“No, not at all, or the palace would have been better guarded. According to Helga Engel, it was fear that prompted her bold plan. I don’t know much else about it. You can ask her when you meet her.”
“But it sounds like she sacrificed her own child to protect another. That seems a bit unnatural, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps she thought she was saving her own life. She had sole charge of the royal heir, after all. If anything did happen to the princess—”
“I get it. Execution and all that rot. How could I forget how barbaric this country is.”
He frowned at her sarcastic tone. “Not that barbaric, but perhaps, like you, Helga might have thought so.”
Alana asked, “What about my father? Is he still alive?”
Christoph sighed. “You should save your questions for your mother, but that one I can answer. Helga came to the palace a recent widow. She had other family, but I don’t know if they are still alive. I will say no more other than she was quite the heroine, protecting the princess in the way she did, aware that she could lose her own daughter in doing so. Which is what happened. She thinks you’re dead. She’ll be overjoyed when she discovers that isn’t so.”
Alana gasped. “She wasn’t told of Poppie’s message to the king that I was still alive?”
“No one was.”
Alana sighed. She’d come to Lubinia thinking she’d have to convince her father of who she was, but now she wondered if she’d have to do the same for her mother. Or would her mother take one look at her and know instantly who she was—just as she’d hoped would have happened with the king. Ha! Fine joke that would have been on her if she had made it into his presence. At least she didn’t have to convince Christoph of anything else. No one could be as stubborn as he was.
She pinned him with a stabbing look. “It’s just occurred to me that you’ve known all along that I couldn’t be the princess. Why couldn’t you have just said so?”
“I did. I called you an imposter, as I recall.”
“You know what I mean. You knew that the babies had been switched.”
He shrugged. “There was always the possibility that you could be Helga’s daughter. I just couldn’t discuss what has been a well-guarded secret all these years: that the wrong child was abducted. Your hair, raven black, is mainly why I didn’t pursue the possibility. Helga described her daughter as having golden hair, the same as the princess, which made it a simple matter for her to switch the two babies until the king returned.”
Alana’s brow knitted thoughtfully. “I only ever remember having black hair. Poppie never said if it used to be blond and changed color.”
Christoph chuckled. “Are you still clinging to the hope that you’re a royal?”
She laughed. “I never once expressed that hope and you know it. I’m just surprised Poppie never mentioned I had lighter-colored hair when I was very young.”
“Perhaps he did and you were too young to recall,” he said with a shrug. “Or perhaps like my father, he didn’t consider it worth mentioning.”
“Your hair used to be different?”
“I was nearly a man when I came upon my mother and aunt reminiscing about their children when they were babies. Mother teased me, confessing she used to call me her white-haired angel until I turned three and my hair turned golden.”
She gave him a disgruntled look. “And yet you stressed that the color of my hair was why—oh, never mind. That was quite an amazing fact you kept from me, that the king never lost his daughter, so of course that daughter couldn’t be me. And she’s been hidden all these years? He even let his subjects think she’s dead? He didn’t even bring her out to drop the floor out from under the rebels? When is he going to bring her home?”
“He did,” Christoph said solemnly. “She’s buried on the palace grounds next to her mother.”
Alana drew in her breath sharply, remembering the mock funeral Poppie had told her about—and the king’s rage at that time. And no wonder, when it hadn’t been a symbolic ceremony, as everyone supposed, but a real funeral.
“She died when she was seven, didn’t she?”
“Yes. It appeared to be an accident. Frederick thinks otherwise and blames himself for visiting her so often. He can’t go anywhere alone, his guards must always accompany him. And naturally this draws attention to him.”
“So he could have been followed?”
“Yes, and seen with a child the age of his daughter. Even if his enemies weren’t sure she was his, they would want to be rid of her just in case.”
She exclaimed, “That’s—!”
“No different than sending an assassin to kill a baby. But due to the absolute secrecy advised back then, to hide the princess, even to pretend she had been stolen so no further attempts would be made on her life, the king told no one about that missive that suggested you were still alive, not even your mother. But after five or so years passed, most people considered you dead. Yet whoever hired Rastibon, as well as all sorts of opportunists, weren’t absolutely sure, thus the imposters started showing up.”
“No, because of his reputation for never failing, Poppie expected whoever had hired him to conclude that he’d finished the job successfully. The ‘disappearance’ of the princess supported that.”
