The Lullaby No One Taught Her
Chapter 02 - The Lullaby No One Taught Her
Queen Mother Beatrice ordered the cameras turned off.
Not one moved.
Several foreign journalists had already begun recording on private phones. Palace security could control the official broadcast, but it could not erase three hundred witnesses.
Adrian crossed the ballroom.
Elena remained on the floor with Clara’s hands locked around hers.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did.
The years between them collapsed into one unbearable moment.
“Where have you been?”
Elena’s voice shook. “I was told you abandoned me.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“I was told you died.”
Beatrice descended from the royal platform.
“This woman is an impostor.”
Elena looked toward her and recoiled.
The reaction was instinctive.
Clara noticed.
“Grandmother knows her.”
Beatrice ignored the child.
She ordered the guards to remove Elena for questioning. Adrian countermanded the order.
“No one touches her.”
The Queen Mother stared at her son.
“You are allowing an emotional child and a servant to destabilize the monarchy.”
Adrian took the rabbit from Clara.
Elena had stitched the crescent inside the ear during their final winter together. Adrian remembered teasing her because the silver thread kept tangling around her fingers.
“How did Clara get this?”
Beatrice answered too quickly.
“It was purchased from a charity market.”
Clara shook her head.
“Mother Sophia gave it to me.”
Sophia, Adrian’s late wife, had died two years earlier after a sudden illness. Officially, she had given birth to Clara seven years before.
Elena touched the rabbit.
“I made two,” she said. “One for my baby. One for myself.”
She reached beneath the collar of her uniform and removed a small cloth square attached to a chain.
The second silver crescent was stitched into it.
Clara began humming.
It was a simple four-note lullaby.
Elena joined without thinking.
Their voices found the same unusual final note—the one Elena’s grandmother had taught her in childhood.
Adrian had never heard Sophia sing it.
Yet Clara knew every word.
Beatrice turned toward the exits.
Adrian stepped into her path.
“The banquet is over.”
“Adrian—”
“No. The performance is over.”
He ordered the royal physician, the head archivist, and palace security director summoned immediately.
Then he carried Clara in one arm and offered Elena his other hand.
She hesitated before taking it.
The ballroom watched the heir to the throne leave beside a maid everyone had been ordered not to see.
Adrian ordered the ballroom doors closed only long enough to prevent officials from carrying documents away. Guests were free to leave after providing contact details.
Beatrice accused him of turning a family crisis into public theater.
“The theater began when the palace invited cameras to celebrate a lie,” he replied.
Clara refused the governess’s arms and stayed against Elena’s chest. Elena held her carefully, as if one wrong movement might cause guards to take the child again.
Adrian noticed that fear.
He had imagined reunion as relief.
For Elena, reunion also meant entering the building responsible for her disappearance.
He lowered his voice and asked before approaching.
“May I sit beside you?”
Elena nodded.
May you like
The question was small.
Inside a palace built on automatic obedience, permission became the first sign that the future might not repeat the past.
