Claimed By The Tyrant King

They were ushered into the chamber and the door closed firmly behind them, leaving only silence inside as Rosalind was already seated and waiting anxiously for their return.

The moment they stepped in, she lifted her head immediately, her voice carrying urgency that she could not hide. "What did you find?" she asked at once as they all settled around her.

Verity exchanged a brief look with Thalia before speaking, choosing her words carefully as though even the air itself was fragile.

"We went to the old woman at the chapel," she began calmly, "and at first she was very reluctant to say anything at all. Her expression alone made it clear she was hiding something, or at least afraid of something, and from the way she reacted, we could tell she definitely knows more than she is willing to admit."

Rosalind listened closely, her heart tightening with every word.

Then Verity finally repeated the most important part, lowering her voice slightly as though it still carried weight even now.

"Then he wasn’t a servant to begin with."

The moment those words settled in the room, a chill ran straight through Rosalind’s body.

Her breath caught slightly as her mind tried to reject it, but the thought had already taken root too deeply. If that was true... if Rowan had never actually been what she believed him to be, then everything she had known about him suddenly became unstable.

Her chest tightened painfully as the realization hit her again and again.

Who exactly had she fallen in love with?

And what part of him had ever truly belonged to her understanding?

Rosalind’s thoughts spiraled so quickly that she barely noticed Verity watching her carefully. "Rosalind," Verity called gently, pulling her back to the moment.

Rosalind blinked and turned toward her, forcing herself to focus even though her mind was still shaken.

Verity continued in a more practical tone, trying to ground the situation, "Even if Rowan has some kind of connection to the royal family, there must be something physical to identify it. Royal bloodlines usually carry markings, seals, or some form of recognition. We should start there first."

She paused briefly before asking more directly, "Have you ever seen anything like that on him? Maybe when he changed or when you noticed him without his shirt?"

The question made Rosalind’s face warm slightly at the memory it stirred, but beneath that embarrassment, her mind began working faster, searching through every moment she had ever shared with Rowan.

Silence filled the room as both Verity and Thalia waited patiently, watching her as she tried to remember.

Slowly, fragments began to surface in her mind.

She remembered the time she had gone with him to the infirmary after he had been injured, when the royal physician had treated his wound and he had briefly pulled his shirt aside.

She hadn’t really thought about it at the time but now that memory sharpened.

"There was... a marking," Rosalind said slowly, her voice uncertain as she tried to recall it clearly. "On his shoulder..."

Verity and Thalia exchanged quick glances, immediately leaning forward.

"But I don’t know what it means," Rosalind added quickly, her voice tightening again. "It could just be a tattoo or something meaningless. We cannot be certain it is anything important."

At those words, the brief hope in the room seemed to dim slightly.

Verity let out a soft breath, her shoulders lowering in frustration. Every time they seemed to step closer to an answer, something pulled them back into uncertainty again, leaving everything tangled and unclear.

It wasn’t that Rosalind didn’t want the theory to be true at all. In fact, a part of her desperately hoped it was all wrong, because if Rowan truly turned out to be someone entirely different, someone tied to something far larger than she could understand, then she wasn’t sure how she would even begin to process it.

All this time, she had known him only as Rowan the footman. That was the identity she had grown attached to, the person she had allowed herself to love.

And now even that felt like it was slipping away.

"I don’t know anymore," Verity admitted quietly with a sigh, the weight of uncertainty pressing down on all of them.

A heavy silence followed, broken only by the awareness that time was no longer on their side.

Alaric had still not returned, and that alone made Rosalind’s anxiety worse. She could not tell when he would appear again, or what state he would be in when he did, and every passing moment felt like it was tightening a rope around her fate. More urgently, Rowan’s situation loomed over her thoughts like a shadow she could not ignore.

If they were going to do anything, it had to be soon.

Thalia finally spoke, breaking the silence with a thoughtful tone. "If only there was a portrait or something official that we could use for comparison," she suggested. "Something tied to the royal family that could help us identify whether any of this is real."

"Portrait?" Rosalind repeated softly, as the idea struck her more deeply than expected.

Verity frowned slightly. "You can’t expect to find something like that lying around. If it exists, it would be hidden in restricted areas or private chambers."

But Rosalind was no longer fully listening.

Something had already sparked in her memory.

"I think... I might know where to look," she said slowly.

Both Verity and Thalia turned toward her immediately.

Rosalind hesitated for a moment, then continued, her voice steadier now as certainty began to replace confusion... She remembered that one time she had been inside Alaric’s private gallery, how he collected different valuables and also bizarre items. Among those things, she recalled seeing a portrait.

He had been livid when she had lingered there.

He had said it was a man who wasn’t that important.

But that portrait particularly had stayed in her mind. And strangely, she found herself wanting to check it again... It was like an intuition she couldn’t ignore.

"I’ve seen a portrait in Alaric’s gallery before," she admitted quietly. "And one of them... looked familiar in some kind of way. Now I feel like I need to see it again."

The room fell silent as that possibility settled over them.

Because if Rosalind was right, then the answer they were searching for might not be far away at all.