Chapter 6 - THE HOUSE OF SAINT ORA
The House of Saint Ora stood on a hill above the northern river, half hidden by pine trees and weathered stone walls. It had once sheltered widows of the royal family, daughters whose marriages had been arranged for peace, and women whose names had become inconvenient to powerful men. After the rebellion, the crown declared it unsafe and ordered it closed.
The official report said the building had been emptied.
The locked windows suggested otherwise.
Adrian, Sofia, and Captain Mara reached the hill shortly after noon, traveling in a plain carriage with no royal crest. The snow had melted into dark patches along the road. Beyond the iron gate, the old house rose from the mist with its slate roof broken in two places and ivy climbing the eastern wall.
“Someone has been here recently,” Mara said.
Fresh tracks marked the mud beside the gate. A narrow trail led toward a stable that should have collapsed years earlier. The stable door was new.
Adrian drew his sword. “We approach carefully.”
Sofia glanced at him. “You say that as if I have been charging recklessly into every building we pass.”
“You did run toward a churchyard while armed men were chasing you.”
“I was trying not to be shot.”
“A fair point.”
Mara gave them both a warning look and moved ahead.
The stable was empty except for a stack of dry firewood and a lantern still warm to the touch. Someone had left a bowl of water near the back wall. Sofia noticed a blue thread caught on a nail, the same shade as the silk from her mother's coat.
She lifted it.
“My mother was here.”
“Or someone who had access to her belongings,” Adrian said. “We should not assume more than the evidence supports.”
Sofia appreciated the caution, though it hurt. She had spent years hoping her mother had left a path behind her. Now that path was real, and every step could lead to another disappointment.
A sound came from the house.
Three knocks.
A pause.
Two knocks.
Mara raised her sword. Adrian answered with two knocks of his own.
The side door opened a fraction. An elderly woman peered through the gap. Her hair was white, her shoulders narrow, and a small scar crossed the bridge of her nose. She held a walking stick in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other.
“Who sent you?” she demanded.
“No one,” Adrian replied. “I am Adrian, son of King Edric.”
The woman stared at him. Then her gaze moved to Sofia's hands.
“Oh,” she whispered. “The last keeper.”
Sofia stepped forward. “Did you know my mother?”
The woman lowered the knife.
“I knew Elena. I knew her mother before her. Come inside, before someone sees you.”
The room beyond the door was warmer than the outside suggested. A fire burned in a stone hearth. Books were stacked in uneven towers, and the table was covered with sewing tools, medicine bottles, and old maps. The woman introduced herself as Sister Beatrice, though she had not belonged to a religious order for decades.
“I stayed after the house was closed,” she explained. “Someone had to keep the roof from falling in. The official caretaker left. I did not.”
“Were you hiding Princess Elara?” Adrian asked.
Beatrice's face tightened.
“I hid many people. The princess was not among them when I arrived. I heard rumors, but rumors are the only currency this place has ever had.”
Sofia placed the letter on the table. “This was found at my mother's grave. It says Elara was taken here.”
Beatrice read the message slowly. When she reached the final line, she closed her eyes.
“Marian's hand,” she murmured. “Your grandmother wrote this.”
“Was the princess here?”
“For a short time. She arrived before dawn with a fever and a guard who refused to give his name. The physician who came with her said she had been sedated. They kept her in the east room for three nights. Then another party arrived and took her away.”
“Where?” Adrian asked.
“I was told she was being moved to a safer refuge. I never learned where.”
“Who gave the order?”
Beatrice looked at the prince with an expression that held both pity and suspicion. “A man wearing your father's seal.”
Adrian gripped the table edge. “My father?”
“I did not see the king. I saw the seal. It could have been used by someone who had permission, or by someone who stole it.”
Sofia studied the old woman. “Why did you stay here?”
“Because the women who came through this house were told that no one would remember them. I could not change the court's story, but I could keep their names.”
She led them to a narrow room at the back. The walls were covered with small paper slips, each bearing a name and a date. Some were written in ordinary ink. Others had been marked with silver script.
“Every person who sought refuge here left a name,” Beatrice said. “Not always their real one. But enough to prove they existed.”
Sofia found Elena Aurellian's name near the bottom of a list dated twenty-seven years earlier. Beside it was another name: Elara Edricson, recorded as “living, transferred north under keeper's protection.”
Adrian touched the paper with two fingers, as if the words might vanish.
“North where?”
Beatrice pointed to a map pinned beside the hearth. A small black star marked a remote estate near the mountain pass, beyond the old royal hunting grounds.
“House of Wintermere,” she said. “It belonged to the queen's sister. After she died, the property was transferred to a charitable trust. No one has lived there officially for twenty years.”
“Officially?” Sofia asked.
Beatrice's eyes sharpened. “Official records are not always the same as life.”
Before they could ask more, a horse sounded outside.
Mara moved to the window. “Riders on the road. At least six.”
Adrian rolled up the map. “Voss?”
“Possibly. They carry no banner.”
Beatrice took Sofia by the wrist and led her to a cupboard hidden behind a tapestry. Inside was a narrow stair descending into the cellar.
“This passage reaches the old river path,” she said. “It was built for people who needed to leave without being seen.”
Sofia looked at her. “Will you come with us?”
“I am too old to run through tunnels. Besides, if they find me, they will find an old woman who has kept an empty house. That is not a crime.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“Child, everything has been dangerous since the day your family was erased. I am tired of letting danger decide where I sit.”
Beatrice pressed a small bundle into Sofia's hand. It contained several pages of names and a second key.
“This is the register of those who passed through Saint Ora. If the court denies that the refuge ever held the princess, show them this. The names are witnesses, even if the witnesses are dead.”
Sofia hugged the old woman before she could think better of it. Beatrice stiffened, then patted her back with surprising tenderness.
“Go,” she said.
The three fugitives descended into the cellar. Behind them, the front door shook under a heavy knock.
“By order of Lord Chancellor Voss,” a man called. “Open in the name of the crown.”
Beatrice's reply drifted down the stairwell.
“The crown has a prince. Ask him what he orders.”
Mara shut the hidden door.
The tunnel was low and damp, but it carried them to the riverbank beyond the house. They emerged among bare willow trees and hurried to the carriage waiting on the road. By the time the riders entered the house, the prince and the last Aurellian keeper were already moving north.
Adrian studied the map as the carriage rattled over frozen ground.
“Wintermere,” he said. “If Elara survived, this may be the last place she was taken.”
Sofia watched the gray river through the window.
“And if she didn't?”
“Then we will know what happened to her.”
She looked at him. “You say that as though knowing is enough.”
“It isn't. But a lie can keep hurting people long after the person who told it is gone.”
The carriage turned toward the mountains.
In the bundle from Saint Ora, a folded note slipped free and landed in Sofia's lap. She opened it carefully.
The writing was faint, but the message was clear.
IF THE PRINCE COMES, ASK HIM WHAT HIS FATHER SAID AT THE FUNERAL.
Sofia read it aloud.
Adrian's face drained of color.
“I was twelve,” he said. “At Elara's funeral, my father told me that grief was a private duty and truth was a public burden. He said I must never ask why her coffin had been sealed.”
“Was it really her body inside?”
“I don't know.”
May you like
The carriage continued north.
For the first time, the prince looked less like a man chasing an answer and more like a brother afraid that the answer might change every memory he had left.
