The thought makes my toes tingle inside my boots. I feel suddenly compelled to tilt my head back and raise my arms like wings, pretending to be one of those enormous birds, wheeling between the snowcapped peaks.
“Careful, or someone might catch you enjoying Vanzador….”
I shriek and whip around.
Prince Alaric leans casually against the wall in the opposite corner. Watching me.
“What are you doing here?Howdid you get in here?” I glance back the way I came. I didn’t see or hear him follow me in, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention.
Stupid! Careless! This is how you end up dead at the bottom of a cliff!
I don’t know if Rowenna is scolding me or if I’m scolding myself this time. Either way, I have to be better than this. Smarter than this.
“Are you spying on me?” I demand, suddenly plagued by images of Alaric hiding in my rooms. He could have been watching me for hours. He could have ambushed me at any moment.
Alaric rolls his eyes. “I have a country to run. I don’t have time to waste spying on you.”
“But—”
“If I was spying with the intent to kill you, why would I wait for you to find this hidden room? Which you may not have discovered for ages? If ever?”
While I bumble over these inconvenient facts, Alaric pushes away from the wall and crosses the room. The sunlight streaming through the windows makes his curls shine like wet ink, and his freshly shaved jaw looks carved from granite. His midnight blue waistcoat fits him like a second skin and paints the perfect contrast to his pale skin and storm-gray eyes.
Elodie wasn’t wrong about his looks—he’s as impressive andintimidating as this room—but no amount of outward beauty can hide his rotten, maggot-eaten core.
“If you’re not spying on me, what are you doing here?” I finally demand.
“This isoursolarium.” Alaric nods over his shoulder, where the outline of a second door is barely visible in the glass. Beside the door, there’s a desk cluttered with quills, inkpots, and a low bookshelf. I was so taken with the view, I didn’t notice any of it before. “My chambers are just through there. I often work in here,” he says as he slides behind the desk.
“We have adjoining rooms?” I sputter.
“Most married couples do. Is that a problem?”
“It was clearly a problem for Rowenna,” I snap.
“How so?”
“How do you think? She turns up dead, and youjust so happento have private access to her chambers?”
“Ah, back to accusing me of murder.” Alaric picks up a stack of papers and begins to read. “I knew it wouldn’t take long.”
“Because it’s the truth—I’d bet my life on it!”
“It isn’t wise to be so flippant about one’s “You shouldn’t be so flippant with your life.”
“Why? Because you plan on ending mine?” I challenge.
Alaric flips the page without looking up. “I don’t need to plan anything. I’m confident you’ll take care of that on your own—just like your sister.”
“We both know Ro didn’tfalloff that cliff,” I say, glaring at his forehead with the burning intensity of the sun. But he doesn’t glance up, and after several excruciating minutes, it feels like a furious swarm of bees are buzzing around my head. “You can’t be serious! We’re really supposed to just sit in heretogether? Did you do this with Rowenna?”
Alaric finally regards me with a beleaguered sigh. “As I’ve told you several times, I rarely saw your sister. She never even discovered this adjoining room.”
“You’re lying,” I automatically argue, even though Rowenna never oncementioned this glass room in her letters. There could be a thousand reasons for that, though. Maybe she rarely came because the view of Vanzador’s prosperity made her sick, or maybe she never crossed paths with Alaric here, so it wasn’t worth mentioning. Or she could have been worried the Vanzadorians were reading her letters before sending them. Maybe that’s why she excluded so many details—she was writing in a sort of code.
“How could you possibly know how Rowenna spent her time here?” Alaric presses.
“Ro was the shrewdest, most observant person I’ve ever met,” I retort. “If you thought she didn’t know about this solarium, it was due to her brilliant subterfuge and your lack of awareness.Orbecause you used this secret room to access her chambers and kill her before she could discover it.” I shoot him a pointed look.
