Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
TIME PASSES IN A BLUR. I want to give justice to what the kitchen staff’s prepared for lunch, but my stomach keeps revolting, and all I can see is Abigail’s dead—
The library door slams open.
Devyn.
He's still in his business clothes—dark suit, no tie, collar open—but something is different. His jaw is tight. His eyes are blazing. He looks like he flew here, like he ran, like something chased him through the halls.
His gaze locks onto me.
Onto my face. My hands. The untouched food.
"Out," he says, and it takes me a moment to realize he's not talking to me.
The staff member who'd been adjusting the curtains vanishes without a word.
He crosses the room in four strides. Crouches in front of my chair. His hands grip the armrests on either side of me, caging me in, and his face is inches from mine.
“What happened?”
I shake my head, not knowing where or how to start.
"You're shaking. You haven't eaten. Mrs. Lyme said you looked like you'd seen a ghost." His eyes search my face, and whatever he finds there makes his expression go darker. "Who hurt you?"
"No one hurt me."
"Bailey."
"I'm serious. No one—"
"Then what?" He's so close I can see the gold flecks in his irises, the tension in his jaw, the barely-leashed fury vibrating through him. "Tell me what's wrong so I can fix it."
"You can't fix this."
"Try me."
I open my mouth. Close it. The words are stuck in my throat, tangled up with fear and exhaustion and the memory of that smell.
His hands tighten on the armrests.
"If you don't tell me," he says quietly, "I will assume the worst. I will have every member of my staff questioned until someone tells me what happened to my wife. I will—"
"There's a body,” I blurt out. "In the passage. Behind the chapel—”
“Tell me you had someone with you.”
“I...can’t?”
Devyn rises to his feet...and gulp.
Because he’s looking at me now like I’m about to be the second dead body in this house.
“What part of ‘staying out of trouble’ did you not understand?”
“To be fair...I didn’t even realize I was getting into trouble—”
“Did you not think that I would have had my men comb through the estate for any hidden passage that Abigail could have used?”
“I—”
“Did it not occur to you that whoever caused her disappearance could also make you disappear?”
“Well, now that you’ve, um, mentioned it—” I stop speaking. Because right now, Devyn is looking at me like he doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to kill me again and again.
"Do you not think it’s strange that you were able to find a hidden passage that my people were unable to find?”
I can only shake my head. I honestly don’t get what he’s saying—
“That passage was not from this world.”
I nearly stop breathing.
“Like you.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“And me.”
Shock turns me numb as I listen to Devyn tell me of his past. And one I could never have imagined even in a thousand years.
"Ten years ago, I walked through a door that shouldn't have existed.”
He's not looking at me now. His gaze is fixed on the window, on the fading light, on something far away.
“I woke up here, and everything was different. Everyone knew my name, my face, my history—but I had no memory of any of it. I just had...this." He gestures vaguely at the estate around us. "A kingdom I never asked for. A role I didn't choose."
I can barely breathe.
"Hewhay's," I whisper.
“Yes.”
“But when I told you about it...you acted like you didn’t believe me.”
“Because you could be lying about Hewhay’s.”
“Why would I even lie—”
“Hewhay’s is not the only way to come to this world. Or any other world for that matter. But unlike Hewhay’s—the other methods require you to pay a price. In blood.”
Chapter Ten
THEY TAKE ABIGAIL'S body away just before dawn.
I stand in the corridor with Mrs. Lyme, watching men in dark suits carry something wrapped in white through passages I'll never walk again without remembering. Devyn is somewhere ahead of them, making calls, giving orders, handling the unthinkable with the same cold efficiency he handles everything else.
Mrs. Lyme talks.
I don't know if she's filling the silence or if she's decided I need to know these things. But she talks, voice low and steady, and I listen. Stories about the king. Things I never knew. Things the world outside these walls will never know.
I file each one away like photographs in an album. Evidence of a man no one else seems to see.
A phone buzzes. Footsteps approach. One of Devyn's men appears at the end of the corridor, and whatever he says makes Mrs. Lyme's face go pale.
"The Court of Stakeholders," she says in a low voice. "Emergency session. They're convening now."
Now. Not tomorrow. Not after we've slept, or showered, or had time to process that there was a body rotting beneath our feet for weeks.