“I suggest you don’t insult me when you’re already on your knees begging for me to do this.”
He only grins wider, and I rub my temples, annoyed that he knows how to be this ridiculous so early in the morning. The idiot goes on to plead with Henrik, explaining that there has to be a reason nobody speaks of it. If it were politics, then it shouldn’t be a taboo topic.
Either somebody spiked my coffee, or my twin brother is dangerously close to making sense. There’s no documentation,no clear answer in any of our books. It’s simply been… accepted. Like my fonts. Clean-cut, something nobody can question.
Except now, I want to. Not because of Kai or anything like that—fuck no—but because I’m looking at the laptop again, at Francesca’s polished smile.
When I glance up, Kai is grinning at me, having caught me zoning out. “See, even our brooding heir is curious. Imagine how interesting you’d be at dinner parties if you knew everything about some secret, messy feud.”
My glower doesn’t dim his smile in the slightest. Henrik chimes in when I refuse to entertain Kai with a response. “On a less insulting note, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to know what happened. If you’re serious about this, I can forward you Sheffolk’s archive index.” He motions towards Kai, who picks up the laptop and brings my entire blanket with him. “Obviously, it’s limited to public documents, but if you’re friendly enough with the young duchess, they might open the rest to you.”
Kai picks up my blanket, balls it up and then tosses it back onto my bed. “Brilliant. When you return, I expect a full report, hopefully involving betrayal and the murder of Gabriel Fairbanks. Justice for Baked Bean, I say.”
Henrik blanches. “The fuck?”
Kai’s moving towards the door, but I haven’t looked away from the clusterfuck that was once my neatly made bed. “You absolute cretin. My bed was made with hospital corners.Hospital corners.Youwillremake it?—”
Kai fumbles with the handle, mutters something about how he’ll come back later, and then he’s gone. I huff out an irritated breath.
Henrik snickers to himself and stands, slipping his laptop into the crook of his arm. “You know,” he murmurs, always the softer voice, “it really could help. Understanding them. Understandingher.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
He squeezes my shoulder slightly and takes one step towards the door, but I stop him. His brows bang together in confusion, though realisation hits when I grab his empty cup and shove it against his chest.
And because he’s my favourite brother, I try to sound kind. “Henrik, I expect that stain to be removed from my carpet by morning. I don’t care how. Get a cloth, summon God, but that stainwillbe extracted.”
My little brother tilts his head in that knowing way, and my spiralling thoughts nearly trip over their feet to halt. “You just lost your mind over a coffee stain, and they’re sending you into a historical political feud. This is going to be delicious.” He gives a mocking bow. “Have fun storming the ancient matriarchy, Your Highness. My money’s on Lady Francesca winning.”
I watch him leave with that insufferable calm smile on his face. The door shuts, and I’m alone again. Just me, my unmade bed, the coffee stain, and the horrifying possibility that some duchy-raised darling might be able to play my game better than I.
I might not believe in the curse they say trails Lady Homicide, but I do believe in secrets. The laptop is gone, but I can still see her face, and the more vivid it becomes, Henrik’s words begin to sound less like a joke and more like an omen.
6
THE WATCHER KNOWS
FRANCESCA
The lake waits for me, as it always does.
I’ve learned to no longer say that out loud; people take that the wrong way. Lots of concerned blinking, and a gentle request for me to ‘reframe my train of thought’. Gran asked me if I wanted to die. Uncle Hamish wouldn’t leave my side for three whole days. But it isn’t that deep. Not really.
I just mean the lake knows me, intimately so, probably because it remembers the sound of my lungs. Remembers the soundImade when it pulled my breath right from my throat, pocketing it the way dragons hoard their gold.
Why it changed its mind, I’ll never know. Could’ve been seconds or minutes later that it rammed the breath back into my lungs as though suddenly realising I was a faulty investment, and I came back choking on more than air, on a scream older than I am.
My fingers twitch with the panic belonging to others. I choke for strangers. I kneel and feel rage wearing a name that’s not mine. There’s grief within me for things I’ve never lived, and the only thing louder than it is the reticence of the six-year-old girl buried beneath it.
Because the lake slipped strangers into my lungs, and it listens each time I kneel here, fully aware that it owes me something. And I keep coming back, stupidly believing it might change its mind.
The thing is, I don’t know where my family went.
Thanks for absolutely nothing, Redford.
For witches to make such a silly mistake is insane to me, really. Nobody uses that term anymore.Witches. But you’d be a fool to think Duchess Adelina wasn’t one. She made her castle remember and hold its dead, binding her traitor and every heir after to the stone.
To be fair, at the time, Sheffolk didn’t have any established borders yet, so of course she cared only for Redford. Her little plot of history. She didn’t really plan for expansion, so there’s no insurance policy for dying off-site.
