As he stood before Claudia’s pitch-black coffin, King Volkhard recalled the letter that she had written him before she slipped into this long slumber.
“To my dearest father: I’m sorry for doing something like this without any warning. The first thing I ask of you is that you please do not blame my dearest Noah, no matter what happens.”
Volkhard was father to four children. His firstborn, Crown Prince Wilhelm, and the second prince, Ehrenfried, were his sons with his second queen, Cassandra.
“This was a decision I made of my own will. Noah merely obeyed my orders. I chose this path because it was what I wished to do.”
The next to be born was Emilia, a princess from the queen consort.
As king of a nation, it was Volkhard’s duty to produce an heir and, ideally, several more children for greater stability. No matter how tedious or meaningless he deemed it, shirking that duty would only invite greater trouble.
“If I do not awaken after a year, then I ask that the kingdom publicly declare the youngest princess dead. In doing so, you will be able to protect the realm.”
He had seen many beautiful women in his time, but very few he could bear having remain by his side.
Some would cling to him, desperate to please. Others, the bolder women, came intending to become his wife. However, among them all, only one had shown zero interest in staying with him. Instead, she’d wanted to leave his side of her own volition.
“For I have enemies among other nations who will come with the intention of capturing me.”
That woman had been the famed songstress who had borne his youngest daughter—Princess Claudia.
The voice of Chief Conjurer Karlheinz caused Volkhard to raise his head.
“Pardon the interruption, Your Majesty.”
The cathedral, situated at the very heart of the royal palace, echoed with even the slightest voice or footfall. The scent of lilies hung cloyingly in the air, though it did not bother Volkhard enough to have them removed.
The carpet, dyed a deep red to obscure any sign of blood, ran in a straight line from the entrance to the altar. Volkhard turned toward his retainer so that his back was now to the coffin.
“Is there news?” he asked.
“There is, Your Majesty. His Highness Ehrenfried has learned that the Kingdom of Lemilsia is preparing for war.”
His youngest daughter, Claudia, lay in the coffin behind him.
It had been three years since she fell into that deathlike slumber. Karlheinz’s eyes rested quietly upon the sleeping princess.
“It seems that all is proceeding as Princess Claudia wrote in her letter, Your Majesty.”
Volkhard narrowed his eyes and turned back toward the coffin.
There, among the cascade of snow-white lilies, Claudia slept. She still appeared just as she had when she was thirteen. Her skin was as pale as the flowers that surrounded her, and only her lips, painted the deep red of a ripe apple, bore any color.
“Claudia’s not the only one who warned me,” Volkhard murmured, gazing down at her. “Someone else once warned me of the same thing.”
“Your Majesty?”
“She warned me that in time, a powerful nation would come to seek Claudia—that they would be drawn to the beacon of her magic.”
Karlheinz was a man who very rarely showed his emotions on his face, but that statement caused a flicker of unease.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but who—?”
Another voice interrupted Karlheinz. “Whose words were those?”
Both king and conjurer turned toward the entrance of the cathedral.
There stood a young man, approaching them while looking boldly at Volkhard in a way that was hardly appropriate of a vassal looking deferentially at his liege.
“So, you have come, Noah,” Volkhard said to the young man.
Claudia’s knight bore obsidian eyes, within which flickered the embers of a still-burning flame.
“Noah—mind your tongue. You are in the presence of your king.”
“It matters not. Let him speak freely,” Volkhard interjected, waving off Karlheinz’s reproach. He carefully studied Noah. “So then, the war draws near. Have you completed your preparations?”
“Whatever the hour, whatever the order, I stand ready to obey.”
“Ha. It would seem my daughter trained her servant quite thoroughly.” The irony of it struck him once more, and he voiced it plainly. “A strange fate. You resemble that woman far too well.”
“Surely, you’re not referring to—” Karlheinz began.
“I shall answer your question from before,” Volkhard interrupted him. “The woman who spoke those same words as Claudia...” He turned to look at Noah before continuing. “It was her mother, Dorothea.”
From beside him, Karlheinz audibly drew in a breath.
Noah, choosing his words with care, asked quietly, “Why would Her Majesty—Princess Claudia’s late mother—have said such a thing?”
“She knew many things,” Volkhard said. “It was why she confessed her own secret in order to approach me—that she was herself a princess of a fallen kingdom.”
The memories became clearer as he spoke them aloud, as if emerging from a fog.
That woman...
Now that he was speaking of it, he found it strange—perplexing, even—that he had never shared any of this with Karlheinz before.
Did she cast a spell on me? One that sealed my memories?
Volkhard closed his eyes and gave a faint, self-deprecating laugh. “She told me that her daughter would be the reincarnation of the witch Adelheid. And then she proposed a contract.”
That was why he had taken a woman of unknown birth—a “commoner”—as his final consort.