The letter wasn't addressed to him.
It arrived tucked inside the back of a ledger Solen had borrowed from the east attic: a catalog of annual royal expenditures spanning two decades. She hadn't meant to find it. Or if she had, she didn't admit it.
When she handed him the yellowed envelope, her voice was careful.
"I found it wedged behind the final page. Dated fifteen years ago. Never opened. I thought…" A pause. "You should decide."
Thalric took it with no ceremony.
The paper was old but intact. The seal cracked easily beneath his thumb. A faint scent lingered in the fibers—something herbal, familiar, but unnamed.
The handwriting struck him first.
It wasn't the Queen's.
It wasn't the King's.
It was clean. Modest. Trained, but not noble. It bore no signature.
"To the child born of silence and silk,"
"You were not meant to know me. That was the arrangement. The cost of peace. But a storm doesn't wait for permission, and blood does not remain buried because court records said it should."
"You are not the second son. Not truly. Not to him."
"But you are Worthing. By name. By necessity. And someday, you may inherit the pieces of a house built on false crowns and softer lies."
"When that day comes, look to the place where names are carved twice. Once in stone. Once in shadow. That is where your truth waits."
No signature.
No seal.
Just a black ribbon, folded and pressed flat between the last lines.
He read it twice, then placed it down.
The implications weren't loud. Just consistent.
He turned to Solen, who watched without pressing.
"Do you know where this was found?" he asked.
She nodded. "Under the expenditures of the Queen's Midwinter Truce Tour. Fifteen years ago. She visited Ardyth Cloister. Stayed three days. The ledgers say she returned alone."
"Not uncommon."
"No," Solen said. "But the entry for that month's court allowance lists only one discrepancy."
He waited.
"A donation," she said. "To a private ward. No name. No invoice. Just listed as: 'Unrecorded Almonry.'"
The phrase sat in the air like fog with no wind to clear it.
Thalric stood slowly and returned to the hearth. The scroll from the Queen still sat on his desk—unread beyond the wax. The feast invitation. The public debut. The final stitch.
Not a crown.
A coronation of usefulness.
The letter wasn't a confession.
It was a correction.
And Thalric, whether born of Worthing or placed inside it, was the one left holding its afterbirth.
He didn't feel rage.
He didn't feel relief.
He felt distance—growing.
As if this life, already borrowed, had now become illegible.
He burned the letter.
But not the ribbon.
That, he pocketed.
Solen didn't ask.
He didn't explain.
But as he looked out the window and saw Cedric and Albrecht sparring in the field below, he felt something shift—not in his resolve.
In his strategy.
Let them play brothers.
Let them play kings.
He would play the role they couldn't rewrite.