Chimes at Midnight

“That makes sense,” I said, not wanting to interrupt the flow of her story, but not wanting her to think I wasn’t listening.

“When the earthquake came . . . things were falling everywhere. Nolan’s leg was hit when some rocks came out of the wall. I went running, looking for Mother. We weren’t supposed to talk to her when we were at Court. I broke the rules.” For a moment, her expression was a child’s, filled with the quiet conviction that breaking the rules somehow caused everything that followed. “The earthquake was still happening. I found her in one of the bedchambers, where she’d been changing the sheets. She was already . . .” She closed her eyes. “She was gone.”

I blinked. “Wait. She was dead? Did something fall and hit her?” Some of the chandeliers I’d seen in noble knowes could crush an adult, if the chandelier was falling and the adult was unlucky.

“No.” Arden opened her eyes. “Her throat was slit. She was murdered. My father was, too. There’s no way he died in the quake. He was Tuatha de Dannan. He was a King. He would have died saving his people, if he died at all. Instead, they said he was crushed. Just crushed. That’s not possible. That’s not my father. Someone killed them, and they would have killed Nolan and me if Marianne—our nursemaid—hadn’t taken us away before anyone realized who we were. So, yes, you found the missing Princess in the Mists. Now please, save my life, and leave.”

“Oh, oak and ash,” I whispered. People had always suspected that King Gilad was assassinated: Oleander de Merelands was in the Kingdom at the time, and her presence combined with his death was too convenient to ignore. This was as close as we could get to proof without questioning the night-haunts. Arden had been orphaned, and her parents had been murdered. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said—but her tone made her words into lies. Her voice was shaky and raw, like the deaths had happened only days before. She’d been deferring her grief over a century, and grief deferred can turn toxic. “But that’s why you have to leave. You can’t be here. You can’t ask me to claim the throne. I have nothing left to lose.”

I paused, a sudden thought striking me. Arden wasn’t an only child. Her brother, Nolan, might not have been Crown Prince, but he was with her during the earthquake, and he went with her into hiding. So why was she only asking us to save her life by leaving? “Arden, where’s your brother?” I asked.

“You’re very young, aren’t you?” Her reply seemed nonsensical until she continued, saying, “You think you’re the first ones to track me down. Like that could happen. Our parents did their best, but there were always rumors. The lost Prince. The missing Princess. It was a fairy tale waiting to happen, and you know how we love our fairy tales.” She spun on her heel, stalking toward the back of the basement. After four steps, she paused, looking back, and demanded, “Well?”

“We’re coming,” I said, exchanging a glance with Tybalt. We walked after her, approaching the rear wall.

The closer we got, the stranger it looked. It was like someone had painted a perfect replica of the actual wall, and then hung the picture in place, using it to hide the fact that the room wasn’t all there. Arden slipped her hands into a fold in the air, pulling the illusion open like a heavy canvas curtain. It was a gesture much like the one Tybalt used when he was accessing the Shadow Roads, but with less natural ease: this wasn’t her spell.