CHAPTER 1
The cold in the lower city didn’t just chill your skin; it settled deep into your bones.
I stood near the great Iron Gates, my breath rising in white plumes, clutching the heavy wicker basket to my chest. Inside were ten loaves of bread. They were slightly burnt on the edges, baked in a crumbling stone oven that my grandmother could barely keep lit, but they were our only hope of surviving the week.
“Fresh bread,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “Please. Just one copper.”
The nobles in their fur-lined carriages rolled past, ignoring me. The market crowd was too busy rushing out of the freezing rain. I pulled my ragged wool shawl tighter around my shoulders, trying to hide the violent shivering that wracked my thin frame.
Then, the heavy brass horns echoed from the valley road.
“The King returns!” a guard shouted, striking his spear against the cobblestones. “Clear the gates! Clear the path!”
Panic swept through the crowd. People shoved backward, pressing themselves against the damp stone walls of the gatehouse. I tried to move, but a passing cart had pinned me in.
I twisted, trying to pull my basket out of the way, but my frozen fingers were numb.
I stumbled. My boots slipped on the icy mud, and I fell forward, right into the center of the royal path.
The massive black stallion reared up with a terrifying shriek.
“Who dares?!” a sharp, arrogant voice snapped.
I looked up through the freezing rain. Towering above me was the Crown Prince, wrapped in a heavy midnight-blue military coat, his chest covered in silver medals. Beside him rode the King, a stern, imposing man with a thick fur collar and eyes as cold as the winter sky.
“I am sorry, Your Highness!” I cried, scrambling to my knees and reaching for my basket. “I lost my footing!”
The Prince stared down at me with absolute disgust. To him, I wasn’t a citizen. I was an insect that had ruined his grand entrance.
“Guards,” the Prince sneered. “Clear this filth.”
Before I could grab the handle, a palace guard stepped forward and kicked his heavy iron-toed boot straight into my basket.
The dry wicker shattered. The loaves of bread—the food that was supposed to keep my grandmother alive—flew into the air and landed in the thick, horse-trampled mud.
“No!” I screamed, dropping into the sludge.
I didn’t care about the cold. I didn’t care about the royal guards. I frantically began wiping the dark, freezing mud off the crushed bread, tears finally spilling hot down my freezing cheeks.
The crowd watched in terrified silence. No one moved. No one breathed.
The Prince let out a short, cruel laugh.
He raised his leather riding crop. With a sharp flick of his wrist, he lashed out. The leather wrapped around my torn wool shawl, and he yanked it violently from my shoulders.
The freezing wind hit my thin linen dress immediately. I gasped, curling in on myself as the Prince dropped my only source of warmth into a deep puddle.
“Learn your place, street rat,” the Prince said coldly. “Move, or the horses will trample you.”
I kept my head bowed, trembling uncontrollably, clutching one ruined loaf of bread to my chest. I waited for the heavy hooves to crush me.
But the procession didn’t move forward.
Instead, a deep, rumbling growl vibrated through the cobblestones.
From the back of the royal hunting party, an enormous gray shape broke rank. It was the late King’s legendary wolfhound—a massive, battle-scarred beast wearing a thick iron collar. It was known to be vicious, loyal only to the dead King, and entirely untamable by the current royal family.
“Hold the beast!” the Captain of the Guard shouted, gripping his sword.
But the dog ignored him. It padded slowly through the freezing mud, walking directly toward me.
I froze, terrified to even breathe. The giant hound stopped right in front of me. It lowered its massive head, its hot breath washing over my freezing hands.
It didn’t bite me.
Instead, it gently closed its jaws around the broken half of a loaf I had missed.
The hound turned its back on the Prince. It walked deliberately to the King’s towering warhorse and sat down in the mud. With a soft thump, it dropped the piece of bread directly against the King’s heavy leather riding boot.
“Get that animal away,” the King ordered, his voice like grinding stone.
The royal Houndmaster rushed forward, pale and terrified, reaching for the bread to clear it from his monarch’s path.
But as the Houndmaster grabbed the muddy crust, he stopped.
He froze completely. He slowly turned the piece of bread over in his shaking hands.
Underneath the mud, baked perfectly into the bottom of the crust, was a distinct, deep carving. A small cross wrapped in ivy.
It was a baker’s mark. But in this kingdom, it was a mark that hadn’t been seen in twenty years.
The Houndmaster looked up at the King, his eyes wide with absolute horror.
“Your… Your Majesty,” the Houndmaster whispered, his voice cracking in the dead silence of the gates. “It is the crest. The lost crest.”
The King frowned and looked down.
When his eyes landed on the small cross in the bread, the stern, immovable monarch went entirely rigid. The color instantly drained from his face, leaving him as pale as a corpse. He gripped his leather reins so hard I could hear the leather creak.
Slowly, terrifyingly, the King turned his head and stared down at me in the mud.
CHAPTER 2
The silence at the city gates was so absolute that I could hear the freezing rain striking the cobblestones.
The King did not blink. His steely eyes were locked onto my mud-streaked face, his gloved hands gripping his reins with terrifying strength. He looked like a man who had just seen a ghost rise from the frozen earth.
“Who are you?” the King whispered.
His voice was not a shout, but it carried a weight that made the surrounding guards stiffen in fear.
I swallowed hard, my teeth chattering uncontrollably from the freezing wind and the terror squeezing my chest. “I… I am no one, Your Majesty. Just a baker.”
“Liar,” the Crown Prince snapped.
The Prince spurred his massive black stallion forward, forcing me to scramble backward in the mud to avoid being trampled. His handsome face was twisted with arrogant fury. He could not stand that the procession had been halted for a beggar, let alone that his father was staring at me with such raw emotion.
“She is a street rat, Father,” the Prince sneered, pointing his riding crop at my shivering form. “She obviously broke into an abandoned estate and stole an old family stamp to make her miserable bread seem valuable. It is extortion.”
“I stole nothing!” I cried out, terrified but desperate. “My grandmother baked that bread! She has used that wooden block to stamp our loaves since I was a baby!”
The Prince’s eyes flashed with cruel amusement.
“So, your grandmother is the thief,” he said coldly. “Guards. Bind this girl’s wrists. Send a detachment to the lower city and burn her filthy shack to the ground. Arrest the old woman for treason against the Crown.”
“No!” I screamed, lunging forward. “Please! She is sick! The cold will kill her!”
Two armored palace guards instantly grabbed my arms, hauling me roughly to my feet. They twisted my wrists behind my back, the cold iron of their gauntlets biting into my bruised skin. I struggled, sobbing, but I was entirely powerless against them.
The crowd of peasants watched in absolute, suffocating silence. To them, I was already dead.
“Wait,” a rough voice commanded.
It was the royal Houndmaster. He was still kneeling in the mud, holding the broken crust of bread like it was a sacred relic. He looked up at the Prince, his face pale.
“Your Highness, please. Look closely at the mark,” the Houndmaster urged, his voice trembling. “This is not just any noble crest. This is the Ivy Cross. The mark of the vanished House of Valerius.”
A collective gasp rippled through the older nobles in the carriages.
Even I knew that name from the whispered tavern stories. House Valerius was the ancient family that had sheltered the King twenty years ago during the Great Rebellion, when he was just a hunted prince. They had given their lives, their wealth, and their castle to keep him alive. They were supposedly all slaughtered.
“Nonsense,” the Prince barked, his face flushing with anger. “House Valerius burned to the ground. There were no survivors. This beggar is playing a dangerous game, and she will hang for it.”
He raised his hand, signaling the guards to drag me away.
But as they pulled me toward the palace road, the giant gray wolfhound moved.
The massive beast stepped directly in front of the guards, blocking my path. It bared its heavy, yellowed teeth, letting out a deep, rattling snarl that vibrated through the air.
The guards froze, terrified of the late King’s legendary beast.
“Move the dog!” the Prince shouted.
“I cannot, Your Highness!” the Houndmaster cried out. “He will tear their throats out! He is protecting her!”
The King finally raised his hand.
The entire chaotic scene instantly froze. The King slowly lowered his eyes to the Houndmaster, then to the snarling wolfhound, and finally to me.
“Bring her to the palace,” the King ordered, his voice echoing like breaking ice. “Take her through the front gates. If she is lying, she will swing from the gallows before sunset.”
The King pulled his horse around and rode forward.
The Prince glared at me with absolute hatred. “You have sealed your own fate, rat,” he whispered.
They did not throw me into a dungeon.
Instead, I was dragged by my chains through the towering oak doors of the royal palace, my muddy boots staining the pristine, cracked marble floors of the grand hall. Nobles and courtiers stepped back, covering their noses with embroidered handkerchiefs and whispering furiously behind their fans.
I was pushed to my knees in the center of the royal judgment room.
The room was heavy with the smell of old wax, damp stone, and woodsmoke. The King sat upon his heavy wooden throne, staring down at me. Beside him stood the Prince, and a frail, white-haired man clutching an ancient, leather-bound registry book—the Royal Archivist.
“You claim your grandmother baked this,” the Archivist said, his voice echoing in the cold hall. “What is her name, child?”
“Martha,” I sobbed, shivering violently in my wet linen dress. “Just Martha. Please, do not hurt her. She has severe burns on her hands. She can barely walk.”
The Archivist frowned and looked at the King. “A common name. And burnt hands could be from a bakery fire… or from a burning castle.”
The Prince stepped forward, his patience entirely gone.
“Enough of this theater,” the Prince commanded. “She is a peasant lying to save her own skin. Strike her until she confesses where she found the Valerius stamp!”
A guard stepped forward, raising a heavy wooden baton. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the bone-shattering blow.
But suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the hall burst open.
Four royal guards marched in, their boots ringing against the stone. Between them, they carried a heavy, rusted iron lockbox, covered in centuries of dirt and ash.
“Your Majesty!” the lead guard called out, bowing deeply. “We raided the girl’s shack as the Prince ordered. The old woman was gone. She fled before we arrived. But we found this buried deep beneath the floorboards.”
The guard set the heavy iron box down on the marble floor.
The royal Archivist stepped forward, his hands shaking as he brushed the dirt away from the lid. There, embossed into the rusted iron, was the exact same symbol carved into my bread.
The Ivy Cross.
“Break the lock,” the King whispered, standing up from his throne.
A guard brought down a heavy hammer, shattering the rusted padlock. The Archivist slowly lifted the heavy lid.
When he saw what was inside, the old man gasped and stumbled backward, dropping his ledger.
The King descended the stairs of the dais, his boots clicking in the dead silence. He looked down into the box.
“Good God,” the King breathed.
He slowly reached inside and pulled out a delicate, tarnished silver tiara and a folded, yellowed piece of parchment sealed with royal red wax. It was the exact seal of the current King—a letter he had written twenty years ago.
The Prince stared at the box, his arrogant mask finally cracking into sheer panic.
Because the letter inside wasn’t addressed to a baker named Martha.
It was addressed to Her Grace, the Duchess of Valerius—and the tiara belonged to the woman who was promised to be the King’s true bride.
CHAPTER 3
The King’s hands were shaking so violently that the yellowed parchment rattled in the dead silence of the hall.
He didn’t read the letter out loud, but as his eyes scanned the faded ink—his own handwriting from twenty years ago—a single tear broke loose and traced a line down his weathered cheek. It was the first time anyone in the kingdom had ever seen the stern monarch weep.
“Your Majesty?” the Royal Archivist whispered, stepping back in fear.
The King slowly lowered the parchment. He looked at the tarnished silver tiara resting in the rusted box, and then he turned his piercing gaze to me, still kneeling in my wet, muddy clothes.
“You said her name was Martha,” the King’s voice cracked. “You said she had severe burns on her hands. Where else was she burned?”
I swallowed hard, terrified by the intensity in his eyes. “Everywhere, Sire. Her arms, her back, the left side of her face. She always wore a heavy cowl. She told me she was caught in a terrible bakery fire before I was born. She said she was my grandmother, and that my parents died of winter fever.”
The King closed his eyes. A sound escaped his chest—a sound like a man who had been stabbed but couldn’t pull the blade out.
“She lied to you,” the King whispered, his voice echoing off the cold stone walls. “To protect you.”
The Crown Prince stepped forward, his handsome face twisting with panic and rage. “Father, do not listen to this beggar! It is a trick! The old crone stole the box from the ashes of Valerius!”
“Silence!” the King roared.
The sheer force of his voice made the Prince physically flinch. The palace guards stiffened.
The King slowly walked down the marble steps of the dais, stopping inches away from me. He didn’t care about the mud or the chains binding my wrists. He knelt on the cold floor so he was at eye level with me.
“Twenty years ago, during the Great Rebellion, House Valerius hid me from the usurpers,” the King said softly, speaking only to me. “I fell in love with the young Duchess. We were married in secret by an old chapel priest. When the enemy armies approached, I rode out to rally my forces, leaving her behind. I promised to return. I left her that lockbox, my royal seal, and the Valerius tiara.”
I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“When I returned,” the King continued, his voice breaking, “the castle had been burned to the ground. I was told no one survived. I was told my beautiful Duchess had burned to ash.”
He reached out with a trembling, gloved hand and gently pushed my wet, tangled hair away from my face.
“She didn’t die,” he whispered. “She survived the flames. But she knew the new royal council would never accept a burned, ruined woman as their Queen. And more importantly… she knew they would murder the child she was carrying.”
The throne room erupted in shocked gasps.
Nobles covered their mouths. The Archivist dropped his heavy ledger with a loud thud.
I stopped breathing. The cold stone beneath my knees suddenly felt like it was spinning. “No… that would mean…”
“She was not your grandmother,” the King said, tears streaming freely down his face now. “She was your mother. And you… you are my daughter. My true, legitimate heir.”
“Lies!” the Crown Prince screamed.
He drew his royal sword. The sharp ring of steel echoed through the judgment hall.
The Prince pointed his blade directly at my chest. He was the son of the King’s second, political marriage. If I was the legitimate firstborn of a secret royal union, he was no longer the Crown Prince. He would lose the throne, his titles, and his absolute power.
“She is a street rat!” the Prince spat, his eyes wide with desperate madness. “She forged the stamp! She stole the crown! I will not let a peasant steal my birthright!”
“Drop your sword!” the King commanded, rising to his feet to stand between me and the Prince’s blade.
But the Prince was too far gone. “The law demands death for treason, Father! If you will not protect our bloodline, I will!”
The Prince lunged forward, thrusting the sword toward me.
I screamed and threw my chained hands up to protect my face.
But before the blade could strike, a massive gray blur launched through the air.
The late King’s giant wolfhound slammed into the Prince’s chest with the force of a battering ram. The Prince shouted in terror as the beast pinned him flat against the marble floor, its massive jaws snapping just inches from the Prince’s throat. The hound let out a deafening, blood-chilling roar, standing protectively over me.
“Do not move!” the King bellowed to the royal guards, who had instinctively reached for their weapons. “Any man who strikes that hound or this girl will hang before dusk!”
The room was paralyzed in absolute terror. The Prince lay whimpering beneath the crushing weight of the giant dog.
Then, the heavy oak doors at the back of the throne room swung open once more.
Every head in the room turned.
There, standing in the doorway, was the current Queen—the Prince’s mother, dressed in rich black velvet and heavy pearls. But she wasn’t looking at her son pinned to the floor.
She was staring in absolute horror at the frail, heavily cloaked woman the royal guards were leading into the hall behind her. A woman with severely burned hands, whose hood had just been pulled back.
I gasped. “Mother…”
CHAPTER 4
The throne room was a tomb. The only sound was the crackle of the wall torches and the ragged, terrified breathing of the Queen.
The Council of Elders, men who had served three generations of kings, stood frozen. They looked at the woman with the burned hands—the woman they had been told was a common baker—and then at the King.
“Martha?” the King whispered, his voice trembling as he stepped toward her. “Is it truly you?”
The woman took a slow, painful step forward. Her voice was thin, raspy from years of inhaling smoke and silence, but it held the unmistakable cadence of the high-born.
“I am not Martha,” she said, her eyes locked on the Queen. “I am Elara of House Valerius. The wife you thought was ash. The mother of the daughter you just tried to destroy.”
The Queen’s face went from pale to a ghastly, bruised purple. “She is a phantom! A charlatan!” she shrieked, looking at the guards. “Why are you standing there? Kill them! Kill the pretenders!”
But the guards didn’t move. They were looking at the King. And the King was looking at me.
He reached into the iron box, pulled out the tarnished silver tiara, and walked toward me. The crowd parted like a dark sea. He placed the cold metal on my brow, right over my tangled, muddy hair.
“Twenty years ago,” the King said, his voice regaining its iron strength, “this woman committed the ultimate treason. She told me my wife was dead so she could take the throne. She sent her men to finish what the rebellion started—to burn a mother and her unborn child in their beds.”
He turned his gaze to the Queen, and for the first time, I saw the true face of a judge.
“But a mother’s love is stronger than your fire,” the King growled. “She took the scars. She lived in the dirt. She became a ‘nobody’ to keep my daughter safe from your knives.”
“I did it for our son!” the Queen cried, gesturing to the Prince, who was still pinned under the heavy paws of the wolfhound.
“You did it for a crown that was never yours,” the King replied.
He looked at the Captain of the Guard. “Strip her of her silks. Remove her rings. Take the Prince to the North Tower. They will remain there until the Council decides if they deserve the rope or the exile.”
The same nobles who had mocked me moments ago now dropped to their knees as the guards dragged the screaming Queen and the sobbing Prince from the hall. The silence that followed was heavy with the weight of twenty years of lies finally being crushed.
My mother—the Duchess, the Queen I never knew I had—reached out her burned, scarred hand. I took it, kissing the rough skin, weeping for every day she had suffered in silence to keep me alive.
The King stepped forward, placing his heavy arms around both of us. He looked out at the court, his eyes resting on the commoners standing at the back of the hall—the people who had watched me sell bread in the mud.
“Today, the baker’s daughter is gone,” the King announced, his voice ringing through the palace and out into the city. “Behold the Princess of the Ivy Cross. The rightful heir has come home.”
I looked down at my muddy hems and then up at the crown on my head. I had walked into the palace in chains, but I stood now in the light of the truth.
The Prince had kicked my bread into the dirt, but he had forgotten one thing: the smallest seed, buried in the dark and the mud, is the only thing that can grow to tear down a kingdom.
THE END.
