Chapter 6 - THE DUCHESS WHO CHOSE THE CHILD
Duke Edmund Ashbourne answered on the third ring.
His face appeared on the secure monitor.
Silver hair.
Dark suit.
Perfect posture.
He looked more like a statesman than a terrorist.
That was fitting.
The most dangerous men rarely dress like villains.
“Princess Evelyn.”
“Director Vale.”
A faint smile.
“Of course.”
Behind him I could see the steel interior of the Northern Strategic Defense Relay.
Two armed men stood near a console.
A technician knelt on the floor with his hands behind his head.
Ashbourne looked completely comfortable.
“Where is my daughter?”
“Alive.”
“Is she injured?”
“You don’t know?”
His eyes sharpened.
“She was shot recovering the child you kidnapped.”
“I did not order her shot.”
“How paternal.”
His expression barely changed.
“Put Victoria on.”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss.”
“You have fifty-one minutes before your deadline.”
“So you received my terms.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“No.”
He laughed softly.
“You haven’t changed as much as Julian believes.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know your father.”
That stopped me.
“My father would despise you.”
“Your father and I once worked together.”
I stared at him.
Amelia went still beside me.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“My father spent his career protecting the constitution.”
“So did I.”
“By kidnapping children?”
Ashbourne’s smile disappeared.
“Your father understood that constitutions survive because powerful men occasionally do ugly things.”
“No. Men like you say that when you want history to forgive your appetites.”
His eyes hardened.
Good.
“Victoria,” he said. “Now.”
I glanced toward the door.
She stood outside with a medic.
Her shoulder bandaged.
Face pale.
I had told her she did not have to enter.
She entered anyway.
Her father saw her.
For the first time, his mask slipped.
“Victoria.”
“Father.”
“Come home.”
She laughed.
It hurt her shoulder.
She winced.
“Home?”
“You are confused.”
“No. Actually, I think today has been educational.”
“Those people are using you.”
She looked toward me.
“Probably.”
I almost smiled.
Then she faced the screen again.
“But you used me first.”
Ashbourne’s jaw tightened.
“I prepared you to become queen.”
“You prepared me to seduce Julian.”
“You loved him.”
Victoria’s face changed.
“Yes.”
That surprised everyone.
Even me.
She continued.
“That was the problem.”
Ashbourne leaned toward the camera.
“He would have married you.”
“No.”
Victoria shook her head.
“He wanted the crown more than Evelyn, but that never meant he wanted me more.”
Julian stood across the room.
He heard it.
So did I.
Victoria swallowed.
“You knew that, didn’t you?”
Her father said nothing.
“You knew every time he came to my bed he was proving something to himself.”
“Enough.”
“You knew I was useful because I made him feel noble again.”
“Enough.”
“And when Evelyn finally broke, I would stand beside him in photographs and pretend that was love.”
Ashbourne’s composure cracked.
“You are emotional.”
Victoria laughed.
“So that’s where Julian learned it.”
Eleanor, standing near the back wall, flinched.
I noticed.
Ashbourne did too.
“Eleanor,” he said.
She stepped into view.
For forty years of history, neither spoke.
Then Ashbourne smiled.
“My Queen.”
“I was never yours.”
His eyes darkened.
“No.”
“You could have stopped this.”
“So could you.”
“You are threatening war.”
“I am preventing national collapse.”
“By creating it?”
“Althea has been weak for twenty years.”
“And your solution was selling our defense architecture to Merevia?”
“My solution was binding Merevia’s security to ours.”
“Through blackmail.”
“Through necessity.”
Eleanor shook her head.
“You always did rename your sins.”
The Duke’s mouth tightened.
Then he looked at me.
“Forty-three minutes.”
The screen went dark.
Amelia turned to the technical team.
“Options.”
A colonel answered.
“We can physically assault the relay.”
“Casualties?”
“High.”
“Can we cut power?”
“Backup reactors.”
“Remote override?”
“Ashbourne severed external command.”
“Destroy the relay?”
“Possible air strike.”
“Hostages?”
“Likely dead.”
“No.”
Julian stepped forward.
“What about the old inspection tunnel?”
Everyone looked at him.
Amelia frowned.
“What inspection tunnel?”
“My father mentioned one beneath the facility. It was designed before modern ventilation standards.”
“Location?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Eleanor did.
“Western drainage channel.”
Julian stared at her.
“You knew?”
“I attended the relay inauguration.”
Amelia pulled historical engineering plans.
Nothing.
Then archived construction files.
Still nothing.
I remembered my father.
Not his job.
A game.
When I was eight, he used to hide birthday presents behind false walls and leave me riddles.
Look where the architect lies.
“Search the original planning blueprints against the finished plans,” I said.
Amelia looked at me.
“What?”
“My father hated undocumented modifications.”
An analyst began comparing files.
Thirty seconds.
Then—
“There.”
A narrow access corridor appeared.
Not on final plans.
It entered beneath the western drainage channel and terminated twelve meters below the relay.
“Can a team use it?”
“Possibly.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-two minutes to reach entry point.”
Ashbourne had thirty-eight minutes.
“Go.”
Amelia began issuing orders.
Victoria grabbed my arm.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“He is my father.”
“Exactly.”
“He might surrender to me.”
“He might shoot you.”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Her expression became strangely peaceful.
“Yes, I do.”
I stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because he spent my entire life treating me like an extension of himself.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“He won’t kill me until he believes I’ve truly stopped being his.”
“And if you prove it?”
She said nothing.
That was the problem.
Julian stepped toward us.
“I’ll go.”
I laughed.
“What exactly is happening today? Has everyone decided bullets are therapeutic?”
He looked at me.
“Ashbourne still believes I want the throne.”
“You surrendered it publicly.”
“He believes people lie.”
“He’s right.”
“I can get close.”
“And then?”
“I tell him I changed my mind.”
Victoria understood.
“So you give him what he wants.”
“For long enough.”
I hated the plan.
That usually meant it was either excellent or suicidal.
Possibly both.
At twenty-eight minutes remaining, Julian called Ashbourne.
“I accept.”
The Duke stared from the screen.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I panicked.”
“Your broadcast seemed sincere.”
“It was a performance.”
My stomach twisted at how easily he said it.
Julian continued.
“Evelyn recovered Alexander. The public loves her. Parliament is already discussing constitutional reforms. If I don’t move now, my family loses everything.”
Ashbourne studied him.
“What changed?”
Julian looked toward me.
He did not have to fake bitterness.
“She told me my son will never be king.”
That was true.
Ashbourne smiled.
There it was.
The bait.
“What do you want?”
“My crown.”
“And Evelyn?”
Julian paused.
Then said—
“Gone.”
The word hurt.
Even knowing the plan.
Even knowing it was theater.
Some wounds remember the shape of the knife.
Ashbourne nodded.
“Come alone.”
“I want proof you can restore me.”
“I can.”
“Then show me.”
“I’ll show you when you arrive.”
The screen went dark.
Julian looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That word.”
I knew what he meant.
“Save apologies for the tribunal.”
He nodded.
Twenty minutes later, Julian entered the Northern Relay through the main gate.
No weapon.
No escort.
A Continuity transmitter was hidden in his belt buckle.
The tactical team moved beneath him through the old inspection tunnel.
I remained at command.
That was the compromise Amelia demanded.
Victoria sat beside me.
Eleanor stood behind us.
Three women Julian’s ambition had damaged in entirely different ways.
On screen, Ashbourne greeted him like a returning son.
“Your Majesty.”
Julian almost laughed.
“I missed hearing that.”
“Then earn it back.”
Ashbourne pointed toward the defense console.
A false Merevian air incursion had already been constructed.
Twelve aircraft.
Three missile signatures.
Entirely fictional.
One command would send the warning to Althean defense bases.
Another would leak confirmation to the press.
“Once the attack appears,” Ashbourne said, “the tribunal becomes irrelevant.”
Julian looked at the screen.
“You’re insane.”
The Duke’s expression hardened.
“Careful.”
“You think frightened people will restore me?”
“They will demand stability.”
“And when Merevia denies attacking?”
“By then Althean aircraft will have crossed their border.”
“And people die.”
“People always die when states correct themselves.”
Julian stared at him.
Then said quietly—
“That is something I might have believed yesterday.”
Ashbourne’s eyes narrowed.
“What did you say?”
Julian looked directly into the hidden camera.
“I said I was wrong.”
Everything exploded at once.
The tactical team breached from below.
Lights failed.
Ashbourne shouted.
Gunfire cracked.
Victoria stood.
“Father!”
On our screen, Julian tackled one of the guards.
Another turned his weapon.
Ashbourne reached the activation console.
“Stop him!” Amelia shouted.
A shot fired.
Julian fell.
I stopped breathing.
“Julian!”
Ashbourne slammed his hand toward the authorization panel.
Nothing happened.
Again.
Nothing.
His face changed.
The biometric seed had failed.
Why?
Then Victoria started laughing.
Everyone looked at her.
She held up the sapphire pendant.
“I gave him the wrong token.”
I stared.
“What?”
“At the forest.”
“You switched them?”
“When Halbrecht pointed a gun at Alexander.”
“When?”
“I dropped the real one in the mud.”
Amelia grabbed the pendant.
Scanned it.
Her eyes widened.
“This is a decoy.”
Victoria looked at the screen.
Her father stared into the dead console.
For the first time, Duke Edmund Ashbourne looked powerless.
Agents surrounded him.
He slowly raised his hands.
On the floor behind him, Julian moved.
Alive.
Blood spread beneath his shoulder.
My knees weakened.
Ashbourne looked directly toward the camera.
Then toward his daughter’s transmitter.
“Victoria.”
She stared back through the screen.
“You chose them.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“I chose myself.”
The tactical team restrained him.
The false attack disappeared from the system.
Althea remained at peace.
I should have felt victory.
Instead I stared at Julian on the floor while medics cut open his shirt.
Blood.
Too much blood.
His eyes opened.
The body camera caught his voice.
“Alexander?”
An agent leaned closer.
“He’s safe.”
Julian closed his eyes.
Then whispered—
May you like
“Good.”
And passed out.
