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The clawing at his chest he couldn’t eradicate squeezed at his lungs. Memories, yes, but something more. Something to do with Alexandra.
Who crouched down, reached out, and touched the exact spot on the tree that popped the door open.
He saw her in profile, and it melded with a flash of the queen. A kind woman. Whose profile looked so like Alexandra’s. He’d pushed those memories out of his mind. Blackened them in shadow. Until he’d found himself compelled to walk up here and come face-to-face with the dusty portraits of the king and queen he remembered.
But it couldn’tbe.
Alexandra looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “What happened here?” she asked.
And he knew he shouldn’t tell her. That whatever this was, it wasn’t about the events in this room. It wasn’t about... Alexandra. No matter what strange parts of the palace she knew.
But the images were there, dancing around, and it seemed he had to speak them into existence or be haunted forever. How would he enact his revenge if he could not deal in hard truths?
“This was Princess Zandra’s nursery, as I said. Diamandis’s room was at the beginning of the hall, as he was a teenager and the heir. The two middle boys, they had their own rooms on the opposite side of the hall, but they were twins. So similar, they were an inseparable duo. No matter how their nannies or parents tried, they always ended up together in one room. Wreaking havoc. Zandra was the only girl and much younger, so this was hers.”
Alexandra stayed crouched there, but then she opened the door wider. Without thinking it through, an impulse born of sheer terror, his hand reached out and grabbed her roughly away.
But she looked up at him, even as he held her elbow. “Lysias, whathappened?”
“On that night... I was with my parents, in our quarters, when we first heard the screams. Gunfire. People fled, crying that the king and queen had been murdered. My parents... They put me in the tunnel to keep me safe. The tunnels, they are old. From early denizens of the palace. By the time I was a child, they were simply used as a playhouse for the children. Including me. So my parents thought I would be safe there.”
“Were you?” she asked, breathlessly. As if he wasn’t standing before her, alive and well.
“I was, but I knew... I knew the men who’d killed the king and queen would go after the children.”
It all came flooding back. Everything he’d blocked out for so long. The gunfire, the screams, his parents’ wild eyes as they’d huddled in their rooms, praying the rebellious group would not come for the servants.
Their desperation to save him when it seemed they would.
He’d known the memories would attack him if he came up here, but he hadn’t been able to resist. Maybe he’d had some foolish belief he could stare it down and forget it forever. Instead he was reliving it, holding Alexandra there at arm’s length.
And it poured out of him. How he had paused there in the tunnels, wondering what he should do. That it had been the thought of his best friend being killed that he could not stand. So he’d made his way through the maze that would lead him to Diamandis’s room. But he searched the room, and Diamandis wasn’t there.
“I thought perhaps he’d gone to save the others, so I looked out of his door. There were men breaking into the room across the hall, where I knew the twins were. Shooting. The screams...”
Maybe she said something, but he didn’t hear it. He was too lost in that old nightmare.
“But I thought if the gunmen were there, they hadn’t gotten to the princess yet. And maybe Diamandis was with Zandra. I could not save the boys, but maybe I could save them. So I went back to the tunnels, came out here.” He pointed to the door she’d opened.
“Diamandis was not here, but Zandra was. She was sitting in her bed. I told her she had to come to the tunnels, to be safe. She didn’t respond. I don’t know what she’d seen or hadn’t, but when I finally went over to her bed, she got out and took my hand. I took Zandra through the door. I told her we would go to my parents. My parents never would have harmed a child.Never.”
“You saved her,” Alexandra whispered, and there was awe in her tone. Misplaced awe though it was.
“I tried. I do not know what became of her.”Will I be safe here?But he had never had time to answer. “I could hear them coming, so I shoved her into the wall and closed the door before the men burst into the room. They said something to each other about me being a servant, not what they were after. I do not know what they did to me, only that it rendered me unconscious. When I woke up, bloody and hurting, I was in a prison. Alone. I was never allowed to speak to my parents again. They were taken away and executed the following day.”
“Lysias...”
“I don’t know what saved me from the same fate. My age. My friendship with Diamandis. They said the princess was dead, and I believed them, but I knew my parents had nothing to do with it. Maybe she took the wrong tunnel. Maybe the men found her. I will never know, but I know my parents did not kill her, and they did not deserve to be executed.”
She nodded, swallowing convulsively. “I believe you,” she said.
All the old monsters roared in some kind of pained relief. For no one, not one person since that night ever had. He felt torn apart, flayed open. A wounded animal with no recourse but to lash out.
Except his Alexandra was all color and light, standing there with teardrops on her cheeks. Brown eyes wide and sympathetic.
“If you do not know what became of her...” Alexandra looked down at the door, and he knew she was considering the impossible idea that had been trying to take root in his mind since she had opened the door in Diamandis’s office.
“It couldn’t be true, Alexandra,” he said harshly. Because maybe some strange part of himwantedit to be. “It couldn’t be possibly true.”
