Chapter 135: DIANA

DIANA’S POV

Diana lasted until the next evening before Household Relief became unusable.

Master Marlon noticed first.

"You have been reading the same claim for twelve minutes."

Diana looked down at the page concerning roof repairs for a military household displaced during the lower-ward reconstruction.

She had read it.

Probably.

Master Marlon waited.

Diana wrote:

IT IS COMPLICATED.

He took the paper from her.

"It is three paragraphs."

Diana stared at him.

Across the room, Alma lowered her head.

Coward.

Master Marlon placed the claim on the completed stack.

"Go."

Diana wrote:

NO.

"You signed the copy instead of the original this morning."

Diana glanced toward the forms.

Unfortunate.

"And you returned a transportation request to Medical."

More unfortunate.

"I admire persistence, Your Grace."

He gathered the remaining files before she could reach them.

"This is no longer persistence."

Diana narrowed her eyes.

Master Marlon remained unimpressed.

Alma finally said, "Perhaps you should answer the Grand Duke before Household Relief becomes structurally unsound."

Diana turned toward her.

Alma attempted innocence.

Poorly.

Diana wrote:

HE IS NOT A HOUSEHOLD RELIEF MATTER.

"No," Alma said. "That appears to be the problem."

Master Marlon became deeply interested in organizing files.

Traitor.

Diana erased the slate.

Raigoro loved her.

The fact had survived an entire day.

She had tried work, food, a walk through the Winter Court, and another Vharos report. None of it had made the sentence smaller.

I love you.

He had said it beside Vharos without asking Diana for anything in return. He had required no name, confession, or promise that their marriage would survive whatever came next.

He had not even told her his anger was gone.

It was still there.

He had simply told her the truth and left Diana to decide what she would do with it.

She knew what she wanted to tell him.

Diana loved him.

Before she gave him that truth, however, another one remained between them.

When Raigoro had asked who she was, Diana had known he already possessed enough evidence to understand the answer.

She had written SELENA anyway.

Maerissa’s letter still hurt. The sentence about Raigoro demanding Selena had found exactly the wound Maerissa intended.

But Diana’s lie came first now.

Raigoro had told her he loved her without making her name the price of it.

Diana no longer wanted fear to decide whether he received that name from her.

She stood.

Alma looked up.

"Going somewhere?"

Diana wrote:

NO.

Alma glanced toward the door.

Diana erased it.

RAIGORO’S STUDY.

"Better."

Diana considered firing everyone.

Later.

She left before either of them could become more helpful.

Raigoro was in his private study.

Diana knew because Daric was leaving when she reached the corridor. He glanced at her, then at the closed door behind him.

"Your Grace."

Diana waited.

Daric moved aside.

She knocked.

"Enter."

Diana opened the door.

Raigoro sat beside the fire rather than behind his desk, a command report resting on one knee. He lowered it immediately.

"Vharos?"

Diana shook her head.

There was no emergency. The latest report had been good: stable breathing, part of a full feeding, and still no wing use.

Raigoro waited while Diana closed the door and crossed the room.

Yesterday she had been unable to answer him beside Vharos.

Tonight she had come to do exactly that.

She stopped near the table and lifted the slate.

Her hand shook.

She had planned three words.

Instead, the chalk wrote: I LIED TO YOU.

Raigoro read it.

"Yes."

He did not soften the answer.

Diana swallowed and wrote: WHEN YOU ASKED WHO I WAS.

"Yes."

Her fingers closed more firmly around the chalk.

I KNEW YOU ALREADY HAD THE ANSWER.

Raigoro looked at her.

"I had enough of it."

Diana stared at the slate before adding: I LIED ANYWAY.

"Yes."

He did not tell her it did not matter.

It mattered because he had trusted her when he asked.

Diana erased the slate slowly.

I AM SORRY I LIED WHEN YOU ASKED ME.

Raigoro read the sentence and remained silent for a moment.

Then he said, "I know why you were afraid."

Diana’s chalk moved immediately.

THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE.

"No," he said quietly. "It does not."

The answer hurt, but the tightness in Diana’s chest eased with it.

She wrote: I THOUGHT IF I GAVE YOU DIANA, EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE.

Raigoro’s gaze remained on the slate.

"It would have changed things."

Diana looked at him.

"Not the promise I gave you."

He had promised not to send her back before asking for the truth.

He had kept that promise even after she lied.

Diana wrote: I WAS NOT SURE I COULD BELIEVE THAT.

"I know."

He offered neither accusation nor absolution.

Diana lowered her eyes to the clean slate.

The next words had existed inside her for twenty years.

Other people had erased them, hidden them, and replaced them. Another name had been spoken loudly and often enough that eventually the world learned to stop asking whether a different one had come first.

Diana had protected those words herself after coming to Blackharrow.

She no longer wanted to protect them from Raigoro.

Her chalk moved.

I AM DIANA VALENCE.

Raigoro read the words.

He was silent for several seconds before saying, "I know."

Diana wrote immediately: THAT IS NOT THE SAME.

His eyes lifted to hers.

"No."

He paused.

"It isn’t."

Diana looked down again.

Her own name remained between them.

She had given it to him this time.

Daric had not reconstructed it from archives. Witnesses, old registers, missing portraits, and foreign records had not delivered it for her.

Diana had.

Her throat tightened.

She had expected relief, yet seeing the name written here felt different from seeing it inside the archives.

Here, it belonged to her again.

Raigoro did not reach for the slate or repeat her name as though possession came with knowing it.

He waited.

One wound still remained.

Diana wrote beneath her name: BUT YOU ASKED FOR SELENA.

Raigoro read it.

"I asked for the First Princess Valence told me was Selena."

Diana hesitated before writing: IF WE HAD BOTH BEEN THERE?

Raigoro understood immediately.

"There would have been no choice between you."

Diana stayed where she was.

"The Blood-and-Flame Covenant required the First Princess. Valence erased you before I ever knew there were two daughters."

His voice remained level.

"I did not choose Selena over you. I did not know either of you."

Diana looked at him.

He continued.

"The demand came from the Covenant and the records Valence gave me."

He paused before adding, "What I told you yesterday came after I knew you."

The words landed differently now.

Maerissa had taken one true fact, that Raigoro had once demanded the princess called Selena, and allowed Diana to build a choice around it that had never happened.

Diana and Selena had never stood before him while Raigoro decided which sister he preferred.

There had been a Covenant, a falsified succession record, and an erased daughter he had not known existed.

Diana wrote: SO IF ODRAN HAD TOLD YOU THE TRUTH...

"I would have demanded the First Princess."

Raigoro held her gaze.

"Diana Valence."

Hearing her name from him after giving it freely felt different.

Her fingers tightened around the slate.

He continued before she could mistake the answer for something it was not.

"That does not mean I would have loved you then."

Diana looked at him.

"I could not have. I did not know you."

A strange ache moved through her.

"But I did not know Selena either."

Raigoro leaned back slightly.

"You are asking whether her name appearing in my demand meant I preferred her."

Diana could not deny it.

"It did not."

His voice lowered.

"The woman named in my demand was an obligation I knew from a record."

His attention remained on Diana.

"The woman I spoke to yesterday was someone I knew."

For a moment, Diana could only look at him.

Yesterday, Raigoro had known exactly who sat beside him.

He knew her work, her temper, her music, her silences, her terrible roadside bread, her habit of correcting records until clerks regretted literacy, and the fear she still carried.

He knew about the lie too.

And he had said:

I love you.

Raigoro did not repeat it now.

He did not use yesterday’s confession to pull an answer from her.

Diana understood the difference.

He had already given her his truth.

She looked down at the slate.

DIANA VALENCE.

She had come here to tell him who she was.

The other words were still waiting.

Raigoro remained silent.

He had said what he needed to say and left the next choice with her.

Diana erased everything except her name.

Then she lowered the chalk to the clean space beneath it.

Her hand shook less now.

She looked at Raigoro.

He waited.

Diana began to write.