The Prisoner Beneath the Palace
Chapter 03 - The Prisoner Beneath the Palace
The queen’s apartments had been locked since Queen Marian died twelve years earlier.
Dust covered the mirrors. White sheets hid the furniture. The fireplace held cold ashes that no servant had dared remove.
Elara stood at the window while guards waited outside the door. The palace courtyard below was filled with soldiers, messengers, and curious nobles refusing to leave before the scandal reached its conclusion.
She pressed her palm against the red marks on her neck.
Rowan was alive.
That fact should have comforted her. Instead, it opened every wound she had spent three years learning to hide.
He had vanished on the same night her father was arrested. The king announced that Rowan had confessed to helping Lord Vale organize a rebellion. Elara had received one letter in Rowan’s handwriting telling her to forget him.
She had believed he chose exile over her.
Now she wondered who had written that letter.
A soft knock came from the servant’s passage behind the wardrobe.
Elara froze.
The panel opened, and an elderly woman slipped into the room. Nurse Agnes had served Elara’s mother before Elara was born. Her back was bent, but her eyes remained sharp.
“You should not be here,” Elara whispered.
“Neither should you.”
Agnes crossed the room and took Elara’s face between her hands. “Let me look at you.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“You are standing in a dead woman’s bedroom wearing a wedding gown chosen by the man who condemned your father. Do not tell me you are not hurt.”
Elara swallowed.
Agnes pulled a folded strip of cloth from her sleeve. A message had been stitched into it with red thread.
THE FALCON STILL BREATHES BELOW THE BELLS.
The falcon was her father’s private symbol.
“Who gave you this?”
“A kitchen boy found it inside a bread basket delivered from the old prison wing.”
“That wing was sealed.”
“So everyone believes.”
Elara read the line again. “Below the bells.”
“The oldest cells lie beneath the cathedral tower,” Agnes said. “They connect to tunnels under the palace.”
Elara’s knees nearly gave way. “He has been there all this time.”
“Perhaps.”
A fist struck the outer door.
Agnes hid behind the wardrobe as two guards entered with Chancellor Varrick.
He carried no parchment. No visible weapon. His politeness frightened Elara more than either.
“The king will question you at dawn,” Varrick said. “I came to offer a simpler path.”
“I will not marry him.”
“You will. The only question is whether your father lives long enough to hear the bells.”
Elara’s breath stopped.
Varrick moved closer. On his right hand, he wore a silver ring engraved with a falcon.
Her father’s signet.
“You stole that,” she said.
“I inherited it from a condemned man.”
“He is not dead.”
Varrick smiled again. “Then prove it.”
He turned toward the door, but Elara caught one more detail. A thread of fresh gray dust clung to the hem of his robe.
Stone dust.
The same pale gray as the cathedral foundations.
After he left, Agnes emerged from hiding.
Elara stared at the closed door.
May you like
“He came from the tunnels,” she said.
Far below them, somewhere beneath the bells, a man began pounding against iron.
