Diana Of Alcotta (Yrsoreth Chronicles 1)

14 ♚ Born of Nine Months

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When the crown prince was born, the king declared a feast throughout the kingdom. After all, Niccolus was the firstborn son and proof of King Augustus' virility. Despite bedding different women, none of them were pregnant, until Niccolus. This led to Claudette's rise to become the official queen.

Thus currently, the news, to murmurs and hush of "The crown prince was born of nine months," spread like wildfire.

Due to the feast of the crown prince's birth, it was also revealed that Niccolus was born prematurely of at most seven months, in contrast to the current rumor of a full term.

The length of Queen Claudette's pregnancy wouldn't have mattered, but the missing two months were crucial. Because that time, the king had a disease. The people of the palace now and then have loose lips, and the truth of the king's illness was a hot hushed topic. The servants, nobles, and commoners all thought he deserved it for sleeping around too much.

They said the king would cry back then when he peed, and his manhood swelled and red from the infection. It took months for him to recover, and his harem was emptied for a while.

And so, if the current rumors were true that Niccolus was born with nine months instead of seven, it meant the queen hid her pregnancy two months earlier, and announced she was two months pregnant, even it was already four.

This led to the question, how can King Augustus impregnate Queen Claudette earlier if he was sick?

Then, who is the father?

The question arose when the alleged Queen Claudette's previous knight, now a drunkard, announced it in a pub that previous night. By the morning, he was found dead in the gutter. That man, although grimy, disheveled and lost its shine, had blond hair, same with the king—and Niccolus.

He was silenced, yet the hushed conversations were more like screams that spread in the capital. Within the day, it reached the palace walls, and even whispered to the king's ears, by his women who wanted the throne for themselves or was just there to create havoc, per Xander's instructions.

"The king mobilized the investigation. They had a heated argument, Your Highness," Ysivan reported. "The king pressed the queen for answers, and she denied."

Of course, she would. The first step, destroying the crown prince's reputation, was staged earlier and intricately planned, outside of Devanti's help. In the search for the queen's weakness throughout the years, they found two people dismissed two months earlier before the queen 'officially' announced she was pregnant. It was her personal knight, Raston, and her Marquis family's official physician, Cailil Gumantua. With further investigation, it was found out that the doctor was murdered in his new clinic by the countryside, and the knight was missing. But they found clinical documents about the queen's pregnancy, in the doctor's vault.

After four years of search, they found Raston as a farmer, with an amputated right hand and a new name, Wayath. This man was a commoner who rose to his rank of knighthood under the queen's family. And now, in a state of hopelessness, given a slither of hope, he was driven with revenge to the queen, he claimed he loved but betrayed him in the end.

Wayath was brought back to the capital, given accommodation and money to spend before his death with one job—to spread Niccolus was born of nine months.

"And the crown prince?" Xander asked.

"He was advised by the queen to stay in his chambers, Your Highness."

Xander nodded, put the documents back to the pile. Later, he would also meet with the war council about the increasing numbers of pirates in territorial waters. He was relieved that there was one less problem with the black flags in Alcotta. It would have been better if Niccolus was doing his job, but he wasn't. All the almost impossible responsibilities were shoved on him—pirates, bandits, criminals in Peduha Slums and more. Yet he was thankful.