Chapter 39: Marisa Ripley

"Tell me what happened the night I was born," Naya said again, refusing to let the silence swallow her question this time.

Godric’s expression shifted into something dismissive, almost pitying. "You’ve been listening to old villagers speaking nonsense. Whatever they told you, it isn’t real."

"I didn’t ask what the villagers said. I asked what happened."

He glanced toward Ronan, something calculating flickering behind his eyes. "Your husband has clearly been filling your head with suspicion."

"He didn’t tell me to ask you," Naya said. "I came here because I wanted the truth."

Ronan said nothing, standing quietly at the edge of the room, letting her handle her own family without stepping in to fight her battles for her.

Godric exhaled slowly, as though preparing to grant a great concession. "You were born during an unusual lunar event. Your mother had complications during the birth. Several members of the pack were frightened by what they witnessed that night." He paused. "An old healer warned us that your blood might attract dangerous enemies if certain details became known. We kept parts of your birth quiet to protect you."

It sounded plausible enough on its surface, but Naya turned it over and found the gaps immediately.

"If you were protecting me," she said, "why did that require hiding who I am from myself?"

Godric had no answer ready for that.

Marissa shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her composure fraying at the edges.

"Is that the truth?" Naya asked her directly.

"Not all of it," Marissa said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Godric’s head snapped toward her. "Marissa."

She fell silent instantly, and Naya watched something pass between her parents that had nothing to do with protecting family secrets and everything to do with fear. Ronan noticed it too, his jaw tightening as he took in the exchange.

Something surfaced in Naya’s memory then, sudden and vivid, a fragment she hadn’t thought about in years. She’d been young, maybe six or seven, waking during a full moon to the sound of her parents arguing just outside her bedroom door.

She’ll eventually ask why she doesn’t have one, Marissa had said.

Then we make sure she never learns, Godric had answered.

Naya’s chest tightened as the memory settled into place. "What did you mean," she asked, "that I don’t have one? One what?"

Neither of them answered.

Ronan finally spoke, his voice even but firm. "An ordinary childbirth doesn’t require erased archives and altered genealogical records. What exactly are you protecting her from?"

"This is a Ripley family matter," Godric said. "It doesn’t concern the crown."

"She is my Queen," Ronan said. "That makes her history my concern."

"Being Queen doesn’t give you ownership over her past."

"I agree," Ronan said. "It doesn’t. But she has the right to know it herself, whether that inconveniences you or not."

Naya watched her father’s jaw tighten at that, his composure straining under pressure he clearly hadn’t expected to face inside his own house.

She turned back to him. "Were the bloodline records removed from the royal archives because of me?"

"No," Godric said, too quickly.

Naya glanced at Marissa and caught the flicker of alarm crossing her face before she could smooth it away. That small, involuntary reaction told her everything her father’s denial hadn’t.

This wasn’t simply about something that had happened the night she was born. Her parents had spent years actively managing what the kingdom could ever learn about her, curating what information survived and what disappeared, and she was only now beginning to understand how deep that effort ran.

Later that night, once Godric had retreated to his study and Ronan had given her space to speak with her mother alone, Naya found Marissa sitting by the window in her old bedroom, staring out at nothing in particular.

"Tell me the rest," Naya said quietly.

Marissa was silent for a long moment before finally speaking. "Your father wasn’t the only one involved. Someone came to our territory shortly after you were born. Someone from the royal court."

Naya’s pulse quickened. "Who?"

"They demanded your existence remain hidden," Marissa said. "I was terrified. Refusing them could have cost you your life."

"Who ordered it?" Naya pressed.

Marissa’s hands trembled in her lap, and she said nothing.

"Was it the Veyr family?" Naya asked.

Marissa still didn’t answer, and that silence told Naya more than any confirmation could have. Whatever secret her parents had spent years burying, it reached somewhere far closer to the crown than she’d ever imagined, close enough that even speaking the name aloud seemed to frighten her mother into stillness.

Marissa rose from her chair after a long moment and crossed to an old dresser, pulling a small locked box from beneath a stack of folded linens. She held it out with unsteady hands.

"Your father told me to destroy this years ago," she said. "I couldn’t do it."

Naya took the box carefully, running her fingers over the worn wood before finally lifting the lid.

Inside sat a small birth bracelet, faded with age, the same ancient symbol from the abandoned village etched delicately into its clasp. Beneath it lay a folded scrap of parchment, brittle at the edges.

Naya unfolded it slowly, her breath catching as she read the only words written across it.

The child survived.

She stared at the parchment for a long moment, three words carrying more weight than anything her father had said in the entire conversation downstairs. Whoever had written this had known something about her birth that her own parents had spent years trying to erase.

She looked up at Marissa, questions crowding faster than she could ask them.

Naya wanted to press further, to demand every name, every hidden year. But something in Marissa’s rigid shoulders told her this was as much truth as her mother could carry tonight.

But her mother had already turned away, staring back out the window into the darkness, as though the answers waited somewhere beyond the glass that neither of them could reach.