She tilts her head. "Okay. How long is ordering a new one going to be?"
I shake my head. "Too long. I already looked. But…there are some rejects at Teddie's old apartment."
"Okayyyyy…" She waits for me to explain.
"My mother won't let Ted or me leave the palace right now, so I can't go get them. I was thinking maybe you could get a bodysuit and bring it to me."
"Okay, but then you're still stuck in here." Harper gestures around the room.
"Well, yeah, about that…" I lean closer and whisper my plan in her ear.
When I pull back, Harper's eyebrows are nearly to her hairline.
But then she takes a bracing drink, clinks her wineglass to mine, and says, "We're crazy, you know that? But I think we might be just the right amount of crazy to pull this off."
30
BRYLEE
Harper leaves immediately to—hopefully—findan extra bodysuit. I love the girl dearly, but I wouldn’t put it past her to get distracted with a certain handsome guard.
As soon as she slips out the door, I begin my own mission: Operation Find Teddie.
It isn’t terribly difficult. When we were children living at the castle, our parents designated an entire wing for the two of us. That wing turned into “Teddie’s wing” when we both moved out. I think my parents secretly hope he’ll return home and perform his duties as the crown prince.
Sunlight streaks through the stained-glass windows as I venture down the hall. I’ve never overly paid attention to the designs depicted on the glass, but now I can’t help but look.
One large window shows a siege tower ablaze, its wooden structure consumed by orange and red flames, with the glass using deep crimson to represent blood spurting from fallen defenders. The besiegers at the base are rendered in dark,menacing blues and purples, their faces twisted in rage as they storm the walls.
Another panel depicts a battlefield after the slaughter, with broken weapons and dismembered limbs scattered across a field of brown and green glass. In the center, a knight lies impaled on a spear, his armor shattered, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony. The artist has used jagged pieces of glass to represent the wounds, creating a three-dimensional effect that makes the injuries appear to pulse with each shift of light.
A third window shows a lord being executed by his captors, his head held high in defiance as the executioner's axe descends. The glass captures the moment just before impact, with the lord's eyes fixed on something beyond his immediate fate. His family? Loved ones?
These windows serve not as decoration but as warning, their gruesome beauty a testament to the horrors of war. When the sun shines through them, it bathes the hall in a rainbow of death, transforming light itself into a memorial to the atrocities committed in the name of “country” and “honor.”
How long have we been fighting the Noths? Off and on for hundreds of years? The most recent exchange has lasted fourteen years—more than half my life.
When will it ever end?
I don’t even know what started this feud. Well, I do, but I can’t help but think there’s more to the story than what my family has told me.
Apparently, hundreds of years ago, the two countries participated in a marriage alliance that ended in bloodshed. A murder-suicide, according to the documents. The Noths blamedthe Hypsos, and the Hypsos blamed the Noths. The first war lasted over twenty years before eventually ending in a ceasefire. That tenuous peace held for three years before the Hypsos invaded a Noth fort near the border.
Then there was another war. This one only lasted a year and a half, but the body count doubled that of the prior war.
On and on this has gone, the cycle never ending.
What started the most recent war? Wasn’t it an attack on a trading post? I can’t recall.
These thoughts percolate in my head as I find myself standing in front of Teddie’s quarters. I know, from memory, that it’ll be a long hallway with half a dozen rooms, three on either side. Three bedrooms, a bathroom, a study, and a rather small library—at least small in comparison to the castle’s main one, located two floors down.
One of those bedrooms used to be mine.
I wonder if it’s the same or if my parents removed my belongings. Is there still a four-poster bed dominating the center of the room with a sweeping canopy overhead? Is my collection of stuffed animals still tucked away in the closet?
Nerves pinball in my stomach as I forgo knocking, sweeping in like I own the place.
I bypass my old bedroom—no point unveiling old wounds, especially ones that haven’t healed properly—and head straight toward the library. I know I’ll find my twin there.
