The Eye of the Wolf by Sadie Vanderveen

years before during the birth of a son who hadn’t
lived much longer than his mother. The King had never remarried, so heart-broken
was he to lose his beloved Amelia. He had spent ten wonderful years with the
woman he had made his queen, a peasant raised on Amor who was both beautiful
and intelligent. Who stole his heart the first time he saw her climb the stairs
to the Secluded City to beg for a little more time for her father to pay his
taxes. He had forgiven the man his taxes and married the daughter, loving her
above all else. It was a beautiful, if not tragic story. Romantic like a
fantastic love story.
    She traced her finger along the
glass: wistful, sad suddenly as the thought of never experiencing that king of
love swept through her.
    Mikayla straightened and moved
to the next case where the sceptor and crown of King Henry was kept. She knew
what the crown looked like; she knew the heat it gave off. She had held it in
her hands, had seen it glimmer in the lighting. She had seen the engraving
within the crown, and now, since she was alone, she longed to see it again.
Crowns did not have engravings inside of them unless there was something to be
hidden or some message to be passed along. Crowns were meant to be worn by
generations upon generations of monarchs. There was no other reason for a
crown. In her research, only one other crown had ever had an engraving on the
inside. That crown had been owned by the Romanovs prior to their assassinations
during the Russian Revolution. That crown had been a marker, a marker to the
Romanov fortune that the girls had not hidden in their corsets. It also had
been a marker to the answers as to what happened to the fabled Anastasia
Romanov. It had been a fake! It had been the Piltdown Man of jeweled artifacts.
    Mikayla looked around her. The
hall was empty. She strained her ears and slowed her breathing to hear over her
own heartbeat. There were no sounds. There was only stillness, silence, and an
eerie echo from each move she made. She swallowed and ran her fingers along the
lid, under the hinge. With one last look around, Mikayla gently pulled up.
    Nothing happened. The lid was
locked tight.
    Mikayla leaned down and
examined the lock closely. It was a typical brass key lock, but it was solid.
She jiggled the lid and nothing happened. She would need the key if she was
going to look at the crown again. And she would look at that crown again. It pulled
at her. Intrigued that part of her that loved to do jigsaw puzzles and read
mysteries. It hinted at a mystery just waiting to be solved. Kankaredes and
Dejeune had both acted strangely about that crown. What was it hiding? What
message did it contain from a long-dead monarch? What was the secret that
allowed the same family to rule peacefully for 900 years?
    Mikayla knew a fairy tale when
she heard one. The story of Amor sounded too much like a fairy tale for her
cynical self. Plus, there was the fact that the story didn’t seem to match the
books she had been reading in the Hall of Records, books that looked like they
hadn’t been opened in the last 900 years. Books she had found in the very back
corners of the hall, hidden in a dusty, mildewed chest made from hearty
redwood. The smell of cedar had permeated the air when she cracked the chest
open mixing with the smell of vegetative decay. She had had to break the lock
on the chest, but Mikayla figured that since no one probably knew the chest was
there, no one would really care that she had destroyed the lock on the chest.
    Regardless of her desire to
keep all historical artifacts intact, the desire to see what treasures had been
hidden long ago was stronger. She hadn’t been disappointed. Heavy leather-bound
books stacked on one another, covered in fine Irish linen with perfect Celtic
knots embroidered in brown, but once had probably been a beautiful sunny
yellow. Most people wouldn’t have found this an exciting find, a treasure to be
protected, but to Mikayla, it was greater