Page 224 of Vexatious Queen

There was a sharpshooter’s board behind some glass, off to the left. I wandered over to check out the paper targets marked with the distance and the person’s signature. I marveled at the skill and was about to walk away when a pair up in the corner caught my attention. The shots had been so accurate that there was no bullseye circle left on either target. But it wasn’t the faded paper or the accuracy that rendered me speechless. A heart had been drawn, half on each sheet, and inside was a pair of initials.

E.G. & A.M.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Liam stepped up beside me and followed my gaze.

“Well, would you look at that. I’ve never noticed those before.”

“Do you think it’s them? My parents? I mean, all these years later, and it’s still up there. What are the chances?”

“Let’s go find out,” Liam said and walked away.

I chased after him to the counter, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the targets in the corner.

Love didn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it lived in things that survived being forgotten. Paper yellowed with age. Ink that refused to fade. Two people who had stood side by side long before the world split them apart, leaving proof behind without knowing who might someday need it.

My parents’ love hadn’t been soft or easy, but it had endured time, distance, betrayal, and pain. Even broken, it was the kind of love people desired. The kind that didn’t vanish just because it was tested.

My eyes traced their initials scribbled on the targets. When my mother had been my age, she’d stood in this very place with my father and made choices she couldn’t take back.

I wondered if she’d felt the same mix of uncertainty and fear curling through me now, if she’d known what it would cost her, or if love had made her brave enough not to ask. The thought hurt in a way I couldn’t explain, like touching something sacred and realizing that love created me. I stood here on my own two feet because of their strength and their willingness to hope and carry on when others would’ve given up.

Liam touched my arm and pointed at the lined pages in an old binder. He tapped the sign-in sheet once and stepped back, giving me space.

My parents’ names were there in ink, written decades ago.

The air left my lungs all at once. Tears burned, clogging my throat as I stared at the proof that before everything shattered, before secrets and sacrifices rewrote our lives, they had been here together—young, in love, and believing they were doing the right thing.

I swallowed hard and looked at Liam.

“I want them,” I said, and wiped away the tear that had slipped free.

Some legacies weren’t just inherited.

They were repeated.

MARCH 8 – SUNDAY 3:00 PM

Yuliana

“He is purposely ignoring me,” I said, pacing the living room that felt about as much like Eddie as him putting on a tutu and performing a ballet.

The dark turquoise walls, flower paintings, and gold accents mocked me with the knowledge that another woman designed this room. There was no universe where he had picked this palette himself. At least, not willingly.

“What did you expect?” Vlad asked.

The glare I shot him was sharp enough to draw blood if it had been a knife.

“I don’t know. More than one conversation,” I snapped. “We need to talk.”

“No,” he corrected. “You need to talk to him. There’s a difference.”

I spun on him, hands on my hips.

“For once, could you not be so damn honest?”

He smirked. “You programmed me this way,” Vlad said, mocking me with his calm demeanor. “Speak freely. Be brutally honest.” Vlad held open his hands. “I always do both.”