Crown Me Dead

As agreed, Elara and Vale enter the library to research Queen Ophelia, but they find that the scribe has ostensibly died from the rot. Vale matter-of-factly takes the scribe’s keys, and they access a locked archive of the royal family’s household annals. While searching for a book detailing the event that made Kael so determined to defy the curse, Elara climbs a ladder that suddenly breaks, and Vale catches her before she can injure herself. Their close contact leads to a passionate kiss that he abruptly ends. Soon afterward, Elara discovers a hidden, folded page in a ledger. The entry describes Queen Ophelia’s ritual “coronation,” where she became deeply distressed and accused the king of having “slaughtered the last queen in the royal bedchamber” and of making “his son, the prince, watch” (126). The entry records that an unidentified prince was present at Queen Ophelia’s death and was subdued by Death in his “divine form.” The prince was then removed by the guards. Reading this account, Elara reasons that if Ophelia was Kael’s mother, then Kael could not have been alive when the previous queen, Maeryn, was killed; she surmises that this prince—the prince who witnessed Maeryn’s death—must have been a different heir: someone older.