“I don’t know. At least as long as I’m here, I suppose.” Her focus was drawn away for a moment as Dmitri laughed nearby. When she looked back at Jax, there was a sad hopelessness in her eyes that tugged on his heartstring. “He wants to make sure that I leave an engaged woman.”
“I suppose it’s time for the two of us to sneak away, then.” Jax winked.
Katrin looked at him warily. “Why?”
“Because if he thinks we’re off having a romantic rendezvous, he’ll be here waiting anxiously for the announcement of your upcoming nuptials andnotin his library where Dmitri and I will be.”
“This is Dmitri’s party. How do you plan on getting his attention without anyone noticing?”
Jax reached into his satchel and pulled out his panpipes and the key that Odessa had given him. He grinned impishly. “We’re going to send the emus into battle.”
Chapter Nineteen
JAX
“Really, Jax? Emus?” Dmitri scolded as he led Jax down the path that led to Boris’s home. “You couldn’t think of any other way to get my attention?”
“I thought of several. This just seemed more fun.”
The prince heaved an exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes. “Of course it was. Care to enlighten me as to what’s going on? I thought you were helping Odessa.”
“That wasn’t Odessa.”
“What?” Dmitri stopped short in his surprise, and Jax prodded him forward.
“That was Katrin disguised by Boris tolooklike Odessa.”
“Why?”
Jax gestured to the modest stone manor that appeared as they crested the top of a short hill. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Katrin indicated that Boris’s plan was that she would receive a proposal instead of Odessa.”
“But wouldn’t that break the curse?”
“That’s what I thought, but she would neither confirm nor deny the hypothesis, which makes me wonder. Boris has been far too careful and crafty to simply let her go; he must have a reason.”
Dmitri led him around to the back of the house and to a door off the kitchen garden. He put his ear to the door and jiggled the handle a few times before pushing it open with a creak. “The tumblers are broken,” he said in response to Jax’s questioning look. “Dessa and I got into our fair share of trouble as teenagers. I’m just glad that no one has fixed it after all these years.”
The house was eerily empty as they crept through the halls, and though Jax knew that chasing down and corralling the emus would likely keep Boris occupied for the near future, he couldn’t help checking over his shoulder every few steps to ensure that they weren’t going to be ambushed.
“Here.” Dmitri paused outside a heavy wooden door, illuminated at the bottom by a thin band of firelight. “This is Boris’s library. I’ll be honest; I have no idea what we’re going to find inside. Dessa was never allowed past this door.”
“Katrin said that she was cursed because she found something in her father’s notes. I’m hoping that whatever that was, it’s still there.” Jax squared his shoulders and pushed the door open. Unlike the kitchen door, it swung open soundlessly, revealing a cozy room with shelves full of books. A long worktable took up most of the far side of the room, cluttered with glass jars and tools that would have been more at home in an apothecary than a library. Stacks of books and neatly arranged piles of loose paper filled one end of the table, looking as if they had spilled off the shelves lining the walls that were already full to bursting.
Jax stepped over the threshold and walked past the dying fire in the hearth and the comfortable-looking chair that sat in frontof it to the table. He picked up one of the books, a dull-looking study of reptile digestion, and thumbed through it.
“At least he keeps everything organized,” Dmitri commented from where he stood, scanning Boris’s shelves. “Do you think he would have filed his notes away alphabetically?”
Jax snorted, closing the book with a snap and tapping the spine against his hand as he looked around. “Perhaps you should check under ‘Villainous Schemes’ or ‘Failures of Fatherhood.’”
A leather book with an unadorned, weathered spine on the bottom of a pile of books drew his eye. The corners were bent and tattered, and the pages were uneven, as if loose papers had been added in over time. He pulled it out and began flipping through the pages, listening with only half an ear as Dmitri continued speaking.
“I still don’t understand what could possibly drive a father to do something like that to their child. I remember seeing them together when I was younger andwishingthat my father would take even half that much interest in me. Boris always seemed like such a doting parent.”
Jax’s eyes caught Odessa’s name, and he stopped, reading the lines twice before hastily flipping back to the front of the book. His jaw slowly fell open, and the prince’s voice seemed to be coming from far away.
“Although I suppose I’m not much better. I should have broken her curse the moment I found out about it, rather than leaving it for someone else to take care of. She’s been my best friend since we were children, if anyone should be willing to break her curse, it’s me.”
Jax slowly lowered the notebook and blinked. He shook his head as the information slowly sank in. “You shouldn’t.”
