QUEEN ISABELLE LAURENT
BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER, SOVEREIGN
I knelt. The wet grass soaked through my trousers immediately. Cold. Real. Grounding me in the present even as my mind lived in the past.
“We found him,” I whispered. My voice cracked. Broke. Like I was thirteen again and watching her bleed. “The man who took you from us. The one who changed the routes. Who made sure you'd be in the right place at the right time.”
The rose trembled in my hand.
“Marcel.” His name tasted like poison. “Papa's closest friend. The man who stood beside us at your funeral and cried like he'd lost something precious. Who helped raise me. Who taught me politics and strategy and all the ways to smile while bleeding inside.”
I traced her name on the stone. Felt the carved letters under my fingertips. Cold. Permanent. Final.
“You were right about the rot. It was standing beside us all along. Pretending to help while it hollowed us out from the inside.”
Anger and relief tangled in my chest until I couldn't separate them. Couldn't tell which was which.
“I'm sorry it took so long. Sorry I didn't see it. Sorry I couldn't?—”
My throat closed. The words stuck.
“You threw yourself in front of that bolt. Chose me over yourself. Didn't hesitate. Didn't think.” Tears burned behind my eyes. Hot. Unwanted. “And I've spent eighteen years trying to be worth that sacrifice. Trying to be what you needed me to be.”
The mist thickened. Turned the world into watercolor. Soft and bleeding and impermanent.
“I don't know if I am. Worth it. Most days I feel like I'm just. Surviving. Going through motions. Playing a part you wrote for me before you knew how it would end.”
I set the rose against the stone. White petals against white marble. Like they'd grown there. Like they belonged.
“But I found him. And we'll make him pay. For you. For Papa. For all of us.”
Footsteps approached through wet grass. Measured. Deliberate. I didn't turn. Didn't need to.
My father's voice came quiet. Careful. “She'd hate this weather.”
I looked up. Found him standing there with an umbrella he wasn't using. Just holding it like he'd forgotten what it was for. Silver hair plastered to his skull. Rain running down his face like tears he was too tired to hide.
“She loved the rain,” I said.
“She loved everything.” He moved closer. Knelt beside me. His knees cracked. Age catching up. “Even when the world gave her reasons not to.”
We looked at her tomb together. Father and son. Two men who'd lost the same woman and never learned how to talk about it.
“Do you think she'd forgive us?” I asked. “For not seeing it sooner? For letting him walk free for eighteen years?”
“I think she'd understand grief makes fools of everyone.” His hand found my shoulder. Heavy. Real. “And that understanding and forgiving aren't the same thing.”
“Are you asking for forgiveness?”
“I don't deserve it.”
“Neither do I.” I touched the rose. “But I'm asking anyway.”
Silence settled. Just rain and breathing and all the words we'd never said.
“I let Marcel become my crutch after she died,” my father said finally. Voice raw. Honest. “Grief makes cowards of kings. Makes you reach for anything that promises to hold you up. Even when that thing is poison disguised as medicine.”
“He used you.”
