Chapter Eight : The Stirring
Cal's fingers lingered on the brittle edge of the same ancient book he'd been reading a few days before. His mind drifted back to Aurelia, he couldn't explain it, the way he felt compelled to look out for her, the way her laughter eased something restless inside him, or the sharp tug in his gut whenever she was near trouble. It wasn't attraction, not entirely. It was something deeper, a sense of duty that didn't make sense for someone he'd only recently met.
He sometimes caught himself wondering if they had known each other before, in another life, under another name. But that was impossible… wasn't it?
Cal's eyes drifted toward the cover once more. The title, written in a language older than the kingdom itself, shimmered faintly under the lamplight , "Chronicles of the TwinRose."
The name alone made his chest tighten, a tug at something buried deep in his memory,
Aurelia's rose mark.
He had a feeling that he'd find the answers he was looking for in that book.
He hesitated, then turned the page.
The ink bled into one another like veins, the text shifting between prophecy and confession. He read on and with every word, the world around him began to dissolve.
The queen's carriage returned to the capital under moonlight, its wheels slick with rain and guilt. Within her, the poison she had bargained for still trembled not in the vial she hid beneath her cloak, but in her heart.
Weeks later, her handmaidens whispered of a miracle. The queen, thought barren, carried life. The court celebrated; the bells of Vaelir Keep rang through the valleys. The king smiled for the first time in months, but not at her.
For in the same season, the woman he loved, his sun, his secret... was also with child.
Whispers spread like wildfire through the court. Fate, it seemed, had cruel humor, blessing both women at once. But envy knows no humor, only hunger. And when the queen felt the first stirrings of life within her, she made her decision.
She would not let destiny mock her.
In the dead of night, she summoned her most loyal servant a woman whose silence was bought with gold and fear.
"There is a cottage," the queen said softly, her voice the edge of a blade. "Beyond the rose fields. The king visits it often. You know whose it is."
The servant bowed, trembling.
"When the time comes," the queen continued, her tone almost tender, "make sure her cup runs dry."
The healer, the king's beloved, went into labor during a storm that split the skies.
By dawn, she was gone, her lips pale, her pulse stilled. But the child survived.
A baby girl, fragile and perfect, with a faint mark blooming at her wrist - a pale outline of a rose.
The king found her in her final moments, clutching the child to her chest. His cries echoed through the hollowed halls of that cottage, a sound so broken it was said the gods turned away.
He carried the baby himself back to the castle.
A symbol of his love.
And his greatest sin.
The court whispered. The queen smiled.
For when she gave birth days later, her own daughter bore the same mark, only darker, clearer, as if the curse itself had chosen its heir.
In the nights that followed, the queen would sit alone by candlelight, tracing the small, dark rose that bloomed against her child's porcelain skin. The words of the Oracle haunted her.
"Two roses from one stem shall bloom beneath divided moons…"
Her chest tightened as she stared into the cradle. One of love, one of power.
If the prophecy was true, it meant the bastard child, not hers, would one day rule hearts and empires alike.
That she, the true queen, would be forgotten.
When the baby cried, she turned away.
And when the nurse laid the king's child in the royal nursery for the first time, two infants side by side, one reaching for the other, the queen's heart twisted with something sharp and venomous.
"Remove her," she hissed. "I won't have that thing near my daughter."
The nurse hesitated. "Your Majesty, the king-"
"I said remove her!"
The queen's voice cracked through the chamber, silencing the air itself. The nurse fled, clutching the smaller child to her chest.
That night, as the queen watched the rain lash against the window, she called her maid again. "Go to the nursery," she whispered. "Look upon the child. Tell me what you see."
Hours later, the maid returned, pale as bone.
"She bears it, my queen," she stammered. "The same mark… but faint. It glows when she cries."
The queen's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Faint," she repeated. "Good. Then fate has not decided yet."
The years unfolded like poisoned petals.
The two girls grew under the same roof, one swaddled in gold, the other in pity. The queen's daughter, fair and composed, was praised as the jewel of the realm. The other, the child of the late mistress, was tolerated at best, her presence a living reminder of betrayal.
The queen wove her web carefully.
Each noble taught to sneer.
Each servant taught to bow colder.
Each whispered tale of "the common-born princess" carefully spun until even the child began to doubt her own worth.
It pleased her... for a while.
But jealousy is a beast that feeds on itself. The queen's smile grew thinner each year as she watched the other girl blossom, her laughter pure, her kindness disarming. Even the king's grief softened in the presence of his daughter's light.
And where there was light, envy followed.
The queen took solace elsewhere, in the arms of the king's right hand, a man whose ambition outgrew his loyalty.
They met in secret, behind velvet curtains and candle smoke, bound not by affection but by shared greed.
"She wins hearts," the queen murmured once, tracing a goblet's rim with her finger. "I win power. Between us, which will last longer, do you think?"
The right hand smiled, cruel and charming. "Power always outlives love, my queen. Love dies easily."
His words slithered into her heart like wine. Together they turned the court against the king's daughter, weaving false tales of arrogance and deceit, each time the girl was humiliated, the queen's satisfaction deepened.
Yet, no matter how many lies she sowed, one truth would not die:
the mark on the queen's daughter's wrist darkened with every passing year.
And sometimes, when the other girl wept alone in the garden, her faint rose glowed softly in answer, as though the two were calling to each other, bound by blood neither could see.
The ink bled across the page. Cal blinked, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and awe. His fingers brushed the edge of the parchment, tracing the very words that seemed to pulse beneath his skin.
"Two roses," he whispered. "Two daughters."
The air around him felt charged, humming faintly. He leaned back, heart hammering. Something about the story, the mark, the curse, the jealousy felt too close, too real.
He ran his thumb absently over his wrist.
And for just a second, he thought he felt warmth there a phantom pulse, like something buried beneath his skin answering from another lifetime.