Page 50 of A Fragile Enchantment

Niamh roamed into an enfilade. On each side of the hall, portraits of Carmines from generations past glared out at her with their eerie green eyes. Likely upset that a lowly Machlish girl, the stubborn remnants of a people they’d failed to stamp out, had set foot in their ancestral home. At the very end, she stopped before a portrait as tall as she was.

This,she thought,must be the royal family.What had been the royal family, anyway.

In the center was a man she now recognized as Kit and Jack’s father, King Albert III. Beside him stood the late queen, with dark brown hair and those wolfish amber eyes Niamh knew so well. Behind her soft, mysterious smile, she looked terribly unhappy. A boy no older than ten sat between them, cradling a newborn. A fissure ran through the canvas like an old scar, just barely visiblebeneath the glossy oil paints. She leaned closer to inspect it—only to nearly topple into it when footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Niamh gasped. If anyone found her snooping…Wasshe snooping? No matter. She couldn’t chance it. But there was nowhere to hide here—nowhere except for behind the curtains, billowing in the breeze sneaking in through the open window. She dove behind them and drew them tight around her. Theclackof heels slowed, but the sound lingered in the empty chamber.

“Huh,” Sinclair said. “It seems your curtains have grown feet since I was last here.”

“Are you hiding?” Kit asked incredulously.

Niamh glanced down. The curtains fell to her ankles like the hem of a fashionable gown. She flung them open. “No, of course not! I was… ah, taking in the scenery.”

That maddening, taunting glint returned to Kit’s eye. “Anything of interest?”

She turned toward the window, which opened onto a view of a wall of ivy and a few slivers of the sky beyond it. It clung to the glass, blotting all but the most stubborn bars of light. “Yes, indeed! Anyway. What brings the two of you here?”

Before Kit could fire off something else, Sinclair interjected. “Dinner will be served soon. Kit thought we ought to make sure you found your way to the dining room safely, since these halls have a way of rearranging themselves.” He smirked. “Very considerate of him. And strange, given he’s never once gone out of his way to be helpful on purpose.”

Kit rounded on him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing.” His gaze slid coyly to Niamh. “Nothing at all.”

“Then stop talking for once in your life.”

Sinclair obliged, but he looked far too pleased with himself.

Niamh, however, could hardly bear the silence. Grasping for the first topic that came to mind, she gestured at the portrait. “It is a striking resemblance.”

Kit frowned up at it. “Between me and the old man?”

She did not thinkyeswas exactly the right way to reply to such blatant disrespect for the King of Avaland, but Niamh nodded. “Except for the eyes, you and your brother both are the very image of your father.”

Sinclair winced. The air grew as heavy as the moment before lightning’s first strike. Niamh had the distinct impression she’d said the wrong thing.

“Some people say so.” Kit’s flat tone made it apparent what he thought of their assessment. He crossed his arms. “He was a mean son of a bitch.”

Sinclair laughed breathlessly, clearly relieved. “That’s putting it lightly.”

“I’m so sorry.” Niamh studied Kit’s expression, but it betrayed nothing. “I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.”

“It’s fine,” he said dismissively. “He’s gone now.”

“Gone?”

“In all but body,” he clarified. “Banished to one of his castles to live out the rest of his miserable existence. I’ve thought about visiting him. I hear they keep him quite docile these days.”

“I imagine it would be strange,” Niamh offered. “He sounds like he was a formidable man.”

“You could say that.” Kit did not look away from the painting. His voice was matter-of-fact, but his shoulders coiled with tension. “He was always heavy-handed with discipline. He valued duty, honor, and reputation above all else. Couldn’t abide any sign of weakness.”

He saidheavy-handedwith such weight, she couldn’t mistake his meaning. It was far from unusual to receive a caning for disobedience or cheekiness, but Niamh never displeased Ma or Gran if she could help it. Kit and his stubborn streak, however…

Do you know, Miss O’Connor,Sinclair had told her,that Kit herewas a very sensitive child?She couldn’t believe it at all. Now, she supposed it made an awful sort of sense why he’d changed.

“Even after he fell ill?” she asked quietly.

“Especially then. Sometimes, he was bedridden from pain, and those were good days. But by the time I was ten, he had fewer good days than bad. Extravagantly happy as long as it pleased him, and when it didn’t, he’d speak for hours at a time, spewing all sorts of vile nonsense. Jack took the brunt of it for my sake, although he’d never admit it.” Kit looked pensive. “It changed him for the worse. But I suppose when you’re dealing with a monster like that every day, you can’t help what you become to survive it.”