*
“Good afternoon, Sir Owen,” Winter said as she stepped out of her quarters the next morning. She gave a curtsy to her guard, guilty for having made him chase her halfway through the palace the night before, but he neither looked at her nor acknowledged her greeting. Which was the way of the guards. They were there to serve and to protect, and to act as a target and a shield for any intruder that might want to harm the royal family. They were not friends. They were not confidants.
But Winter couldn’t always bring herself to ignore them as they ignored her.
She glided down the hall on her way to her tutoring session and spotted Jacin waiting for her as soon as she turned the corner into an elevator bank. She smiled—an instinctive reaction—though it fell once she took in his expression. A frown creased Jacin’s brow.
He glanced once at her guard, who had followed a respectful distance in her wake, before dipping his head toward her. “They found a note.”
“A note?”
“From the servant. The one that…” He didn’t have to finish. “My dad is on the team conducting the investigation. It was found in the servant’s quarters. Probably won’t be made public, but he read it before it was taken away.”
“And it was a … suicide note?” she asked, her heart pattering. The words chilled her. Suicide was always met with suspicion in their society. Everyone knew, even twelve-year-old princesses, that an apparent suicide could just as easily have been a murder caused through manipulation. That was how almost all of the queen’s formal executions were carried out, after all. Hand the convicted perpetrators a sharp blade and let them drain out their own lives.
But the crown did not have a monopoly on the Lunar gift, much as the queen may have wished it so. No death could ever be proven a true suicide, and few murders were ever solved.
“What did it say?” Winter asked.
“It wasn’t murder. She definitely meant to do it.” Jacin’s voice stayed low as they stepped into the elevator, along with her stoic guard, and he said nothing else until they’d stepped out again and left the guard to follow a few paces behind.
Winter frowned. Much as she’d hoped that it was a misunderstanding, she wasn’t surprised. No one had been manipulating the woman in the throne room before Winter rescued her. Or thought that she’d rescued her. She couldn’t help wondering how many attempts the woman had made to take her life before she finally succeeded.
“But why?”
Jacin’s gaze darted around the hallway. A few young aristocrats wandered by, probably having just finished with their own tutoring sessions, and when they noticed the princess they stopped to gawk at her. Winter ignored them. She was used to gawking.
Jacin scowled every time and seemed relieved when they passed.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
She wasn’t sure at all, but she nodded anyway. What could drive a person to such a decision? What could make them think there were no other options? Especially when there were doctors and specialists who could ensure you never felt sad or lonely or frightened again.
Jacin swallowed hard. “She was pregnant.”
Her feet stalled. Jacin paused with her, his brow drawn tight.
“Pregnant?”
It clarified nothing. She’d only ever known women to be happy upon discovering a pregnancy.
Jacin’s jaw tightened. He had gone from looking sorry to angry in half a heartbeat. His blue eyes, normally so bright, were now shadowed with a fury Winter rarely saw. “The note said that Thaumaturge Park is—was the father.”
She stared.
“Evidently, he’s been manipulating her for a long time.” Jacin looked away, seething. “No one knows exactly how long it’s been going on. Or … what methods exactly he’d been using to…” His face was reddening, his breath erratic and his knuckles white.
What methods.
This was a horror that Winter knew of, yet so few spoke of it. Manipulation of the strong against the weak. You could make a person do anything, and though there were laws against it, with the powerful among the elite and the enforcers, who was to stop them?
She recalled the desperation in the woman’s eyes, the desperation that had gotten stronger over the years.
Winter pressed a hand against her stomach. Her mouth was suddenly stinging and sour and she couldn’t swallow fast enough. She would be sick.
“I’m sorry.” Jacin held her elbow. “I didn’t know if I should tell you or not. I know … I know you have to see him…”
Only in the court. She would only have to see him among the court.
It would still be far too much. “Will they do anything to him?” she asked.
But Jacin didn’t have to answer.