Chapter 6: The Diary of Ashes

The ballroom had dissolved into a blur of perfumed greetings and hollow laughter, but I barely registered any of it. The voice—*her* voice—had burrowed beneath my skin like a splinter. Every glance from a masked noble made me flinch, certain I’d find those cold, knowing eyes staring back.

Damien found me by the terrace doors, his jaw tight. “Ella. What did you hear?”

“I don’t know.” The lie tasted bitter. “Just… wind.”

His gaze searched mine, and for a heartbeat, I saw the boy he must have been—curious, untamed. Then the mask slid back into place. “Stay close to the palace. No wandering alone.”

He was gone before I could argue, swallowed by the throng of sycophants. But his warning was a door slamming shut. And I’d never been good at following orders.

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The east wing was silent, save for the whisper of my own footsteps. The servants’ quarters where I’d slept for three years were familiar, but tonight I walked past them, past the kitchens, to a door I’d never noticed—tucked behind a tapestry of a weeping willow. The wood was warped with age, the lock rusted. It gave way with a single, angry twist.

The room inside was a tomb. Dust motes swirled in the sliver of moonlight cutting through a cracked window. A four-poster bed, rotted linens. A vanity with a cracked mirror, its surface stained like tears. And there, on a small writing desk, a leather-bound book.

My hands shook as I opened it. The pages were yellowed, the ink faded but legible. *My dearest little rose*—

I stopped breathing. The same phrase. The voice from the ball.

I flipped to the first entry.

*She is born. Seven fingers on her left hand, the midwife says, but I have already counted them myself. She is perfect. She is mine. But Damien… Damien is not.*

The world tilted. I gripped the desk to keep from collapsing.

*The King believes Damien is his heir. Let him. But he is the son of the stable boy, a man I loved when I was young and foolish. I knew the moment I saw his mother’s eyes in Damien’s that the bloodline was tainted. But a crown is a powerful veil.*

I read faster, my pulse roaring in my ears.

*I have watched Damien grow, and I see the wildness in him—the restless hunger he cannot name. He is not of royal blood. He is of the earth. And if the truth ever surfaces, the kingdom will tear him apart. So I will bury it. I will bury it in the only place no one will ever look—in the heart of the rose who cannot speak.*

The entry ended with a flourish: *She will be my keeper. My secret. My sacrifice.*

A sob clawed up my throat. The diary slipped from my fingers, hitting the floor with a thud. Seven fingers. The midwife’s error. My mother had written about *me*. I’d been the keeper of Damien’s secret before I even knew his name.

But she hadn’t stopped there. The final page was dated the night of the fire that killed my mother.

*They suspect. The King’s advisors found the stable boy’s letters. I must burn them all—except one, which I will hide where only a rose can find it. If I die tonight, let my death be a warning. Damien is not the true heir. But the crown is safer with him than with the vultures circling the throne.*

Below, in a trembling hand: *For my daughter—if you are reading this, you are the only one who can decide what happens next. Tell no one. Trust no one. Not even the ones who love you. Because love is the easiest leash.*

The diary ended. But tucked into the back cover was a folded slip of paper, yellowed and singed at the edges. I unfolded it with trembling fingers.

It was a marriage certificate. Dated twenty-six years ago. Between my mother, Lady Celeste Marchetti, and a man named *Jasper Thorne*—the royal stable master.

I stared at the names until they blurred. My mother had been married. To a commoner. And if that were true, then—

“I thought I’d find you here.”

The voice was ice. I spun around.

Damien stood in the doorway, torchlight carving shadows into his face. His eyes flicked to the diary in my hands, then to the certificate. And I watched the color drain from his skin like water down a drain.

“What did you find?” His voice was dangerously quiet.

I opened my mouth, but the words were a stone in my throat. The truth was a blade, and I had just picked it up.

“Ella.” He stepped closer, and I could see the fear behind the fury. “What did you find?”

I looked from his face to the certificate in my hands. My mother’s name. A stable master’s name. And the date—nine months before Damien was born.

The secret wasn’t just that Damien wasn’t the true heir.

It was that *I* was.

The diary slipped from my fingers. Damien caught it before it hit the ground, his gaze scanning the pages, his face hardening with each word. When he looked up, his eyes were wild, but not with betrayal. With something far worse.

*Recognition.*

“You knew,” I whispered. “You knew all along.”

“No.” His voice cracked. “I knew I was different. I knew the King never looked at me like a son. But I didn’t know—I never knew you—” He stopped, shaking his head, his fist clenching the diary until the leather creaked. “This changes everything.”

The torchlight flickered. Somewhere beyond the window, a nightingale sang a jagged, broken song.

“What do we do?” I asked.

Damien looked at me, and for the first time, I saw not the prince I’d been sent to serve—but a man staring into the same abyss I was.

“We burn it,” he said. But his hand was shaking. “We burn it all, and we pretend we never saw this.”

“And if someone else finds out?”

He stepped closer, so close I could feel the heat of him, the tremor in his breath. “Then they’ll have to go through both of us.”

His hand found mine, warm and calloused. The diary lay between us, a smoldering coal.

But before either of us could move, a floorboard creaked behind the tapestry.

We both froze.

“Who’s there?” Damien’s voice was steel.

The silence stretched, thick as smoke. And then, from the shadows, a soft laugh—feminine, familiar, cold as winter.

*“Did you really think,”* the voice purred, *“that I would let you burn the only thing that could save us all?”*

The woman from the ball stepped into the light. Her white glove was gone, revealing a hand with seven fingers.

Just like mine.