“. . .there was a fervor to their argument that I’d never seen before.”
“Byung-He was working on something for the King. The way your father was sequestered the days leading up to his. . . passing, and the tension it brewed, it never sat right with me.” He meets my eyes, and there's a solemnity in them that wasn’t there before.
His pause is telling, a quiet space that lets the weight of his words hang in the air. As if sure I understand his meaning. I do. I don’t like it, but I do.
“Plus, the morning after he died, I saw one of the King's advisors burning documents in the courtyard. Early morning, before anyone else was around. Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe it was everything.” There's steel in his voice, a conviction that’s hard to deny.
There's a moment when everything pauses—the sound, the breath in my lungs, the very beating of my heart—and I hover in that space, disconnected from the agony of reality. His words echo like distant thunder, a storm I’m desperate to avoid by folding into the gray shadows of my detached self.
He watches me closely now, gauging my reaction.
“They said he died of heart failure.” The words that escape my lips feel like they belong to someone else.
My father was everything to me. My mother died in childbirth, so he was all I had. While I didn’t exactly belong in the Midnight Kingdom, it had been okay because we had been together.
My dad made sure we took regular trips back to the Common World to get ice cream. He took me to the movies, taught me to ride a bike, and most importantly, we painted together. While he made masterpieces on massive spans of canvas, he was never too fussy to stop and fingerpaint with me.
When he died, my world fell apart.
And then it morphed into a hell I never saw coming.
My breath turns ragged and shallow. Anxiety squeezes around me like a python, making me light-headed. I glance at the prince to see if he’s noticed, but he only scoffs and goes on. “Yeah, technically that’s not wrong. His heart stopped, but I doubt his ticker gave out for no reason. The timing was too convenient with the shit I saw.”
A part of me yearns to slip into the void between thoughts, where the harshness of his theories can't reach me.
I point first at him, “You think your father,” then at myself, “killed my father.”
Kaison pushes off the lockers, frustration etched into every line of his face as he runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But if I were you, I sure as hell would want to find out.”
My chest constricts and my breath catches in my throat, as if my lungs are collapsing under the weight of all the air rushing out. A sense of unease settles over me, creeping up my spine like a cold hand. “I don’t know that he was murdered.”
And yet, deep down, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something wasn't right about my father's death.
I had avoided thinking about it for so long, pushing the thoughts away in order to survive in my personal hell with my stepmother and stepsisters. The idea of my father being killed was too much to bear on top of everything else.
Even now, ten years later, I struggle to accept the possibility.
My entire nervous system trembles with the knowledge as if acknowledging it would shatter me completely. The emotions welling up inside—anger, rage, fear—seem almost tangible, ready to consume me whole. To know that my father was murdered, to face that brutal reality head-on, could very well crush me.
It’s only been six years since I escaped to the Common World, and it took a long time to get my head out from under water. Not to mention to get my health back.
My heart flutters in my chest and my breathing becomes ragged, but I've become an expert at masking these reactions around others.
I begin to shut down, retreating again to a place where his theories and my fears turn hazy. Reality becomes slippery and distant as if I'm watching us from the other end of a long, dark tunnel.
“We can both get what we want here,” he goes on. “You need safe, protected access to the castle, to the fairies of Midnight to find out what happened. And I don’t want to spend the social season entertaining young ladies and their mothers who want to land me as their prize.” Kaison’s face blanches as if the thought makes him physically ill. “If I’m engaged, I’ll be left alone. Plus, bonus points for following the letter of the law while staunchly giving the traditional spirit of it the middle finger. There is no law that says I can’t choose a human as my bride. Getting engaged to you will drive my father up a wall.” He waggles his eyebrows at me.
“You really think he’d let an engagement between us stand?” I ask.
“You would be the sole exception as the daughter to his only human friend. If he got all racist over you, let’s just say it would look very bad for him politically. It would damage relations with the Common World, and we are gettinga lotof attention right now.”
The words of King Charming and his advisor return to me, about having to tolerate the ambassadors. That tensions were high as his rule was in question.
“And if I find my father’s killer?” I say slowly.
A storm moves in over Charming’s face, and it reminds me of that moment he found me in the crowd at the ball. Suddenly, he’s unrecognizable. Whatever carefree façade he’s been touting is not the whole of Prince Kaison Charming. Not even close.
“Well, I know what I’d do, but you choose to do what you wish with that information. And when the time comes, we’ll call off the engagement. Or better yet, I’ll cause a scandal that forces us to part ways.” Kaison explains, and a flicker of mischief dances in his dark eyes as if the thought amuses him.
