Chapter 8 - The Voice in the Music Box
The telephone stood on a wooden table beside the abandoned railway tracks.
It was an old palace model with a brass receiver and no visible connection to the modern network.
The ringing stopped when Lily approached.
Then it began again.
Adrian lifted the receiver.
No one spoke.
He could hear shallow breathing.
“Elena?”
The line crackled.
A woman whispered, “Adrian.”
He gripped the receiver.
“Where are you?”
“I do not have long.”
“Lily is with me.”
Silence.
Then Elena began crying.
“Is she safe?”
Adrian looked at Lily.
“She is standing beside me.”
“Let me hear her.”
He gave Lily the receiver.
“Mommy?”
“Lily.”
The little girl covered her mouth with one hand.
“I knew you did not leave me.”
“I am sorry.”
“Where are you?”
“Do you remember the story about the garden where winter never ended?”
“Yes.”
“Follow the silver flowers, but do not come through the front gate.”
Lily looked at the compass inside the hairpin.
“We have them.”
“The seventh pin must remain closed until you are with Adrian, the emerald, and the Crown Ledger.”
“We found the ledger room.”
“That is not the Crown Ledger. Those records are only evidence of Lucien’s theft.”
Adrian took the receiver.
“What is the real ledger?”
“A list created by Mother. It names everyone involved in the palace fire, Father’s death, and the stolen relief funds.”
“Where is it?”
“The ledger is not a book. It is a cipher engraved into the emerald.”
Adrian remembered Queen Amara’s brooch at Celeste’s throat.
“The message said not to trust the emerald.”
“Because it records anyone who opens the final pin near it.”
“Elena, who is the Regent?”
The breathing on the line stopped.
“You are not ready for that answer.”
“I watched our father’s face carry Lily through the ballroom.”
“That was not Father.”
“Then who?”
“A man trained to look like him from a distance. Lucien has used doubles for years.”
“Why?”
“To make us doubt our own memories.”
A door slammed on Elena’s end of the line.
She spoke quickly.
“Adrian, the Winter Garden is at Blackthorn House. The house has no mirrors. Enter through the chapel well. Trust the woman who confesses before midnight.”
“Which woman?”
The line went dead.
Lily held the receiver against her ear.
“Mommy?”
Nothing answered.
Theo examined the telephone.
“A direct line. Someone knew we would come through this tunnel.”
“Elena,” Lily said.
Adrian looked at the compass.
Blackthorn House had belonged to Queen Amara’s family before her marriage. It stood in the northern mountains, three hours from the city.
It had been empty since the monarchy fell.
Or so Adrian had believed.
They followed the railway to an emergency exit near the river.
Theo contacted a pilot he trusted, but every Ashbourne aircraft had been grounded by the board.
Adrian’s accounts had been restricted.
His company security access had been revoked.
News reports already described him as a fugitive who had abducted a child from a charity gala.
Celeste appeared on every channel.
She stood in front of the hotel and claimed Lily had been manipulated by Adrian’s grief.
“The child requires professional care,” Celeste told reporters. “Mr. Ashbourne is using her to attack the foundation and rewrite his sister’s proven crimes.”
The video cut to Lucien.
“My daughter has shown extraordinary compassion,” he said. “We pray Adrian returns Lily safely.”
Lily watched from Theo’s phone.
“Why do people believe them?”
“Because they are speaking first,” Adrian said.
“Then we should speak louder.”
Theo found them an old delivery truck owned by his cousin.
They drove north through heavy rain.
Inside the truck, Adrian examined Miriam’s music box again.
One of the wooden panels was loose.
He removed it and found a photograph.
It showed Elena standing outside Blackthorn House eighteen months earlier.
Miriam stood beside her.
A third person had been cut from the picture.
On the back, Elena had written a date and one sentence.
The house without mirrors remembers every face.
Lily turned the photograph toward the dim light.
“Someone is still there.”
“How do you know?”
She pointed toward a window in the background.
A woman’s reflection appeared in the glass.
She wore a crown.
Adrian looked closer.
May you like
The face resembled Queen Amara.
But the photograph had been taken seventeen years after the queen’s funeral.
