"The heir—he's running a fever."
The maid came rushing in before dawn.
Miria pushed herself halfway up in bed. The dull ache in her lower belly, the throb of the wound that hadn't yet healed, all of it vanished at those words.
Before a child burning with fever, a mother's body forgets its pain.
"Where is Lionel—no, where is the heir?"
"In the annex, my lady. Her Majesty the Queen Mother has summoned the physician."
"I'm going too."
The moment she swung her feet down from the bed, the room swayed. She didn't care. Barefoot, she stepped onto the rug.
"Consort-to-be."
The maid planted herself squarely in front of her.
"Her Majesty the Queen Mother has instructed that the mother is to remain in her bedchamber."
"...What did you say?"
"She says that showing the heir his mother's weary face while he is feverish would be a disturbance to him."
A reason for keeping a mother away from her feverish child had just come out of the girl's mouth.
Miria stood there, unable to move.
—She's making her say this.
The Queen Mother. Borrowing a maid's mouth, she'd set yet another door between mother and child.
Not even on a night when the child was running a fever would she let the mother near. To that woman, Miria had been nothing but a piece on the board, there only to produce an heir. So long as the heir stayed on the board, a piece that had served its purpose was no longer needed.
"His mother's weary face," indeed. The nerve of it. Pretending to be concerned for her, while pushing her out of the mother's seat one step at a time, fully intending to gather the grandchild up for herself, whole.
—That vicious hag.
—I hope she goes straight to hell. Just as rotten as she is, never once ashamed to call stealing a child from his mother "raising him."
Shortly before noon, a brief report arrived from the annex.
"The heir's fever has broken. He is on the road to recovery."
That was all. It wasn't even addressed To the mother. It read like a work notice sent to a secretary.
Miria read it over twice.
It had broken. Thank goodness.
The relief lasted only an instant.
In the annex, guarded by the finest wet nurse, that child had gotten through his fever without any help from her hands. Whether she was there or not, nothing changed.
Here, even a mother's worry was called "a disturbance" and thrown out.
—Why is it only me who has to go through this? I haven't done anything wrong.
Before the relief that his fever had broken, that thought came surging up through her chest. She couldn't stop it, even if she'd wanted to.
In the afternoon, she was summoned to the Queen Mother's rooms.
"Congratulations on the heir's recovery."
Miria bowed her head.
"Yes, truly."
The Queen Mother tilted her teacup.
"I stayed at his side all night, directing the physician myself. At times like these, one does need the judgment of someone who understands how things are done. Lady Rosalind, I daresay, would have grasped that a mother hovering over a feverish child would only disturb him, and would have kept her distance of her own accord."
"..."
The small sound of the cup being set on its saucer.
Inside Miria, something made a thin little sound.
She put on a smile. Her hands, threatening to tremble, she clenched in her lap. Tears—no, not today. Here, tears weren't even a weapon. Every weapon was on the Queen Mother's side.
—You monster.
As long as she didn't say it aloud, she was free to think whatever she liked.
Stayed at his side all night, directing the physician. How could she even say it?
All she'd done was stand nearby shouting at the physician, and the moment the child recovered, the credit was hers, every bit of it. Meanwhile Miria had been shut away in her bedchamber, and the one report she got hadn't even been addressed to her.
Taking the grandchild away and calling it "overseeing his upbringing." Keeping the mother away and calling it "a disturbance." Dressing up nothing but the words, while all she actually did was tear a child from his mother and hold him close as her own pawn. That previous consort, whoever she'd been, must have been bled dry the very same way.
And yet no one ever reproached this woman. The one reproached was always Miria—the one who'd been made to sit in the chair.
"Thanks to your arrangements, Mother, the heir is able to grow up in good health. I'm deeply grateful."
Her voice sounded like some other woman's.
"Very well."
The Queen Mother nodded, satisfied.
"And there is one more matter."
"There seems to be a slight irregularity in the crown estate accounts."
The Queen Mother's tone never changed. It stayed at exactly the temperature of her tea.
"Donations to the church were made in your name, were they not? I'm told there's a small discrepancy between the copy of the donation deed and the church's own record of receipts. Only the slightest. But it is precisely because it is slight that it is a problem."
She stroked the rim of her teacup with a finger.
"The donations were in your name, after all. Should an inquiry ever be convened, it would be you who must answer for them, wouldn't it?"
A hush of cold ran down Miria's spine.
The church donations. —The records she'd skimmed from, just a little, for her family's sake, back when she was a Saint candidate. Sloppily, just enough not to get caught.
That "sloppily" was now taking shape and walking toward her.
—No, not only back when I was a Saint candidate. Even after I became consort-to-be, I signed the bundles the maids handed me without really reading them. Even when they said "after you've looked them over," I only glanced at the headings and put pen to paper. I never once checked what might have been slipped in.
—But that's the fault of everyone who shoved it all onto me.
"Oh, don't worry yourself."
The Queen Mother smiled slowly.
"It isn't as though anything will happen right away. Only, do keep in mind that the donations are in your name. —One never knows when, or from where, a summons might come."
Her nails had left marks in the palms she'd been clenching.
In the corridor on the way back to her room, the maids' voices brushed the edge of her hearing as they passed.
"Lady Clarice's presentation is next month, I hear."
"So she's His Majesty's official royal favorite now."
"Oh my, then the heir's foster mother might be—"
The footsteps faded.
Miria stopped dead in the middle of the corridor.
A new royal favorite. Foster mother.
For the child she had borne, another mother's seat was already being prepared—for a different woman.
—What is His Majesty doing?
He'd had her bear his child and that was that—not one word of visiting her, and now preparations for his new woman's presentation. They were trying to swap out the "mother" of her child for another woman, and he wasn't even stopping it.
And yet no one ever blamed His Majesty. The one blamed was always the woman who'd been made to sit there.
That same evening. The Grand Duchy, the office.
"Rosalind."
Partway through signing off on a document, Lucas called her name. Not by her title—just her name.
"You're pushing yourself too hard. That's enough for today. Rest."
"I can still finish a little more."
"If you collapse, I'm the one who'll be in trouble."
That was all he said before gently slipping the pen out of Rosalind's hand.
There was nothing hidden behind that "rest." She could simply believe that he was worried about her.
Night.
Lying in bed, Miria quietly laid a hand on her chest.
There was nothing there anymore.
No fever had come.
Not a fever of the body, but the fever of a mother. Whether there was still, inside her, the heat that would truly send her running for that child—here, she had been robbed even of the means to find out.
Tonight, too, the lamp in the annex burned in someone else's arms.
And on her desk, documents addressed to "the heir's mother" had piled up into a new mountain.
On the very top sat one more letter, with a wax seal she didn't recognize.
It bore the crest of the church.
Miria's fingers slowly reached for it.
She tore open the seal. It was only three lines.
Regarding the inquiry into the crown estate accounts, the named party, Miria Lowe, is hereby summoned to appear.
Sender: the church. The royal family's name appeared nowhere.
Ah, Miria thought.
That woman meant to put Miria's name alone in the line of fire, without staining the royal name in the slightest. She no longer had any intention of keeping Miria around, not even as "the heir's mother."
She had no allies. His Majesty, the church, every last wall of this palace—all of it was on that woman's side. There was not one person left in this country who called her by her own name, simply as it was—
Her thoughts got that far, and then Miria abruptly sat up in bed.
—Why should it be me in the first place?
This seat was never supposed to be hers. If only that woman had meekly become queen back then. The duties, the blame, the cold stares—that woman would have taken on every bit of it. Instead she'd tossed it all aside with a smile and fled to another country.
Yes. When you got right down to it, it was because that woman had so readily accepted the broken engagement and run away that Miria had ended up like this.
Then that woman had a duty to help her.
Her trembling fingers picked up a pen. On cheap stationery with no wax seal, she wrote out the name.
—Rosalind Abel.
She could ask that woman. That woman was responsible for helping her. Believing it without a shred of doubt, Miria set her pen racing across the page.
Without ever knowing how that letter would be handled, once it reached a desk in the north.