect me," Naya said. "You sent me because you needed something from him."

Godric didn’t deny it.

The silence that followed felt heavier than anything else in the room, heavier than the letter itself, heavier than every secret they’d uncovered since the vault.

Ronan didn’t move to attack Godric further, didn’t try to make the decision for her. He simply turned to Naya.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I want the rest of the letter," Naya said.

"I won’t give it to you," Godric said.

"Then we’re leaving," Ronan said.

Naya folded the damaged pages carefully and held them close, meeting her father’s eyes one final time.

"I’m done letting you decide what I deserve to know," she said.

She turned and walked out of the room without waiting for his response, Ronan following close behind her, and neither of them looked back as they crossed the estate toward the carriage waiting outside.

Once they were far enough from the house, Naya finally sat down on a low stone bench near the gate and unfolded the remaining pages, determined to finish what she’d started despite the damage age had done to the parchment. Most of the final section had faded beyond legibility, water stains and time eating away at whatever else Marissa had tried to preserve.

But one line remained clear enough to read.

If they ever discover the child survived, they will come for her.

Naya looked up at Ronan, the weight of it settling over her all at once.

Before either of them could speak further, the sound of hooves approached fast along the road, a royal messenger riding hard toward them, his horse lathered from the pace he’d clearly kept up since leaving the palace.

He reined in sharply and dismounted, breathing hard as he addressed Ronan directly.

"Your Majesty. There’s been a breach at the palace."

"What kind of breach?" Ronan asked.

"Someone broke into the restricted archives last night," the messenger said. "Security was bypassed entirely. We don’t yet know how."

"What did they take?" Ronan asked, his voice sharpening.

The messenger hesitated, glancing briefly at Naya before answering.

"Only one thing was taken, Your Majesty," he said. "The original record of Naya’s birth."