Part 4 — Every day they bathed me in the palace, until I raised my hand at the emperor’s next words and his smile lost its color

The letter was still in Adrian’s hands when the servant standing in the corner of the room locked the door.

Outside, the guards looked at one another. For the first time they could not understand whose order they should obey.

Adrian threw the letter onto the table.

“Everyone leave the room.”

No one moved.

“That is the emperor’s order!” he shouted.

Celeste answered calmly:

“And this is his last order that I will no longer carry out out of fear.”

Adrian took a step toward me.

“Isabella, think. If this story gets out among the people, Lucas will become an orphan.”

“He already felt like an orphan when you humiliated his mother every day.”

His jaw tightened.

“You are my wife.”

“I was. Until my pain became your entertainment.”

Then the sound of heavy footsteps came from outside. The door opened and Captain Mateo entered. He wore a dusty cloak and held a small wooden box in his hands.

Adrian immediately looked at the guards.

“Arrest him!”

The commander of the guards lowered his head.

“I can no longer carry it out, my lord.”

“Why?”

“Because the order no longer comes only from you.”

Mateo placed the box on the table. Inside lay a small round device, beside which was a thin wax plate. In the palace archive, such objects had once been used to preserve the king’s words.

“This was recorded on the day you ordered the doctor to increase the dose,” he said.

Adrian tried to laugh.

“A piece of wax? This is supposed to be evidence?”

Mateo activated the device.

Adrian’s voice sounded in the room. Clearly. Coldly.

“A woman whom the people will no longer look at will, of her own accord, demand to leave the palace. If she cannot bear the shame, so much the better. Increase the dose.”

My breath caught.

Although I already knew these words, hearing them with my own ears struck me more powerfully. Adrian turned his head toward the wall.

“That is not my voice.”

Mateo played the second recording.

“The child will remain with me. And the mother will convince everyone that she is powerless.”

Lucas’s nanny began to cry. Celeste lowered her eyes, but her face was no longer trembling.

Adrian struck the table with his hand.

“This is a conspiracy! You are all traitors!”

“No,” I said. “We are simply no longer part of your silence.”

That same evening the royal council assembled. Adrian first tried to destroy the letters, then to bribe Celeste, and finally asked for the help of his own lawyer.

The lawyer read all the documents and rose from his chair.

“I can no longer defend you.”

“I pay you to defend me!”

“I cannot defend a lie.”

Adrian covered his face with his hand.

And I stood directly opposite him. I was no longer crying. Nor did I feel victory. I was only tired from the years when I apologized to my own body for surviving.

The trial lasted three days.

On the first day they heard Celeste. She read out the name, dose, and date of each medicine. On the second day the servants who had witnessed the morning humiliations entered. Some of their voices were trembling.

“Why did you laugh?” the judge asked one of them.

The servant lowered his head.

“Because I was afraid.”

That answer was heavier than any insult.

On the third day they listened to the wax recording.

Adrian stood in the middle of the hall and listened to his own words. “Increase the dose.” “The child will remain with me.” “Her appearance must make the people hate her.”

After each sentence his shoulders drooped more and more.

The judge announced the sentence: Adrian was deprived of the throne, deprived of custody of Lucas, and was to live for the rest of his life in a distant tower of the fortress. A large part of his property was given to the royal hospital, where women in serious condition after childbirth would be treated.

I was not glad at his punishment.

When the hall emptied, Adrian looked at me from among the guards.

“You loved me after all,” he said.

I looked at him for a long time.

“I loved the man who once kissed my hand. But you killed that man.”

The next morning his room was empty. Beside the bed stood only my old mirror, the one in which for years I had looked at myself as guilty of my own body. And on the table I found my silver hairpin. Adrian had found it the night before the trial and had probably tried to return it.

I picked up the pin.

Its small crack was still there.

Three months later I moved from the capital to the seaside city of Nerea. Lucas ran by the shore every day, while Celeste worked in a new medical home. I began writing letters for women—for women who had been taught to apologize because of their own bodies.

My days filled with small tasks.

In the morning I opened the windows.

I baked honey bread for Lucas.

In the evening I hung his drawings on the wall.

In one drawing three people stood: me, Lucas, and Celeste. Above them was a large yellow sun that had a face.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“You, Mother,” he answered. “Now you are the sun.”

The first snow came in December. That day Lucas made a small snowman in the yard and placed my silver hairpin on its head.

“It will not lose this,” he told me.

“Neither will I.”

Several weeks later I received a letter from Adrian. There was no longer his seal on the envelope. Only my name was written.

“Give me the opportunity to see Lucas at least once. I made a mistake. I know that I have not deserved forgiveness, but I still need your help.”

I read the letter several times.

Then I did not burn it in the fire.

I folded it and kept it in the archive, where his other orders were kept.

And I wrote him a short reply:

“Lucas is safe. I am free. I will no longer bear your consequences.”

The next morning I went to the city square. Snow fell silently on the paving stones. My hairpin was still in my hair, and the little crack in the crescent shone in the sunlight.

Once I thought that this crack was a sign of my defeat.

Now I knew that it was a sign of survival.

Lucas took my hand.

“Mother, come home.”

I smiled and went with him.

The crack still shone.

And for the first time I was no longer hiding.