Chapter Forty-Two

The funeral was beautiful. The boys’ choir was angelic, the flowers divine, the homily heavenly.

It was fit for a would-be king, but nothing like Albert Laurent, the man, who probably would have preferred a quiet service by his favorite trout stream with a small but satisfying luncheon of roast chicken and potatoes.

Technically, I shouldn’t have been included, but as this was the twenty-first century and no one was cruel enough to exclude me from my father’s funeral, I sat with Sophie and Henry and Felice on the third row of the cathedral while Thea and Gran sat at the front of the church.

I never said that protocol was completely ignored.

There was a short procession (he was only a prince, not the monarch, after all) and then a reception for politicians and VIPs in the state hall. Henry had liberally shared his flask in the limousine back to the palace so the event passed by in a blur. Of course, all of us behaved ourselves. We were professional royals and we could shake hands and murmur politely no matter how much whiskey had been consumed.

The word had been passed around…to meet in the library after the event. Okay, it was me passing the word around. I knew Henry wanted to return to his unit as soon as possible, and Sophie had said some things about the invitations that were coming her way. Her friends wanted her in Courchevel. Or St. Bart’s.

And then there was Thea. I was still worried about her. She had been a workhorse over the last week, but I suspected that some time with Nick on an island somewhere would do her good.

No, I needed to get us all together one last time, before we all scattered and everything changed.

Because change was inevitable.

Instability was not, however.

It was nearly evening when the four of us convened in the palace library. It was a true library, rivaling many universities in its collection of rare books and encyclopedias on Driedish history, economics and politics. It was generally a deserted spot in the palace, which is why I had picked it for this occasion.

Sophie entered the room with a groan and promptly lay flat on a library table. “What now?” she asked dramatically.

“Good God, please make this quick,” Henry said, pulling his flask out of his jacket pocket. I had noticed earlier that he had taken care to make sure his suit matched, a sign of his distraction.

Thea was the one who still seemed to be holding it together, albeit with thread that was quickly unraveling. “What’s going on, Caroline?”

I pulled four envelopes from under my arm and laid them on a table. “I asked Dr. Lao to pull these for each of us.”

Henry cracked open one of his eyes. “What is it?”

“They’re your blood tests. From when we all gave blood when Father was in the hospital.”

“Isn’t this illegal?” Thea asked shrewdly.

I shifted uncomfortably. “Under the policy between the hospital and the royal family, the blood we give is retained for family use only. It would be destroyed once Father died, but it was the property of the palace while he was alive.”

Thea raised her eyebrows at me. “So you presumed to have each of us tested? For what?”

“To make sure we’re not bastards,” I said. It was a joke that only Henry got. Sophie looked intrigued. Thea’s eyes went cold. “No, that’s not why,” I said hastily. “I mean, none of us really knows…but that wasn’t why.” Here was where I started telling partial truths, but it was necessary.

“They’re testing the bones found at the Langůs battlefield, to confirm that they’re the remains of King Fredrik, our ancestor. And after what happened to my medical records, I realized that, in this century, the royal family needs to protect its own genetic information, now more than ever.”

“This is crazy,” Sophie declared. “Do you think someone would try to say we’re not legitimate heirs, based on what some old bones look like?”

“That’s exactly it,” Thea said, rubbing her forehead.

“So these are for each of you,” I said. “Certified genetic tests, overseen in a hospital, from samples that were kept separate from any other donations.”

“And what do you want me to do with this?” Sophie asked, holding her envelope by the corner as if it contained something creepy and crawly.

“Take it immediately to your vault and lock it away,” I explained patiently, reminding her of the large vault in the safe room attached to her apartment in the tower above us.

“I’ve forgotten how to open it,” she whined.

“I’ll show you,” Henry said, almost as if he was bored. But he had been staring at his envelope intently since I’d said what was in it.

“Can we go now?” Sophie asked, and I replied that she could. We all needed rest, space and time away from the palace, I added.

“Especially you,” I said to Thea after Henry and Sophie had nearly run into each other on their way out of the library, leaving just me and my older sister.

“I don’t understand what has happened,” she said. “But I know there’s more to it than you’re telling me.”

“Just like there’s more to what you’ve told me about what happened after Christian disappeared.”

Thea gave her head a little shake. “That’s different. You, my sister dearest, keep secrets.”

“We all do,” I said. “Look at Father.”

My sister frowned. “What did he keep from us?”

“All these years after the divorce, Mother was still his designated person to give medical consent.”

“But Father wasn’t exactly good with those kinds of details.” Her face was drawn, thinking of the man we had buried so recently in St Julian’s Cathedral.

I left it alone because I didn’t want to cause her more stress or grief, but I knew there was no way that Father had simply forgotten to update a form for the last decade. No, the palace had secretaries and administrators and couriers all double-checking and triple-checking such things, planning ahead for all sorts of unlikely events. Mother’s name had been left on his paperwork for a painful reason.

Love.

“Take care of yourself,” I told my sister. She really did look ill.

“You’re leaving. And not to the hotel.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to keep it a secret. “I need to go and take care of a few things.”

“You’ll be back for the Jubilee, though.” It was more of an order than a question. “And I’ll want you by my side when Gran abdicates. I want us all to present a united front.”

“I would like nothing better,” I said honestly.

“And then it will be that much easier for me to slip you back into all the paperwork,” Thea said, making a little check signal as if she were signing a document. “I’m righting Gran’s wrongs,” she said in a very earnest tone. “All of them.”

I left it at that. Whether I was named a princess again, whether I was given back my HRH, seemed inconsequential at the moment.

Not when I still had a fire wall to erect around my life—and that of my family.

My grandmama was waiting for me, which wasn’t a surprise. I’d had to announce my name at the gate, after all: Caroline of Sevine.

I knew it would get her attention.

Astrid was standing at her bookshelves and took off her reading glasses as I entered her study.

“I suppose we need to talk,” she said.

“Only one of us is talking,” I told her.

Because she was a smart woman, she kept her lips together.

“Your actions have been unacceptable. Arranging marriages, manipulating your own granddaughters, sending Christian after me to gather my DNA…”

Her eyebrows raised. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Don’t you dare,” I scoffed. “There are exactly two people in the world who would care enough about the DNA in those bones at Langůs. Two people who would really care if I was a descendant of that Fredrik. And they are both my grandmothers.”

Several expressions flitted across Grandmama’s face—surprise, calculation, then…humor? “Really. I wouldn’t have done anything with it, even if the test showed that one of the Laurent bastards had illegitimately taken the throne at some point. It would have been worth it just to see Aurelia’s face when I told her that her precious legacy wasn’t quite as untarnished as she believes.”

“And what about Thea’s face?” I demanded. “Your own granddaughter? What would she look like when she learned that you were the puppet master behind her biggest humiliation and betrayals?”

Astrid looked shamefaced, which was somewhat satisfying. “I never encouraged Christian to leave Thea. That was a mess he got into all on his own.”

“But you continued to harbor him, enable him, use him to do your bidding when you wanted information after the bones at Langůs were discovered.”

“He went rogue,” Astrid stubbornly insisted. “And anything he tells you is a lie.”

It didn’t matter now. At the end of the day, I had only come to Switzerland to tell my grandmother one thing.

“There is something I want to make perfectly clear,” I said. “If you or Vox Umbra ever releases any of the information it is keeping on me or anyone I love, or does anything to hurt my people, there will be consequences.”

Grandmama looked intrigued. “What should I expect? Some retribution from that Konnor fellow you dragged in here?”

A dull stab of pain blossomed in my gut at the thought of Hugh. “No. My answer will be published in the biggest newspapers around the globe. All of your dirty secrets—Vox Umbra, the spying, the lies. I have a document that will be sent to major news outlets around the globe in the event that you or your fellow colleagues attempt to manipulate the royal family of Drieden again.”

“Under your pen name? Will it be Clémence Diederich or Cordelia Lancaster or a yet to assumed nom de plume?”

“No. My revenge will be under the name of Caroline Laurent.”

Finally, I had done my grandmother proud. She beamed at me and said, “And that is how it should be.”

I spun on my heel, intending to march out of the convent, having said all that I had come to say, but stopped as my grandmother’s voice rang out.

“Is that it?” I closed my eyes at the hint of pain in her strong voice. “Am I the next to be disowned?”

Go.

Being an outcast hurts; no one knew that more than me. And Astrid deserved my rejection and more for all the trauma she had caused.

What would a Sevine woman do?

My fists closed tightly at my sides. A savvy Sevine woman wouldn’t turn her back on another Sevine woman.

“That depends,” I said finally.

“On what, exactly?”

“On how well you make this up to us.”

With a slow, meaningful nod, Astrid signaled her acceptance of my terms and I left to return to my home.