They Locked Me Away for What I Knew—Sixteen Years Later, My Daughter Stepped Onto the Wheel

Renard's mother, Colette, had served Queen Aveline's private rooms.

She was the servant listed in Severin's medical notes.

The one who carried the poisoned tonic.

"She didn't know what was in it," Renard said. "When the queen got worse, my mother panicked. She told Vautrin she would confess."

Mathurin gripped the bars until his knuckles went white.

"What did he do to her?"

Renard looked at the floor.

"Sent her away. I was told she died on the road."

"Did she?"

"I don't know."

Then he gave us a name.

Sister Agnes.

A nun at the Mercy House outside the east gate.

At dawn, Elise, Lucien, and I rode there with four guards. It was the first horse I had sat on in sixteen years, and every bone in my body complained.

"Still bossy?" Elise asked as we rode.

"Worse now."

The Mercy House smelled of soap and hot bread.

Sister Agnes was eighty if she was a day. When I said Colette's name, she closed her eyes.

"She's alive," the nun said.

Mathurin, who had followed us despite my objections, made a sound behind me.

Agnes led us to a small garden.

An old woman sat beneath a pear tree with a blanket over her knees.

Mathurin stopped ten feet away.

"Colette?"

She looked up.

The cup in her hands fell into the grass.

Their reunion was quieter than mine with Elise. No running. No shouting. Just two old people touching each other's faces like they were proving the other was real.

Then Colette saw me.

"Blanche."

"You remember?"

"I remember everything."

She gripped my sleeve.

"Including the person who held the queen down while Vautrin poured the last dose."

Lucien went still.

"Who?"