Page 78 of The Starling and the Hatter

And hummed and hummed.

After some time, Daggon and Morley stopped arguing and I stopped rocking, my nerves and my wits returning. After sitting in the silence with my whirling thoughts for several minutes, I knew what I wanted.

Answers. I wanted answers, and my brothers could provide them. I breathed deeply for several minutes and then stood up and walked to the door of my cell. Daggon sat on the floor in the cell across from me, his face flickering in the weak torchlight, and I tried not to shrink as his eyes bore into mine.

I had to swallow twice, but then I managed to speak. “You recognized me,” I said.

“Yes.”

“What gave me away?”

His gaze dropped to my throat. “The brooch.”

My hand went to the gold brooch I’d kept all these years. The money I’d stolen from them had long since been spent and replaced, but the brooch I had held on to. I was a little surprised the guards hadn’t taken it from me.

His eyes returned to mine. “It was one of the most valuable pieces I ever took. And it disappeared the same night you did.” His lip pulled up. “You stole it.”

I tilted my chin up. “Yes, I did.”

He bared his teeth for just a moment before he stuck his chin out and shrugged a shoulder—pretending not to care. “So when I saw your Starling character wearing it, it wasn’t hard to figure out. You’d always loved singing, though I always found it annoying.”

“Why are you here?” It was a struggle to keep my voice steady as the unfairness of their very presence tore at my insides.

“Because I was caught thieving,” he said with biting sarcasm.

I pinched my lips together. “I mean in Winhaven. How did you get the wolf wagon through the mountains?” It should have been impossible—unthinkable.

He grinned with the kind of smugness I knew all too well. “We didn’t go through the mountains.”

I didn’t bother asking him how that worked, knowing that his arrogance would force him to gloat about his brilliance.

“Winberg isn’t the only place with festivals. Tride has villages with people just as rich and just as stupid as they are here. Plus, it’s an easy journey from their northern villages into Winberg.”

Was it? I didn’t know much about the kingdom of Tride other than that it sat directly west of Winberg. “Then why come back? Why not stay and swindle the people of Tride?”

“And miss out on being selected as one of the duchess’s favorite acts?”

I breathed carefully through my nose, trying to control the anger and frustration over the fact that they’d found a way to be here.

“So, why plant the duchess’s ring on me?” I asked. It was the reason he’d been caught, after all. “Why steal it in the first place? If accolades were what you were after, why ruin it by stealing from the duchess? Do you hate me that much, Daggon?”

He sat forward suddenly, making me fall back a step. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for us to recover after you left? Not only did we have to rebuild the wagon after it was hacked to pieces, but we had to rebuild our entire show.” His look of disdain was ugly and fierce. “No one wants to give money to grown men prancing about.”

I straightened my spine just a little. “It’s a shame you didn’t think of that when I was around,” I pointed out. “I would have stayed. I would have stayed forever if you had given me the slightest reason to believe you valued my presence. It wouldn’t have taken much. Perhaps if you hadn’t rewarded my performances with your fists, I would have stayed.”

He stood and came at me, pounded his fists against the bars, making me jump back with my heart in my throat even though there were two sets of iron bars keeping us apart. “I used my fists to teach you your place,” he spat. “We made you into something. We kept you safe all those years, and you paid us back by leaving us in a lurch and robbing us blind.”

I let out a guffaw. “Robbed blind? If a couple fistfuls of coins and one brooch was all it took to make you destitute, then perhaps you aren’t as good as you’ve always believed.”

He pointed a sharp finger at me. “You are disloyal.”

“And you’re a manipulative barbarian!” I screamed. “A bully and a wretch. A man who would sell another human being and grin about the profit of it. Don’t try to stand on some moral high ground about loyalty,” I sneered. “If loyalty meant anything to you, you would have gone looking for Mom when she disappeared instead of washing your hands of her.”

“Gone looking for her?” He scoffed. “Why? She left us. She didn’t want us, so why would I want her?”

“She did want us!” I argued, needing to believe it was true.

He raised his arms in a dramatic shrug. “She left on her own, and I couldn’t keep taking care of her when she wouldn’t pull her weight.”