Page 64 of The Billionaire's Royal Crown

They pushed open the heavy doors to the archives, and Nate’s stomach dropped. The vast room was lined with towering shelves crammed with dusty tomes and ancient manuscripts. The air, which was the musty scent of old paper, was a silent testament to centuries of history, waiting to be discovered. It would take all of them days to search through this.

“Uhhh, is there a good place to start or do we just need to look at everything?” Stephen asked, voicing Nate’s concern.

“Royal decrees are housed in the back,” Alexander said, snaking through the shelves and filing cabinets. “We’ll start there.”

“Stephen, you could help me look at the marriages thus far and determine if there have been any instances of a non-royal marriage while Alexander and Nathan look through the decrees.”

“Sure,” Stephen answered, following her to another area of the room.

Nate took another glance around the room as he shuffled behind Alexander. “Don’t you think your brother would have checked this?”

“No,” Alexander answered with a shake of his head, as he pulled open a drawer filled with official looking manuscripts. “He would deliberately mislead us just for the chaos. It’s entirely possible we could find something in here.”

They pored over edict after edict, decree after decree, finding nothing that would help them.

After hours, Nate slumped into a seat at a well-polished table with a copy of a thick book listing Eldoria’s laws. He cracked open the dusty volume, noting several of the handwritten pages dating back hundreds of years.

He peered at a few of them, finding nothing interesting. As he flipped to a new page, an envelope marked with the royal seal slid from the book.

Nate gazed at the envelope, its edges tinged yellow and fragile from the passage of time. The royal seal, unbroken and commanding, exuded an aura of profound historical weight.

“Hey, Alexander, look at this,” he said, awe and reverence mingling in his voice.

The man peered over Nate’s shoulder. “Looks like a royal missive. I wonder why it was never opened.”

“Me too. What should we do with it?”

“Open it,” Alexander answered. “Let’s determine if it could help.”

Nate handed it over to the prince, his stomach twisting into a knot. Alexander carefully broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.

“It appears to be a royal decree,” he murmured. “Let’s hope this is the answer to our prayers.”

Nate held his breath, wondering if he’d stumbled upon something that would help Elena’s case or hurt it.

CHAPTER 17

ELENA

Elena’s fingers wrapped tightly around the camera she’d shoved into her pocket when the voice had startled them. With wide eyes, she glanced into the hall, finding an older woman staring at them with her hands on her hips.

“Hello,” she said with a sweet smile. “I hope we haven’t disturbed you.”

“What you’re disturbing is a crime scene,” the woman snapped.

Elena’s gaze fell to the outline on the floor with a wince. “Right.”

“I suppose you’re curiosity seekers. Well, I’m calling the police.” The woman withdrew a cell phone from her pocket with a shake of her head.

“No, no,” Elena said with a shake of her head. “No, we’re not…curiosity seekers. We are…friends of the deceased. I am here for…photographs. For her funeral. I thought she’d had a few ofall of us together that would be nicely displayed as a testament to her life.”

The woman’s eyebrows crinkled as she hesitated, her phone still in hand as she studied Elena. “Don’t recognize you.”

“Oh, well, perhaps you would recognize my fiancé. I’m marrying Chloe’s brother-in-law.” Elena held up a finger before she dove into her purse for her phone. After a moment of fiddling with shaky hands, she displayed a picture of her with Nate.

“Oh, yeah. Wait, wasn’t he dating Chloe?”

“Well, he was, but then he wasn’t. And now he’s engaged to me, and she is…well, was, married to his brother. It’s very complicated.”

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