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The only sound breaking up the silence was Aura’s heavy breath. Until a muffled feminine voice broke throughout the room, coming from inside the chestnut wardrobe. Aura gasped and her gaze fell to the golden handles. She rushed toward them, then threw the door wide.
Soft groans rumbled inside the large space as Aura rummaged through silk, fur, and velvet cloaks. The wardrobe was deeper than she thought when she stepped into its depths. Near the very back, a body spilled out from a cluster of dresses and toppled to the side.
Aura hurried forward, then knelt beside Sorcha to wrap her arms around the girl’s trembling form. Her dress and hair were sopping wet while beads of water dotted her pale skin.
“Sorcha, wake up,” Aura whispered, lightly tapping the girl’s cool cheek. She could feel her again, the same as in the last dream, and she wasn’t certain what that meant in the slightest.
“Aura?” Sorcha rasped, her eyelids opening to bright sapphire irises. “This is getting a bit tedious for us both, isn’t it?” She laughed softly before releasing a few coughs.
Aura patted Sorcha on her back until the coughing seized. “It seems fate enjoys having us meet like this.” Aura smiled. Or perhaps it wasn’t fate at all… The spell… Whatever it was doing. Again, she’d hoped to get something more from Rush in the ballroom, but all she’d gotten were his hands on her waist, her thighs, and she tamped down the thought of how she’d wanted them in other places. However, she needed to focus now. Rush had loved this girl, and even though Aura couldn’t decide if she liked the king even a smidge, she wanted to help Sorcha. Find a way to aid the girl and herself.
“Fate can be a tricky little thing.” Sorcha blew out a breath and stood on shaky legs. Aura led her out from the cloaks and into a high-backed leather chair in front of a round wooden table lined with gold and emeralds.
“How long were you in the wardrobe?” Aura asked, pulling the other chair beside Sorcha’s to sit next to her. Sorcha only shrugged so Aura went on, “Rush was just in this room. I was afraid he would find us here together before I got a chance to figure out anything.”
“Rush was here?” Sorcha jolted upward, her eyes no longer heavy-lidded but beaming as a bright smile spread across her cheeks. “How? Does he have a spell cast on him too?”
“If someone did to him what he has to me, let’s just say he would deserve it. But no—he somehow waltzed his way into my dreams with what I’m assuming was a sorcerer’s concoction.”
“It doesn’t sound like Rush to dabble with spells like that… Unless he found... Oh no!” She cupped her mouth, straightening. “Heknows.”
Aura furrowed her brow, waiting for Sorcha to continue. “Knows what?” she nudged.
“Hold on. It’ll come back to me.” Sorcha stood from the chair, pacing back and forth across the marble floor as she massaged her temples. She came to a halt, her gaze drifting across the spacious room. “When I was younger, I used to come in here and play all the time,” she said with a gentle smile. “Dolls, board games, writing in my journal, reading. Sometimes Father would be working at his desk while Rush and I hid and played games in the wardrobe or out on the balcony. Father always spent so much time in his office with us and Mother. They were wonderful parents.”
Sorcha ran toward the balcony door, discovering the entrance barred. She trailed her fingers over the stones, then pushed as if she could make them collapse. But they didn’t budge. “Why are stones here?”
Aura’s lips parted like a fish several times as she thought over what Sorcha had said. But bewilderment continued to swirl within her. “This isn’t your father’s desk? It’s Rush’s.”
Sorcha gave a knowing nod as if she understood Aura’s confusion. “You’ve heard of Princess Constance?”
She remembered briefly hearing about the deaths of the royals while in Starnight. The queen, then the king two years later, and a year after that, the princess. “I have, but you know how the courts are, they don’t hear much, too concerned with their own.”
“That is certainly true.” Sorcha sighed and pointed to a spot behind Aura. “Walk closer to that painting on the wall. The one just above the leather settee.”
Slowly, Aura turned around and squinted at a large portrait of four royals wearing crowns and fancy attire. As she crept closer, the details became clearer, sharper. The first person she noticed on the right was Rush, who was maybe fifteen at the time. His long obsidian hair brushed his shoulders, and he was dressed in his finest black shirt. Even though he didn’t hold a smile, there was life in him within that picture, his eyes bright … and happy. Behind him were who had to be his mother and father. Rush inherited the eyes and skin coloring of his mother while most of his features came from his father—the strong jaw, the high cheekbones, the long lashes. Then, beside Rush, stood a young girl with dark hair in long curls cascading to her waist, a yellow bow atop her head. Her bright blue eyes shone like sapphires, the same as her father’s, the same as the dragon’s within the stained-glass of this room. Aura’s heart thrummed, slamming against her sternum. Sorcha was indeed a girl who Rush loved, but he hadn’t beeninlove with her.
“That’s you! Only younger,” Aura shouted, whirling around to find Sorcha studying the painting with tears glistening in her eyes. “You’re Rush’s sister! Princess Constance. The one who—”
“Died,” Sorcha finished, wiping away a lone tear trailing down her cheek.
Aura furrowed her brow. “But why did you tell me your name is Sorcha?”
“It was what Rush called me.” She shrugged. “He told me when I was born, I never looked like a Constance, but a Sorcha, the name of the sun from one of the stories Mama had always read to him. I shine like the sun and draw the darkness out of everyone, he would say. My brother is more caring than anyone I know.”
Aura’s knees wobbled and she almost collapsed to the floor right there at those last words. “Caring?” she hissed. “Even though Rush has done a few good deeds for me, your brother stole me away from Starnight on my wedding day and is holding me prisoner in his palace. Oh wait, aguestof sorts.” She rolled her eyes. “I can go anywhere I want except outside the palace gates because of the blasted spell he’s cast.” But then a thought struck her and she straightened, hope filling her. “Do you know what this spell is for? It drains me a little each day or hits me hard and pulls me into these dreams. There has to be a reason you’re here too. I never heard how you died, but if this is anything to go by, I now know you drowned yourself.” Until recently, Aura and her family had lived secluded from the palace and gossip.
Sorcha sucked in a sharp breath, then shouted, “I remember what I was going to say earlier! Rush must have found my journal that heldeverythingin there... I wasn’t ever supposed to be with him, but I fell in love.” Her face paled. “No, there’s more. There’s a truth hidden and Rush needs to know. When I went out to the lake that day—” Water gurgled up from her mouth and took away her words. That only made Sorcha try harder as Aura held onto her shoulders. None of the things escaping her mouth were decipherable.
“Come on, Sorcha. Stay. Concentrate,” Aura said with determination, but when she spoke the last word, her hands passed through water. Sorcha’s skin was now a light blue, all of her was, and a dull glaze covered her eyes. The water crashed to the floor, the sound echoing off the walls, before turning into small puddles.
Aura screamed when everything else inside the room mirrored what had happened to Sorcha. The furniture, the paintings on the walls—all of it turned to liquid and collided with the marble floor. Like one of her dreams before, the water rose, the cold liquid seeping over her feet, but before it could reach her sternum, a sharp sting pierced her finger, the agonizing pain spreading up her arm and tearing another scream from her throat as she closed her eyes.
When she reopened them, no longer was she in a murderous dream but in a bedroom surrounded by black. Comforting. The darkness in this palace was somehow becoming just that. Only, Rush wasn’t staring at her this time—Astor was. He sat on the chaise, twisting a wooden puzzle box around and around when he glanced up.
“Finally.” He sighed. “Have a good nap?”
Aura thought about Sorcha … Rush’s dead sister. Princess Constance. She jerked forward, her brows sliding together in concentration. What had Sorcha wanted to tell her? Was there a different reason she’d decided to drown herself other than being abandoned by a lover?
