The past comes knocking

"What do you mean, a baby girl?" The queen mother despite her age was pacing the room. The court had dispersed and now there was an emergency meeting. The queen mother looked at her son and dared him to utter a word. She was angry but excited. Had the gods gifted her this chance to save the kingdom from certain doom? There were only the older members of the royal family present including the midwife who was no longer shackled but still had guards waiting at the entrance for her.

She glanced at Seraphine who was not even paying attention at the moment. She was not really present but who could blame her when the child she called hers was another's. Only the gods knew where the child was or whether she was even dead. There was less of a possibility that the latter could have been her fate.

"Martha!" The queen mother yelled when she noticed that she was not even listening. "Tell me everything."

"Mother..." The king cut in. "This is not..."

"Herod." Rhea was old but not weak. He was the king but she was his mother, she would ask the questions that needed to be asked. "Let her speak."

Rhea faced Martha again and made her gulp. Her confidence had left her by now, she was thinking now about her relatives and how they could be negatively impacted by this if the king decided to exert revenge.

"The king had told me weeks before the queen went into labor that he must be the first to be informed of the sex of the baby even before the queen," She mumbled, looking around the room frantically as though she was searching for something. "I did and when he found out it was a girl he... he..." The words refused to form. Herod had not stopped glaring at her. She had sworn to take the secret to her grave.

"Spit it out, now." Rhea moved towards her.

"He made me drug the queen."

"Liar!" Herod got up and moved in a threatening manner toward her. Rhea blocked his path and the rest of the royals got up too, trying to avoid what could go down.

They tried to calm him down. "Brother, don't..." Agatha joined in but was interrupted by her brother.

"Keep your mouth shut, this is all your fault. You are nothing but a thorn in my flesh." He disparaged her. He had only made himself seem more guilty with his words.

This gave Martha a push to go on. "Then his mistress came along."

"Which one?" Rhea asked quickly.

"The late lady Juliet." She answered.

"And she came with a child in secret and," She glanced at Herod and looked away. "Made me switch the children."

"He made you do it?" Agatha asked skeptically. "Or he paid you to do it."

Without a moment's hesitation, she confessed. "Yes, he paid me with fifty gold bars and I swore my silence." There was no use trying to defend herself.

King Herod's uncle, Lord Clement let out a peal of throaty laughter all of a sudden. "Is this because of that bet?"

"What bet?" What more did she not know? Rhea thought.

"We were just playing around when he had just been crowned king," He explained in between laughing. "You know some uncle-nephew bonding time."

"Get to the point," Rhea told her brother-in-law.

"I was just telling him how nice it was to have five sons and then he got defensive," Clement continued to cackle. "You should have seen his face."

"Clement," Rhea warned. He was testing her patience.

"He said he could do the same but I reminded him that he was his father's son and that he would end up with five daughters and one son."

Rhea had given birth to those children for the late king and was not taking kindly to them being referred to as failures, however indirectly.

"But I knew that having all sons would not be an easy feat so I was kind enough to make it easy for him and told him that he must have a son as the first born."

"Or what would happen?" Rhea asked.

"He would give me a part of Merynia to rule." He answered.

"What?" Rhea glared at her son who was now quiet. He was wondering why his old hag of a mother wouldn't just drop dead.

"When he accepted I was surprised," He continued. "But it would be expected because he was still young back then, I didn't even want to go through with it."

"What did you do then?" Lady Hannah spoke for the first time.

"Me?" Clement asked incredulously. "I didn't do anything but when I refused, your ballsy nephew handed me a contract the next day."

"And you signed it?" Agatha wanting to join in asked the stupid question. No one responded to her.

"It would be better if you stopped denying the accusation, Herod," Rhea told her son solemnly. All she heard only added to her worries about the fate of the kingdom. Didn't he know of the implications? Didn't he understand why they looked for a noble of true blood for him to birth an heir with? For the first time, Rhea looked at her daughter-in-law and couldn't imagine her pain. Her real daughter was out there somewhere or even dead. If the girl looked like her at least it wouldn't be hard to recognize her, not many people had eyes of gold as she did or was as beautiful.

"She has no evidence." Herod's voice slit through her thoughts.

"So?" Rhea asked dismissively. She could read her son's body language and understood what it was saying like a book. She wasn't dense in the slightest and it was time he accepted that he had been exposed.

"Mother," As if that would sway her to believe him.

"Do you even know how close you were to destroying everything that our ancestors spent centuries building?" He was never really that bright. She had stirred the reins of the kingdoms with him for decades, she thought he would have gotten wiser.

"I didn't do any such thing." He was not letting up.

"I believe it would be better if you confessed," Clement advised.

"She has no evidence."

"I still have a few of the gold bars that he gave me." Martha dropped a bomb, side-eyeing the king who suddenly forgot how to speak.

Rhea looked even more forlorn now, thinking about the girl that could have solved all her problems. She would be twenty years of age as well.

"There is a high possibility she is still alive," Martha announced as if reading Rhea's mind.

For the first time, Seraphine got up and practically ran to Martha. She took her by her shoulders and looked her in the eye. "Where did you leave her?" She shook her. "Where can I find her?"

Martha looked at her and written all over her face was anguish. She was holding back everything in order not to go crazy and she looked like she was about to snap. "I am sorry." She told her lamely.

Seraphine didn't acknowledge her apology and asked. "Where is my child, Martha." Her tears fell and her eyes glowed.

Rhea nudged Herod to go and console her.

"Sera," The king had his hands on his wife, trying to calm her down. She wouldn't budge. "Don't touch me." She said quietly. Her voice was laced with venom and scorn. That everyone turned to her. She never spoke like that, she was more unhinged than she let herself seem to be.

"Did you harm her?" she asked.

"No, never," She replied, her voice shaking.

"Then where is she?" Seraphine demanded, her own voice quaking too as angry tears streamed down her pale face.

"It is hard to explain, my queen."

"Where is my daughter?" Her question echoed throughout the room.

"I left her in a forest in Thandon that night."

"Thandon?" Rhea repeated. "A forest, at night?" And she claimed that the possibility she was alive was high.

"Yes, but I had left a royal shawl around her and when I remembered I went back to retrieve it so that no one would suspect that she was royalty."

"If the wolves hadn't gotten her by then." Clement chimed in.

"They couldn't have."

"How are you so sure?" Rhea asked hopefully.

"Because when I went back there, she was gone."

"Gone?" Seraphine asked.

"And you are certain predators didn't eat her," Clement asked.

Rhea glared at him before turning her attention back to Martha.

"There was no blood, no bones, no shaw left when I got there."

"There is still a chance then," Seraphine said, talking to no one in particular. She raised her voice and called the guards. "Guards, guards." but Rhea held her back and wiped her daughter-in-law's face with her thumbs. "We will find her together."

****

Eva's POV

With our bag full of as many non-perishable foods as we could get, we left for our journey. At this point I didn't care if Lisa would see me, I was no longer afraid nor was I alone. I felt like a free bird like Thomas had named me. Well, maybe not exactly because my full name Evaline means beautiful bird. I looked up at the sky through the large forest. It felt different because for the first after Thomas' death there was a weight lifted off my soul. I still needed to heal, I knew that but this was one step out of the thousand I would have to make. I had to give Cecilia some credit because if she hadn't sent me out to the night market that night, wouldn't have met Rosé. I locked my arm in hers and heard her chuckle.

"You are in a good mood,"

"Thank you," I said, pulling her even closer than before.

"For the invite to the trip?"

I nodded, smiling as she pushed a branch out of the way.

"We just started." She chortled, her shudders reaching me.

"I know," I probably sounded so dreamy because she turned to look at me.

"Do you know that your eyes glow when you are happy?" She asked. "I never noticed how unique your eyes were."

"Says the person with pink hair." I teased while twisting a strand around my fingers. I always had eyes that were different from everybody else's. Thomas, Cecilia and Lisa all had blue eyes but I had to be the one with amber eyes. I used to hate the fact I looked different from them but now I didn't even know how I felt about it anymore.

She laughed again, the sound made me smile. Even though we were walking through the wilderness I never felt safer, she was the sister I always wanted after I lost the one I had. She looked younger than me. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one," She answered.

That surprised me because she looked so much younger. "Wow,"

I looked up at her to see she looked kind of gloomy.

I unlocked our arms. "What is bothering you?"

She sighed sadly and smiled ruefully. "I am getting older."

"We all are, silly."

"It is deeper than that." Her mood still had not lightened and I felt bad for joking around.

I straightened myself and took over the job of pushing the branches out of the way so that she could rest her arm. After a while of silence, I asked her. "What do you mean?"

"It is a witch thing." She dismissed.

It meant it was very important to her. "You can tell me," I whispered.

"Sorry," She replied. "I can't tell you."

We continued to walk quietly as the wilderness got thicker and thicker. I didn't want it to affect me but it did but this was the splash of cold water that I needed to see the reality of things. As a witch and a human, there were always going to be boundaries we could cross. "It is fine," I finally told her after a while of uncomfortable silence. "I understand."

"Thanks," She said before suddenly grabbing my arm and yanking me.

"What?" I asked in surprise. I looked down and my question got its answer. In front of me was a deep, steep ditch. If she had not pulled me like she did it would have been a disaster. "Oh, my God," I gasped, slowing down my rapidly beating heart. I was scared.

"You are okay," She tried to keep me calm. As I kept looking back at the ditch in fright.

So much for acting like what she had said hadn't affected me. I almost fell into a ditch because I couldn't focus.

"Why do you live there?" She asked out of the blue.

I looked at her dumbstruck unable to speak to ask what she meant. "As in how?"

"No," she said. "Why do you live so deep in the woods?"

I thought about it and realized it had been like that for as long as I could remember. We had neighbors but they had built houses there not too long ago and they were not even near us. "I don't know."

"Oh..." She bowed her head slightly in disappointment. "I understand."

It took me a while to realize why she suddenly did that. "Wait, no it's not like I don't want to tell you. I seriously don't know why." I explained.

"So it has always been that way then? That you did not question it."

"Exactly."

"Have you ever left Thandon then?"

"No,"

"Okay,"

When I realized she was not asking any more questions, I asked her. "Why did you ask?"

"Oh, nothing." She answered quickly.

I felt she was holding back on so many things but she would have her reasons, I thought. It still didn't change the feeling of hurt it was leaving me with. Rosé stopped in her tracks and looked to the left. "It's time we travel east." She looked at me and smiled at me.

I cleared the gloom on my face and we headed east as she said.