“You’re letting your imagination run away with you, son. We have always been wary where the king is concerned, but there’s no reason for us to run around in a panic. We are still descendants of a princess, not a prince. Queen Valentina is still young, and Prince Hadrian still lives. I think, in the near future, his focus will be on them, not us. For now, we will continue with a search for undeniable evidence. We will not hide, and we will not run.”

Etan huffed but said no more, at least seeming to respect his father enough to obey. As far as I’d seen, he had little respect for much else.

But there was a part of me that completely understood Etan’s concern. If the Darkest Knights would cavalierly dispose of bodies in front of King Quinten’s palace to brag of their works, why was no one speaking of this?

There were too many questions floating around our situation, and none of us knew how we were going to find the answers.

Three

IT WAS MIDNIGHT, AND I still couldn’t sleep. One thing I missed about Keresken Castle—which had irritated me so much toward the end—was the constant stream of sound. The whisper of maids, the scuttling of feet, and even the rattle of carriages in the distance became a lullaby for me, and in the weeks since I’d left, I hadn’t grown used to its absence. I found myself straining my ears, hoping I’d find something to be the melody of an otherwise silent night. It didn’t happen.

Sometimes, when the world was too quiet, other sounds came to my head, ones that I’d invented. I would hear Silas screaming. I would hear him pleading. Or sometimes my mother would be crying out instead. My mind tried to fill in the spaces of what it didn’t know, imagining the worst. I tried to force myself to assume the best. I told myself my mother fainted from the fear of it all, and my father, distressed, was knelt over, clutching her hand. That way, he never saw death when it came, and she never felt it.

As for Silas, I couldn’t imagine him not staring down anything that came at him, good or bad. If he screamed, it wouldn’t have been for mercy or in fear. It would have been as he went down, fighting with every breath.

I tossed in my bed. I’d known my mind would be searching for other clues from King Quinten’s visit to the palace, but there was nothing else to find. At least, it seemed like there wasn’t. That didn’t stop me from trying and then wishing for sleep and then realizing there were too many things in my mind fighting it, including the fact that someone who hated me was right next door.

I finally got out of bed, daring to venture across the hall to Scarlet’s room. She wasn’t sleeping well these days, either.