PART 2
“Silence,” the king said.
The word did not rise above a normal speaking voice, yet it struck the ballroom harder than any shout could have. Preston froze with one foot forward, his champagne flute trembling in his hand. The governor’s advisers stopped whispering. Cameras that had been pointed at Preston slowly turned toward me.
Toward the locket.
Toward the pale blue dress my husband had called homemade.
King Alistair continued walking until he stood before my table. Up close, he looked older than he had from across the room, not weak, but worn by some private storm that had never ended. Fine lines cut deeply around his eyes. His mouth trembled once before he forced it still.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
My hand rose instinctively to my throat. The locket was small, oval, silver darkened with age. On its face was the same strange crest I had traced with my thumb since childhood: a crowned white stag holding a rose in its mouth.
“It was with me,” I said. My voice sounded too small for the room. “When I was found.”
The king closed his eyes.
A murmur moved through the guests like wind through dry leaves.
“When?” he asked.
“I don’t know the exact date. The sisters told me I was left outside Saint Agnes Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In winter. I was wrapped in a gray blanket.”
His eyes opened sharply.
“A gray blanket,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“With blue stitching along one edge?”
I stopped breathing.
No one had known that. Not even Preston. The blanket had burned in an orphanage fire when I was nine, but I remembered the stitching because I used to rub it between my fingers to fall asleep.
“Yes,” I whispered. “How do you know that?”
The king looked as if the floor had shifted beneath him. One of the royal guards stepped forward, but he lifted a hand to stop him.
“Because I bought that blanket myself,” he said. “In Vienna, three weeks before my daughter was taken from us.”
A sound broke from someone nearby. It might have been pity. It might have been shock.
Preston finally found his voice. “Your Majesty, surely this is some misunderstanding. My wife is from a charity home. There must be thousands of lockets—”
“There was one,” the king said.
He did not turn to look at Preston. That made the dismissal worse.
“One locket,” he continued, his gaze fixed on me. “Made for my daughter on the day she was born. Her mother placed a lock of hair inside it and insisted the clasp be engraved beneath the hinge. No one outside the palace knew.”
My fingers felt numb as I unclasped the chain. The locket had never opened easily. As a child, I had tried with pins and fingernails until a sister scolded me for damaging my only possession. Now, with the entire ballroom watching, I pressed my nail beneath the hinge.
It clicked.
For the first time in my life, the locket opened.
Inside, beneath glass clouded by time, was a tiny curl of dark auburn hair.
And beneath the hinge, almost invisible, were three engraved words.
