Every night, I asked Midnight to free Fraleigh from her servitude. Each time, Alastar roared from the bottom of his pit and created a new crack in Derrick’s foundation.
As soon as Alastar shook the floor, Midnight would whisk me away to the safety of my bedroom in the paper castle before he disappeared.
My nights were sleepless and my days were no reprieve. Brietta sometimes called meetings with Annalisa and I to discuss a new detail in Freya’s diary, only for Annalisa to snap that Brietta had interpreted her mother’s scrawl wrong.
General Hyton sometimes gave me a break from the bickering and we would play a round of “answer for answer” over a cup of honeyed tea. In our visits, I learned he met Astrid the summer before his Junior year when he accompanied his mother to visit Hilda. Riyan was conceived when Ragnar snuck Astrid into a tavern during Winter Solstice. I also learned the General had to be cold and cruel to his son to keep him safe—anyone suspecting Riyan was a Hyton heir would have put him in more danger than he was already in.
In exchange, he asked me if I could learn to perform a blood bond enchantment.
My white flame surprised me with the truth—I could.
Though I was unsure if I could create a blood bond as strong as Fraleigh’s, my magic was strengthened with every night I mended Derrick’s wounds.
We had the same nightly routine. He locked his arms around my waist, I greeted Midnight, and I found a new door that led to a memory where Alastar had roared through his mind.
The memories grew heavier on my heart. He saw Freya draped limply on a couch and did not know if she was dead or alive. He shed lonely tears on his sixteenth birthday. He escorted each of his older sisters at their Presentations before they were torn away from him. He even refused to let go of Sapphira’s arm the instant he saw Emperor Orlon’s grey hair.
As the moon waxed in the sky, the walls in the paper castle got narrower and narrower until I was crawling on my belly to make my repairs.
But I pressed on. I was only able to mend the cracks in the walls because Derrick was always fighting Alastar, though he did not even know he was doing it. With everything I had seen in Derrick’s memories, a weaker man would have succumbed to that voracious need for control.
Made me wonder what he was fighting for.
Regardless of the reason, his resilience gave me hope. After eleven Dukes, he could finally be the one to prevail over Alastar and release Fraleigh.
So if Derrick was going to fight, I would fight too.
At every party, Derrick gripped the arm of his throne while I sat in his lap, my Hyton Blue skirt draping over his legs. Though my eyelids were heavy as bricks, I forced myself to keep vigil over the ballroom, tasting each goblet the servants brought before letting Derrick have a sip.
Mother seemed to be acting in a similar role. She followed General Hyton around the ballroom like a dark shadow, her full lips always on the rim of his goblet before she handed it to him.
Annalisa usually only made a brief appearance at the parties before the crowd overwhelmed her, but Brietta swept through the ballroom with a dazzling smile. She mingled with men and women in every House color, occasionally throwing an approving glance to my place on the dais.
If I stayed glued to Derrick’s lap, she did not have to worry about becoming pregnant.
But she did not always approve of my methods.
“You are cutting his meat for him?” she had asked one morning.
I folded my arms. “He gets very tense when he sees blood. I cannot risk him falling into another convulsing fit.”
She pursed her lips and returned to reading Freya’s diary. “Just feed him haddock from now on.”
After a week of restlessness, the parties ceased and the season of business had begun.
I clung to Derrick’s arm as we walked through the palace halls. His first official meeting with the Barons was in mere minutes.
Derrick wore the crown of Lycaster, his cape billowing from his shoulders and his chest gleaming with chains of gems.
He glanced down at his chest. “I hate wearing these.” He twisted one of the heavy chains before releasing it with athunkagainst his chest. “They werehis.”
I smirked. “Well, with how inheritance works, the jewels were always yours. Your father just held onto them for a while.”
He kissed my forehead. “Will you ever stop dazzling me with your brilliance?” He slowed his stride and pulled me closer to the wall. “I want you at the meeting with me.”
I knitted my brows. “But I am a woman. The Barons would take it as a grave insult.”
Even though I was a Baron. The thought tasted sour—what good was power if it relied on the acceptance of others?
