The Queen’s Decree
The travel from Ashworth Chapel & Crypt to Royal Court of Westminster & Ashworth Manor Gardens consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The bullet punctured Beckett’s shoulder instead of his heart, a deviation of two inches born from a lifetime of aiming at targets that did not bleed. The Viscount’s heir screamed, a wet, undignified sound that echoed off the marble columns of the Royal Court’s antechamber. His pistol clattered to the floor. Blood soaked through his brocaded waistcoat, spreading like a dark rose across the silk.
Xavier did not lower his weapon. He watched Beckett crumple, one hand pressed to the wound, the other grasping at air. The guards burst through the doors three seconds later, boots heavy on the polished stone, but they skidded to a halt when they saw who held the smoking barrel.
“Lord Voss,” the lead guard said, a man named Hemlock who had served the Crown for thirty years. “Explain.”
“Attempted murder of a Crown witness,” Xavier said, his voice flat. “The heir of Langley fired first. Ask the powder burns on his cuff.” He nodded toward the pistol on the floor. “The shot went wide. Mine did not.”
Hemlock crouched, examined the fallen weapon, then looked up at Beckett’s shoulder. The wound was clean, non-lethal. A surgeon could save him. That had been the point.
“Take him,” Hemlock said, and two guards seized Beckett by the arms. He howled as they wrenched him upright, but his eyes found Xavier’s across the room, and in them was not hatred but confusion.
*Why didn’t you kill me?*
Xavier turned away. He had no answer that Beckett would understand.
—
Lyra stood in the Court’s holding chamber, Jace pressed against her side, Margot’s hand gripped in her own. Through the barred window, she could see the courtyard below, where a Queen’s carriage had just arrived. The Royal Standard flapped in the gray London wind—a reminder that this was no longer a petty squabble between estates. This was Crown business now.
“They’re bringing him in,” Margot whispered, her face pressed to the glass. “Owen Langley, too. He looks like he swallowed a hornet.”
“Good.” Lyra’s voice was steady. She had stopped shaking three hours ago, when the surgeon had come to tell her that Xavier had fired the shot that stopped Beckett. Not a killing shot. A *message*.
Jace tugged her sleeve. “Mama, is the bad man going to prison?”
“Yes, my love.”
“And then can we go home?”
Lyra knelt, smoothing the collar of his coat. They had dressed him in his best clothes—a dark blue jacket with brass buttons, polished shoes, his hair combed flat. He looked, for the first time in his life, like a viscount’s son. The thought cracked something open in her chest.
“We’ll see,” she said. “First, we have to be very brave.”
“I’m always brave,” Jace said, and she kissed his forehead because it was true.
—
The Court convened at noon. The chamber was packed—peers, barristers, clerks, and a gallery of spectators who had heard the rumors and come to watch a scandal burn. Owen Langley sat in the defendant’s box, his hands folded, his face a mask of aristocratic indifference. Beside him, Beckett sat bandaged, pale, his arm in a sling, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
The Queen entered at twelve minutes past the hour. She did not sit on the throne; she stood before it, a woman of sixty-three with iron-gray hair and eyes that had seen fifty years of political rot. She did not suffer fools, and she did not tolerate forgeries.
“Lord Langley,” she said, and the room fell silent. “You have been accused of fabricating a marriage contract to contest the legitimacy of a child of the Voss bloodline. How do you plead?”
Owen Langley rose. He was tall, dignified, the picture of an old-blood patriarch. “Not guilty, Your Majesty. The contract bears my father’s seal. My family has held that estate for two centuries. We do not forge documents.”
“No,” Xavier said, stepping forward. “You merely pay men to do it for you.”
He produced a letter from his coat—not the forgery itself, but the correspondence between Owen Langley and a disgraced clerk named Elias Thorne, whose signature matched the contract’s handwriting. Xavier had found him in a debtor’s prison in Dover, willing to trade testimony for freedom.
“Elias Thorne is outside these chambers,” Xavier continued. “He will swear, under oath, that you paid him three hundred guineas to mimic your father’s hand and backdate the agreement. He kept the draft. He kept the ink recipe. He kept your coin.”
Owen’s face did not change, but Beckett’s did. The younger Langley turned to his father, something breaking behind his eyes.
“You told me the contract was real,” Beckett said, his voice raw. “You told me the child was a bastard.”
“Silence,” Owen hissed.
“No.” Beckett stood, swaying, his injured shoulder trembling. “I shot a man for this. I nearly killed a woman. I nearly killed a *child*. And you lied to me.”
The gallery erupted. The Queen raised her hand, and silence fell like a blade.
“Lord Langley,” she said, “you will produce your father’s original ledgers. You will produce the witnesses to the contract’s signing. You will do so by sundown, or I will consider your guilt proven.”
Owen Langley said nothing. Because he could not. The ledgers did not exist. The witnesses were dead or bought. He had built his house on sand, and the tide was coming in.
—
The Queen withdrew to her private chamber, and Xavier was summoned. Lyra watched him go, her heart a wild drum. Margot squeezed her hand. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“I know.” But Lyra had seen the look on Xavier’s face when he mentioned the contract. It was not triumph. It was the exhaustion of a man who had been fighting for seven years and had forgotten what peace felt like.
Inside the Queen’s chamber, Xavier stood before the monarch. She did not offer him a seat.
“You could have killed Beckett Langley,” she said. “You didn’t.”
“He was a tool, not a master.”
“And his father?”
Xavier hesitated. Then he said: “Owen Langley has been running smuggled goods through the port of Whitby for the last decade. Wool, brandy, French silks—untaxed, unregistered, undeclared. I have the bills of lading. I have the names of his captains. I have his ledgers.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed. She was not a woman easily impressed, but she was a woman who understood information as currency.
“You have been holding this as a sword.”
“I have been holding it as a shield,” Xavier said. “For my son.”
A long silence. The clock on the mantel ticked. Outside, the London rain began to fall.
“The forgery was designed to protect a legitimate heir of a noble line,” the Queen said slowly. “And you have provided the Crown with evidence of a smuggling ring that has defrauded the Exchequer for a decade. That is not a crime. That is a service.”
She stood, walked to the window, looked out at the gray city.
“I will pardon Lyra Montclair of all charges related to the concealment of the child’s birth. I will legitimize Jace Voss retroactively to the date of his birth. And I will see that the Langley name is stripped of its title until such time as a worthy heir can be found.”
Xavier bowed. “Your Majesty is gracious.”
“I am practical,” she corrected. “Now get out of my sight. You have a son to raise.”
—
The verdict was delivered at four o’clock. Owen Langley was sentenced to transportation to the Australian penal colonies for life. As he was led from the chamber, he stumbled on the steps, and the guards caught him. Later that night, the carriage carrying him to the holding prison would crash on a rain-slick road outside Bristol. The driver would survive. The horses would survive. Owen Langley would not.
Beckett Langley was sentenced to exile. His lands were forfeit to the Crown. His name was stripped from the peerage rolls. He was given one week to leave England and never return. He did not look back.
Lyra stood in the gallery, Jace in her arms, as the court clerk read the Queen’s decree aloud. Margot wept silently beside her. Cole stood at the door, his arms crossed, his face unreadable, but there was a lightness in his shoulders that had not been there that morning.
Xavier walked toward them through the emptying chamber. He did not run. He did not speak. He simply took Lyra’s hand and held it, and that was enough.
—
They returned to Ashworth Manor that evening. The gardens were wet with rain, the hedges dripping, the gravel path slick. Jace ran ahead, splashing through puddles, his laughter ringing through the twilight. Margot and Cole walked behind, their hands brushing, their voices low.
“When did that happen?” Lyra asked, nodding toward them.
Xavier followed her gaze. “Somewhere between the forgery and the gunfire. Cole asked her to marry him this morning. She said yes.”
Lyra felt a smile crack through the exhaustion. “Good. She deserves happiness.”
“So do you.”
She looked at him. The years had carved lines into his face, but the eyes were the same—steady, guarded, full of a warmth he rarely let anyone see.
“I have Jace,” she said. “That is happiness enough.”
“It’s a start.” He stopped walking, turned to face her. The manor loomed behind him, its windows glowing gold. “I want to give you more. A home. A name. A life without secrets.”
“Xavier—”
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” he said quickly, and she laughed despite herself. “Not yet. I’m asking you to stay. To let me prove that I can be the man you deserve. The father Jace deserves.”
She looked at their son, who had found a frog in the garden and was holding it up for Margot to see. Then she looked at Xavier, this man who had crossed a country and defied a queen to protect a child he had never known existed.
“I’ll stay,” she said.
He did not smile. He simply exhaled, and nodded, and took her hand again.
—
They gathered in the drawing room that night—Xavier, Lyra, Jace, Margot, Cole. The fire crackled. The rain pattered against the windows. Jace sat on the floor, building a tower of wooden blocks, and for a moment, the world felt whole.
The herald arrived at nine o’clock, a thin man in a royal uniform carrying a scroll sealed with the Queen’s own crest. He read the decree aloud to the assembled household, his voice carrying through the silent halls.
The servants listened. The guards listened. The ghosts of seven years of lies and silence listened.
“*By Royal Decree, Jace Voss is declared the sole and true heir of the Duchy of Ashworth. Let no tongue speak ill of his birth.*”
Jace looked up at Xavier, his small face caught between wonder and fear. “Does this mean I can never go back to the cottage?”
Xavier lifted him, settling the boy’s weight against his chest, and felt the small, steady heartbeat beneath his ribs.
“No, son,” he said, and his voice cracked only slightly, and that was allowed. “It means the world is your cottage now. And I am your father forever.”