The gate hung open. Balthazar stumbled toward it, reaching for the wooden beam. Montgomery raced to help. They shoved their weight against the door, scrambling to seal it.
“Hurry,” Montgomery called over his shoulder.
Panic beat in time with my heart. My feet felt suspended in molasses. I couldn’t move fast enough. The beasts would move like lightning, though. They’d come over the roof tiles or break down the gate.
I stumbled to my room and threw my things into the old carpetbag. A bedsheet would give us shade from the relentless sun. Mother’s jewelry and the silver comb and hairbrush would fetch a price. The wooden box that held my treatment. My thoughts clutched at all the scattered things I couldn’t take. Wilted lavender Alice had left on my dresser. The copy of Longman’s Anatomical Reference I’d saved from our library on Belgrave Square. Now I never wanted to see it again.
I dragged the carpetbag outside and hurried along the portico to Edward’s room. A cloud covered the moon, plunging the courtyard into shadows. My eyes played tricks on me. I thought I saw shapes climbing through the windows, over the roof. But when I shook my head, nothing was there.
Puck joined Balthazar at the front gate. They pressed their ears to the wooden boards, looking puzzled. They didn’t know the beasts were just outside, planning an attack. I wondered if they’d fight back. Puck glanced at me. His scaly mouth peeled into a grim smile.
Puck might be wild enough to join in the frenzy. But not Balthazar. Balthazar would ball himself up and let the beasts tear at him. He saw me watching, and his face brightened. Again, I felt a twist of guilt at my lie. But I hadn’t a choice. If he regressed like the others, turned violent in the crowded London streets …
A tile crashed to the ground. I jumped, scanning the roofline. I imagined the beasts there, watching, waiting, stalking, led by a black-clawed monster.
My hand found Edward’s doorknob and squeezed the odd latch. “We have to leave,” I said in a rush.
But the room was empty. The trace smell of sulfur hung in the air from a recently lit match. The lantern sat next to the pallet he used as a bed. Beside it was a pile of clothes borrowed from Montgomery, an old pair of shoes, a stack of books from the salon, and a crystal decanter.
We can sell that, I thought, and snatched it up.
The decanter left a wet ring on one of the books. The cover caught my eye. I’d seen this book on the shelves in the salon when I’d arrived, but then it had gone missing.
Edward III.
I’d read it, long ago, when it used to be in our library on Belgrave Square. It was a lesser-known play, attributed to Shakespeare by some. It was bound in dark-green cloth, standard size, nothing remarkable except for the gold foil imprint in the spine: three straight lines surrounded by a circle.
The same symbol Jaguar had carved into my skin.
My hands started shaking. I flipped through the book, nearly ripping the pages. Half the pages were dog-eared. Some had been torn out. A long gash sliced through the back cover, made by something razor-sharp. I let the book fall open to one of the marked pages. A few lines were underlined in black ink, over and over, so hard it ripped the paper.
And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths.
Witness our too-much-memorable shame …
Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales.
Edward, the Black Prince. I tried to remember all I’d read of the Black Prince’s character in plays. To the French, Edward III was a young boy raised by a cruel father—a general—who pushed him to military victory through ambition and brutality, turning the poor boy into a fiend. Not unlike the snips of story Edward had given us. The feeling went out of my feet and I knelt on the ground, frantically pawing through to the marked pages.
It was all there. The same story. The same person.
Edward had lied to us. He wasn’t Edward Prince. He was Prince Edward—the Black Prince from Shakespeare’s plays. This was his mystery. He’d stolen his identity from a little-known play.
The book fell out of my hands. This discovery meant one of two things. Edward might just be a runaway like he claimed, giving himself a new identity to flee some crime or maybe a girl he’d gotten with child. Or it could mean …
Sweat dripped down the sides of my face. I brushed it away, taking deep breaths. I fought to think with my head instead of my heart, which wanted to shout Edward’s innocence. But my heart was weak. I had to cut it out of my chest and think logically.
Or it could mean Edward was one of my father’s creations.
Named after a Shakespearean character, just like Balthazar and Cymbeline and all the others.
Just like me.