The Crest of Secrecy
The gilded clock on the mantelpiece chimed the half-hour, its delicate mechanism a thin, metallic scream against the dead silence of the king’s private study. Xavier had not moved from behind his desk, the polished mahogany an unnecessary barrier between himself and the woman who had just unraveled the last six years of his carefully constructed life.
Iris remained standing, her hand still pressed against the spot on her chest where she’d tucked the crest. Her knuckles were white. The overhead chandelier, forty-eight candles flickering against the gloom, cast deep shadows under her eyes, betraying a weariness no amount of makeup could conceal. She looked nothing like the girl he remembered from the library annex, yet everything about her—the stubborn set of her mouth, the way her gaze refused to yield to his authority—was achingly familiar.
Jace was gone. Owen had taken him to the kitchens under the pretense of finding a late-night pastry, a ruse that had bought them perhaps fifteen minutes before the boy grew suspicious. Xavier had seen the way Jace looked at him before leaving—a guarded curiosity, as if the King of Valdoria were a painting on a wall, something to be observed but never trusted.
The thought split something open inside him.
“Explain it again,” Xavier said, his voice flat, betraying nothing. “From the beginning.”
Iris’s chin lifted. “You don’t need a repetition. You need to decide whether you believe me.”
“I need to hear you say it again so I can find the lie.”
“There is no lie.” She stepped forward, and the candlelight caught the silver chain now visible at her throat. She unhooked it with trembling fingers and placed the object on the desk between them. “You gave me this on the night of the Harvest Gala. Do you remember?”
He did. The memory surfaced unbidden—the cool balcony air, the scent of jasmine from the palace gardens below, the way her laughter had been a balm against the suffocating politics of his father’s court. He had been the second son then, overlooked, underestimated, and profoundly reckless. He had pressed the crest into her palm and told her it was a promise.
He hadn’t known what promise he was making. He had just been young and desperate to hold onto something real.
The crest lay on the polished wood now, a tarnished circle of silver no larger than a crown coin. It was broken cleanly in half, the jagged edge a wound in the metal. The design was unmistakable—the Winslow falcon, wings spread, clutching a thorn branch. His house crest. *His* crest, the one he had worn on a signet ring before his brother’s death had thrust him onto the throne.
Xavier picked it up. The metal was warm from her skin. He ran his thumb over the falcon’s head, feeling the worn grooves of a thousand touches.
“This is my half,” he said. It was not a question.
“And the other half is around Jace’s neck, hidden under his shirt.” Iris’s voice cracked, but she forced herself to continue. “I told him it was his father’s. That it would protect him. I didn’t know if I was lying.”
Xavier set the crest down carefully, as if it might shatter. “You said Flynn Blackthorn discovered you were pregnant.”
“Two weeks after I left the capital.” She crossed her arms, a defensive gesture he recognized from their arguments in the palace library. “Dorian’s father had been watching me. I didn’t know it then, but he had informants everywhere. The morning I bought the tea leaves for nausea, he had a report by noon.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
Iris let out a bitter laugh, hollow and short-lived. “Come to you? You were a second son who had just been betrothed to the Duchess of Ashford. Your father’s court was a viper pit, and I was a commoner with no name and no family. Do you think I could have walked into the throne room and announced I was carrying the king’s grandson?” She shook her head. “Flynn Blackthorn would have killed me before I reached the gates.”
Xavier’s hand tightened on the armrest. The wood groaned under the pressure. “He would not have dared.”
“He dared, Xavier.” She leaned forward, planting her palms on the edge of his desk, forcing him to meet her eyes. “He cornered me in the market square three days later. He said he knew about the royal bastard in my womb. He gave me a choice: disappear and raise the child in obscurity, or he would ensure neither of us survived the birth. He said he would make it look like an accident, that the crown would never investigate the death of a servant girl.”
The words hung in the air, cold and suffocating.
Xavier’s mind raced, assembling fragments of intelligence reports from the past six years. The Blackthorn patriarch had grown increasingly bold in the last three years, consolidating land holdings, purchasing grain monopolies, marrying his daughter to a minor prince in the eastern territories. Flynn Blackthorn was not content with wealth—he wanted legitimacy. He wanted a path to the throne.
And a child with Winslow blood, hidden away in the countryside, was the perfect key.
“He’s been hunting you,” Xavier said slowly, the pieces clicking into place with sickening clarity. “All this time.”
“The first year was the worst.” Iris straightened, but her hands remained clenched at her sides. “I changed my name, moved through three villages. I worked in laundries, in kitchens. Anywhere that would take a woman with a baby and no questions. I thought if I stayed small enough, quiet enough, he would lose interest.”
“But he didn’t.”
“He sent men last spring. Two of them, asking questions in the village of Linden. They had a sketch of me—a good one. I fled the next night with Jace in my arms and six silver coins in my pocket.” Her voice dropped, the fury bleeding through. “I have been running for fourteen months. Every time I thought I had found safety, one of his agents appeared. A face in a crowd. A letter slipped under a door. A shadow that vanished when I turned.”
Xavier rose from his chair, the motion abrupt. He crossed to the window, staring into the darkness beyond the glass. The city lights flickered below, distant and indifferent.
“Flynn Blackthorn does not act without purpose,” he said, more to himself than to her. “If he has been chasing you for six years, it is because he believes Jace is the lever he needs to move the kingdom.”
“He believes Jace’s bloodline can be used to destabilize the crown.”
Xavier turned, a sharp motion. “That’s a direct accusation.”
“It’s the truth.” Iris met his gaze steadily. “Flynn told me himself, in the market that day. He said an unacknowledged royal heir, properly produced at the right moment, could throw the succession into chaos. He said your marriage to the Duchess of Ashford was childless, that your brother’s line was extinct. He said the kingdom was already looking for an alternative to your rule.”
The words struck like a physical blow. Xavier’s jaw worked silently. The marriage to the Duchess of Ashford had been a political necessity, a union of convenience that had produced no heirs and little warmth. His brother’s death in the hunting accident had left the throne to him, a man who had never wanted it, who had never been trained for it.
He had spent seven years trying to hold a kingdom together while its noble families circled like wolves.
And all the while, the Blackthorns had been hunting his son.
“Where are they now?” Xavier demanded.
“Flynn’s agents? They were in the square tonight.” Iris’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I saw one of them as we crossed the courtyard. A man in a grey cloak, watching the main entrance. He didn’t approach, but he recognized me. I saw it in his eyes.”
Xavier’s blood ran cold. He crossed the room in three strides and pressed a hidden mechanism on the bookshelf. A section of the wall slid back, revealing a narrow compartment lined with velvet. Inside lay a single ledger, bound in black leather, its pages yellowed with age.
He pulled it out and flipped it open, scanning the columns of faded ink. Names. Dates. Debts owed and collected. The intelligence ledger of the Winslow kings, passed down through three generations.
“The Blackthorns have a weakness,” he said, his finger tracing a line of script. “A debt, accrued thirty years ago. My grandfather loaned Flynn’s father a significant sum to rebuild the eastern ports after the flood. The terms were generous, but the penalty for default was absolute forfeiture of all Blackthorn lands in the southern provinces.”
Iris stepped closer, peering at the ledger. “He has never repaid it?”
“He can’t.” Xavier’s voice was grim. “The debt has been passed down, compounded with interest. At this point, it exceeds the total value of their estate. My grandfather designed it that way—a golden leash to keep the Blackthorns loyal. But Flynn has been avoiding payment for years, hoping I would not enforce the terms.”
“Will you enforce them now?”
Xavier closed the ledger with a decisive snap. “I’ll do more than that. I will call in the debt. Immediately. Without warning.” He turned to face her, and for the first time, Iris saw the king in his eyes—not the reckless young man she had loved, but a monarch who had learned the weight of the crown. “It will strip him of every southern holding. It will cripple his influence for a decade. And it will send a message: he has touched something that belongs to me.”
Something flickered in Iris’s expression—relief, perhaps, or fear. “And then what? He will still come after Jace. If anything, this will make him more desperate.”
“He will not find him.”
Xavier crossed to the writing desk and pulled a sheet of parchment from the drawer. He scribbled a quick note, his handwriting sharp and angular, then pressed his signet ring into the wax seal.
“Owen will take you and Jace to a safehouse in the northern foothills. It is not on any map, and the land belongs to a lord who owes me his life. No one will know you are there except me and Owen himself.”
“And Selene,” Iris said quietly. “She was the one who helped me reach the palace tonight. She covered my movements with false records in the archive.”
Xavier paused, glancing up. “Selene knows about Jace?”
“She is the only one I trusted. She has been feeding the Blackthorns false travel logs for months, buying me time.”
A long moment of silence stretched between them. Then Xavier nodded slowly. “She can be trusted to continue the deception. Tell her to create records placing you in the eastern provinces. Let the Blackthorns chase ghosts while you disappear.”
Iris’s shoulders sagged, the exhaustion finally breaking through. She pressed a hand to her temple, and Xavier saw the tremor in her fingers.
“I should go,” she said. “Jace will be wondering where I am.”
“Iris.”
She stopped at the door, her hand on the brass handle.
“You should have told me the moment you knew,” Xavier said, his voice rough. “I have lost five years of his life—and nearly lost him to the wolves.”
Iris turned. In the candlelight, her eyes glistened, twin points of unshed tears.
“I was trying to save him. From you. From them.”