Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Queen's Letter
Aveline didn't sleep.
Long after the banquet had ended...
Long after the music faded from the Grand Hall...
She sat beside the fire in her room with the faded parchment spread carefully across her lap.
She had read it at least thirty times.
If I do not survive, protect my daughter until the Moon remembers her name.
Lysandra.
She whispered it aloud.
"My mother."
The name felt unfamiliar.
Yet...
Wonderfully right.
For eighteen years she had belonged to no one.
Now she belonged to a memory.
To a woman who had crossed an entire continent while dying just to keep her alive.
Tears slid silently down her cheeks.
Not from grief.
From gratitude.
A quiet knock came at her door.
"Aveline?"
Doctor Whitmore.
"May I come in?"
"Please."
The
