Chương 74: Chapter 7: The Royal Mandate

Severity returned to his face, carving once again the wrinkles of command and concern, and Selena knew the truce was over. The serious conversation was about to begin. —Daughter, my little niece —Valerius said. His voice had lost all trace of its former amusement. Now it was grave, direct, loaded with an intensity that made Selena's skin crawl, making it run down her back like a warning shiver. —Why did you run away this time? Fear of marriage? Evading the responsibility of the house?

Is it because of the punishment I gave you for what you did at the market? Or is it once again just for... fun? The question floated in the air between them, heavy as a block of iron, dense as the silence before a storm. Selena felt the panic, momentarily driven away by that unexpected laughter, returned with redoubled force, climbing up her throat like a vine. What can I say?

What reason would the original Isabella have had to escape this man who looked at her with a mixture of severity and such heartbreaking tenderness? The thought arrived first, and then she spoke. —I just wanted to learn what it was like to live as they do —she managed to articulate. The phrase sounded hollow, borrowed, even to her own ears. Like a disembodied echo, like a lie that not even she could sustain.

But inside, deep in her mind beyond what she was able to remember, the intruder, the philologist, struggled in a sea of confusion. He had no answer. He did not know the motives of the woman whose body he inhabited. He could only guess, assume, based on the fragments of a cruel and capricious personality he had been told about, the brushstrokes of horror he had been collecting like someone gathering stones to build a wall.

The Grand Duke raised a hand, a minimal gesture charged with an authority as natural as breathing, as the beating of his own heart. Instantly, as if emerging from the shadows, as if she had been waiting for that sign for hours, a maid materialized at his side with a cut glass goblet where the served liquor shone like a ruby. He took it, drank a long draught, and the silence stretched, heavy, as the liquid descended his throat, each second an eternity.

Finally, he lowered the glass and his gaze, charged with a contained tempest, with years of accumulated frustration and fear, fixed back upon her. —My daughter, little one —he began. His voice was a hoarse whisper, an echo of an ancient sorrow that had been buried for decades under layers of power and protocol. —I hate it when you run away. I hate it when I cannot find you. I hate it when I see you... and I remember everything we could lose.

He paused, and the silence that followed was more eloquent than any speech. —I have told you since your parents died, I do not want to lose you for anything in this world. You are the last piece of them, the last shred of my own blood. But you... you insist on fleeing. Another silence.

And then, a gesture of sincere and cold sadness, as naked as it was improbable in a man of his power, crossed his face, transforming his severe features into those of a tired old man, those of a father who has spent too many sleepless nights waiting for news. —Please... I do not want to lose my only family. Selena looked at him, and the surprise was so evident she could not hide it. She felt her eyes widen, her lips part slightly in a gesture of incredulity that no mask could conceal.

That vulnerability, that genuine anguish, that fear so human and so primal, was not part of the tyrannical jailer she had imagined in her musings. The words burst forth then, driven by a deep, almost visceral need to justify not the Duchess's flight, but her own. To explain, even if no one could understand why she, the intruder, also longed to escape. —I flee because I want answers —she said, responding from deep within.

Her voice sounded strangely clear in the immensity of the hall, like a bell tolling in the night. —I escape because the world is vast and beautiful, and I experience things... I do it because... because they fill my soul. These were words from the center of her heart, from something that came from beyond everything she understood now in that world; they were the words of someone who had dedicated their life to unraveling meanings hidden between the lines of ancient texts.

Not those of a capricious noble fleeing political commitment. The Grand Duke observed her, and a spark of bewilderment followed by a profound curiosity shone in his gray eyes. It was a response he had never heard from her lips. A window into a soul he did not recognize. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. —Then... if that is your reason, if it is the thirst for knowledge that drives you —he said slowly.

It was as if he were savoring a new idea, like someone tasting an unknown dish and finding an unexpected flavor in it. —I will share with you the news that has had me disconcerted these last few weeks. He drank the rest of the wine in a single gulp, with the decisiveness of a man arming himself with courage to confess a secret that weighed like a slab. The empty glass was gathered by the same phantom maid, who disappeared again into the shadows from which she had emerged.

—His Majesty, King Thaerón IV Volgthar —he announced. The name resonated with the weight of centuries, with the authority of a five-thousand-year uninterrupted dynasty. —He has made it known to me that his royal investigators have determined in you... a magical potential. He let the words fall between them; they were like stones in a pond whose ripples expanded uncontrollably.

Selena felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature, a cold that ran down her spine and made every hair on her body stand on end. —You are the Hereditary Duchess —Valerius continued, and his voice was now grave, almost solemn. Selena took a breath. Surprise was reflected in her eyes, but deep in her chest, there was expectation.

—Magic is not only rare and dangerous, but since the founding of the kingdom by our first monarch, the great Eliud Volgthar, there has not been a single noble with magical potential. It is an anomaly. A... rarity without precedent. He exhaled a sigh, a harsh and human sound, far from all the noble pomp, from all the artificiality of the court. —That is why the King gave me three petitions in exchange for you, my daughter, my beating heart.

His voice softened with affection so evident it was heartbreaking, almost unbearable to witness. —Learning to control that gift at the Royal University of Kaelburg. It is evident, by your previous answer, that you do not oppose learning. And I, as the head of House Solendra, have already asked for two. He paused, measuring her reaction, scrutinizing every micro-gesture on her face. —The first of them was for the Crown to heal my reproductive capacity. The second, a wife of noble birth, fertile and kind.

The terms were crude, transactional, typical of the ruthless world he governed—the market of alliances and wombs that high politics had become. —However, daughter, my green-eyed little one... His voice almost broke, and the mask of the Iron Grand Duke cracked again, showing the tired and longing man beneath, the uncle who only desired a family. —I left the third to you. As you know, you are my only family, and for years... for decades I have desired to have my own. He stopped speaking.

A noticeable weight, as if he had shed the shoulders of invisible armor, lifted from him. There he stood, not just as Grand Duke Valerius of House Solendra, but as an uncle who had just confessed his deepest vulnerability and, at the same time, revealed that his niece was a unique phenomenon in the history of the kingdom. Selena's mind became a whirlwind of silent questions, a cyclone of ideas spinning out of control.

Magical potential, the royal university, the petitions, the King watching from a distance, manipulating the threads of her life without even knowing her... It was a chessboard whose pieces moved with a logic she was only beginning to glimpse, a game of thrones where she was a newly discovered piece of incalculable value. She controlled herself. She stifled the panic beneath a layer of cold determination, the same that had allowed her to survive in Terracanto, negotiate with criminals, and face mercenaries.

She knew that this moment, this single petition, was a turning point. A crossroads where every word could mean the difference between freedom and a longer chain. She could not waste it. Freedom was a chimera. Her uniqueness made her a target, a resource too valuable to be released, a caged bird that was worth more than the entire aviary. Asking for Kaela... the idea pierced her heart with a sweet and dangerous heat, a pang of hope and fear in equal measure.

But the thought questioned her immediately: what if they used her? If they turned her into a bargaining chip, a hostage for her good behavior? The image of the tanner, with her dark eyes and rare smile, being dragged into this world of conspiracies and violence, made her blood run cold. She could not risk it. Not with her. Then, like an underground river finally bursting to the surface after centuries of silence, the memory of the dusty town of Terracanto emerged.

Not just of Kaela, but of Lyra and her hopelessness, of the calloused hands of the women of the Sacred Rest, of the smell of misery and despair that soaked the dirt streets, of the children thin from hunger and the old men coughing blood in the corners. She remembered injustice not as an abstract concept, but as a scar on her own intruder's soul, like a burn that would not finish healing.

She opened her mouth, and the voice that came out was not that of the capricious duchess, nor the obedient daughter, nor even the frightened philologist. It was that of a ruler, firm and decided, the voice of someone who has seen horror and has decided not to be an accomplice to silence. —Remove the tax increased by the Mayor of Terracanto —she said almost without thinking. The words resonated with a clarity that cut the air, filling every corner of the hall with their weight.

—My people, our people, deserve to live with dignity. The Grand Duke looked at her, and in his steel-gray eyes, there was no anger, nor even the condescension she expected. There was a profound, almost overwhelming wonder, a complete re-evaluation of the creature before him. His eyes widened, and for a moment his mouth fell open for a few seconds, but he controlled himself. He controlled himself as only men of power know how to do, swallowing any emotion that threatened to overflow.

—I will do it —he conceded, without flinching, without a second of doubt. —But it is not a petition to the King. It is an internal matter of our house, and I will resolve it. Ask the King for something that House Solendra cannot achieve by itself. Something that only the Crown can grant. Selena caught a gasp. She had wasted her petition... or not. Perhaps she had gained something more valuable: the certainty that her order, for now, would be obeyed.

The confirmation that she could pull the threads of this world, even in minor matters. But now she needed to think further, higher, deeper. What can I ask the most powerful monarch in the kingdom that would be both a tool for my survival and my escape? What do I truly desire, more than anything else? she questioned herself at speed.