Hail to the New Queen

Chapter 8

The days following blur into a crash course in becoming someone I never knew existed.

Advisors appear like clockwork each morning. Parliamentary procedures. Constitutional law. The intricacies of royal succession explained in terms that make my head swim with their complexity.

I nod when expected. Take notes in margins until my hand cramps. Pretend I understand half of what they're saying while desperately filing information away for later review.

Lawyers arrive next, spreading documents across polished tables like surgeons preparing their instruments. Inheritance claims. Property disputes. Nineteen years of systematic theft catalogued in precise legal language that makes my eyes blur.

My mother's name appears on every single page. My name, too—the real one. Christina Ashford. Heir to the throne. Words that still feel borrowed from someone else's life entirely.

Protocol instructors correct my curtsy seven times before declaring it barely acceptable. My posture earns three modifications and a disapproving sigh. The way I hold a teacup apparently requires complete reconstruction from foundation upward.

I practice until my calves ache and my smile feels permanently painted on.

Seamstresses measure my waist, my shoulders, the circumference of my neck. Tailors debate fabric weights while I stand on a pedestal like a porcelain doll waiting to be painted.

I am prodded, poked, pinned, and assessed from every conceivable angle. My body no longer feels like my own.

The coronation looms like a wave about to break, and I am expected to know how to swim through treacherous waters without drowning.

Between sessions, I escape to the study that has become my only sanctuary. Papers blanket the mahogany desk—deeds, contracts, financial records spanning two decades of careful theft.

My mother's name printed in ink that rewrites everything I believed about myself.

Each document is a wound finally permitted to speak.

I'm tracing the transfer of my grandmother's gifts to Lady Maryanna—the manor, the investments, the trust funds meant for my education—when it hits me.

Not grief this time. Something else entirely.

My stomach lurches without warning. I barely make it to the waste bin before everything comes up—the tea I forced down this morning, the toast I couldn't finish, bile that burns my throat and brings tears to my eyes.

The door opens behind me.

I'm still bent over the bin, eyes watering, hair falling into my face, when Daniel's voice reaches me.

"Christina?"

I hear his footsteps cross the room. Then his hand is on my back—warm, steady, grounding me as the last wave passes.

"I'm fine," I manage, straightening and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "Just nerves. And I think breakfast didn't agree with me."

"Understandable." He crosses to the sideboard and pours a glass of water, pressing it into my hands. "You've had more thrown at you in four days than most people face in a lifetime. The body keeps score."

I drink gratefully. The cool liquid settles my stomach.

"It happened to your grandmother, you know," he adds, settling into the chair across from my desk. "The first month after her coronation, she couldn't keep anything down. Stress manifests in strange ways."

The comparison should comfort me. Instead, guilt twists in my chest at how easily he accepts the lie.

"I'll be fine," I say. "It's passing already."

He nods, apparently satisfied, and gestures to the organized chaos of papers surrounding us. "You've wasted no time. I came to check on your progress, but it seems you've been building quite the case."

"I've wasted nineteen years." My voice carries edges I no longer bother softening. "My grandmother left behind information. I intend to use every single piece of it."

Daniel moves closer to the desk, examining the documents I've flagged for immediate action. Property transfers. Financial irregularities. Evidence of systematic theft documented across nearly two decades of betrayal.

"The Valdrens have deep roots," he says carefully. "Powerful allies. Connections that span generations. Uprooting them completely will require patience and precision."

"They raised me in my mother's stolen palace. Fed me scraps from my own inheritance. Made me believe I was nothing while they built their empire on my bones." I meet his weathered gaze without flinching. "I will take it back. All of it."

Something shifts in his expression. Not doubt—I've learned to recognize that from years of seeing it on Valdren faces. This is something entirely different.

Admiration, perhaps. Or recognition of something familiar.

"Your grandmother was right about you," he says quietly.

"Right about what?"

"That you would be formidable."

He nods once, a gesture that carries more weight than words. Then he rises and moves toward the door.

"I'll leave you to it. But perhaps eat something bland for lunch—crackers, broth. Give your stomach time to settle."

"I will."

The door closes behind him.

I wait until his footsteps fade completely into palace silence. Then I press my hand flat against my stomach and let the truth I've been avoiding crash over me like cold water.

The nausea. The exhaustion. The way certain smells make me gag without warning. This isn't stress. This isn't something I ate.

I know what this is. I've known for days, buried it so deep I almost convinced myself I was imagining things.

But I can't ignore it anymore.

The palace doctor is out of the question—too many eyes, too many mouths ready to spread whispers through the court. Instead, I slip out through the servants' entrance Daniel showed me days ago and find a pharmacy three blocks from the palace gates.

Back in my chambers, I lock the door and follow the instructions with trembling hands.

Two minutes. The longest two minutes of my life.

I don't want to look. If I don't look, it isn't real. If I don't look, I can still be the rightful queen with nothing but vengeance ahead of me. If I don't look, my future remains uncomplicated by impossible choices.

I look.

Two lines. Positive.

Hunter's child.

The man who humiliated me before three hundred witnesses. Who announced another woman's name while I stood in borrowed pearls believing myself loved at last. Who shared my bed without ever considering me worthy of truth or basic respect.

His family destroyed me. His mother stole everything I should have inherited. His sister made cruelty her daily entertainment at my expense.

And now I carry their blood inside me. Growing. Becoming something I cannot ignore no matter how desperately I want to.

How do you raze a house to ashes when your own blood is mortar in its walls?

How do you destroy a family completely when you're carrying its heir?

The test trembles in my grip. Two lines. Such a small thing to reshape absolutely everything.

I could tell Daniel. Could seek advice from the lawyers, the advisors, the army of people suddenly invested in my success. But I already know what they would say. Complications. Political implications. A Valdren child with a claim to my throne.

The irony is spectacular. The universe has an exquisite sense of timing.

I bury the test in the wastebasket. Deep, beneath crumpled papers and discarded drafts where no one will ever think to look.

The throne comes first. Vengeance comes first. The Valdrens will answer for every stolen year, every borrowed gown, every whispered reminder of my worthlessness.

Everything else—the impossible question of loving something created by someone who discarded me—will have to wait.

I return to the documents on my desk. Property transfers. Financial records. Evidence of nineteen years of systematic theft.

My hands have stopped trembling.

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