Fate's oddity volume 2, page 22
Beatrice stepped away from the door and came to Kris’s side. The room smelled like citrus; the folder on the table made everything feel smaller.
Kris read the pages three times—words, signatures, nerve. Then: “You forged a marriage.”
“I did,” Alaric said.
“You took my yes and my no,” Kris went on, tapping the paper with a knuckle. “You put me on your books because you couldn’t handle being only what I allowed.”
“Yes.”
“Say why. No speeches.”
“Because I was scared,” he said. “That you’d disappear again. That the court would move our kids around like furniture. That if I died, the law would chew you up. I wanted something that held. I told myself it was for you. It was also for me.”
Kris’s mouth flattened. “You loved me like a jailer.”
He didn’t dodge. “Yes.”
“And you cut me out,” Beatrice said—calm, cold. “You turned your wife into a prop for a secret I would never have approved. You answer to both of us now.”
Alaric steadied a hand on the chair back. “What do I do?”
“Start here,” Kris said. “You don’t get forgiven. Not today. Not soon. That paper stays sealed because it protects the kids and buys us time against my father—for now. We’ll use your mess as a shield. Don’t confuse that with acceptance.”
Beatrice slid a blank sheet toward him. “You’re going to write a statement: you signed this without Kris’s knowledge or consent. It goes in the same file. If you ever try to wield this against us, I’ll make sure the whole world sees that line first.”
“Done,” he said.
“Next,” Kris said, “no public rollout. No surprise titles. If anyone asks, we’re coordinating for family security. You keep quiet until we pick the hour.”
“Done.”
“Move to the east tower,” Beatrice added. “Tonight. Separate staff. If you want back into either of our lives, you use a door and your voice.”
“Understood.”
“And stop ducking your father’s filth,” Kris said, softer and sharper. “You look at it with me. Not as the King. As the man who signed that.” She tapped the page. “Carry it where I can see it.”
“Yes.”
“Write,” Beatrice said.
The pen scratched. When he finished, Beatrice read, crossed out two hedges, and slid it back. Kris didn’t pick up the pen.
“You sign it,” she told him. “Twice.”
He signed. Beatrice folded the statement, set it with the forged marriage, and met his eyes. “Now go prep your inquiry. You take every question and every rumor. If something ugly needs handling offstage, Kris and I decide that. Not you.”
“I hear you.”
“Good,” Kris said. “One more thing: we’re keeping this because it’s useful to us. When it stops being useful, it dies. If you push, it dies sooner.”
“Do you want it annulled now?” he asked.
Kris glanced at Beatrice; Beatrice gave the tiniest nod.
“Not now,” Kris said. “It stays sealed as a shield. Later, we choose what happens to it.”
“Thank you,” he started.
“Don’t thank us,” Beatrice cut in. “Carry it.”
Alaric nodded, gathered the papers. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Kris said. “You apologize to our kids for the years you let other people name them. No speeches. Just time.”
“I will.”
“Good,” Beatrice said. “Chamberlain’s office. I’ll meet you there with the seal. Then you can start counting stairs to the east tower.”
He left.
Silence held a beat.
“He’s lucky you were here,” Kris said.
“He’s unlucky I was,” Beatrice replied, but the edge eased. “We’ll use what he broke until it stops being useful. Then we break it on our terms.”
Kris’s eyes stayed on the door. “He’s going to hate those stairs.”
“That’s the point,” Beatrice said, tucking the documents under her arm. “Come on. Let’s lock this where only we can reach it. Then we tell the kids—our way.”
Kris nodded. “Our way.”
They left together—not forgiving, not forgetting, just choosing the tool that kept the family intact while the man who’d made the mess learned how to carry it.
Chapter 11: Before the Crown Comes Down
The palace had a dozen rooms for diplomacy, for ceremony, for keeping secrets—but only one for deciding which truths were safe to say out loud. Morning light slipped in through half-lidded windows, softening the edges of a long table at the room’s center. A lavish table runner stretched its full length, dyed in deep ocean blue and thick with silver-threaded embroidery, like something meant to impress the spirits themselves.
Servants moved with polished quiet, each one already in the know. The truth of the family’s bloodline had spread through the trusted ranks like smoke through floorboards—unspoken, but seen. They poured tea, adjusted plates, and cleared crumbs with the kind of attentive grace that came from understanding how fragile peace could be. Lieutenant Silva lingered near the wall, straight-backed and watchful, present without intruding.
Alaric stood at the head of the table, tall and composed, making no use of the chair’s height. To his left sat Beatrice, hands folded, a kind woman shaped into something steadier. To his right, Kris sat in quiet restraint, black dress crisp against the pale morning, her hair pinned back, eyepatch hidden beneath a plain strip of silk—as if even her scars had agreed to wait.
The rest of the table filled out in familiar patterns. Kukuri and Kalis sat beside their mother, still quietly chewing over the strangeness of being here like this. Across from them, Celestia leaned comfortably into Krimson, who lounged with habitual ease, posture relaxed but senses awake. Murasaki sat at his opposite side, one ear tilted toward the center of the table. Her presence was alert, but not tense—guarded, not hostile.
And farther down, just near the edge of comfort, sat Albrecht. He said nothing. His seat was on Beatrice’s side of the table, but separated by more than chairs. The distance was chosen, not accidental. He hadn’t been excluded—only reminded that inclusion came with consequences. His gaze rarely lifted from his plate.
It was breakfast before the mask. The room smelled faintly of coffee, toast, and some spiced preserve that clung to the air like a promise.
Alaric set his cup down with quiet finality. “Your mothers and I have been talking,” he said, his voice even. “And we’ve decided it’s time to make this family a little more official.”
He let the words rest, not forcing them. “We want to start living like a family. Not just behind closed doors.”
Albrecht scoffed and turned his head, eyes fixed on the far wall.
Kukuri made a small, involuntary sound; Kalis caught her hand under the table and squeezed once, hard enough to sting and settle.
Beatrice’s smile was soft but certain, like sunlight through stained glass. “This is a good thing,” she said gently. “It may be complicated for a while… but it will lead to something better.”
Kris looked at her children and then at the two women who had, by all observable measures, decided to be part of the mess. “The story we tell,” she said, “is not the whole truth. However, it is the useful truth.”
Celestia gave a wry smile. “Of course it is. That’s very you.”
A soft, almost inaudible sigh drifted from the far end of the room—Sylva, by the door, muttering just loud enough for pointed ears to catch, “Would be even more useful if I didn’t have to process world-changing secrets before breakfast.”
Alaric began laying out the pieces like a general setting pawns. “First,” he said, “we’ll be telling the court that Kris and I have been married for a long time.”
Kalis blinked. “Wait—have you?”
He offered a faint smile, weary and unrepentant. “Technically, yes. I signed the documents myself. Years ago. Before any of you were born.”
Kris’s mouth tugged sideways. “It was paperwork and a knife under a borrowed name. A private fiction. One he clung to more than I did.”
Alaric nodded. “It wasn’t real. Not then. I made it for myself—something to hold onto. But now, it serves a better purpose. It’s the useful truth your mother spoke of. And it’s the one we’ll use to set things right.”
Beatrice’s eyes softened. “It will be announced formally,” she said. “Kris is—officially—Queen of Gaia. The court will choke and then swallow. They always do.”
Kukuri frowned, stirring her drink with the tip of her spoon. “And we’re just supposed to forgive him for that?”
Both mothers answered in unison.
“No.”
They gave Alaric a sharp look—different flavors of the same simmering heat.
“We’re still mad,” Beatrice said.
“Very mad,” Kris echoed.
“But that doesn’t change what has to be done, does it?”
Alaric exhaled through his nose. “No.”
Krimson gave a quiet, dry chuckle. “Yeah… we really can’t do anything normal, can we?”
Alaric cleared his throat lightly and went on. “Second, we’re going to publicly acknowledge what my father did to Nox. No more careful omissions. No more euphemisms.” His eyes met Krimson’s across the table. “I’ll call it what it was—an atrocity—and I’ll apologize without conditions. And from this point forward, any Noxians who wish to build a life here will be welcomed. This was never their home, but it can be. They’ll be offered full citizenship, no strings attached, under the protection of Queen Kris.”
Beatrice added, “There will be a restitution fund, cultural protections, and a council of Noxian elders to advise the throne. We won’t presume to know what’s fair. We’ll ask. Let them tell us what they need.”
She didn’t say where the money would come from. Not yet. Officially, the fund would be state-sponsored. Unofficially, it would bleed from three sources: the royal family’s own coffers, the Stoll estate, and the vast holdings of Viscount Ludwig Salvador—the former Noxian turncoat who built his fortune on blood and betrayal. But until the last pieces were in place, that part of the plan would remain silent.
Kukuri exhaled like someone had let go of her ribs. “Thank you,” she said, and then, “Mom?”
Kris met her daughter’s gaze evenly. “I stayed in the shadows for a long time. Some of it was for revenge. Some of it was love. A lot of it was just me being stubborn.” Her tone didn’t waver. “The official story is going to be that I was protecting the realm from the dark. And that’s what people will hear.”
She paused, letting the silence land before adding, “Let them. It protects the ones who really were.”
The room didn’t argue. They understood the shape of the lie—and why it mattered that it stood.
Krimson’s mouth curved without humor. “And Blood Trail?”
Beatrice looked to Krimson with gentle finality. “After this, there won’t be any need for anyone to say that name again. ‘Blood Trail’ was never a person. Just a description. A shadow.”
She exhaled, her voice steady.
“There may be more bloodshed in the future, morbid as that sounds. But there will be no more one-man myths walking around with that name. Not while I’m queen.”
Kris’s good eye didn’t blink. “I can stand in front of the knives a little longer, Bea.”
Beatrice puffed her cheeks like an offended debutante. “No. Absolutely not. No more self-sacrificing.” She crossed her arms, looking every bit the stubborn queen. “You don’t get to carry all of it anymore. That’s what we’re here for. All of us.”
From across the table Celestia laid her hand on Kris’s wrist—formal, almost ceremonial. “We will hold the line from the outside. You hold it from the dais.”
Alaric let the support ripple through the room, then placed the final piece with quiet finality. “I’ve called for a royal declaration—two days from now, in the palace courtyard. It’ll be open to the public.”
Alaric looked at the three youths—youths in the historical sense, not the lethal one. “For now, you’re still commoners. In name, at least. And that means something.” His voice softened. “This is your last bit of freedom before the world starts seeing you as symbols instead of people. Before every smile gets scrutinized, and every word weighs more than you meant it to. So take the day. Use it. Walk the city as yourselves.”
Beatrice reached across and, with the easy tenderness of someone who had chosen to love these children as her own, adjusted the fold of Kalis’s collar. “Eat something ridiculous,” she said, giving a little smile. “Laugh too loud. Let them see you happy. That’ll matter just as much as anything we say from a balcony.”
Kukuri’s grin returned in full. “We were planning pastries.”
“Good,” Beatrice said. “Bring me one. I’ll lie and call it a carrot.”
She gave a little laugh, and the others started to rise—when the chair at the end of the table scraped loudly.
Albrecht stood.
Not slowly, not calmly. He pushed to his feet with the deliberate over-exaggeration of someone desperate to make his displeasure known without words. His jaw was tight, his eyes glassy, and his fists clenched at his sides as he turned on his heel and started toward the door in silence.
Kris’s voice stopped him.
“We’re not cutting you out of this,” she said plainly. “There’s no reason we can’t all be family, Albrecht.”
He didn’t respond. Just paused at the threshold, glanced back once—not at her, but at all of them—and kept walking. There was a shine in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, but no one could tell whether it was from hurt, or anger, or both.
No one spoke after that.
Not right away. Because he hadn’t said anything wrong. But he hadn’t helped, either.
And sometimes, that kind of silence left the heaviest mark.
***
The trees along the roadside had thinned, their limbs bare and wiry against a colorless sky. Frost clung to fence posts. Distant chimneys puffed like lazy thoughts. The wind wasn't sharp yet, just cool enough to remind them winter was almost here.
Krimson let out a quiet breath and watched it fade. “It’s been two months.”
Celestia glanced over. “Since what?”
“Since I met you, duh.”
She blinked, then smiled gently. “Wow, that long already?”
He nodded. “It feels longer. And somehow not at all.”
“Same,” he said, stuffing his hands into his coat.
Murasaki walked slightly ahead, her ears angled back to listen, tail swaying with the rhythm of the road. She didn’t speak, but her presence anchored them—soft, steady, observant.
The road curved through a quieter stretch of the city. A few doors had wreaths made of pine and ribbon. Someone had bundled dry sage into a charm above a lintel.
“Winter Solstice is coming,” Celestia murmured.
“The air smells different now,” she added, brushing her fingers along her cloak. “Solstice coming.”
Murasaki nodded, ears flicking as a breeze caught her braid. “You can feel it. In your ribs. Like the world’s holding its breath.”
They kept walking. Just the three of them, hearts warm against the cold.
The city took them in like it had been waiting.
The three of them moved through it like weather: familiar, noticeable, changing the space without asking.
Krimson wore a coat sharp enough to draw attention even without the white flash in his hair. He managed gazes like tools—meeting some, measuring others, giving back only what the moment required.
Celestia wore a fitted Gaian coat over her usual dress, the lines bold enough to draw glances even in the cold. Her style didn’t hide her elven features, or her confidence. The city had gotten used to her by now, but every so often, someone would stare—half curiosity, half awe, a little more than before.
Murasaki didn’t adjust anything. She walked like she always did—head high, greataxe slung across her back, violet hair catching the morning sun. She took up space like it belonged to her and nodded once at anyone who looked like they needed reminding.
The bell over the bakery door chimed, and the woman behind the counter glanced up, dusting flour from her hands.
“Oh—it’s you three,” she said, a touch of recognition in her smile. “What brings you out so early? Not chasing monsters already?”
Krimson shook his head, still a little full. “Just walking off breakfast. Thought we’d pick up something for later.”
Celestia studied the display. “What do you recommend for a stroll?”
“Orange buns are fresh, and there are a few nut spirals left. Not much else this morning,” the baker said.
Murasaki leaned over the counter, considering. “Let’s just get three. We’ll eat them as we go.”
The baker started wrapping up their order, nodding. “You lot know how to make a morning count.”
Krimson paid, and the three of them left with a paper bag between them and nowhere urgent to be.
They overpaid by just enough to be polite and not enough to insult, and stepped back into the street.
As they made their way from the shop people noticed them—not with a crowd, but with sideways glances and hesitant smiles. Children whispered behind gloved hands, a few workers leaned out from shop doors, and a girl with a bright strawberry-red ribbon and a battered notebook watched with barely-contained excitement.
She hesitated, then hurried over, clutching a card to her chest. “Um—could I get your signatures? Please?”
Celestia smiled, meeting her eyes. “Of course. What’s your name?”
“Anya,” the girl breathed, her voice trembling a little. “I mean, thank you, Your Highness.”
Celestia just nodded and signed with a flourish. Murasaki scrawled her name quick and sharp, almost shy about it. Krimson finished last, his handwriting precise. When Anya took the card back, she held it tight, beaming at all three, and bolted away—like she was afraid the moment might vanish if she waited too long.
Murasaki shook her head, faintly amused. “We’re really someone’s story now, aren’t we?”
