The humor drained from his face. “Are you sure you want me to answer that? It’s not very pleasant.”

It seemed nothing about Darling’s past was. “Yes, please.”

Maris paused as if he was considering something. After a few seconds, he narrowed his eyes on her. “Come with me.”

She followed him out of the room and down a long, winding hallway. Ornate and gilded, it was breathtaking. For all the brutality members of the Cruel family had committed, the palace itself showed nothing but beauty. They passed countless portraits of Darling’s numerous ancestors who had ruled before him.

“Where are we going?”

Maris slowed. “The family wing.” He opened a set of heavy doors that led to another ornate, marbled hallway that stretched out for what seemed to be a mile at least. Each side of it was lined with doors. “This is where the governor’s wife and children stay whenever they’re in residence.”

So this was where Darling’s room had been before he killed his uncle.

As if he heard her thoughts, Maris led her down to the next to the last set of doors on the left side of the hall. She wasn’t sure what to expect as he opened the room and stood back for her to enter first.

Large and airy, it was definitely a boy’s room. Decorated in maroon, dark blue and gold—the national Caronese colors—the room held a large canopy bed with a seal on the headboard that matched the seal in Darling’s current chambers. There was an old computer on a huge desk that was littered with chemistry sets and spaceships.

The wall on her right was covered with intricate drawings and sketches pinned over each other. “Are those… chemical compounds and bombs?”

Maris laughed. “Darling was always a little strange. But yes, they are components to different devices and explosives he was working on.”

But as she looked around more, she was nonplussed by what she saw. The room was like a time capsule. Covered in dust and obvious signs of neglect, it appeared as if Darling had been ripped out of it as a boy and never allowed to return. There were even toys left scattered across the floor.

It didn’t make sense. “This was his room before Arturo died?”

Grief and sadness lined Maris’s features before he spoke. “We were at school, laughing during study hall about something innocuous. Suddenly, there was a shadow falling over us. Thinking it was a teacher there to yell at us to lower our voices, we looked up to see three Caronese guards. Without any compassion or decency, their captain glared at Darling and said coldly, ‘Your father’s been assassinated. You must come with us.’ ”

Bile rose in her throat at the cruelty. How could anyone be that cold to a child when telling him his father was dead? “Are you serious?”

He nodded. “I’ll never forget the look on his face when he heard those words. They didn’t give him even a second to recover or pack so much as a toothbrush before he was hauled back here. He was only twelve. A scared little boy who had no idea what had happened. When he tried to see his mother, she refused.”