Chapter Nine
I CAN'T STOP SHAKING.
It's been hours since I came up from the passage. Hours since I stood in front of that ancient door and breathed in the unmistakable smell of decay. Hours since I climbed back up those fifty steps on legs that didn't want to hold me and pushed through the rose panel into the chapel.
I made it back to my room. Washed my hands. Changed my clothes. Went through all the motions of a normal morning, like I hadn't just discovered that something—someone—was rotting beneath my husband's estate.
But I can't stop shaking.
Breakfast was impossible. The croissants sat on the tray like accusations, and every time I tried to lift the coffee cup, it rattled against the saucer so loudly I was sure the whole house could hear.
Now I'm in the library, curled into a leather armchair that probably costs more than my old apartment's rent, and I'm holding a fresh cup of coffee that's gone cold because I can't bring myself to drink it.
My hands won't stop trembling.
I keep seeing that door. Smelling that smell. Thinking about Abigail—beautiful, angelic Abigail—fleeing down that passage on her wedding day.
But instead of finding safety...she found death.
The coffee cup rattles again, and I set it down on the side table before I drop it. My fingers are ice cold. My whole body feels wrong, like I'm watching myself from somewhere outside, unable to do anything but observe the slow unraveling.
"Your Majesty?"
I flinch so hard I nearly knock the coffee over.
Mrs. Lyme is standing in the doorway, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, her expression professionally neutral. But something flickers behind her eyes as she takes in the sight of me—the untouched coffee, the shaking hands, whatever my face is doing right now.
"Is everything all right?" she asks. "You didn't eat breakfast. I could have something else prepared, if—"
"I'm fine." The words come out too fast. Too high. "Just tired. I didn't sleep well."
She doesn't believe me. I can see it in the slight tension around her mouth, the way her gaze lingers on my trembling fingers.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Lyme. Truly.”
She hesitates. Then nods and withdraws, closing the door softly behind her.
I stare at the space where she stood and try to remember how to breathe.
What do I do?
Does 911 even work in a world where mafia billionaires are kings, what was black was white, and I still can’t rule out that my husband could still be the man who had gone insane and Abigail was running away from?
TIME PASSES IN A BLUR. I want to give justice to what the kitchen staff’s prepared for lunch, but my stomach keeps revolting, and all I can see is Abigail’s dead—
The library door slams open.
Devyn.
He's still in his business clothes—dark suit, no tie, collar open—but something is different. His jaw is tight. His eyes are blazing. He looks like he flew here, like he ran, like something chased him through the halls.
His gaze locks onto me.
Onto my face. My hands. The untouched food.
"Out," he says, and it takes me a moment to realize he's not talking to me.
The staff member who'd been adjusting the curtains vanishes without a word.
He crosses the room in four strides. Crouches in front of my chair. His hands grip the armrests on either side of me, caging me in, and his face is inches from mine.
“What happened?”
I shake my head, not knowing where or how to start.
"You're shaking. You haven't eaten. Mrs. Lyme said you looked like you'd seen a ghost." His eyes search my face, and whatever he finds there makes his expression go darker. "Who hurt you?"
"No one hurt me."
"Bailey."
"I'm serious. No one—"
"Then what?" He's so close I can see the gold flecks in his irises, the tension in his jaw, the barely-leashed fury vibrating through him. "Tell me what's wrong so I can fix it."
"You can't fix this."
"Try me."
I open my mouth. Close it. The words are stuck in my throat, tangled up with fear and exhaustion and the memory of that smell.
His hands tighten on the armrests.
"If you don't tell me," he says quietly, "I will assume the worst. I will have every member of my staff questioned until someone tells me what happened to my wife. I will—"
"There's a body,” I blurt out. "In the passage. Behind the chapel—”
“Tell me you had someone with you.”
“I...can’t?”
Devyn rises to his feet...and gulp.
Because he’s looking at me now like I’m about to be the second dead body in this house.
“What part of ‘staying out of trouble’ did you not understand?”
“To be fair...I didn’t even realize I was getting into trouble—”
“Did you not think that I would have had my men comb through the estate for any hidden passage that Abigail could have used?”
“I—”
“Did it not occur to you that whoever caused her disappearance could also make you disappear?”
“Well, now that you’ve, um, mentioned it—” I stop speaking. Because right now, Devyn is looking at me like he doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to kill me again and again.
"Do you not think it’s strange that you were able to find a hidden passage that my people were unable to find?”
I can only shake my head. I honestly don’t get what he’s saying—
“That passage was not from this world.”
I nearly stop breathing.
“Like you.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“And me.”
Shock turns me numb as I listen to Devyn tell me of his past. And one I could never have imagined even in a thousand years.
"Ten years ago, I walked through a door that shouldn't have existed.”
He's not looking at me now. His gaze is fixed on the window, on the fading light, on something far away.
“I woke up here, and everything was different. Everyone knew my name, my face, my history—but I had no memory of any of it. I just had...this." He gestures vaguely at the estate around us. "A kingdom I never asked for. A role I didn't choose."
I can barely breathe.
"Hewhay's," I whisper.
“Yes.”
“But when I told you about it...you acted like you didn’t believe me.”
“Because you could be lying about Hewhay’s.”
“Why would I even lie—”
“Hewhay’s is not the only way to come to this world. Or any other world for that matter. But unlike Hewhay’s—the other methods require you to pay a price. In blood.”