What could they possibly offer her?
Answers about why and how would not stop her from spinning like a top after the secrets in her path.
Answers would not keep her sleeping soundly through the night.
Answers would not stop the prince from turning her in.
She’d been found out. The prince knew. Death or worse were her only options now. Her heart squeezed tight, refusing to accept this. She couldn’t just leave. This was herhome.Maybe this group Rollie had put her onto was nothing but smoke and mirrors, but then maybe they were more. The sweet song of magic that guided her hand told her what she needed was still here, and she clung to that inkling like it was truth.
She knew they wouldn’t be able to kill the magic in her. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have anything to offer. The soft voice of reason inside her head pleaded with her to take Gage’s offer and go.
“I’m going to meet with them. I have to.” She lifted her chin, defiant even in the face of her own demise.
Gage looked her square in the eyes as he broke her heart. “Your prince helps him. He’s hunted just as many of your kind as the king has. You have to live, Elysia. You don’t understand how important it is that you live.”
She could hear some meaning that she didn’t understand behind his words, but she couldn’t care about that right now. Not with the ghosts of Topp’s hands pressed to her face even as her hope died.
Perhaps her father was right. She really was cursed, after all.
Chapter 16
Elysia couldn’t decideif it was certain terror or elation she felt zipping through her like a spark as she traipsed through the castle. The hand of her beloved dangled a rope above her head, and yet she felt as though she might actually be closer to freedom than she’d ever been before. The prince could turn her in at any moment, but he hadn’t, and if she knew Topp Blatz, that meant she wasn’t the only one with schemes afoot.
But that wasn’t why she was here. No, Topp, her handsome executioner, would have to wait. She was here to see the one man in her life who had always known her secrets. Her father.
She’d requested a meeting with the promise that she had a long-overdue payment. In a manner of speaking, she had been paying her father in secrets to keep her alive since she was a small child. She wasn’t even five years old the day her father realized the truth about her. His demands and threats had started soon after.
On days like today, when payment was due, she wished she could go back and hush that small version of herself.How different my life could have been.
Elysia walked the familiar halls to her father’s office, heels clacking in an oh-so-satisfying manner. Her hand brushed thecool stones, and the memory of that day replayed in spite of herself. She’d sat in the corner of the very office she now walked toward with a book, flipping pages and eavesdropping. Three, maybe four years old—her nanny had been sick that day. She’d been happy to be stuck in the corner with her book, listening to her father scoff and argue about the price of things. It was familiar, soothing.
Her father’s guest had prattled on about the fine spiced meats he could ship to Kava. Delicacies and such. But there was a sound beneath his words that had caught her tiny ears. She had paused mid-page-flip to listen closer to what was being left unsaid.
She’d been able to do this for some time and hadn’t thought much of it. She figured everyone could do it. Hear the story beneath the lies. It wasn’t something she could turn on or off. It happened according to its own will, pulling her here and tugging her there. Sometimes it led her to overhear conversations. Other times, strange music enchanted her and sent her searching for its source. And then there were the times when she just simply knew something that she should not have known.
She’d made a mistake that day. Telling her father about the bad man and his spoiled meat.
From then on, her father’s instructions were clear: she could only tell such things to him. He rarely let her out of his sight for years, taking her to meetings and on long travels. Even now, she wasn’t sure if it had been out of fear of discovery or for the sheer usefulness of keeping her around. To everyone else, he appeared to be the world’s most doting father.
As she’d gotten older and it was no longer so simple to keep her by his side, her father had changed the rules. If she was ever caught, he would deny to his last breath that he knew. That cursed as she was, it was her duty to protect the family, and protecting the family meant feeding her father secrets.Confirming his uncanny instincts for the market, and steering him away when she detected foul play. Spying on men he did not like and finding skeletons to cause their ruin.
She’d cut down more men from their seats of glory than she could count at this point. Anyone important enough to be a nuisance to her father was bound to have a few dirty old secrets lying around.
But then she grew older. All of her peers began their adult lives, and she longed for the same. She grew restless with her father’s demands. She did not want to act as a sieve for the gross sludge of politicians and merchants and financiers. Always sifting for the piece of shit that would make her father happy. They all had secrets. It was nasty, tiresome work, all to satiate her father’s ambition and accrue the Crown more coin. The Crown had enough coin, and she’d had enough of her leash.
So, she had gotten a little sloppy. Didn’t bother to share a few tips. Ignored a few summons. Her punishment had been thorough.
Her father had not cared for his silent prodigy’s backlash, and he’d made sure she knew. All of her freedom had been ripped away for six whole months. She had been forced to follow him from sunup to sundown unless she was off slumming for dirt. His behavior gave her whiplash as he morphed from proud father to someone repulsed by the sight of her. That was a few years ago. She hadn’t missed a payment since then until the dreams started and her life fell apart.
Then again, it seemed she couldn’t help but step outside the narrow lines he had drawn for her. The recent incident with the bloodletters was the most glaring example, of course. The scars on her feet reminded her with each step just how far Jack Parker was willing to go to keep his daughter managed. But that was why she was here today. She knew she’d been pushing her luck and now wasn’t the time to set him off. The last thing she neededwas to lose his trust and be forced to live in the castle again, trailing behind his every step. She just needed to offer up a good enough tip to keep him satisfied and looking the other way.
The guard at the door nodded at her approach. “Miss Parker.”
She smiled in response, wondering at his presence.That’s odd.Her father didn’t usually have guards stationed at his door.
He opened the door, letting her through to her father’s office. The sweet smell of smoke cloaked her nose and a damp chill hung in the air. Her father, bear of a man that he was, rarely lit his fire even with all the rain and cold. Argued that he could not feel it touch his bones.
Jack Parker folded his hands atop the stack of papers he’d been evaluating and offered Elysia the full weight of his attention. His smile was so sincere it caught her heart. “If it isn’t my favorite daughter here to offer her father an unexpected gift.”
