Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 15 of 44

Colt's words stayed with Bailey long after the man walked off. Prince Colton. A name he could speak but not prove. He stood at the edge of the dock and felt the weight of it. Anyone could claim a throne. He needed something that only the true prince could hold. Cora watched him and knew that look. "You want the crown," she said. "You want them to believe you." Bailey nodded. "A name is only air. I need proof." Cora reached into her stained robe and pulled out a folded scrap of paper. It was a rubbing she had once taken from the root den carvings. "There was a mark I never understood," she said. "A crest. Two lions and a letter. I copied it because it was pretty." She held it up. "It's the same shape on Colt's stories. The royal house." Bailey took the paper. His fingers shook. The crest was real, older than the swamp's lies. "The carvings kept it," Bailey said. "But carvings won't walk into a hall and speak for me. I need the thing itself." He remembered the root den, the deep chamber where the vines had once hidden more than words. Bram Mosswick had spent a lifetime dragging chains through that swamp. If anyone had found buried metal, it was him. They found Bram at his forge, hammering a blade so bright it hurt to look at. He no longer wore the iron manacles Cora had broken through the altar. His horns caught the firelight. He set the hammer down when he saw Bailey. "The boy who freed my wrists," he said. His voice was rough gravel. "I owe you my hands. Ask." "I need what you dug from the root den," Bailey said. "A royal thing. Metal. Cloth." Bram grunted and crossed to a chest in the corner. He lifted the lid and drew out a sword wrapped in cloth. The blade was old, marked with the same runes from the carvings. The hilt held a purple stone. Beneath it lay a folded cloak, deep purple, with a golden crest sewn on the chest. Two lions and a letter. The exact mark on Cora's paper. "Found them in the mud below the roots," Bram said. "I forged near them for years. Never knew whose they were." Bailey lifted the sword. It fit his hand as if made for it. He set the cloak on his shoulders. The crest sat over his heart. Cora pressed her paper against it. They matched, line for line. "This is proof," Bailey said. His voice broke. "No one can call me a liar now." But even as he spoke, a colder thought arrived. Bram frowned and asked the question Bailey feared. "If you were the prince," the blacksmith said, "then someone else has been sitting your throne all these years. And they won't want you back." “I thought you were on the throne, Bram?” Cora spat. Bram replied, “Only for ten years I sat there, cousin, but then the curse came and my family was casted away in shame.” Bram frowned and said, “The new King doesn’t like successors. I heard he’s lived for over a thousand years.”