I’ve only just gotten Arlo settled into his bed when his sister bursts through the door, Ruffus at her heels. Kestrel immediately freezes, her gaze darting back and forth between me and her unconscious brother.
With obvious effort, she settles the tension from her body, lifts her chin, and quietly asks, “You know the truth, I take it?”
I focus on placing a cool cloth on Arlo’s forehead. “I saw it for myself.”
The doctor arrives before we can discuss anything further.
I stand back, bracing myself against the wall, letting the servants and the doctor fully take over.
Kestrel paces anxiously between them while they work, until one of the head servants arrives with a tea tray and insists on the princess taking a seat and drinking some kind of herbal concoction to calm her nerves.
Arlo is surprisingly stable, given all he’s been through. There are terrible bruises on his hands and arms, and the rest of him is alarmingly pale, but his breathing remains steady, and the doctor is able to rouse him enough to get a few, one-word responses out of him.
Remedies are given, rest is prescribed, and before long, it’s just the four of us left—the young prince sleeping peacefully; Ruffus curled up at the foot of the bed he barely fits on; Kestrel sitting on the bench by the window, tightly clutching a teacup; and me still braced against the wall, wondering where the hell I’m supposed to go from here.
I’m staring at the door, thinking of leaving, when Kestrel says, “Reave intended to tell you.”
“He should have told me sooner.”
She doesn’t argue, just takes a sip of her tea as she stares out the window.
“I don’t like walking into battles where I know nothing about what I’m fighting,” I say.
More silence from her.
I move to the bedside, sinking down into the chair the doctor previously occupied. “Tonight could have ended much worse; he was foolish not to be honest with me before now.”
“Maybe he was.”
I sigh, reaching for one of Arlo’s hands, tracing the worst of the bruises on it. They have a strange, sickly green undertone that I only notice now that I’m looking at them up close.
“I think he wantedto believe he could bring himself to just…forceyou to do as he commanded,” Kestrel continues after a moment. “So you didn’t need to know the details. It wasn’t your business to know. Only to obey. The gods know he’s given his share of cold, emotionless orders. But somewhere along the way, he decided he couldn’t just command you as though you were another soldier in his army, and I don’t think he’s figured out how to deal with that yet.”
“He could have justaskedfor my help, like a normal, functional human being. It didn’t have to be a cold command.”
She angles her face toward me. “Would you have helped him? Truly?”
My hand stills against Arlo’s.
“Are you going to help now?”
The question feels deceptively simple—either I stay or I go. What else is there? Yet I can’t seem to voice a reply.
I honestly don’t knowwhatI’m going to do, or what I’m even capable of doing.
Kestrel goes back to staring out the window, as if she didn’t expect an answer. “My brother is not a man who asks for help. Ever. From anyone. I don’t think he even knows how.” Her hands shake a bit as she lifts the teacup from its saucer only to set it back down. “Our mother was very sick, long before she died giving birth to Arlo. Our father was mentally gone, even before that—his mind eroded early on, a madness that claimed him before the transformation into a beast fully took him away from us. And the curse claimed his father before him in a similar way; he murdered our grandmother the first time he transformed, you know.”
I sit quietly with these revelations, wondering just how tragic and bloody their family history really is—and how much of that tragedy has been covered up for the sake of making them look impenetrable from the outside.
“But the worst of the curse spared you and Reave for whatever reason?” I ask.
“Yes. The ones who know the truth about our curse were overjoyed to have an heir that seemed to be…intact. So, since he was old enough to carry a sword, Reave has been the one expected to protect us from all the enemies that have circled closer and closer to our kingdom. But there was no one to show him how todothat—no king who wasn’t cursed, no other ruler he could actually trust.”
I look down at Arlo, smoothing a bit of sweat-soaked hair from his face. I’ve often thought that he looks like a miniature version of his older brother. And yet, now that I think about it, I can’t seem to picture Reave as a child at all. I can’t imagine him free and uninhibited, smiling in a way that truly lights up his eyes.
“I’m not telling you all of this to excuse him, or me, or any of the choices we’ve made,” Kestrel says. “I just think youshould have all of the information before you decide what to do next.”
I don’t know how to reply. The silence becomes a fifth presence in the room, a figure tense with all the things we still need to say, but one I think we’re both too tired to properly acknowledge or understand.
