Drugged coffee, a dark room, voices. A knife and blood on her hands. She needed those memories, those details to have the rest. She’d just begun to face this.

The room was very quiet. Through the west windows, the light was lovely, serene. It turned the red carpet to blood without violence.

“So you believe the coffee Gabriella carried in this was drugged.” Armand spoke without heat as he glanced at the red thermos that sat on his desk.

“It’s logical.” Reeve didn’t sit. He faced Armand, as well, standing just beside Brie’s chair. “It also fits in with the recurring dream Brie has.”

“The thermos can be analyzed.”

“Yes, and should be.” Though his eyes were very calm, he watched Armand’s every movement, every expression. Just as he knew Armand watched his. “The question is why it wasn’t found before this.”

Armand met Reeve’s gaze. When he spoke, he spoke with authority, not with friendship. “It would appear the police have been careless.”

“It would appear a great many people have been careless.” It wasn’t as easy as it had once been, Reeve discovered, to hold back temper. He saw nothing on Armand’s face but cool, steady calculation. And he didn’t like it. “If the coffee was drugged, as I believe it was, the implications are obvious.”

Armand drew out one of his long, dark cigarettes and lit it slowly. “Indeed.”

“You take it very calmly, Your Highness.”

“I take it as I must.”

“And I as I must. I’m taking Brie out of Cordina until this business is resolved. She isn’t safe in the palace.”

Armand’s jaw tensed, but only briefly. “If I hadn’t been concerned for her safety, I wouldn’t have brought you here.”

“Without the bond between our families, I never would have come.” Reeve’s reply was mild and final. “It’s not enough anymore. Now I want answers.”

Armand was suddenly and completely royal. “You have no right to demand them of me.”

Reeve took one step forward. He needed only one. “Your crown won’t protect you.”

“Enough!” Brie sprang out of the chair to stand between Reeve and her father. If it was a protective move, it wasn’t a conscious one. She couldn’t have said which of the two she sought to protect. Her anger whipped through her with a force that helped smother other emotions. “How dare the two of you speak around me as if I were incapable of thinking for myself? How dare the two of you protect me as though I were incompetent?”

“Gabriella!” Armand was out of his chair before it fully registered how often he’d heard and dealt with that tone before. “Mind your tongue.”

“I won’t.” Infuriated, she turned on him, leaning over the desk with both palms pressed to it. Another time he would have thought her magnificent—as her mother had been. “I won’t be polite and inoffensive. I’m not a cotton-candy princess to be displayed, but a woman. It’s my life, do you understand? I won’t stand here silently while the pair of you bully each other like a couple of arrogant children over the same prize. I want answers.”