Page 27 of Vow to Claim You

My stomach tightens. That’s not entirely true. Palaces, yes. Luxury, yes. But also secrets. Men who visited my father who I knew weren’t part of the royal society. Deals whispered behind locked doors.

Still… I’ve never had a gun pointed at me. I’ve never seen someone bleed for me. Not until today.

“I’m just… really stressed out,” I manage.

“That is natural, Mrs. Vold.” She smiles warmly. “But you are safe here.”

I nod, though safety feels like a myth tonight.

Ingrid continues, almost wistfully, “I remember Mrs. Angelique fainting the first time she witnessed Mr. Vidar being shot. Although she fainted because she was pregnant with Aric…we learned that later.”

“Angelique?” A frown tugs at my brow. The name strikes like a spark on dry tinder. “Was she…Aric’s mother?”

Ingrid goes stiff, eyes widening like she’s just realized she’s stepped on a landmine she forgot was buried there.

“I… should not have mentioned her,” she murmurs sheepishly. “We do not speak of her. We cannot speak of her.”

I stare at her. Bluntly.

We cannot speak of her?

What is she, Voldemort? She Who Must Not Be Named?

I swallow down my sarcasm. “Why?”

She hesitates like she’s violated some ancient blood oath—which, knowing this family, she very well might have. “It’s a complicated story.”

“I can handle complicated. And this stays between us,” I assure her.

Ingrid sighs, folding her hands tighter. “Mrs. Angelique…did not want to be with Mr. Vidar. She was in love with someone else, but Mr. Vold forced her to be with him.” Her voice drops to a sad whisper. “He was obsessed with her, to an unhealthy extent. And she…she was deeply unhappy. She didn’t deserve what she had to endure.”

My chest aches unexpectedly. A woman trapped in a marriage she didn’t choose. Forced to bear a child for a man she didn’t love. The parallels aren’t lost on me—they’re screaming.

“The only way out was to leave,” Ingrid continues. “So after giving birth, she escaped the country.”

I stare at her, waiting for the rest. For the part where she took her baby with her. For the part where she fled with Aric bundled in her arms, protected him from the monster who fathered him, raised him somewhere safe and warm and far from this frozen hell.

But that part doesn’t come.

“That means she…” The words taste wrong before they even leave my mouth. “She abandoned Aric? She just…left him here? With Vidar?”

Ingrid’s silence is confirmation enough.

“Why didn’t she take him with her?”

I can’t wrap my mind around it. I can’t make the pieces fit into any shape that makes sense. You carry a child for nine months. You feel them move inside you, hear their heartbeat, count their fingers and toes the moment they’re born. You look into their eyes—those brand-new eyes that don’t know cruelty yet, don’t know betrayal, don’t know that the world can be cold and brutal and unforgiving—and you’re supposed to protect them. That’s the one unbreakable law of motherhood, isn’t it? The one thing that transcends culture and circumstance and survival instinct.

You don’t leave your child behind.

You don’t hand them over to the monster you’re running from and disappear into the night like they were never yours to begin with.

“I am not certain,” Ingrid says, and a despondency washes over her face at the memory—the kind of sadness that’s been carried for decades, worn smooth like a river stone. “Perhaps because he was unwanted. Or perhaps she feared taking Mr. Vidar’s heir would doom both of them. He would have hunted them to the ends of the earth.”

Unwanted.

The word lodges itself beneath my ribs like a splinter I can’t reach.

Suddenly, so many pieces of Aric click into place. The coldness. The control. The scars you can’t see. The way he flinches from warmth like it burns him. The way he speaks of love like it’s a disease he’s been vaccinated against. The way he holds people at arm’s length, even when his hand is pressed to my waist or his body is shielding mine from bullets.