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His lips twitched. “Is that what’s weighing you down?”
Rochelle stared at him.
Aric tucked his hands into his pockets, his stance entirely too casual for their circumstance. “You’ve been uncomfortable since we stepped out of that portal,” he said. “It’s commendable that you dislike snooping through someone else’s home, but considering our enemy and our sparse collection of clues, this may be the only way we’ll find any of the answers we need.”
She did understand his point. She’d known it going in. But intellectually understanding a thing and experiencing it were two very different sensations, and in this case, she struggled to balance them. Finally, she let out a breath. “Where do I look? What am I lookingfor? What if we get caught?”
Aric’s expression gentled. “We’ll go through each room, together. If Denham returns before we leave, I’ll deal with that, don’t worry. As for what we’re looking for—” He angled more into the wide room and swept a weathered book off what Rochelle still wanted to call a coffee table. He thumbed it open with a faint frown, then held it up. “Anything that might hold useful information. As well as anything that draws your attention.” He snapped the book shut and set it back on the table. “Of course, if you see anything I don’t seem to see or see the way you do, that will be our primary focus.”
Right.She didn’t fully understand how that worked—how Denham could hide something that her weird lie detector eyes could see but Aric couldn’t see without knowing to look for it. But the incident in the cave had proven it was possible. If nothing else, she supposed that meant she could be useful. She still worried about the possibility of their investigation backfiring on them, but she chose to trust in Aric and did her best to push down her concerns.
“Life can’t be lived in your comfort-zone, you know.”How many years had it been since Bridget had said those words to her? It was past time she listened.
Instead of searching every nook and cranny of the sizable, single-story home for somewhere that might hold information, Rochelle chose to look around for something out of place. She would have a hard time determining information that could be useful, but if Denham had some pre-existing knowledge of her old world—or worlds like it—then perhaps he had something more tangible, too. Something that could help to enlighten them, or at least prove the things he’d done.
She couldn’t help but think she would never have guessed the house they were sifting carefully through was a residence of a royal. It was certainly well-maintained, but in no way was it dripping in wealth or extravagance. She’d only met Denham twice, under vastly different circumstances, but she would have assumed that a home he openly held would be … shinier. More opulent, from the little touches to bigger, more dramatic moments. There were some paintings on the walls, mostly scenic, as well as one portrait-style of a man Rochelle hadn’t recognized, sitting with a much younger Denham. The portrait painting sat in an engraved golden frame in the main sitting room. Aric had said he believed the unfamiliar male to be Denham’s late father, who himself had once been Crown Prince, brother to King Jensen’s then-King father. That portrait was the most obvious sign of personalization and even extravagance in the entire home.
Rochelle found herself staring at the lackluster bed in the second bedroom, a frown curving her lips. “Something just doesn’t feel right.” They’d been through every feasible space. If not for the portal-thing in the back room, there would have been nothing suspicious about the house as a whole.
Aric trailed his fingers along the wall across from the bed. “How unassuming and modest the vacation home of the Elder Prince proports to be?”
“Yes, that.” She crossed her arms, trying to articulate the feeling. “Also … why would he have a mysterious portal in a cave—the cave where he took and tortured me—connected to thisunassuminghouse?”
Aric reached for the tall wardrobe tucked into the corner against the window wall, but paused before pulling it open. “He may have multiple portals, and the link between this house and that cave might only exist because that’s the connection he last utilized. It’s entirely possible that if we’d stepped into the portal on this end first, we would have been sent somewhere else.”
Rochelle scrunched up her nose for a moment. “I suppose.” That made as much sense as anything, really.
“And if Denham sent us here purposefully,” Aric continued, pulling the wardrobe open as he spoke, “it may have been because this was one location he knew he had access to. All of which is conjecture unless we happen to get an opportunity to search another of his residences.”
“Are we going to have to do that?” She flicked another glance toward the neutral-toned bed, probably barely wide enough for two. As she understood it, Denham was single and had never had children. If this was his vacation house, why did he need a second bedroom? Even if he brought a lover home overnight, wouldn’t that person stay in his room?Maybe he’s the kind of guy who kicks his partner out of bed when they’re done.
The sound of Aric’s low, thoughtful rumble made her wonder for a moment if she’d spoken her thoughts out loud. Before she could settle on whether or not she was embarrassed about that, however, he said, “Come here a moment, please. I think I felt something I can’t seem to see.”
Her heartrate kicked up and Rochelle rounded the foot of the bed until she was standing at Aric’s side, angled to peer into the wardrobe. And she realized it wasn’t quite as empty as she’d expected it to be. Her gaze caught on the cloak and what looked like a dress hanging behind it, and the most ridiculous thought popped into her head and out her mouth in an instant. “Please don’t tell me he wears that.”
Aric made a sound as if he were choking back a laugh. “I don’t think he could fit into this,” he said, briefly lifting the dress enough to reveal its slender size.
“That would definitely be a misuse of magic.” It was a nice dress, very feminine and alluring looking. Rochelle struggled to understand its place in the tastefully masculine house.
Aric set it back and motioned toward the highest shelf, at shoulder height, sweeping his hand low as if he were not quite sure where the lone object was. “What I wanted your perspective on is up here.”
She could see it. Something was tucked slightly back, as if to be missed by a casual observer, but technically above the two garments hanging below. “Here.” She stretched out her arm and grabbed hold of the object, curious enough to forget for a moment that doing so might be dangerous. For the next half-second, she held her breath as she waited for her skin to catch fire again. It didn’t.
In her hand she held what she could only describe as a brooch. It was certainly too pretty to call a pin. It had a sturdy weight and glittering gems of red, blue, and green dotted throughout the design. The shape was similar to a shield, with feathers spread like stretching fingers around the upper edges and lower wings folded inward in a defensive posture. The piece was white gold with thin trims of yellow gold helping emphasize the design and the stones. The item was beautiful, even despite the one garish, ominous crack that ran at an angle from nearly the top left corner to the edge of the lower right wing. The crack hadn’t quite severed it fully in half, but it was sizable enough for Rochelle to want to be careful in her handling of the brooch.
Rochelle held her hand out, palm up, in front of Aric. “Can you see what’s in my hand?” Why would Denham have hidden such an item? Was it because the piece was so obviously valuable, or did it have a sentimental meaning?
Aric’s eyes lit with magic for a moment and then his brow furrowed. His lips thinned into a hard line, and he lifted the object carefully from her hand. “I haven’t seen this in some fifteen years.” He stroked his thumb over the crack. “But how did it come into Denham’s possession…?” The question was soft, like a whispered thought he hadn’t meant to give voice, as he raised the brooch-like item higher for a closer look.
A sinking feeling settled in her stomach. There was something almost reverent in Aric’s tone. “Do you recognize that?”
Aric tucked the object into his pocket. “Yes.” He met her gaze. “It’s time to go. There’s more to this situation than we still know and someone else I need to speak to. It’s too soon for Denham to know we’ve been here.”
His answer didn’t ease the uncomfortable feeling inside her. What was this sense of unease? “What about the portal? If you leave him barred from it, won’t he realize you were here?”
“That’s likely the conclusion he’ll come to,” Aric said. He shut the wardrobe, leaving the dress and cloak hanging as they’d found them, and guided her toward the exit of the room. “But we also can’t lose the evidence of its existence. For that reason, we’ll also stop back by the cave so I can seal off that one as well.”
Rochelle pursed her lips and nodded. His words were sensible, even if she was immensely confused as to why the small pin-less brooch had so drastically changed the mood. She wanted to ask, but if they were hurrying to do other things, her questions needed to wait.
