“Your wife is waiting for you by the Christmas tree.”
It wasn’t talked about that my guards were now used to keep me locked up, not safe. Because with a Crowne cold war, the battles were always hidden under layers of taffeta and silk, so you couldn’t see blood or motive.
I worked out my shoulder, stiff from being held to the floor. “You mean Lottie?”
Her brows drew. “Do you have another wife?”
Even if it was only in secret, even if only fate watched, Snitch was forever and always my real and true wife.
And now she was somewhere in this dark castle with a monster.
“Of course not,” I gritted.
She lingered, feathering the bruise purpling beneath my collar from the last time I ditched my guards and disregarded their silent threat.
“We don’t get to choose our roles, Grayson. We don’t get to audition; we’re cast in them from birth, and we play them until we die. This is the life you were given in exchange for the privilege you have.” She slowly lifted her eyes to mine. “So remember your role.”
“Or what?”
Still holding the fabric at my neck, my mother’s eyes shifted over my shoulder, the slightest crease in her brow. “What happens to the play when the main character decides not to show up?”
I followed her eyes, looking over my shoulder to see what had her brow furrowed. My grandfather, the puppet master himself, was waiting in the hall.
“Everyone else on the stage suffers,” she finished.
Her eyes lingered a moment on my grandfather. A hero for my sisters. A good man. A good father. Everything I hoped to become, every reason that Snitch sacrificed for me, ran through my mind like a freight as I saw something in my mother’s face I’d never seen before: humanity.
Fear.
It vanished as quickly as it came, and she stepped back, putting on her mask and going to him. The guards that had thrust me to the ground followed her. Her hand lightly brushed my grandfather’s shoulder as she walked by him, something whispered between them I couldn’t catch.
Then his eyes landed on mine.
“You didn’t bring your friends this time.” I noted the absence of his guards, the ones he used to teach me respect the first two weeks Story was gone.
“I’m here to talk.”
Sure.
He dragged his pointer finger along the underside of his jaw. “You’ve made another scene, two times tonight. For another man’s mistress, no less.”
I palmed my forehead, curled my fist, tried to think past the bright and blinding pain in the center of my forehead anytime that word was uttered.
His mistress.
His fucking mistress.
“Do you know the history of the Crowne-du Lac rivalry?” he asked lightly.
The rivalry between the Crownes and the du Lacs is so old it predates my grandfather and even his grandfather. I don’t know how it happened, or when it started.
“Just that it’s old,” I said.
“It began with a girl and a gold coin. The wrong girl.” He circled our room, fingering gilded antiques and cloth-covered oil paintings.
He turned to me. “I’m sure you know about the coins.”
I schooled my features. “As much as anyone in this world knows.”
He nodded to himself, turning back to the antiques. “Over a century ago, a Crowne was set to marry a du Lac. The night before, the groom was found kissing some whore. Which would have been fine, but…” He eyed me. “Some men just cannot let things go. The du Lac man stole a coin from the Crownes and used it to try to get out of the marriage. Of course it didn’t work, both sides challenged. It was bloody and pointless, and now, centuries later…”
He continued to circle the room, and my muscles grew tight. For as long as I’d lived here, this place had been a lost room. It was where my mother shoved the antiques from our ancestry she couldn’t display or sell.
This room was like us; these artifacts were priceless but had no place in the world.
Now, my mother, Arthur, my grandfather, fucking Westley, everyone had been here—stamping their touch on everything.
“I spent my life finding them only to lose them at the last moment. They were stolen from me.” His voice grew cold at the word stolen.
I kept my face schooled, giving nothing away.
The day of my father’s funeral, three coins were placed into my pocket. At the time, I didn’t know what they were or what purpose they served. I never saw who put them there, and I still don’t know who placed them.
I never gave it much thought, because for years these were always just a dream. A fairy tale. Now it’s a bloody reality.
Somebody stole these coins from my grandfather.
Someone knew I had them.
I was suddenly feeling like a fucking puppet again.
But now I had a lot more to lose than just myself if my strings were cut
“But, you know, Grayson,” he said. “I think I’m finally close to finding them.”
There it was, the secret I’m keeping from my wife. It wasn’t something easy to tell her—it was a feeling, and every day it grew. My grandfather, the du Lacs, fucking everyone knew more than us and was determined to not only keep us apart—but worse.
Bloody and pointless.
I told Snitch I wouldn’t put my faith in fairy tales, because in fairy tales, monsters always know more than the hero.
And we weren’t just surrounded by them, we were sleeping in their fucking cave.
My grandfather ended his tour in front of me, and placed his hand on my shoulder. He steered me out of the room, and into the ballroom, my view on Lottie. “Your wife is waiting.”
Lottie was reclining on a gold silk chaise, surrounded by a cluster of sycophants and family like something out of the Victorian era. Her pregnancy was global news now, so she was wearing a green gown that showed her bump—our baby.
It didn’t feel like ours, like how I felt with Snitch. Insane every minute she was away. Like I couldn’t breathe or think. When I looked at Lottie, I felt nothing. I felt…a vague sense of duty, but nothing.
And every moment I was reminded of that, I felt like shit.
It made it nearly impossible to look at her.
“They won’t let me stand,” Lottie said when I arrived, misery etching her features.
“And rightfully,” her grandmother—who flew in from France, my mother needed me to know—replied. “You’re a du Lac, it’s a right for a du Lac woman to have their feet up during a pregnancy.”
They would never say the truth out loud. Every moment Lottie stood, she put the baby at risk.
I eyed the black suits standing sentry on either side of the arched entry. Snitch was back. She was fucking home. All I wanted to do was go to her, and I think my mother knows, because she hadn’t let go of me, her nails digging into my bicep.
“With you already being four months. That gives us, what, a few months to plan?” My mother sighed about something, I assumed the baby shower.
Everything was always about the baby.
Lynette agreed. “Not enough time.”
“Why?” Lottie interrupted. “Why must so many come to the shower?”
My mother and hers laughed like she was too funny.
“You’re having the next Crowne heir, Charlotte,” Lynette said. “Your pregnancy will be the most watched birth since the royal baby.”