Chapter Twenty
Jet
“What are you doing up here?” I asked when Vishen alerted me that Tove was making his way up the stairs to my quarters.
My father’s advisor was dressed and groomed, despite dawn not even breaking yet.
Tove’s proud jaw lifted, watching me with those eyes I swore always seemed to see more than I was willingly showing him.
“Your father wishes to speak to you.”
“It can’t be later than four in the morning,” I said. “You can’t be telling me that he didn’t sleep.”
Especially on the night before an exhausting, day-long event like the tournament. He was unstable enough when he’d gotten a full night of rest. There was no way he could keep his mad ramblings to himself all day. With a giant audience watching him.
Fuck.
Allowing the people to find out about him was certainly not part of the plan. It wasn’t in Tove’s best interest either. So why the hell had he allowed it to happen?
I didn’t pretend to understand exactly what happened between the two men behind closed doors.
A lot of coddling, I imagined, since there was no reasoning with him when he got in one of his moods.
The more you agreed with Cass, the calmer he got.
Not to the point of rationality, but enough that he wasn’t bellowing out his murderous plans or trying to escape his quarters to tell others to set his plans into action.
I guess some part of me assumed that Tove would occasionally use a sleeping tonic on my father when his mania kept him awake in the late hours of the night, since we both knew he was at his sharpest early in the day after a full night of sleep.
Was this Tove showing his hand? Was he plotting against Cass now, too? Against me? Did he want the throne for himself? Or was he helping someone else?
What other explanation could there be for being so careless on a day that was so important?
Or was Cass simply progressing past any of our known methods of subduing him? Were they no longer working?
No matter what the answer was, it wasn’t good for us.
Tove exhaled hard.
“I am not your father’s keeper.”
He was, though. He’d worked hard to make sure of that.
“Tell Nira,” I told Vishen, who rushed off to wake up the other guard to keep an eye on a vulnerable Serin.
Then the two of us followed my father’s advisor down the steps, then clear across the palace to my father’s quarters.
Tove also kept a room there, though he didn’t have the same kind of excuse I did to keep Vishen and Nira close.
I wasn’t even exactly sure when Tove moved in from the staff quarters.
A year? Longer? I wasn’t always paying as close attention as I had been lately.
Back when I thought my father was just being vengeful, not losing his damned mind.
How much had slipped by me before I realized?
No.
It wasn’t time for that shit.
We were past that.
We were in the end stage of planning and closing in on execution.
“What’s this?” I asked as we passed three redcaps being carried out of the castle on stretchers by members of the royal guard.
They were pale as parchment, their eyes glassy and far away.
“Who knows,” Tove said, shaking his head. “They’re always eating something they shouldn’t.”
My father’s quarters were roughly twice the size of mine, and he filled some of the space with a built-in office, complete with scrolls and books on ancient magic thought long gone.
He sat at the giant desk, piles of books and papers strewn all about, his hair wild and standing on end from running his hands through it.
As I suspected, his eyes were puffy and red. If he had slept, it wasn’t nearly enough.
“Father,” I greeted him as I closed in on the desk, reaching for a piece of paper to find his slanted handwriting filling the whole page. The only problem? It didn’t make sense. All there was to be found were open-ended ramblings of a deranged man.
Was this new?
Or had it been this bad for a long time?
What did the official documents look like?
Was this shit falling into the hands of important, powerful people?
Or was Tove stepping in and rewriting it all?
I didn’t know which possibility was the most upsetting.
I folded up the paper and discreetly shoved it in my pocket to show to Vishen when we were in my study.
“Jet. We need to do something about this,” he said, shoving something in my direction. I reached for the notepad, finding more scribbling. But instead of nonsensical sentences, all I found were random words scrawled across the top sheet.
Most alarmingly, right in the center, underlined and circled, was one word. No. A name.
CELESTINE.
Fuck.
I hadn’t heard him say her name in a while. I kind of hoped the memory of her was fading, that whatever was eating away at his mind was starting with his more recent memories and working backward.
“What is it you want me to do about this?” I asked, knowing it was never the right move to confront him with his insanity.
“You need to handle it.”
“Handle what? My sister?”
“Sister,” he snarled. “Sisters don’t scar their brothers.” His gaze flicked to my throat, the same raw rage there that had existed when he’d first seen me after the burn. I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he was stuck in that memory, if he was there in the past instead of the present moment.
“What do you want me to do to handle Celestine?”
“I need her here.”
“You want me to travel into the Seelie Court, steal their princess, and bring her here? Without getting burned again?”
“Gloves. You can make her wear gloves.”
“That’s… an option,” I agreed. “Why do you want Celestine right now?”
“She’s plotting against me.”
“Celestine isn’t on the throne,” I reminded him. “Dany is on the throne.”
“Dany is as mad as a bog witch.”
There was a human saying about a pot and a kettle that applied here.
“Dany was under a spell. It is broken. She is on the throne.”
Cass’s face went splotchy, the anger rising up from his core, tinting his neck beet red and creeping up his face.
“You think you can lie to me?” His fist slammed onto the table, making some books and papers stacked precariously near the edge topple to the floor.
Alright.
Time to change tack.
“What do you want from Celestine?” I asked. “I might be able to get her to meet with me under the right conditions.”
“You know what I need from her.”
“Her powers,” I guessed.
“I need to burn every last bastard who is lying to me. Force them to tell me the truth.”
“Okay. Who is lying to you?”
“Who isn’t?”
“Who are you most concerned with?” I asked. He might be mad, but I figured there was likely a little reality stitched in there somewhere. And if there was someone on his list that wasn’t on my list, then I wanted to know.
“Grimwood,” he growled. There was definitely a reason to worry about him. Not that I was going to tell him that, though. “Moorestone. And that vicious bitch.”
That could be several of the women in powerful families. “Which one?”
“Donella.”
Donella?
The woman who hadn’t had a sober thought in my entire life?
“Why Donella?” I clarified, wondering if maybe her drunkenness was a cover, if Cass knew something I didn’t.
“What she did to me at the ball.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
He wanted me to drag my sister to the dungeon, drain her of her powers, then use them to burn a woman who publicly spurned him back when he’d been a prince?
“Alright. I’ll add her to the list. Is there anything else?”
The redness had leeched away from his face, leaving him ashen and sunken. But he seemed calmer.
Behind me, Tove cleared his throat as he came closer.
“My King,” he said, coming closer with a glass of what looked like wine. “You forgot to drink your evening wine.”
My gaze cut to my father’s advisor, but he said nothing as he handed my father the glass and watched as he obediently sipped.
So I was right.
He was drugging him.
But my father had neglected to do his part. And Tove had likely retired before he realized. Leaving my father to stay awake, ranting and raving all through the night.
I hoped to hell no servants saw or heard him like that.
Little by little, I saw Cass start to fade.
“I will look into that for you, Father,” I said before excusing myself. Every second I was there was a second he wasn’t sleeping. If he crashed soon, he could still get a solid five hours before he had to get up for the festivities. It wasn’t ideal, but it was damn sure better than nothing.
“Look into what?” Vishen asked
“Some slight from several human lifetimes ago,” I said with a snort. “Tove fucked up and didn’t make sure he took whatever he drugs him with before he went to bed himself.”
“Have you ever considered—” Vishen started, but a guard appeared out of nowhere, making us both lapse into silence until we were back on our floor.
“Considered what?” I asked when we were once again in my study.
“That Tove could be the one driving your father insane? Think about it. He has unlimited access to your father, to his quarters, to his food and drink…”
“If he were, why wouldn’t he dose him when he has public appearances? Why not keep the crazy under wraps?” I asked, dropping into my desk chair.
“To sow doubt? So he can form alliances against Cass?”
It was possible.
But so were a hundred other scenarios. That was the problem. The threat could be coming from outside or within. All we knew was it was coming. Soon. And we were running out of time.
“Jet?” Serin whispered, making us both turn to see her standing there, still in one of my shirts, her hair bed-messy. “Is everything okay?”
“Isn’t Nira with you?”
“She just said your father needed you.”
“My father needed to rant and rave, as usual. Did you have another nightmare?” I asked, waving her over.
“Yeah,” she admitted as she got close enough to my desk for me to reach and pull her onto my lap.
Vishen’s brows rose, but he said nothing.
Serin curled into me, her body soft, her face going to my neck.
“I’ll leave you two.”
“Hey, look over this,” I said, producing the page of ramblings. “See if there is anything that could be true in it.”