Chapter 40 Jayne
My next breath was a ragged gasp. “You’re sure, Dad?”
“Positive.” He just stared at Janvier, nodding, his expression somewhere between lost and fuming. “I need to talk to her.”
I stared, too. That was my aunt. Crazy.
Larsen glanced at me like she was looking for backup. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, your highness. We need to interview her, see what she’s willing to tell us—”
My dad swiveled to face Larsen. “You don’t think she’ll tell me everything once I confront her?”
“It’s just, it’s not how we generally— Look, I realize this is an unusual situation but—”
“You can record everything. Will that help?” My father awaited her answer while ice crystals edged the corners of the window next to him.
Larsen frowned.
My father frowned right back. “What if you come in with me?”
Larsen huffed out a breath and relented. “That would be … better, your highness.”
My father didn’t wait, just charged forward. Larsen followed. Sin and I stayed put.
“I can’t believe this,” Sin whispered.
“You and me both,” I whispered back.
We inched closer to the window as the door to the interview room opened and my dad walked in, a storm of emotions darkening his appearance and making him every inch the Winter King. Larsen closed the door and stood in the corner as if trying to keep some distance from him. Not a bad idea.
He looked at his sister. “Janvier?”
Her face went slack, her eyes momentarily rounded, then her expression crumpled and she burst into tears. “J-Jackie, I’m so sorry.”
A sudden blankness washed over my dad. He clearly hadn’t been expecting that reaction. He swallowed and seemed to compose himself. “What happened? How are you here? When did you come back?”
Janvier’s entire body seemed to expand with her next breath. “I don’t even know where to start.”
My dad pulled out the chair beside her and sat. “At the beginning,” he said softly.
Janvier nodded. “Right. Well, I guess that would be when … you know. The man I left to marry … that didn’t work out so well. He was great at telling me what I wanted to hear, how amazing our life was going to be, how he was going to spoil me and treat me like the queen I was meant to be but …”
A deep sigh escaped her. “We made it to California, where I very quickly found out he was actually still married to someone else.” She stared at the table, shame in her eyes.
“Janvier, you were twenty-one. No one makes good decisions at that age.”
I loved my dad so much in that moment for giving his sister grace when she obviously needed it. The repercussions of murdering Delton would come soon enough.
“Yeah,” she said with a little laugh. “I was really good at bad decisions then, wasn’t I?”
“Why didn’t you come home as soon as you found out the truth about him?”
“I was too ashamed. And determined to make something of myself. I wasn’t good at much.
Growing up as a princess doesn’t really give you a skill set outside of royal duties.
I waited tables. Worked at a farm taking care of animals.
But the best job I got was at a carnival, working the ice cream truck. ”
She smiled. “For once, my natural abilities came in handy. No one understood how, when the generator went down, I managed not to lose a single scoop of product.”
My dad laughed. “That good old Frost magic.”
“Exactly. There was one guy who knew. He was a strongman in one of the sideshows. Hans.” Her smile got a little bigger.
“He was kind and understanding. Somewhere in his past, he had a great-great-grandmother who was part winter elf and a great-great-grandfather with a touch of ice troll in his lineage.”
My dad nodded but said nothing. I was sure he was thinking the same thing I was, that Janvier must have been thrilled to find someone she could be herself around.
“Hans and I fell in love and got married. I took his last name and, inspired by it, decided to change my first as well, using the letters left over in my real name. Dumb, I know, but it felt like this delicious little secret.”
She rolled her eyes as if to underscore how silly she thought it was now.
My dad shrugged. “Pretty clever, if you ask me. What happened next?”
“We moved to North Dakota, where the winters felt like home. He went to work for the police department. I stayed home and had babies.” Her smile was gone now, and her eyes clouded with memories.
“We had a daughter then, two years later, a son.”
“Flora and Crispin,” I whispered.
Sin nodded.
“But less than a year after our son was born, Hans was killed in a car accident.” A tear slipped down her cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” my dad said quietly. He put his hand on the table and slid it closer to her.
She didn’t seem to notice. “I was lost. I didn’t know what to do.
I had two babies to look after, no job, no family.
” A deep breath turned into a sob. “Then I found out Hans was still taking care of me. He’d gotten life insurance I didn’t even know about.
It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough to do something with. ”
“And that something was to come back to the North Pole?”
She nodded, looking at my dad. “I had no intention of doing anything other than living a simple life where my children wouldn’t have to hide their abilities. I bought a house as far away from town as I could. I kept to myself. I never wanted more than that, I swear it on Hans’s memory.”
My dad sat back. “Then what happened?”
Janvier took a breath and looked him right in the eyes. “Your daughter got pregnant.”
I jerked back. I hadn’t been expecting that.
“That started all this talk about Naming Day. My children, now adults, asked about their naming days, and I had to tell them the truth. Not about who I really was but that they hadn’t been born in the North Pole.”
Her frown was back. “Crispin has never been one to leave anything alone. He wanted to know more about his father, more about me, wanted to research what his Naming Day would have been like. He went to work at the archives to have access to all the records, and he figured out who I really was. It changed everything.”
She tipped her head back. “He saw no reason I shouldn’t reclaim my place in the royal family. That he and his sister shouldn’t be living in the palace, enjoying all the benefits of being a prince and princess.”
A muscle in her jaw twitched. “I told him under no circumstances was he to do anything to jeopardize the life I’d built. That announcing who I was would have the exact opposite effect of what he wanted. He wouldn’t listen. Kept digging.”
“So you reached out to Delton.”
“I had to. I had no choice. I told him I’d overhead Crispin talking about his plan to announce that you should not be on the throne and that your grandson was not a legitimate heir. I begged Delton to hide any archives that would give Crispin the proof he was after.”
“I believe he tried,” my dad said. Then his eyes narrowed. “So are you saying that Crispin killed Delton?”
She blinked, frowning like what he’d just suggested was unthinkable. “No, of course not. I talked to him about that. He said straight out it was Percy Tinselwick. I have to say there’s a good chance he’s right. Percy has been—”
“We talked to Percy,” Larsen said, finally stepping out of the corner.
“Tailing him turned up nothing, but he’s got a solid alibi for the time of his father’s death.
He was in a coffee shop downtown, camped out a table with a cold brew and his notebook for nearly two hours.
He was writing a letter to his father, apologizing for the way things have been between them and listing out all the reasons he hoped his father would support his bid to be a tinker. ”
Janvier’s breath caught on a sob.
My father took Janvier’s hand. “Do you really think it wasn’t Crispin?”
Janvier’s face crumpled, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I wish I didn’t, but now I don’t know what to think.”
My father glanced at Larsen.
She nodded. “We’ll bring him in.”
Through tears, Janvier got a few words out. “You should talk to his sister, too. They are very close. Maybe … maybe she can prove he didn’t do it.”
Or, I thought, prove he did.