State of Sorrow (Untitled #1)(91)

Sorrow said nothing, waiting with a face like stone for him to continue.

“To the best of my knowledge, the infant I met when I returned to the Winter Palace almost a year later was Cerena and Harun’s child. I had no inkling until four years after that, when your grandmother told me.” He lapsed back into the old terms. “Harun had shown no interest in you at all, and your grandmother came to me. It must have weighed on her so heavily. She’d got into her head that Harun could sense you weren’t his, because he wouldn’t see you, wouldn’t hold you. I tried to reassure her that his disinterest was because of his grief … and then she confessed what she’d done.”

“She stole me.” Saying the words aloud did nothing to make them easier to bear.

“She took the baby – Harun and Cerena’s real daughter – from the room, but she was clearly beyond help. She said she didn’t know what to do; she kept walking and then she passed a room with a sleeping child in and it was done. She took her – you.”

He made it sound such a simple thing. Explained in just a few words the actions of a few moments. Sorrow shook her head, trying to clear the low buzzing there.

“What happened to the other baby?”

Something like shame, or regret, flickered over Charon’s face. “She hid her, in a cupboard.”

Sorrow choked, her hands rising to cover her mouth.

“She went back for her,” Charon said hastily. “Graces, Sorrow, she didn’t leave her there. She secreted her out, and into Cerena’s coffin. They’re buried together.”

He paused, and Sorrow closed her eyes. That poor baby. Her poor parents. Surely they’d raised the alarm? Surely they’d demanded to know where their daughter had gone?

“How did she keep it quiet?” she asked.

Charon understood what she meant. “Mael and Cerena had just died, the country was in shock. No one cared about a missing child, even one taken from the same hospital you were born in. The people were just grateful it wasn’t you.”

“But it was me,” Sorrow said, her eyes flying open to meet his.

He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away.

“Who are my real parents? Did she tell you that?”

Charon hesitated, clearly debating whether to answer or not. “A young couple, from the North Marches,” he said finally.

“Do they have other children? Do they still live there?”

“I don’t know. I never asked for more information than that. I didn’t want to know.”

“You didn’t want to know?” Sorrow couldn’t stay seated any more, launching to her feet and beginning to pace.

“Sorrow, listen to me. You were five years old when I found out. Five. You’d fallen asleep in my arms more times than I could count; my name was the third word you ever said. My own children doted on you, Irris couldn’t be kept from your side. Arran stood watch over you when you were ill. As far as I was concerned, you were Sorrow Ventaxis.”

“But I wasn’t!” Sorrow’s voice rose as hysteria gripped her. “I’m not.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Charon replied. “Cast you out? Tell Harun? Your grandmother would have been executed.”

“She wasn’t my grandmother!”

“She was in every way that counted.”

“She stole me! From innocent people. Stars, Charon, of anyone, how can you defend this?”

“I’m not defending it. I’m explaining it.”

Before he could say anything else there was a knock at the door.

Sorrow and Charon exchanged a brief glance, and Charon wheeled himself to the door.

Irris stood on the threshold.

“Is everything all right?” she asked Charon. “Sorrow?” She looked into the room. “What’s going on?”

“It’s fine. We’re fine,” Charon said. “Go and get ready for the ball.”

Irris looked at Sorrow, and it took every ounce of self-control she had to nod that she was all right.

“It’s just a disagreement,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’ll tell you later.”

Irris looked between the two of them, her disbelief evident in her frown and the set of her mouth. Then she shrugged, saying nothing else as she turned and left. Charon closed the door and then rolled to the window, closing that over too.

“Sorrow…” he said as he moved back to her.

“That’s not my name. That’s the name of the dead girl. I don’t know what my name is.”

“Your name is Sorrow,” Charon said.

“For it’s all I bring.” She turned to him. “That’s what she said, Cerena, isn’t it? Sorrow is all I bring. Stars, what if she knew? What if the last thing she knew was that I was a lie, that the daughter in her arms was a substitute? After all, my name is practically a prophecy.”

“Please, calm—”

“If you tell me to calm down I will scream.”

He held up his hands. “Sorrow, believe me, had I known at the time what your grandmother had done, I would have done something. Had you smuggled back to the hospital and returned to your … to those people. But as I said, you were five when she confided in me. Too late to undo what had been done without breaking Rhannon completely. The nation knew you as Sorrow Ventaxis, the last scion of the Ventaxis family. It was far too late to do anything other than make the best of it.”