The Chamberlain staggers frantically next to the Prince as he makes his way to the Queen’s bedchambers.

  “My Prince, what if the woman is lying?”

  Taeg steps onto the stairs and climbs up, making his way up the tower. “What reason has she to lie?” he says. His voice echoes off the stairwell.

  “I’m not inclined to trust the word of a common madame. They defile our streets.”

  The prince chuckles.

  “’Defile’?” he says, shooting the Chamberlain a look of amusement. “I’ve made note of your habitual trips into the city and I’m not inclined to believe a word you say, Chamberlain.”

  The old man flushes, flailing his hands about as he speaks. “W- well, besides the point… I’m not enthused about her circumstances.”

  “Were you a madame, would a dead boy be something you would lie about? It’s too drastic a fib for anyone to believe. But if it were the truth…” the prince trails off thoughtfully. He steps into the peak of the tower, sunlight streaming in from the high windows surrounding the foyer. Anarah is standing guard outside the Queen’s door in full armor, her arms clasped behind her back.

  “My prince,” she nods.

  Taeg smiles in her direction and raps gently on his mother’s door. A murmur comes from behind it and he pushes through. The Chamberlain follows, bowing to Anarah before shutting the door behind them.

  “Mother, how are you?” Taeg calls. Her circular room is dark, the windows covered in decorative sheets. “The physician will be along shortly to examine you.”

  The Queen is tucked away under a mound of furs atop a large wooden bed. She is a slight woman. Her hair, once dark, is graying from the roots, peeking around her temples.

  The Queen looks up from a leather-bound book, a pair of glasses sitting proper on her small nose. Her eyes, green like her son’s, are wrinkled and dull. “Hello,” she says. “Quite well, I believe. Physician?” She tilts her head.

  The Chamberlain whispers from behind the prince, “She has been rather receptive this morning. You’re lucky to have caught her as such.”

  Taeg seats himself in a wicker chair near the Queen, leaning forward to offer his hand. “Mother, I wanted to ask you something.” He pauses.

  Her eyes flicker about the room before landing on his face.

  “Hello, my son,” she says, pulling her other hand slowly from her book to cup his face. She smiles, shallow wrinkles like the sand dunes pulling up from the corners of her lips.

  “Mother, please listen to me,” Taeg pulls her hand away from his face and clasps them together in his. Her flesh is thin, hands frail in his palms. “I need you to answer as best you can.”

  He hesitates. If his theory were true, the Queen would not take such an inquisition lightly. He did not understand the lengths to which her mind could wander and could not anticipate how she may react, even with a gentle reminder of the thing that had frightened her most. He looks starkly into her eyes, pleading for her release from this affliction.

  “Do you remember what you saw…two years ago, not long after Father died?”

  The Queen shifts painfully, removing her hands from his to adjust her blanket, and seems to think for a long moment.

  “I’m so sorry, my son, that we lost your father. He was a great king, as are you.”

  “Mother, I’m not king yet. You are still the reigning queen.”

  The Chamberlain shuffles to his side. “My prince, perhaps now is a good time to bring up seceding power,” he murmurs. “We must have either a formal resignation or a physician’s written assessment to continue with the ceremony. We both know that the physicians upset her.”

  Taeg ignores him, but the Grand Chamberlain remains where he stands. The Queen stares blankly in his direction. “Mother, please, do you remember…the dead one? What did he look like?” The words spill from his mouth and he holds his breath.

  For a moment, she looks puzzled. “The dead one?” she says, tilting her head in her son’s direction. “Are you feeling alright, my son? You know there is no such thing.”

  She seems herself again, a rigid pillar of truth and protection. His mother reigned Queen for more years than his father did King. She ruled a country from behind the scenes when Roen was alive, and for years after. As an adult, Taeg finally understood who the true advisor to the King was. He missed most her motherly nature and her constant assurances.

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  “Yes, there is. You don’t remember seeing a dead boy? In the halls of the castle? He was walking?”

  She sits up straighter, cupping the prince’s chin again. “Now I believe you need to see the physicians. You’re not making any sense.” She notices the Chamberlain then. Her eyes regain some light. “Ah, Chamberlain. Lovely to see you. Can you please call on the physicians to examine my son? He is the reigning King and shall be treated as such.”

  The Chamberlain fumbles with his words. He bows lightly.

  “My Qu-” he catches himself. “Yes, Queen Mother.” He shoots Taeg a knowing stare before backing from the room. The door thuds closed behind him.

  Taeg looks down at his aging mother’s hands. There were many times in which these hands meant the difference between illness and health. Taeg was an often sickly boy, but screamed at the sight of the Church’s doctors. He looks back at the Queen, seeing the positions reversed.

  “Look at me,” he says, gaze locking onto hers.

  Her eyes are wide, assertive. She opens her mouth to scold him for such behavior, but he interrupts her.

  “Yes, I understand how insolent I am being,” he says roughly. “But I need you to cooperate with me. I know you’re still there. I know you’ve hidden from what cursed you. But I need you to face it now, Mother. You remember when I received my own chambers for the first time, and I cried perpetually until you came to speak to me?”

  Her eyes soften.

  “You do,” he says. “Then you remember the dead boy. I remember you screaming as if it were yesterday. It curdled my blood, seized my muscles. When we found you, you had crawled under the stairwell. Do you remember that?”

  She stares.

  “Do you remember myself and the Chamberlain dragging you up to your room? I was only a boy. Your poor dress was filthy, your favorite blue one. Your hair had fallen from its clasp. You tried to fight us the whole way.”

  The silence that emanates from his mother is deafening. He hears his own blood running through his veins and the faint peal of swordplay, metal on metal coming from the north window. Save for a candle burning near her bedside, the curtains block out the daylight, peeking through only when the breeze moves them aside. The prince watches his mother’s face. She does not move.

  “Your brother,” she says suddenly.

  Her eyes are far away, focused loosely on the wall at the far side of her room.

  “My brother?” the prince says carefully. “What do you mean? I am your only child.”

  The Queen’s lips part ever so slightly, and her hand begins to tremble. He presses further, watching her eyes fade from reality.

  “Vilania,” he forces her name from his mouth, feeling out of place. “What do you mean ‘my brother’? Am I not an only child?”

  She turns to face him, and her eyes are feverish. Her small hands reach for his, squeezing fiercely.

  “Your brother is dead, Taeg.”

  She says his name for the first time, and the prince feels relief wash over him. Then, as he comprehends her words, his heart drops.

  “Mother, I don’t have a brother.”

  “Yes, you did.” She interrupts him. “You do. But he is…dead. I saw him dead. He was alive. Walking. Talking to me. I left him with a young girl. Your father...”

  She speaks haltingly, shaking her head and gazing at their hands.

  “He looks like you. But he was dead – alive. Where he came from, I don’t know. He knew who I was. Your brother can’t be alive. Not like that.”

  She pulls her hands from his, raking them through her long, dark hair, covering her eyes. Her chest begins to heave. Taeg’s eyes are wide with fright, watching his mother dissolve before him.

  “Mother, please. I don’t have a brother. Are you talking about the dead boy? Was the dead boy my brother?”

  She covers her face, sobbing heavily into her hands. The Queen’s slender shoulders shake.

  “I abandoned my boy!” she wails.

  The prince winces, sitting in silence for a few seconds, watching helplessly. He can feel his chest burning, and he looks at the floor. Desperation builds in his throat like acid.

  He’s suddenly standing, grasping ahold of his mother’s bony shoulders, shaking them. “I’m right here!” he shouts. “I’m right bloody here, Mother!”

  She stops wailing, taking a deep breath, and looks up from her hands. “No,” she says.

  Taeg releases her, backing away, arms at his side. His hair falls over his eyes, tickling his eyelashes as he shakes his head at her, gaze boring into hers.

  “My Queen,” he murmurs. “Is there a son born of your body that the King was not aware of?”

  The Queen, red with emotion, scowls at her son. Tears dry on her lips.

  “Yes,” she snaps. Her voice chills and the warm eyes of his mother become frozen metal. “He was my first born. Your father believed him to be dead, never to have left the womb alive. He believed it was a child of his own blood. I abandoned my bastard child for fear of penance. And now I pay my penance. My child is dead.”

  Taeg sits back heavily in the wicker chair, dropping his head in his hands.

  “You’re confessing to adultery, Mother,” he whispers through his fingers before looking up. “You’re telling me the dead one the Constable saw in the streets was my bastard brother?”

  She wipes tears from her face, tucking the blankets around herself. She tries feebly to regain her composure, her honor, pulling her shoulders back against the headboard.

  “Yes.”

  His gaze hardens. “You truly have lost your mind.”

  The voice that comes from his mouth is dry and sharp, not his own. He gets up to leave as the arriving physician knocks heavily on the door. “My Queen?” can be heard from the other side of the wall.

  The slender woman lying in bed begins to plead. She leans forward in her blankets, reaching for him.

  “Taeg.”

  He ignores her.

  “Please. Tell them I am deranged. The punishment for adultery is far worse than living my life out as a lunatic. Please, my king!”

  Taeg staggers to the door and opens it to reveal a lanky, aging physician in white robes. “My prince,” he bows deeply. “I am here to examine the Queen.”

  “No need,” Taeg snaps. “She has just abdicated the throne.”