The Missing Trial
Chapter 07 - The Missing Trial
By morning, the palace knew Lord Vale lived.
The news spread through servants’ passages, guard towers, kitchens, and noble houses before the king could seal the gates. Crowds gathered outside demanding to see the man who had supposedly been executed three years earlier.
Varrick urged the king to declare martial law.
Aldren refused.
It was the first time anyone had seen him deny his chancellor in public.
“Bring Lord Vale before the council,” the king ordered.
Varrick bowed. “He is ill.”
“Then bring the council to him.”
“The prisoner is unstable.”
Aldren’s voice sharpened. “Bring him.”
Two hours later, Varrick returned with an empty transport cart and a dead guard.
Lord Vale had vanished.
Again.
The chancellor blamed Rowan’s supporters. Rowan blamed Varrick. Elara trusted neither accusation without proof.
She demanded access to her father’s original trial record.
The archive chamber contained shelves from floor to ceiling, but the Vale file was missing. So were the prison logs, the execution order, and every letter Rowan had supposedly written from exile.
Someone had not hidden a document.
Someone had erased three years.
Elara searched until her fingers turned black with dust. Near sunset, she found a narrow drawer marked with Queen Marian’s crest. Inside lay a prayer book that had belonged to Elara’s mother, Lady Celeste Vale.
Several lines had been underlined.
Mercy hides beneath the third bell.
Truth waits where the queen cannot hear it.
Elara remembered her mother and Queen Marian laughing together in the palace gardens. Before the queen’s death, the two women had been inseparable.
Afterward, Lady Celeste stopped speaking of the palace. A year later, she died during a winter fever.
Or so Elara had been told.
Rowan entered the archive without knocking.
“We found the cart tracks,” he said. “They end at the river gate.”
“Varrick moved my father before the council could see him.”
“Probably.”
Elara closed the prayer book. “You knew he might be alive.”
Rowan did not deny it.
The silence between them changed shape.
“How long?” she asked.
“I heard his voice the night he disappeared.”
“And you never told me.”
“I had no proof.”
“You had hope. You decided I did not deserve even that.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Rowan looked at the queen’s prayer book.
“From what your father knew.”
Elara stepped closer. “Say it.”
He hesitated.
That hurt more than the answer.
Before he could speak, a crossbow bolt shattered the window. Rowan pulled Elara to the floor. A second bolt buried itself in the wall above them.
Wrapped around it was a strip of parchment.
STOP READING THE DEAD WOMEN’S WORDS.
The assassin vanished across the roof.
Elara picked up the bolt and saw a smear of white powder on the metal tip.
The same rare sleeping powder her mother had used during her final illness.
May you like
Lady Celeste had not died of fever.
Someone had silenced her too.
