"Mother of the Heir, you are as lovely as ever today."
The maid's voice reached her through the mirror.
Miria stared at her own face.
A month since the birth. If you looked closely, they were still there: the bruise-dark shadows under her eyes that makeup hid, the hollows in her cheeks.
Even so, the maids said "lovely."
It wasn't a lie. What they were looking at wasn't Miria's face.
A title, "Mother of the Heir," was sitting in a chair. They looked at it and said: lovely.
"...I am Miria."
It slipped out of her.
The maid's hand stopped. The comb hung in midair. A troubled face. A face troubled from the bottom of her heart.
"Yes... you are the consort-to-be. No, rather—you are the Mother of the Heir."
"I see."
Miria didn't ask again.
Afternoon. An official function.
Miria walked the red carpet. The herald's voice rang out high.
"The Mother of the Heir enters."
The nobles bowed their heads like a wave.
Nowhere in that wave was the name "Miria Lowe."
When she'd been a Saint candidate, people had called her "Miria." Even back when she was the daughter of a country baron's house. Her father, her little sister, her governess. Even the young ladies who trailed after her called her "Lady Miria."
Now, no one did.
She sat in the chair. She smiled. She waved. She let her eyes go moist—that, at least, she was still good at. Even after childbirth, her muscles remembered how to act out tears.
The one skill she had left.
Around the same time. The Grand Duchy, the northern council hall.
"—It is exactly as Economic Advisor Abel projected. Customs revenue for the coming term will turn to a surplus."
At the secretary's words, the gazes of the assembled officials gathered on Rosalind all at once. Direct, admiring gazes.
"Advisor Rosalind's projection. Not mine," Lucas said shortly from the head of the table. It was the voice of a man returning credit, by name, to where it belonged.
Here, everyone called her by name. "Advisor Abel." "Advisor Rosalind." Her work had her name attached to it, properly.
"Then let us move on to the next item."
Rosalind turned the page of her documents, cool and composed. Her name treated as her own, her work treated as her own—hers was the profile of someone who didn't think there was anything special about that.
Dinner.
Just the two of them, Miria and the Queen Mother. Alfred didn't come. Tonight, again, he didn't come.
"In my day, I returned to my duties three days after giving birth," the Queen Mother said, not pausing as she raised her soup to her lips.
"And my milk came in so plentifully. I had no need of a wet nurse at all."
A small sound of spoon against bowl.
"There are set hours for visiting the heir, you know. If the mother shows her face too often, she grows far too attached."
—Far too attached.
—What is that supposed to mean? So she's saying that if I'm involved, it'll harm how the child grows up. That a mother showing her face is poison, or something.
—That she can raise him properly, better than his real mother. That again. This mother-in-law is just deciding things on her own.
Miria gripped her spoon hard.
—But.
She let the strength drain smoothly from her clenched fingers. Softened her brows, lifted the corners of her mouth, even added an adoring shimmer to her eyes. In a single beat, she built a radiant smile.
"Yes, Mother. Just as you say."
The one skill she had left was useful at times like this most of all.
She set the spoon gently back in the bowl.
Night. Her bed.
Beyond the sense of the maids withdrawing, whispers leaked in from outside the door.
"His Majesty has taken up with a new count's daughter..."
"Lady Clarice, they say. Ever so beautiful."
"His Majesty's view is that it would be improper to lay a hand on his consort while she's with child..."
"Even though she's already given birth, hasn't she?"
A tittering laugh. Footsteps faded away.
His Majesty hadn't come to her room once, not even before the birth.
Not since that day her pregnancy was confirmed and the physician ordered her to rest. "My consort must not be disturbed in her condition," he'd said, with a perfectly reasonable face, and stopped coming.
—While I lay in bed, bound to nothing but bearing his child, he was visiting another woman's room.
And now that she'd given birth, it was already the next woman.
—Calling for me only when it suits him.
This was how he'd cast off Big Sister, too. When he got bored, on to the next. The night of the broken engagement, she'd thought she had been chosen—but she'd simply been standing there when he got bored of Big Sister.
—To begin with, I took Big Sister's seat because I went after it. I gazed up at him with tears in my eyes and said "I'm being bullied," lined up the testimony, timed it just right, and got him to decide on breaking off the engagement. It all went exactly according to the script I wrote.
—But what's wrong with that? I wanted something, so I wished for it and reached out my hand. That's all. The one who finally decided "I'll do it" and wrecked everything was His Majesty. All I wanted was that seat. Nobody told me, not one word, that a hell like this came attached.
—What a horrible man.
If she bore the heir, she would be loved. She would sit in a seat above everyone else. That was what she had believed.
When she gave birth, she became "the woman who bore the heir." That was all.
She rolled over. Her lower belly still hurt. The bleeding they'd laughed off with "You're exaggerating" still hadn't fully stopped.
—This is no joke.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got.
Her husband was off with another woman. Her child had been taken by the wet nurse, and even his name decided without her. "Miria" had vanished from the voices that called her. Still bleeding, buried in paperwork, and they expected her to keep smiling.
This was where she—once a Saint candidate—had ended up?
—I'm nothing but an unpaid maid with the title of Saint.
This wasn't what she had wanted. It was supposed to be a dazzling future. And yet why was it only her who had to suffer like this?
Something black lurched and boiled in the pit of her stomach. Sleep, it seemed, would not come.
The next morning, the one who knocked on her bedchamber door was neither the Queen Mother nor a maid.
"Saint candidate Miria Lowe. An urgent notice from the temple."
The church's envoy did not bow his head.
Pressed into the wax seal was not the holy sigil, but a single word: Suspended.
Her recognition as Saint. Suspended.
The seat of consort-to-be was already far off. No one called the mother by her name. And now even the last word she had left—"Saint"—had been left dangling in midair.
—Why?
She had only done it for her family. She'd only tidied up the records a little. She hadn't hurt anyone.
The notice slipped from her trembling fingers.
—Big Sister.
It was all Big Sister's fault.
That woman had known from the very start. Just what a hell this seat was.
That the consort's seat was a monster that stole the mother's name and swallowed even the word "Saint"—she had known all of it, every last bit of it.
She had known, kept quiet, and shoved it onto her. "Please, you take it," she'd said, handing it over—and set her up.
And then run off to the Grand Duchy, all by herself, without a backward glance. No doubt she was laughing right now, snug in some warm room. Watching from on high as Miria was stripped bare, layer by layer.
Miria ground her back teeth.
—I will never forgive her.
All of it was that woman's fault. She had done nothing wrong. Nothing at all.
She had simply been set up.