Catherine hurriedly wiped the tears from her eyes, as though clearing her vision would somehow change what she was seeing.
It didn't.
He was still there.
The guilt she had buried for two lifetimes tore through her chest with ruthless force.
She hadn't protected him.
He had died because a power-hungry minister had plotted against the throne... and because his own father, blinded by pride and suspicion, had failed to protect the child who should have inherited everything.
She had arrived too late. By the time she found him, he had already been taken from her. She still remembered his tiny body, the blood, the desperate cries for his mother that had never been answered. He had been too young to understand betrayal, too young to understand politics, too young to understand why no one came.
He had died frightened.
Lonely.
Believing his mother had abandoned him.
The memory had haunted her through death itself.
And now...
