Trying to keep my voice as calm and measured as possible, I pat the bed beside me. ‘Why don’t you sit down? I think there’s been some kind of mistake.’
Yes, a mistake. A cruel, sadistic, green-eyed mistake.
Flint doesn’t sit down. His fists are clenched, knuckles protruding. ‘There’s no use denying it, Blaze,’ he says. ‘Spinner saw. She saw him.’
Heat creeps into my cheeks. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
My brother sighs. ‘How could you be so stupid?’
Embarrassment turns swiftly to anger. I stand up and face him head-on. ‘Stupid?’ I repeat. ‘So I’m stupid now, am I? And how, exactly, am I stupid?’
‘Nobody can find out about this,’ says Flint. ‘Nobody.’
I stare at him. If Spinner saw me with Fox in the maze, why hadn’t she mentioned it before now? And if she’d seen us emerging from the serf tunnels together, the most she can do is accuse us of being in the same place at the same time. In any case, if she saw us last night she’d also have seen thatFox left me at my door. So why is my brother ransacking my room? And why is he shouting about marriage anddefiling my honourand –
‘It’s not your fault, Blaze,’ Flint says quietly. ‘It’s mine. I should have …’ He stops, takes a breath. That’s when all the anger seems to drain out of him and he moves across the room, slumping down on to the window seat. ‘I should have put a stop to it. I should have handled it differently. But I never expected him to take it this far.’ An anguished look spreads across his face. ‘You’ve lived a sheltered life. You’re young –’
‘You do realize you’re only ten minutes older than me, right?’
Flint glares at me. I shut up.
‘You’re young,’ he continues, ‘and you’re naive, and he’s taken advantage of that and he’s going to pay for it, prince or not.’
My chest constricts. ‘Wait,’ I say slowly. ‘Who are we talking about?’
Flint looks at me incredulously. ‘Hal, of course. Who else? Or is this your way of telling me that you’ve been taking multiple boys into your bed?’
There it is, my jaw, lying cracked and broken on the floor at my feet.
Hal? My brother thinks that Hal spent the night here, in my bedchamber, in mybed?
Flint folds his arms. ‘Well?’
Laughter bubbles uncontrollably up my throat. Relieved by the misunderstanding, I sit back down opposite my brother. ‘Care to explain?’
‘Spinner came by your rooms to check on you because you decided not to show up to the feast –again, I might add – and she saw Hal knock on the door, she saw it open, and she saw him go inside. Inside your chambers, late at night, when you were alone and unchaperoned.’
I frown, pinpricks of confusion stabbing into me as I try to make sense of his words. To reveal I know nothing about this is to reveal that I wasn’t in my rooms last night, which will only lead to questions. But Flint is looking at me as though I’m this sad, foolish, ignorant little girl and it’s making me so angry that I have to say something in my defence without incriminating myself in an entirely different way.
‘I wasn’t at the feast,’ I begin. ‘But I wasn’t here either. I was … in the library.’
Yes, good. No one is ever in the library, so no one can dispute whether I was there or not. Apart from the old man, but he’s apparently decided to disappear off the face of the earth.
‘Oh, really?’ says Flint, in a voice that tells me he doesn’t believe a word.
‘Really. I was reading up on … on the history of the Rain Singers. River lent me another book he thought I might be interested in. I’m sure Hal was just dropping off some roses from the palace gardens.’
‘I see.’ My brother nods once, twice. ‘Then could you explain why Spinner also informed me that Hal did not return to the feast? If, as you say, you weren’t in fact here, then whyever should the prince have cause to stay away such a great length of time?’
I stare at him, mystified and irritated, feeling somewhat asthough I were on trial for a crime I didn’t commit. ‘Maybe … maybe he waited for me to return. Or maybe he just didn’t feel like going back to the feast straight after. Maybe he took awalk. Last I checked, he can do what he wants, being the prince and all. But whatever he did, I don’t know, because I wasn’t here. I was in the library, like I said, and I lost track of time. Happy?’
Flint picks at a loose thread on the hem of his doublet. ‘Not particularly, no.’
I throw a pillow in his direction to get him to look at me. ‘Flint, I’m your sister. Please believe me when I say that the Crown Prince of Ostacredid notspend the night in my bed. And nor did anyone else, for that matter, unless you count Mouse. All right?’
My brother squints at me, reading my face. Then he gets up from the window seat and sits down next to me. ‘All right,’ he says in a defeated sort of way. ‘I believe you.’
‘If you had found him in here, would you really have challenged him to aduel?’ I ask.
