Chapter 236: The Marigolds
"I’m sorry," she said softly. "I didn’t bring you into this world with a proper title. Just because you were born to a..."
Her lips trembled. The words cut her even now. But she made herself say it. She owed him at least that honesty.
"...to a royal mistress."
The word hung between them like a fragile blade.
Leroy felt the weight of it, not as a shock, but as a simple truth.
It hurt her to say it; he saw it in the way her jaw trembled slightly. She was not ashamed of having loved. She was not ashamed of him. But to speak of herself that way, to her grown son, the son who had once spat that word at her in his anger, it carved through years of carefully held composure.
"No, Mother," Leroy said quietly, and he reached out to hold her hand. His grip was warm and firm, grounding.
The Dowager’s hatred had never been only about his birth. There had been other reasons, deep, tangled, dangerous. But right now, none of that mattered.
Aralyn squeezed his hand back. "You were loved," she whispered. Her voice grew steadier, almost fierce. "Your father loved you even before you were born. And I... I only held you for a few minutes, but..."
Her breath hitched; the memories were sharp edges.
"I know," Leroy said.
And he meant it. Oddly, he didn’t crave more than that. He had no burning urge to ask about his father, no great hunger to reconstruct the past. He didn’t know if that made him cold or strange. Perhaps it did. But the truth was simpler: he didn’t care.
The past had already taken too much from them. He didn’t need its ghosts to define him.
Aralyn looked at him for a long moment—this man who had grown far from her, forged by steel and war and choices she hadn’t been there to shape. And yet, she saw something in his eyes that mirrored her own: that same quiet, stubborn resilience.
She reached up with her free hand and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, just as she might have done if she had been allowed to raise him. Before her fingers brushed his braid, he casually stepped back.
For a brief moment, the garden, the palace, the world itself seemed to still. It was just a mother and her son, walking through a garden in autumn light, piecing together what years had stolen from them.
And for Leroy, for all his pragmatic, battle-hardened detachment, there was something profoundly grounding in that.
"At least you didn’t suffer growing up," Aralyn said softly.
There was a wistfulness to her tone, almost a fragile relief. She clasped her hands together as they walked, eyes fixed somewhere far away. "You were the Crown Prince of Kaltharion, weren’t you? You must have had a peaceful childhood there. A better life than what you would’ve endured here."
In her mind, she was painting a picture—a life she wanted to believe she’d given him. Perhaps it was the only way she could rationalize what she’d done, handing him over as a newborn to strangers. She had to believe her sacrifice meant something. That somewhere, far from the palace walls and daggers of Vaeloria, her son had grown up safe. Loved.
Leroy’s lips curved into a faint, private smile.
She had no idea.
For a heartbeat, he nearly told her the truth, that his adoptive parents had known he wasn’t theirs all along. That even if he had believed he belonged, they hadn’t. That being Crown Prince of Kaltharion wasn’t the golden, easy life she imagined.
But he stopped himself. What would be the point of unraveling her fragile hope now?
Let her believe that she had saved him. Let her soothe her heart with the illusion that his childhood was warm and untouched by cruelty.
The past didn’t matter anymore.
Only the present did.
And in the present, he had Lorraine. His sharp, brilliant, infuriating, perfect wife who loved him with every heartbeat. She was his anchor. His purpose. His family.
"I am grateful to you for saving my life," Leroy said finally. His voice was quiet but steady, deliberately steering the conversation to what mattered. "But... the Dowager didn’t want me dead because I’m a bastard."
Aralyn looked up, startled.
Leroy lifted his hand and touched the side of his cheek, where the mark lay faintly visible under his eye. "She tried to kill me because of this," he said. "The Mark of Dravenholt. She knew the courtiers would rally behind the child bearing the mark."
Aralyn froze. Her eyes widened, horror flashing across her face like lightning.
That night. She remembered it now, the night she gave birth. The way her husband’s face had gone pale when he saw the crimson mark. The hurried footsteps in the corridors. Osric being summoned in the middle of the night. The stars crying fire across the sky.
Her hands shook as she reached up and cupped his cheek, as if to reassure herself that he was truly here, grown and alive.
"I’m glad you’re safe now," she whispered, her voice trembling. "To see you... to hold your hand... I am grateful to the heavens."
Leroy caught her gaze, and for the first time that evening, his smile softened, not polite, not restrained, but real. "You should be grateful to my wife," he said.
Aralyn blinked. "Your wife?"
"Yes," Leroy said without hesitation. "Because of her, I’m safe. Because of her, I have a reason to live. A purpose."
The words came easily, unfiltered. His chest warmed at the mere thought of Lorraine—the way she schemed and plotted with fearless brilliance, the way she laughed with abandon, the way she leaned against him at night, trusting him to keep her safe.
He smiled; a radiant, unguarded smile that came from the very center of his being.
Aralyn was momentarily stunned. It wasn’t just that he spoke of Lorraine. It was how he spoke of her—with devotion so fierce, so instinctive, it eclipsed everything else. He wasn’t curious about his father. He wasn’t bitter about the past. But mention his wife, and he lit up like sunlight breaking through clouds.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
But even as warmth settled between them, a shadow crossed Leroy’s thoughts.
If his parents had feared the Dowager’s wrath so much that they’d sent him away as an infant to keep him alive... why had she let him live after he returned?
She’d made him wear a mask, yes. But she hadn’t tried to kill him. She could have. It would’ve been easier than swatting a mosquito. Yet she hadn’t.
Why?
The question lodged itself quietly in his mind, refusing to leave.
He turned his head absently toward the flower patch—and then he saw them.
The marigolds.
Bright golden blossoms, unfurling proudly against the fading light. They had bloomed.
For a moment, everything else fell away. His heart leapt, light and boyish, and before he knew it, his feet were carrying him forward.