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Every sound in the room dissolved. Only her turbulent voice remained.
Oh, I heard her right. In fact, I’d heard those words countless times and in countless ways, in nightmares and spoken from scores of mouths. From Jinny, from Nicu’s mother, from the dead Court Jester I’d replaced, from born souls in carnival troupes, and from maddened prisoners caged in cells.
Fear was an emotion I’d learned most acutely. It had become a perverse second language from the moment I first met my son.
I tilted my head. In my mind, this fear had been uttered by everyone but the princess. Hearing the words was one thing, yet it took me several heartbeats to understand Briar. When I did, I choked the knob behind me and slowly shut the door.
Then I bared my teeth. “I’m not amused, Princess.”
Briar shook her head, and her eyes shimmered. “It’s not a jest.”
Nay. Quiet. Don’t howl.
This woman wouldn’t lie to me. She had wounded me too frequently and too surely to be capable of faking anything. I couldn’t fathom why I’d accused her of making a cruel joke.
Nay. Hush. Remember to hush.
It wasn’t a jest. Damn her, it wasn’t. I knew from the way her palms clasped my jaw, holding me steady lest I should splinter apart.
They have your son.
Theywere the Crown. They’d caught my son. They had him.
“Nicu,” I hissed.
She nodded. “I’m sorry, Poet. I’m so sorry.”
My trembling hands flattened over hers. Every vile thing that passed through me, she attempted to soak up, because I was about to be sick.
My son was here. He was in this court, away from his bed. The princess had found out before I’d had the chance, but I should have sensed it immediately. If Nicu was in danger, my instincts should have told me that.
He was here. I hadn’t realized it.
A scream tightened in my stomach, then vaulted up my throat, about to blast out of me like shrapnel. The impending racket alerted the princess, prompting her to whisper, “Hush.”
The scream thrashed across my tongue. I swallowed, forcing it down.
“You have a son?”
The stunned tenor jolted Briar. She reeled back, and her gaze landed on Eliot. The thunderstruck minstrel had risen from his seat, and his head jumped between the princess and me.
Briar gaped at him, then at the scene—the dim candlelight, the roasting fire, the chairs angled close to each other—then at me. Another streak of pain reflected in her eyes, for I’d once told her that I never brought anyone into this room. None but her.
Pardon this jester, who couldn’t be bothered to explain himself. Not at this cursed moment.
She recovered quickly. “Eliot. Excuse me, I didn’t know you were here.”
“But you can’t have a son,” the minstrel insisted. “You’re Poet.”
Poet, the Court Jester of Spring. Sinful artist and silver-tongued advisor. Lover of lovers.
The Crown’s darling. The court’s whore.
He couldn’t have a child.
Apologetically, the princess glanced at me too late. For the questions frothed in Eliot’s head.
How could somebody like me have a son? Why had he been “taken”?
