Chapter 18: The Bones Beneath the Crown

The capital had grown quieter since the banquet.

Not safer. Not calmer. Just… quieter. As if the city itself held its breath, waiting for something unseen to break.

Caelan rode through the gate of Northwall disguised once more in the robes of a minor courier. The guards no longer questioned strange travelers or missing faces — not when the Queen's enemies now wore smiles at court.

But this wasn't a political visit.

This was personal.

"You're going alone?" Vale asked, pacing furiously as Caelan strapped knives beneath his sleeves.

"It has to be me," Caelan said.

"The Queen's royal crypts are beneath the basilica. Guarded. Ward-sealed. No one even knows what's down there except the royal line."

"I'm part of the royal line," Caelan said evenly. "Whether they like it or not."

Vale grabbed his arm. "You don't have to prove anything to her. She already tried to kill you twice."

"I'm not doing this for her."

Caelan looked up, jaw tight.

"I'm doing this for my mother."

The Royal Basilica of Caer Thalon was not just a temple.

It was a monument to a thousand years of rule, with gold-lined walls and stained glass depicting angels and fire and kings who had claimed to be gods.

It was also a crypt.

Beneath its polished marble lay generations of monarchs, sealed in silence, beneath earth laced with bone and blood and oaths.

Caelan slipped in just before twilight services ended, hood drawn low.

He moved like shadow through columns of light, past prayer candles and bowed heads. The moment the priests turned their backs, he slid behind the altar, past the tapestry, and through the small silver door used only by royal death-minders.

The path to the royal crypts wound downward, cut into blackstone. It reeked of wax and old incense. The deeper he went, the colder it grew.

Then the seals began.

Wards carved into stone. Arcane glyphs pulsing faintly with the blood-magic of kings.

He paused at each.

Took a vial of his blood.

And fed it to the stone.

His mother had left him with nothing — no name, no title, no crest.

But she had left him her blood.

And that… was enough.

The final chamber was circular and vast, lined with sarcophagi of silver and onyx.

Each bore the emblem of a monarch. Each one sealed tight.

And at the center, atop a raised dais — one tomb lay unmarked.

No crest.

No inscription.

Just a ring of black roses carved into the lid.

Caelan's breath caught.

This was it.

This was her grave.

He stepped forward — and stopped.

A woman stood before it.

Robed in pale green and silver. Hair pinned into a crescent braid. Her face half-shadowed, but familiar.

He knew her.

Aunt Lysandra.

The Queen's youngest sister. The one who had disappeared from court twenty years ago, claiming a "pilgrimage."

"Caelan," she said softly, as if greeting a ghost.

He swallowed. "What are you doing here?"

"I come to speak to her. Once every year."

He looked past her to the tomb. "Why is it unmarked?"

Lysandra turned. Her eyes shimmered — not with tears, but with fury restrained.

"Because Elaria forbade her name to be written. She claimed your mother died in childbirth. That her body was burned. But it wasn't. She was buried here. Silently. Alone."

Caelan stepped forward.

"And why do you come?"

Lysandra gave a thin, bitter smile.

"Because I loved her."

They stood together in silence.

He did not know what words could touch this — this unspoken sorrow woven into stone.

But Lysandra spoke again.

"She wasn't weak, Caelan. They called her soft. Naïve. They were wrong. She tried to change things. Tried to protect you. She died for it."

Caelan turned to her. "Tell me."

So she did.

Twenty-one years ago, Caelan's mother, Lady Seraphine Thorne, had been summoned to the palace as part of a strategic alliance. Her family, impoverished but noble, offered her in marriage to the King's youngest brother — a quiet match, overlooked by many.

She was kind, but brilliant. Quiet, but unyielding.

And she carried a secret.

She was pregnant before the wedding.

The father was unknown. No one could prove anything.

But whispers reached the Queen — that her brother's new bride had seduced a royal cousin. That the child was a threat.

Elaria moved quickly.

She arranged for the brother's exile. Pressured the church to annul the match. Then, weeks before Seraphine gave birth, she "fell ill."

No one saw her after that.

But Lysandra, the youngest princess, visited one last time — and found her bleeding on the floor, whispering Caelan's name.

"She handed you to me," Lysandra said. "Wrapped in her shawl. And begged me to hide you."

Tears slipped down her cheek.

"She said, 'Tell him… I never stopped fighting.'"

Caelan knelt beside the tomb.

For the first time in years, he let himself feel it — the grief, the guilt, the seething anger.

Elaria had taken everything.

His name.

His mother.

His future.

And still, she ruled.

Not for much longer.

When he returned to Lys and Vale, his voice was colder.

"There's a list," he said.

They looked up.

Caelan unrolled the parchment he'd taken from Lysandra. Old ink. Black wax. The Queen's personal seal.

"It's every noble who helped cover it up. Every priest. Every courtier. Every noble family that kept silent while she buried my mother like a dog."

He looked up.

"They die next."