Chapter 7 - THE UNMARKED BLANKET
Three days after the failed coup, the grand administrative transition of Ashynmere was well underway. The corrupt southern garrisons had been purged, loyal commanders installed in their place, and Graves’s shadow network completely dismantled.
Sally sat at her familiar mahogany desk in the archives, though it no longer felt like a hiding place. The ledgers were neatly stacked, the room was bathed in golden sunlight, and the heavy iron bolt on the door remained unlatched.
"He's doing the jaw thing again," Fen announced cheerfully inside her mind, munching on what felt like a mental daydream of roasted pheasant.
Sally smiled, dipping her quill into the inkwell. "Fen, your human is currently presiding over a high council meeting. He is allowed to look serious."
"No, this is the 'I am trying to figure out how to tell my mate I bought her a ridiculous crown' jaw thing," Fen insisted gleefully. "It's very square. Like a building block."
Before Sally could reply, the archive door swung open, and Rhett stepped inside. He had discarded his heavy battle plate for a dark velvet doublet embroidered with the sun-and-wolf crest, though his broadsword still hung at his hip. He looked tired, but the severe, burdened tension that had defined him for years was entirely gone.
He walked straight over to her desk, leaning his hips against the edge of it, looking down at her with a soft, affectionate smile.
"Council adjourned?" Sally asked, setting her quill down.
"Successfully," Rhett replied, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "The southern lords have officially submitted their allegiance. No one will ever question your place in this castle again."
Sally leaned into his touch, feeling the comforting hum of the bond between them. "I wasn't worried about what they thought, Rhett. I was only ever worried about what we were building here."
Rhett smiled, his thumb brushing her cheek. But then his expression shifted slightly, turning thoughtful. He reached into his doublet and pulled out a small, old, neatly folded piece of faded, coarse gray wool cloth—frayed at the edges, bearing no crest, no stamp, and no signature.
Sally froze. Her breath caught in her throat.
"Where... where did you get that?" she whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
"One of Vane’s scouts recovered it from the old municipal registry archives in the southern border town," Rhett said softly, his eyes filled with infinite gentleness. "It was logged twenty-four years ago by a compassionate border guard who found an infant wrapped in it beside the stones."
Sally stared at the rough blanket—the very blanket she had been wrapped in when she was abandoned as an infant, the physical proof of her supposed lack of worth, her lack of a family tree.
"I thought it was lost forever," she murmured, reaching out with shaking fingers to touch the frayed wool.
May you like
"It was never lost," Rhett said, covering her hand with his own large, warm palm. "And it doesn't represent where you came from, Sally. It represents the exact moment the universe decided to send the future Queen of Ashynmere into the world."
Tears welled in Sally’s eyes, but for the first time in her life, they weren't tears of sorrow or inadequacy. They were tears of complete, unburdened freedom. She wasn't an orphan hiding in the dust anymore. She was found. She was chosen.
