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She drew a heavy breath. “You brush off everything else.”
Aric quirked a brow at the odd response.
Her eyes narrowed. “Like my feelingsnow.”
Irritation flashed through him and he fought it back. “I’ve respected your feelings on this subject forfifteenyears, Cecilia. I’ve held back every question I had. I refrained from hunting you down when you disappeared. Because I wanted to respect your grief.”
She folded her arms across her chest and raised her chin. “Then what’s changed?”
It was the opening he needed, and the only one he could count on. Aric calmly extracted the cracked brooch from his pocket and held it out for her to see. He watched her eyes widen and her naturally ashen complexion go pale. “I found this today,” he said, keeping his voice even. “As you can see, it’s damaged, and the pin is missing. But what’s most interesting is that I found this supposedly lost brooch inside one of Prince Denham’s vacation homes.”
Cecilia’s arms fell to her sides and her jaw locked for a long second. She didn’t take her eyes off the brooch. “I thought it was lost…”
Aric frowned. “Did you?”
Cecilia finally snapped a glare up at him. “Of course I did! Are you trying to accuse me of something?” She sucked in a breath. “I can’t begin to tell you how the Elder Prince got hold of Trish’s crest. If you want an answer for that, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”
Aric closed his eyes and tucked the brooch away. As he’d feared, every word she said rang true. He believed her immediately and had to remind himself to re-analyze the words, the tone, the response, and even the body language. He hated having to be suspicious of one of his closest friends. He hated knowing he was causing her pain, no matter how legitimate his need for the information or ridiculous her defensive stance.
It was a moment before he recognized the tell.
Cecilia never used nicknames, rarely even when she was asked to. It was why most of their circle had gotten used to sayingViveca, despite that the teenager had introduced herself as Viv. Yet, seconds earlier, Cecilia had referred to Trisha asTrish. Had he ever heard her do that before?
He plowed ahead. “And what am I supposed to ask him? ‘Did you murder a seventeen-year-old Academy student in the eastern mountains fifteen years ago and take her family crest as a trophy’?” He held Cecilia’s impertinent stare. “Or perhaps, ‘were you holding onto this broken crest as leverage because you know something about Trisha’s murder’?”
“Her death was ruled an accident, Aric.”
He didn’t blink. “Do you know how many ways I could kill someone without leaving a trace of my presence behind? I could easily make it look like an accident.” For that matter, in the right environment, Cecilia could, too.
The realization slammed into him like a punch to the gut.
No. However Denham had acquired the broken brooch, and wherever Cecilia had gone for the year she’d disappeared, neither of those things equaled that. It was too big a leap. Everyone on-scene that morning had insisted Cecilia had been absolutely inconsolable. So lost to her pain that they’d been concerned she was having a mental break. It was why she’d been excused from Academy for the entire rest of the year and allowed to graduate absentee. She couldn’t possibly have been responsible. Being capable did not mean she was guilty.
He ought to have been able to accept that. Yet something held him back.
“Well, I was there,” Cecilia said. “I saw it happen. Is that what you need to hear? It was a landslide, Aric. A fucking landslide. I saw her get crushed. I barely got away myself.That’swhy I don’t talk about it.”
He drew a breath in through his nose. How had he not known she’d actually been there when it had happened? Something like guilt rolled in his stomach. Of course that would make one less inclined to talk about something, after seeing something so horrific. He felt like an ass. He opened his mouth, prepared to apologize, when he caught sight of the movement of her hand at her side.
Her fingers were pressed into her palm, clenching and flexing together in a familiar, nervous release of energy. Because he’d upset her, no doubt.
Except something inside him compelled him to re-evaluate again. If what she’d just told him was true, then several people with no real connections between them had lied not just to him but to everyone. Everyone had been told that Cecilia was first on the scene. That she’d used her magic to run ahead of the professors and let out a bloodcurdling wail seconds before the first adult caught up. Darnel had even said, weeks later, that his uncle was furious she’d been allowed to rush ahead when the professors had reason to believe there was danger.
Aric remembered all of those conversations, as well as the series of mental visuals he’d created as a result. Which forced him to ask himself, was it more likely that everyone potentially involved had been consistently telling him the same lie up to this point? Or that Cecilia, who he had long suspected could lie as well as she could read them, had only just then told one in an effort to get him to drop the subject?
That cleared the answer up rather quickly, but it was exhausting having to go through those mental hurdles with her every statement. So he opted to switch direction somewhat. Recalling another thing Rochelle had told him earlier, Aric asked, “Was it Prince Denham who taught you how to lie like that?”
Cecilia’s eyes blew wide for an instant as if she were caught off-guard. “Excuse me?”
“Was Denham the mysterious mentor you’ve always refused to talk about?”
She was silent for several seconds. Then, finally, she said, “When did you stop caring about how you refer to the royal family?”
Interesting.Aric tucked his hands into his pockets and opted to play into her hand for the time being. “Just Denham,” he said. “I suppose it was somewhere between when he wasted all of our time on the lies about these additional invasions and the moment he abducted my lover.” He watched Cecilia’s hands tighten into fists again at his words. “The Elder Prince made a deliberate enemy of me. I have no respect for fools.”
“I distinctly remember cautioning you against getting too close to her,” Cecilia said after a moment. “She seems to have been sincere lately, but there’s something off about her. Something that can’t be trusted.”
“Rochelle has been honest with me,” Aric said. He was highly intrigued that that was the part, out of everything he’d just said, that she’d latched onto.
