Page 52 of The Midnight Blizzard
“Glora?”
“My name’s Valencia,” my stepmother answered, but her voice shook.
The queen shook her head. “I never forget a face. You’re Glora.”
“Your midwife?” The king puffed out his chest and crossed the room to step protectively in front of his wife. “You were told never to come back here.”
“I…I merely wished to thank you properly for what you gave me?—”
“You were paid and told to leave.”
I stared between the queen and my stepmother, confused.
“She’s a mage,” the queen said in hushed tones.
I looked at my stepmother, but didn’t see any evidence to support the claim. Her hair was the model of perfectly curled auburn locks, without a strand out of place, just as always. She never missed an opportunity to examine her reflection in the mirror or fix her hair, which still didn’t have a single strand of grey even as she aged… Understanding thunked into place faster than snow fell from rooftops. The thin, stretchy, skin-colored material Jack and I had found while searching her room suddenly made sense. “You wear a wig.”
Valencia threw a dirty look at me. “It only took you three years to figure it out, did it?”
“Let’s continue this conversation elsewhere,” Queen Isolde said, looking pointedly at the doctors and nurses, all of whom seemed to be engrossed in their task but would have been able to easily overhear anything.
“I should stay here with my girls,” Valencia said hesitantly.
“Don’t disobey your queen.” King Wenceslas spoke coldly. “Jack, Noelle, Glora, come.”
Silently, Valencia rose and we all left, following the king. Once the door closed and we moved down the hall, Vanessa’s screams redoubled, and Valencia flinched at the sound.
“In,” the queen ordered Valencia, pointing into an empty room. We all filed in, and the queen gave two nods to the guards standing at attention on either side of the door.
Valencia stared at the floor, wringing her hands in front of her. Jack looked just as confused as I felt, and even the king had an eyebrow raised.
“She was one of the midwives at my birthing,” the queen explained. “She can remove anyone’s discomfort or pain when she focuses on them, so doctors often brought her along to their appointments so she could alleviate the patient’s suffering. Once they saw I had twins and one was a mage, they all promised to never speak of it…except for her.”
Valencia locked her jaw and said nothing, her featuresset in the same stubborn expression that often crossed my own face.
“She threatened to tell and said that people had the right to know, but back then, mages were often persecuted or taken from their families. We just wanted to protect Jack,” Queen Isolde said in hushed tones. “Wenceslas and I paid an exorbitant sum to send her to a different kingdom, Sorana I believe, to start a new life.”
“So, she likely hid that she was a mage and had her two daughters,” I breathed. “But why return?”
“Your father was working on a great deal of laws related to mage rights,” Jack pointed out.
“And that’s how she met Papa. They became acquainted when he was speaking about mage rights.” Additional understanding hit me with stampeding force. “That’s why Papa always felt so healthy and energetic around her. He wasn’t recovering from his illness; she was masking his pain.”
“And when he left the estate to her,” Jack chimed in, “she would have had to provide a birth certificate to validate that she was who she claimed to be. But since she used another identity?—”
“It was a legal name change,” Valencia interjected, holding her chin aloft. “I have the paperwork to prove it.”
“Ah, but you would have needed to have the birth certificate, name change paperwork, and the marriage certificate, and when they checked your birth record, they would know that your marriage wasn’t legal,” Jack pointed out.
My mouth fell open and I addressed my stepmother. “So that is why you wanted that law to pass so badly. It was to grant full rights so you could inherit property and to legalize your marriage to Papa sohe could pass the full estate on to you. It wasn’t ever to help me. It was all for you. Then you would get everything.”
Valencia’s silence was confession enough. No wonder she always feigned an injury or faded into the background anytime the queen was around. The time when Jack had convinced Stephen to take my stepfamily to meet his mother to give Jack and me time to snoop through their rooms…of course Valencia had come back early to avoid her. And she had faked an ankle injury when she’d learned that the queen would be in attendance when we presented the bill.
“Did Papa know?” I asked. “Did he know about you?”
Finally, she raised her eyes to meet mine. “Of course he knew. Why do you think he kept our wedding so private and never had us accompany him on his trips? Why do you think he always gave me ample time to get ready each day? It was to conceal it from everyone for my own safety. I knew exactly what would happen if I revealed myself to the public, and I was right.”
“Glora, what did you do to your daughter?” the queen asked crisply.
