I don't take my eyes off it.
"Did you mean to use it?" he asks. “The potion?”
My jaw tightens. He deserves the answer.
"I don't know." And that’s the gods’ honest truth, that I don’t even know whether I would have used it.
He stares at me.
The disgust in his face lands harder than a fist.
"And if I had disappointed her?" he asks. "If I had said the wrong thing at dinner? If my father had pushed hard enough? Would you have poured it into her cup and watched her forget me?"
"I don't know." My words come out brokenly.
"Why?"
Because I was a coward is too clean. Too easy.
"Because getting rid of it would have meant admitting I had been wrong about you. Keeping it let me pretend I still had control."
Caden turns away from me. He walks three steps into the road, then back before looking at the letter in his hand.
“If not you,” he asks softly. “Then who?”
Here. Here’s where I say out loud who I really think did it. And with everything that I’ve done wrong, I don’t know if there’s any going back from this.
“Your brother.” The two words are like sand in my throat.
"My brother," he says after a moment, in disbelief. "You're certain?"
"As certain as I can be,” I admit. “He came to the wedding. He stood by the coats. Your father told me he wanted the courtship dead months ago. I can’t think of anyone else."
"That's everything?"
Shit, I think I’ve lost him.
"That's everything,” I admit.
He gives me a sharp, bitter laugh. "No ledgers. No witness. No potion bottle. And you've already decided it was Princeton."
"So have you."
That gets him, because he blinks, almost like I caught him off-guard on that. "He's my brother."
"And Mirelle is my sister." The words come out harder than I mean them to.
Caden steps toward me.
For the first time, I see the Voss in him, the temper underneath all that quiet. It’s not the Duke's calculation or Princeton's polish. It’s the fury of a man who got most of what he wanted in life.
"You don't get to say that to me," he says.
"Why not?" I challenge. Not to necessarily contradict him, but tto point out that we’re two sides of the same coin.
"Because you bought the first weapon used against her."
That shuts my mouth. His chest rises and falls. So does mine.
