Chapter 2

2: 2

2.

The princess's chart showed a life starved of family ties.

The moon-star had fallen into the seat of the void, its light snuffed out, no trace of living breath left in it.

What the chart laid bare was unmistakable. The princess's mother was already dead.

Yet here, right now, Mabel Pruitt lay on the bed and smiled at me, soft and gentle.

"Stella, what's wrong?"

Seeing the change in my face, she braced a hand on the edge of the bed and began to rise.

Jasper Harding, emperor of Dayong, strode over to me, his eyes anxious.

"Stella, you don't look well."

"Is something the matter with the princess?"

A line that sounded like concern, and it pulled every nerve in me tighter still.

Right now I had nothing to go on.

If I blurted out that Mabel was a fake, one wrong move and I'd only tip off the enemy.

I wasn't afraid to die.

But if something had truly happened to Mae.

I couldn't let her die alone, unknown and unexplained, in this deep palace in a broken age.

And besides, celestial fate-charting wasn't always entirely accurate.

If someone had deliberately tampered with my reading, then accusing her outright could be the very thing that hurt Mae.

I lifted my head and forced down the suspicion churning inside me.

I dredged up a faint smile.

"With Your Majesty's protection, the princess is surely blessed with every safety and grace."

Jasper was delighted.

"With those words from you, Stella, my mind is at ease."

"To bless the daughter I share with my Mae, from today I proclaim a general pardon across the realm and open the granaries to feed the people!"

"I will have all under heaven celebrate my daughter's birth!"

As if she'd sensed my unrest, Mabel gathered the child up and brought her over to me herself.

"Stella, back in school you always used to say you'd never marry."

"You made me promise that if I had a daughter someday, she'd call you her godmother."

"That name doesn't come free, you know. Hurry up and give her a name."

She hummed a little tune, patting the soft pink bundle in her arms.

I searched her every move for a single crack.

But her expressions, the small gestures woven through her words, all of it was the Mabel Pruitt I remembered.

Then something flashed in my mind, and I ventured a test.

"How about we name her Ivan?"

She nodded without a moment's hesitation, teasing the baby with a tender smile.

"Any name you choose, I love it."

"Baby will love it too, won't you?"

Her voice was gentle as water.

But it landed in my ears like a thunderclap.

Every word set my eardrums trembling.

Mabel Pruitt's first love was a piece of trash.

Freshman year, he was carrying on a sweet campus romance with her.

While every night he was online with his ex, hot and heavy.

None of us had any idea, not until the ex went after Mabel online, branding her the other woman.

Only then did the whole truth come out.

That trash of a first love was named Ivan Fletcher.

The kind of name Mabel would curse out loud even when it surfaced in a dream.

And yet I'd named the princess Ivan, and she hadn't gotten angry?

Instead she went right along with me, saying she loved the name.

In that moment, my heart sank all the way down.

She wasn't my Mae.

She was nothing but a counterfeit carrying pieces of Mabel Pruitt's memories.