“Everyone who contracted the magical curse got it on the same day, but some have progressed slower than others,” I said. “The symptoms seem to be the same. First, a moon-shaped mark appears on their chest and slowly grows. As it expands, the symptoms worsen.”
“Symptoms being weakness and growing extreme fatigue.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed in thought. “Everyone on this list is fae.”
I nodded. “That has been clear from the start. Only fae are affected.”
“No, I mean, everyone afflicted is pure-blood fae. Not half-blood, and… what if they also aren’t vampires or werewolves?”
Vampires and werewolves could be fae that had been turned. And they were illegal, so they spent their lives hiding it. “I can’t imagine how we’d determine that.”
“I know someone who might help.” She grabbed the computer from me and settled it on her lap. I didn’t care that she took it, but the familiarity that it implied startled me for a moment. Lizzy could be forward when she chose, but she was also aware of social propriety. “Here, I’m going to mark everyone who’s known to have the disease from Austen Heights. And then I’ll ask the person who probably knows.”
Then again, the way she was hiding the identity of ‘the person’ from me might cancel out the computer grab. “I swear to you, if you disclose to me who it is, I won’t tell anyone, and they won’t get in trouble.” If a fae made a promise, they had to follow through, so Lizzy had to know I spoke the truth.
Still, she hesitated, her teeth sinking into her lip, but then she nodded. “It’s Mary, my sister. She knows the werewolves and most of the vampires in town.”
“How would she know that?”
“She… assists them, especially the werewolves, in making potions that keep them from turning on a full moon.”
It was illegal to do so. Only because helping a werewolf to live undetected was illegal.
Lizzy watched me carefully for a reaction.
“Your sister is a hero,” I said.
The tenseness in Lizzy’s shoulders relaxed. “I think so.” She finished highlighting the names from Austen Heights. “Is there anything significant about the date the curse affected everyone?”
I hesitated. I didn’t have any proof. Only a correlation that seemed too coincidental for me to ignore. And Lizzy didn’t know that the two dates aligned. “It’s the day my parents were found dead.”
Her eyes grew wide, and she studied me. “I thought your parents died several days after?”
I shook my head. “The council and my family agreed we’d announce them at different times and make them appear separate to avoid rumors and speculation. But they’re actually the same day.”
“Okay,” she said, soaking in the new information with relative ease. “So you believe that Moonrot has something to do with the death of the king and queen?”
“I think it has something to do with their murder.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and went a little rigid. “Wait, murder? I thought they died in a car accident.”
“I thought so too, but things don’t add up.” I pulled up a couple of documents on my computer. One was a coroner’s report. “You see? The estimated time of death doesn’t match up with how long they were supposedly driving in the car. It only takes thirty minutes from Pemberley to get to where they died on the road.”
“And the coroner says they died about an hour or two before that,” Lizzy examined the document. “So you think someone killed them beforehand and then staged the car accident?”
“Fae magic could make it seem like an accident without the killer needing to be in the car if you used a brief animating magic.”
Her hand landed on my arm. “Darcy, I’m so sorry.”
I clenched my jaw, a sense of resolve coursing through me. “There has to be some connection between Moonrot and my parents' murder. The curse must have been released by the killer or as a result of their death.” I took a slow breath, trying not to show how her compassion made me want to confess my true feelings to her. Anyone would be compassionate after a story like that. It didn’t mean anything. “I have a list of everyone who had been near my parents close to their deaths.”
At some point, Netherfield had added two mugs of hot chocolate on the adjacent table, and within the steam drifted tiny hearts with the initials D+L. The manor was anything but subtle.
Lizzy had slid even closer as she gazed at the list, her entire left side flush with my right. My arm itched to move and place itself around her shoulders, to invite her closer, but I refused to give in to the temptation, knowing she most likely wouldn’t welcome it.
“These are all members of the council,” she said.
