Page 107 of Queen

But I know better.

I have not been reborn. I have been sharpened.

The Letter

It’s Guido who finds it.

I hear his bare feet padding across the stone porch, his small voice carrying through the salt-slick air. “Mama, someone left this.”

I turn from the stove, knife in hand, and see the envelope pinched between his fingers. No stamp. No return address. Just a crack of red wax sealing it—deep, thick, the imprint unmistakable.

A bishop’s ring.

My stomach knots.

“Guido,” I say carefully, keeping my voice level. “Put it on the table. Don’t touch it again.”

He obeys, though his eyes linger on me, too wide, too knowing. He deserves innocence, but he’s my son—born into shadows whether I wanted it or not.

I wipe my palms against my apron before reaching for it. The paper is thick, expensive—the kind used for proclamations, not threats. But when I break the wax and slide the letter free, there’s nothing holy in what waits inside.

The words are blunt, carved across the page like a curse:

The sins of the Queen are mine to judge.

—Santino

My pulse hammers, but it’s the photo tucked behind the parchment that steals my breath.

An altar. Marble steps slick with blood. Streaks across the cloth, handprints clawing at the edge like the dead tried to drag themselves free.

Guido tilts his head, trying to see. I snap the photo shut and press it to my chest.

“Is it bad?” he whispers.

Bad doesn’t begin to touch it.

I crouch in front of him, cradling his cheek in my palm. His skin is warm, alive, mine. “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” I murmur, even as my throat scrapes raw from the lie. I smoothhis hair back and kiss his forehead, lingering like I can seal him in light. “You are my everything, Guido. You, and your papa. Always.”

His lip trembles, but he nods, and drifts back toward the puzzle spread across the table. For a moment, I just watch him—my boy, my kingdom, my happily ever after. Not the kind they write about in storybooks, but the kind I carved with blood and ruin.Our kind.

I unfold the letter again, reading the line until it blurs.The sins of the Queen are mine to judge.

A laugh slips from me, sharp and bitter. “Judge me, Santino? You’ve no idea what I’ve already burned.”

But beneath the rage, love steadies me like steel. I see Emiliano’s hands, scarred and ruthless, holding mine in the blood pact. I hear his vow:If you kneel to her, you kneel to me.Even in exile, I feel him—our chain stretched but never broken. He is still mine. I am still his.

I press the photo flat to the table, my fingertip tracing the bloodstains, and whisper into the salt-heavy air: “This is our ever after. Emiliano, Guido, me. Nothing—not Santino, not the Church, not the whole fucking underworld—will take it from us.”

My scarred wrist throbs as if answering, a reminder of the vow I made in shadows and silk.

Santino wants a reckoning? He’ll have it.

But he’ll learn the truth the hard way:A Queen doesn’t bow to judgment.She delivers it.

The Game Begins Again

The letter still bleeds in my hand. Santino’s script, the bishop’s seal, the altar photo—it’s a noose disguised as scripture.