“Derrick?” Darren’s wheeze was echoed in my own. I struggled to right myself and adjust my top that had fallen low to one shoulder, snarled in my hair.
“Your highness… Ry? I–I’m so sorry, I didn’t…” My brother’s neck flushed pink as he stammered on. “I–I came to find my sister, a-and I saw the hallway was empty. I was worried and thought to check…” Derrick’s voice trailed off as his eyes darted from one side of the dark chamber to the other, clearly getting an idea for why that was.
“Thanks for checking.” The prince’s gaze assessed my brother with a slight frown. “Wasn’t that door locked?”
Something pricked at the back of my spine.
“It couldn’t have been.” My brother wore an incredulous expression. “How else would I have gotten in?”
My eyes darted to my brother, and he looked away as he added. “There must have been a catch. It swung open a-and then I realized…”
Darren looked away, embarrassed as my brother. The moment couldn’t have been more awkward if he tried.
Derrick ducked his head. “I –I’ll let the two of you alone.”
“Derrick,” I suddenly called, “why were you looking for me?”
His head shot up but he didn’t meet my eyes. “I–I guess I don’t remember.”
The door shut and then it was just Darren and me in the dark. Only this time there were shadows creeping around my thoughts. Unease and fear were pounding at my chest. I pulled myself up off the table.
Darren caught my arm. “You are leaving?” He sounded so confused.
A part of me wanted to stay. To forget everything and recapture that moment, but… “I –Can you find me a replacement, tonight?”
“Of course…” He swallowed. “I’m sorry—I never meant to make you—”
“It wasn’t that!” I cut him off quickly, blushing furiously and grateful for the dark. “I–I just…” Gods help me. “I haven’t taken any of the potions to… help keep away a child… I… I wouldn’t want to until a-after the war.”
“Oh.” The back of his neck was as red as my face, I was sure of it. “I… I, uh, can ask one of the healers to… if you want?”
I was ready to melt into a puddle of humiliation. But there was another part of me that begged not to brush his offer aside. She wouldn’t let me run off in a childish fit; she wanted this. “I –I do.” I squeaked the reply, and then ran from the room—confident my fit of “embarrassment” would be enough to explain my rough exit.
Darren didn’t need to know the real reason was Derrick. To find my brother before he had time to recover. So I could corner him and force him to explain.
Only two guards—me, and a mage named Ike—had a key to the room. Ike took his role as seriously as Paige took hers. I had never seen him so much as yawn on duty once. The only others were the current Council of Magic and the Crown. Derrick was neither.
****
“You stole it from me, didn’t you? That day in practice.” I didn’t wait for a reply as I shoved my brother against the wooded walls, hissing. “That time I thought I lost it. But I didn’t, did I? The next day when you told me you had found it? You had taken it and made a copy!”
“I—” His chest rose and fell as he panted for breath. His arms were twice as wide, his frame easily two heads above my own—but just now he looked small, so much smaller than I.
“Why did you need it?” I rammed his shoulders, my fingers bruising upon impact. “Why? WHY DID YOU NEED IT, DERRICK?” No one else was around. The building was eerily quiet except for the soft crunch of hay and the shifting of hooves.
Everyone else was at dinner. Or abed. Or on duty. The closest guards were a quarter mile away: a couple at the palace gates, the others the barrack walls. It was Derrick’s shift at the stables.
Or it was supposed to be. Except he had been attempting to break into the Council chambers. Under the guise of visiting me.
My brother stopped panting and looked me straight in the eyes. “You know why,” he said softly.
“No! No, I don’t!” My fist hit the wall by his neck. A trickle of blood dribbled down from my knuckles to the floor.
“You do.” Derrick didn’t falter under my gaze.
“No, I…” I did. My legs gave out from under me, and I caught the wall just before I fell. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh…” I slid down until I was sitting in the hay, my knees pulled up to my chest. The name spilled over on my tongue like a disease. “You are a rebel.”
Derrick sat down next to me and said nothing.
“You… you d-didn’t come back for me.” My breath was coming out hard and fast, and I was seconds away from heaving. “You c-came here for them.”
My whole world rose up to meet me. Hot flashes of sweat and my skin became clammy and pale as I dropped on my hands, vomiting into the musty straw, giant swells of dust and dirt clogging my throat.
Derrick held my hair back and waited for me to stop coughing, handing me his water skin until I had washed my mouth out and spat. Then he spoke.