“Father, I haven’t got time to explain. You have to trust me.” She met his eyes, willed him to listen, to yield—just for once. “Who did this to you?”

He surrendered. “The physician. His medicines reinforce the … the spell.” He spat the word, as if it were a curse.

“And why? What game is Jonas Thorn playing?”

Her father shook his head. “Look not to the pawn, but to the player. Who has gained the most from my madness?”

Constance frowned. “The Justice? But he hates magic … Why …?”

“For power. Why else?” The Duke was gazing upon his ravaged hands with disgust, as if at the hands of a beggar. “All manner of hypocrisy is practiced in the name of power.”

“You know this for certain?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe the Justice was capable of such self-deceit. “It doesn’t really make sense…”

The Duke met her eyes witheringly. “I know it. And if you have half a brain, you ought to know it too. Of course it doesn’t make sense: the Justice is a fanatic. He is not a logical man, and it is likely he sees no conflict between the end he desires and the means he chooses to achieve it.”

Her mind was racing, but she brushed aside her other questions. Instead, she took his hands to ask the one that truly mattered, the question she had saved until she knew he might be capable of answering. His fingers were dry and papery in her own, the hands of a very old man, though the Duke was barely fifty. “Father, I am looking for something. … Do you remember the brooch that Mother used to wear on her chemise?”

Confusion clouded his expression, but he nodded. “I remember it. She wore it always,” he said, and despite his forcibly matter-of-fact tone, a tightness showed around his eyes. “I had gifted her far finer pieces of jewelry, and yet…”

The relationship between her parents had been strained, Constance knew: a marriage of two strong-headed people was rarely without complications. And after her mother’s death, the Duke had all too quickly moved from mourning to his second marriage. She’d always hated that. And still … looking at his face now, she knew some part of him had truly loved her mother.

“Have you seen it since? Do you know where it is?”

“Why would I have seen it?” He fixed her with a hard stare. “What is this all about?”

Constance felt a precious part of her hope flicker and die. She’d assumed her father’s induced madness was a sign he knew something important, something that would lead her to the answers she sought.

When her father spoke again, there was a new softness in his voice. “You should not have returned. Is this about what happened that night … when I saw …?”