00:00You should be more careful, King Frederick said quietly, about which staff members you decide to trust.
00:07Bow down.
00:08Maya's grip tightened on the letter in her hand.
00:11Where is Helene?
00:13Reassigned, the king said simply, effective immediately.
00:17Some members of this household forget that loyalty to a memory is not the same as loyalty to the crown.
00:24Adrian stepped forward, positioning himself slightly between his father and Maya.
00:29Father, if you had these letters this whole time, why not destroy them?
00:33Why keep them at all?
00:35King Frederick's expression didn't waver.
00:37Because some things are worth keeping close.
00:40Adrian, even the things we'd rather the rest of the world never see.
00:44He set the empty wooden box down on the desk and walked out without another word,
00:50leaving both of them standing in silence with more questions than they'd started with.
00:54Maya found Helene, twenty minutes later, already packing a small suitcase in the staff quarters,
01:01palace security waiting quietly by the door to escort her off the grounds.
01:06You knew this would happen, Maya said.
01:09You knew giving me that letter would get you fired.
01:12I knew it might, Helene said calmly, folding a worn cardigan into a bag.
01:18I served this family for four years, and I watched them erase a woman I loved like a daughter.
01:23I decided a long time ago that if I ever got the chance to make sure her death meant something,
01:29I'd take it, whatever it cost me.
01:32Then help me, Maya said.
01:34Tell me what she found in the East Wing archive.
01:37Helene paused, glancing toward the security guard, now approaching the doorway.
01:42She lowered her voice to barely a whisper, shipping manifests that didn't match the official trade reports.
01:49Isabelle found something the Crown was hiding about the port agreements,
01:53the same agreements tied to your engagement negotiations with the Ashworth family.
01:58That's all I know.
01:59That's all she had time to tell me.
02:01Before this, the guard reached the door.
02:03Ma'am, it's time.
02:05With Helene squeezed Maya's hand once hard, before being led away.
02:09Be careful who you trust in that archive, she whispered.
02:13It isn't just the king who has something to protect.
02:16That evening, Maya relayed everything to Adrian in the privacy of the consulate garden.
02:21The only place they were reasonably certain wasn't monitored.
02:25Trade agreements.
02:27Maya, that's not the kind of thing people usually die over.
02:31People die over money all the time, Maya said.
02:34Especially the kind of money that runs entire kingdoms.
02:37Adrian rubbed his temples.
02:40The weight of three years of unanswered grief pressing visibly on him for the first time.
02:47I spent three years believing Isabelle's death was just a terrible, random accident.
02:52If it wasn't, if someone in my own family had a hand in it.
02:56We don't know that yet, Maya said gently.
02:59But we won't know anything if we don't look.
03:03Adrian looked at her for a long moment.
03:05The East Wing archive isn't accessible to anyone outside senior royal staff.
03:10Not even me.
03:11Not without authorization.
03:13Then we need someone who already has access, Maya said.
03:17The person who had access, it turned out, was someone neither of them expected.
03:22Christina Ashworth.
03:24She found them the next morning, before they could even ask.
03:27Appearing in the garden with the same composed expression she always wore.
03:32Though something about her posture seemed different.
03:34Less guarded.
03:36I heard about Helene.
03:38Christina said.
03:39And I heard what she told you.
03:40How?
03:42Maya asked worrily.
03:44Because my family has been trying to get into that same archive for three years.
03:49Christina said.
03:50The Ashworth trade agreements.
03:52Your palace keeps renegotiating every few months.
03:55Aren't renegotiations at all.
03:56They're cover stories.
03:58Something changed in those shipping numbers.
04:01Right around the time your first wife died.
04:04Adrian and my father have spent years trying to figure out exactly what.
04:08Then, the engagement between us was never really about alliance at all.
04:13No, Christina admitted.
04:15It was about my father needing enough access to the palace to find out what really happened
04:20to those manifests.
04:22And enough leverage to make sure whatever he found never became public unless he wanted
04:26it to.
04:27So the whole engagement, Maya said slowly, the whole scandal, the whole reason I'm even
04:33standing here right now, it all traces back to a shipping record.
04:38Welcome to royal politics, Christina said dryly.
04:41Nothing is ever about what it appears to be about.
04:45Adrian looked between the two women, the fake fiancee his father arranged, and the real
04:50one currently offering to help him uncover the truth about his dead wife.
04:54Why help us now?
04:56He asked Christina.
04:57You could use this exact same leverage against my family instead.
05:01Because my father wants to use it as a weapon, Christina said.
05:05And I'm tired of being handed to men as a bargaining chip in exchange for information I could just
05:10as easily find myself.
05:12She looked directly at Maya.
05:13Believe it or not, Miss Reyes, I don't actually want your fairy tale.
05:18I want out of this entire arrangement.
05:21Mine and yours both.
05:22For the first time since the engagement announcement, Maya found herself trusting Christina completely.
05:28Christina's staff badge granted after hours access to the East Wing archive, a privilege
05:34she'd never used since the Ashworth family had always relied on quieter, more official channels
05:40to search for what they needed.
05:42That night, the three of them moved through the palace's oldest wing together, Christina
05:47leading them past dust-covered portraits of long-dead Belmore royals toward a locked
05:53records room at the very end of the corridor.
05:56If we're caught in here, Christina warned, sliding her badge through the reader, there is
06:01no version of tonight that ends well for any of us.
06:05The door clicked open.
06:06Inside, rows of sealed filing cabinets, stretched back into darkness.
06:12Decades of royal records, untouched by modern digitization.
06:16Exactly the kind of place someone would hide something they never wanted found.
06:21Where do we even start?
06:23Maya whispered.
06:24Adrian's flashlight swept across a cabinet drawer near the back, one label catching all three
06:29of their attention at once.
06:31V.O.S.S.
06:32I.C.E.L.D.
06:33by order of the crown.
06:35Adrian's hands trembled as he pulled the drawer open.
06:39Inside was a single thin folder, far too light to contain three years of shipping records,
06:44but heavy enough to hold something else entirely.
06:46He opened it to find not financial documents, but a single photograph paper-clipped to a handwritten
06:53note in unfamiliar handwriting.
06:56The photograph showed Isabel, alive, standing beside a man, none of them recognized, taken,
07:03according to the note, only three days before the accident that supposedly killed her.
07:09The handwritten note beneath it read only six words.
07:12Fray-Sham.
07:14She is safer when no one looks.
07:16Fray-Sham.
07:18Maya looked up at Adrian, whose face had gone completely white.
07:22Adrian, she whispered.
07:24What if Isabel never actually died at all?
07:27Behind them, the archive door creaked open.
07:29That, said a voice from the doorway, is a very dangerous question to be asking in this room.
07:35Coming up in episode five, six words.
07:38The identity of the man in the archive doorway changes everything.
07:43And Adrian must decide whether he's ready to know the truth about the wife he thought
07:48he buried.
07:48The identity of the man in the archive.
07:48The identity of the man in the archive.
07:48The identity of the man in the archive.
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