Daphne
The castle has spent the last day in chaos, the woods around it and the bordering town of Eldevale searched for any sign of the lost princes—not that most people in the castle know Reid and Gideon are princes, which makes their disappearance all the stranger. What would be the motive for kidnapping the sons of a dead Frivian nobleman and his foreign wife?
Queen Eugenia, for her part, is distraught. Or, at least, is told she’s distraught, since she hasn’t left her room and her maid claimed she needed to be sedated with a tincture of eddleberries and ground vestalroot.
After a night and day of searching, there is still no indication of who took the princes or why. The hoofprints and Bairre noticed appeared to lead in circles before disappearing altogether, and after another heavy snowfall, even those are gone, leaving no trace of the princes at all.
didn’t need to ask Bairre if he knew anything about it—she knows him well enough by now to know that he would never put children in danger and that his shock and horror following their kidnapping was genuine. That doesn’t mean, however, that the rebellion isn’t involved. Bairre must have told someone the princes’ true identity, and they wouldn’t have taken kindly to Friv involving itself in the matters of a foreign country.
She doesn’t have a chance to ask him if he knows anything more before he leaves with a group of scouts to search the surrounding villages for any information that might reveal the boys’ whereabouts.
So, asking after Cliona, is directed to the stables, where she finds the other girl brushing out her mare, a tall creature, every inch of her black apart from a white mark on her forehead that reminds of a crown. Cliona doesn’t seem surprised when appears, barely interrupting her brushing to give a nod of acknowledgment.
sees no point in wasting time with small talk—the stables are otherwise empty of humans, she ensured it herself.
“Did your people kidnap the princes?” she asks.
Cliona’s expression doesn’t change. “Princes?” she repeats, her voice ringing a little too innocent to be believable, at least to . So Bairre did tell her the princes’ true identities, or someone did.
“You really are a terrible liar,” says, stepping farther into the stable and reaching up to scratch behind the mare’s ear. The horse leans into ’s touch and lets out a low whinny. It isn’t quite true—Cliona is a perfectly fine liar, is simply better at reading people.
Still, the insult digs beneath Cliona’s skin and her lips purse. “Fine, then let me say this perfectly clearly,” she says, looking up and meeting ’s silver eyes with her brown ones. “Neither I nor any rebels had anything to do with the kidnapping of those boys.”
’s eyes search hers for a moment, but she’s telling the truth—at least she believes she is. Cliona claims she knows every move the rebels make, every plot they have brewing, but knows that Cliona’s father is the head of the rebels, and there are some things he might not wish to burden his daughter’s conscience with.
“But you did know who they were,” says, knowing better than to pull that particular thread with Cliona.
Cliona snorts. “Of course,” she says. “I know the king underestimates his people, but I’d have thought you knew better by now.”
“Then you must have had a plan to get rid of them and their mother,” says. “What was it?”
Cliona rolls her eyes. “Nothing so dastardly as you’re imagining, I’m sure,” she says. “We were simply going to leak the information about their true identities and let the people of Friv put pressure on the king to send them back to Temarin.”
“And, of course, if he still refused, it would only incite more opposition to his rule,” adds.
Cliona shrugs. “Either way, it was a win for us,” she says. “We had no reason to extract those boys from the castle.” She pauses, eyes settling on . “Just as we had no reason to want you dead, Princess,” she adds.
“So you say, after threatening to kill me,” reminds her, but the point remains. Cliona and the rebels weren’t responsible for the attempts on her life, and never found out who, exactly, was. It stands to reason that if there is another element at play here, it might be responsible for both the attempts on her life and the boys’ kidnapping.
“Your assassins lured us to the very woods where the princes were kidnapped,” Cliona says, as if reading ’s mind.
“There have been no further attempts on my life,” says, shaking her head. “We killed every assassin there—what makes you think there are more?”
“Because I’ve learned a little something about underground movements over the last few years. There are always more people involved than you think, and more often than not, they’re right under your nose.”
It isn’t reassuring, but Cliona’s words rarely are.
“Speaking of which,” Cliona continues, “I didn’t ask where you learned to fight. I’ve never met a princess who could wield a knife like you do.”
“Apart from me, you’ve never met a princess at all,” points out. “Besides, I assumed you and Bairre didn’t ask questions because you didn’t want me to ask questions of my own,” she adds, turning back to the door and walking away. She nearly makes it before Cliona speaks again.
“Sooner or later, , you’re going to have to trust someone,” she says.
’s steps falter for just an instant and she’s tempted to respond. She trusts her mother, and that’s all she has ever needed or will ever need. She will not make her sisters’ mistakes. But the words die on her tongue and she walks away, leaving them unspoken.
—
Bairre and his scouting party return that evening, and when goes to her room after dinner, Bairre is waiting for her, sitting in the green velvet armchair that has come to think of as his on account of the nights he’s spent there while she’s been ill or injured. Those nights have added up to too many, she thinks.
He took a bath after arriving and his chestnut hair is still wet, the smell of his soap—something with bergamot, she thinks—thick in the air.
“Any sign of them?” she asks, closing the door behind her. She’s sure if he’d found the princes, word would have spread through the castle in the time it took him to bathe, but she has to ask anyway. When he shakes his head, her heart still sinks.
“My mother said she would listen to the stars again tonight, but they haven’t spoken to her about the princes yet,” he says.
“We were meant to be watching them,” says, shaking her head and leaning back against the closed door. “I just never thought—”
“No one could have,” he says, getting to his feet and coming toward her but stopping short a few steps away, as if he’s afraid to get too close.
He should be, thinks, even as she wishes he would close the distance between them and take her in his arms.
“Cillian and I played in those woods all the time when we were younger and we were never in danger, and all of Friv knew we were princes. Those woods should be safe,” he says.
“But it isn’t the first time they haven’t been,” she points out, her conversation with Cliona coming back to her. “I can’t help but think the two events are related. Cliona swears the rebels had no part in it—”
“Of course they didn’t,” Bairre says, shaking his head. “I would never let them hurt children.”
That steals ’s words—not because his heroism is touching, but because he’s na?ve enough to believe he would have a say in the rebellion’s plots. Bairre might be the reluctant Crown Prince of Friv, but he isn’t in charge of the rebels. Not even close.
“But murdering an empyrea is all right?” asks. “Tell me, what was Fergal’s crime? It must have been something truly heinous for him to die so horribly.”
That makes Bairre frown. He opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it.
“You might be one of them, Bairre, but you don’t make their rules,” she says softly before pausing and letting him absorb her words. “But in this, I think you’re right: they had nothing to do with kidnapping the princes. There was a time I thought the rebels were the ones responsible for trying to kill me.”
expects him to balk at that notion again, but he doesn’t. At least he isn’t completely oblivious to the lengths the rebellion will go to in order to succeed. “They weren’t, obviously,” she says. “So, we have to assume there is a third faction working within Friv to hurt us—though I’m not sure who us is. Me, certainly. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both the fight with the assassins and the princes’ kidnapping happened in the woods.”
“You were poisoned in the woods as well,” Bairre points out.
frowns. That had to have been a coincidence, didn’t it? After all, Zenia had been given the poison to use against her long before she’d set foot in the woods. The location she’d chosen to use it had to have been a happenstance. Except…
“When my saddle girth broke, I was in the woods as well,” she says. “I was supposed to be riding alone. The assassin who cut the girth didn’t know I was meeting Cliona.”
“The same assassin we followed, who said you were supposed to follow him alone instead of with Cliona and me?” he asks.
nods, feeling ill. That assassin is dead now, she saw him die, saw his body lifeless and cold. But someone else is still out there, she knows this as surely as she knows her own name, and that someone has Gideon and Reid.
“The pattern breaks with Zenia,” she says. “Zenia poisoned me with six other people around.”
“Zenia was following orders,” Bairre points out. “She’s ten—it’s possible she misunderstood what she was supposed to do.”
considers this. “That or she simply didn’t care,” she says. “Is she still in the castle?”
Bairre nods. “Rufus and the rest of his family are supposed to leave tomorrow afternoon,” he says. “Zenia’s still skittish. She feels guilty for the part she played—I’m not sure how open she’ll be to talking about it more.”
“She’ll talk to me,” says. Her mother always told her she could talk a snake into eating its own tail. Bairre doesn’t seem surprised by her confidence.
“You’re good at getting information from people,” he tells her, his voice lowering.
looks at him for a long moment. First Cliona pushing her about her fighting skills, now this. She would suspect it was a coordinated attack, but she knows Bairre well enough to know he wouldn’t do that. He’s too blunt; scheming and manipulating aren’t his style. But she thinks of their conversation before, about the secrets between them. Perhaps this one, she can let him have just a sliver of.
“My mother thought it was an important talent for my sisters and me to cultivate, especially since she was sending us to countries that might just be hostile toward us. She’d faced hostility early on in her own reign—she always said she survived mainly on the secrets she’d wormed out of her enemies, or those close to them. She thought we should be able to defend ourselves as well, for similar reasons. I’m hardly the first royal bride with a target on her back.”
Bairre takes this in, though she can’t tell if he believes her or not. He doesn’t look at her, but suddenly she’s desperate for him to. She wants him to look at her the way he did in his mother’s cottage—like lightning, she remembers, or even like he did over tea, just before he kissed her. She can feel the space between them yawning open again, filling up with secrets both of them are keeping. It’s good distance, necessary distance, she tells herself. Sophronia cared too much about Leopold and that made her foolish. It got her killed. won’t make the same mistake, but suddenly she understands why Sophronia did. Suddenly, Sophronia seems a little less foolish.
“It’ll be best if I talk to Zenia alone,” she says, pushing the thought away. “I’m sure Rufus won’t be keen on letting her out of his sight, though.”
“I’ll distract him,” Bairre says before pausing. “…,” he starts, trailing off. She hears an ocean of words in that silence. A thousand questions she can’t answer. A thousand statements she doesn’t want to hear, even though she also does, so desperately she can’t think straight.
And that’s exactly the problem with Bairre—where he’s concerned, she can never think straight.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she tells him, injecting her voice with false brightness. “Thanks to your rebel friends, we aren’t married yet, and if you’re caught here—”
“They’ll what? Force me to marry you?” Bairre asks, taking a step closer to her, pausing, then taking another until they are toe to toe and the scent of bergamot soap and Bairre threatens to overwhelm her. He’s so close that if she just tilts her head up an inch her lips will meet his. “I think that ship’s sailed,” he says, the words ghosting over her cheek before he brushes his lips over hers.
It’s a gentle kiss—barely enough to be properly called a kiss at all—but it steals ’s breath all the same. She brings a hand up to Bairre’s chest, torn between pushing him away and pulling him closer. Her good sense wins out, this time at least, and she pushes him back a step, grappling for a reason to keep him at arm’s length.
“It hasn’t, though,” she tells him. “Sailed, that is. You’ve no intention of marrying me. You’ve made that perfectly clear, Bairre.”
Bairre falters for a moment. “That doesn’t mean I don’t—”
“Don’t what?” she asks. He’s been knocked off-balance, but now she needs to finish it. “Don’t want to kiss me? Bedme?”
He stumbles back another step. “, I…,” he says, but if he has more words to offer her, they die on his tongue.
“You don’t want a throne, Bairre. But I do. Friv might be a dead end in that regard, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to waste time with a bastard rebel masquerading as a prince.”
For just one breath, wants to take the words back, but she can’t. She watches them land like punches, watches Bairre’s expression turn to shock, then fury. Watches him barrel past her to the door without sparing her a second look.
And then he’s gone and the words spoke echo in her mind. They were true, all of them, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t feel like razor blades in her throat.