Chapter 5 - What the Old Seamstress Remembered
Mara Fenn arrived the next morning on a snowplow.
She climbed down wearing a red wool coat, enormous boots, and the expression of someone who considered mountain weather a personal inconvenience.
Arden hurried outside with an umbrella.
Mara ignored it.
“Where’s Elena’s girl?”
Carmel stepped into the lobby.
The old woman stopped.
For one brief moment, all the sharpness left her face.
“Oh,” she whispered. “There you are.”
She asked before embracing her.
That small courtesy nearly broke Carmel’s heart.
They met in a private dining room with Draven, Maeve, Arden, and a recording clerk appointed by the independent delegates.
Mara studied the bracelet.
“I made the compartment,” she said.
“You knew what was inside?” Carmel asked.
“I knew Elena needed somewhere to hide something. She never told me the details.”
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“I tried.”
Mara’s eyes hardened.
“Your father told me you’d been sent to relatives overseas. My letters came back unopened. Then a treasury investigator warned me I could lose my pension for interfering.”
Carmel closed her eyes.
One more door her father had quietly locked.
Mara touched the fabric.
“Elena used the old pattern code.”
“I remember pieces.”
“Then we’ll remember the rest together.”
For two hours, the women worked.
Blue meant eight unless it crossed a gold thread. A reversed knot indicated a name. Green stitches separated payments from receipts.
At last, a list emerged.
Accounts.
Transfer dates.
Storage locations.
And a sentence that silenced the room.
DUPONT RECEIVES ONE SHARE IN FOUR.
Draven leaned back slowly.
Mara looked at him without fear.
“Your Majesty, the north wards were hungry that winter.”
“I remember.”
“Do you remember the official explanation?”
“Road failures. Spoiled supplies.”
“Some roads failed,” she said. “The money failed first.”
The final coded instruction named a garment.
THE FIRST FROST MANTLE. LEFT INNER HEM.
Arden frowned.
“The queen’s ceremonial mantle?”
Mara nodded.
“Elena restored it before she died.”
Carmel looked at Draven.
“The original records are inside?”
“If they still exist,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“The capital.”
Three hundred miles beyond the storm.
Carmel’s hope faltered.
Then Mara snorted.
“No, it isn’t.”
Everyone turned.
“The summit exhibition,” she said. “Your cultural office borrowed it last month.”
Arden was already reaching for his phone.
Maeve stood.
“I’ll secure the gallery.”
Draven remained seated.
There was something strange in his face.
“The First Frost Mantle,” he said.
Mara watched him.
“You remember.”
He nodded.
Carmel waited.
Finally, Draven touched the old scar near his collar.
“When I was a boy, someone tried to kill me in the winter gardens. My mother wrapped me in that mantle while the physician worked.”
“The gardens were full of winter jasmine,” Mara said.
He looked at Carmel.
“That was what I remembered when I found you asleep.”
Her scent.
Not a forgotten lover.
Not a prophecy.
A memory of safety from the worst night of his childhood.
“I thought perhaps—” He stopped.
“A mate bond?” Carmel asked.
The room became very quiet.
He did not pretend otherwise.
“Possibly.”
She folded her hands.
“And if it is?”
“Then it tells us our wolves recognize something in each other. It doesn’t tell you what to do.”
“Could you order me to accept it?”
His face hardened.
“No.”
“Could another alpha?”
“Some would try.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Draven met her eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “Some could make refusal dangerous. That is one of the laws I have allowed to remain too vague.”
Carmel appreciated the answer more than she would have appreciated reassurance.
“Then change it.”
Arden looked startled.
Draven did not.
“I intend to.”
Maeve’s voice suddenly crackled through the room’s security speaker.
“Your Majesty. The exhibition case is empty.”
Draven rose.
“What?”
“The mantle was removed thirty minutes ago under an emergency conservation order.”
“Who signed it?”
A pause.
“Chancellor Dupont.”
Carmel stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
Mara caught her sleeve.
“Think, girl. Your mother knew powerful men. Would she hide everything in one place?”
Carmel looked down at the decoded instructions.
There was another line beneath the garment’s name.
She had mistaken it for a pattern reference.
Three short words.
THE MOUNTAIN KEEPS.
Draven went still.
Outside the dining-room windows, the hotel’s ancient stone chapel rose against the white mountainside.
May you like
Beneath its foundations stood the oldest treasury vault in the northern kingdom.
And the chancellor had just requested the key.
