Page 27 of A Valiant Prince

“Baby, how long have you been at this?” I ask her.

She scratches her head. “Uh, I…maybe two hours or three?” she answers.

“You need sleep,” I say to her.

“I know,” she says on a yawn. “But I feel like I’m so close. Like I’m seeing the puzzle pieces but they aren’t quite fitting together yet,” she adds. “You know what I mean?”

I shake my head. She sighs.

“I just feel like we’re missing something, something really obvious. It’s almost like…” She trails off.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like…Sten seems like the most obvious answer…maybe he’s too obvious,” she says slowly, contemplating each word as it leaves her mouth. My hands drop to my sides and consider what she’s saying.

“You don’t think Sten is behind this, do you?” I ask her as I sit down on a chair next to the desk where she’s working.

She shakes her head slowly. “No…I don’t,” she says. We stare at each other as we both process that.

I know that there is no way that I’ll be tearing Susanna away from that laptop. And there’s also no way that I’m going to go back to sleep. That’s when I remember that I left the box of my mother’s belongings in the car. Maybe, I’ll do some of my own research.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to her as I pop up and walk out of the room. Pete’s in the living room, a single lamp is on, illuminating his face in the otherwise dark void.

“Where you off to?” he asks me.

“I just forgot something in the car,” I say as I walk to the garage. I grab the box and head back to the room, glancing over my shoulder to see Pete look up from his phone briefly before continuing to text or peruse social media, or whatever the hell guards do in the early morning hours.

I plop the box on the bed and take the lid off.

“What’s that?” Anna asks, turning in her chair.

“Some of my mother’s things,” I say to her.

She leans over from her chair to exam the contents of the box.

“Is that a…lover’s eye?” she asks, pointing to the locket.

I nod. “You’ve heard of them?” I ask her, a bit surprised yet not. I hand it to her.

“Yes, they are very rare, but…” She pauses as she examines it in her hand. She looks up at me.

“This isn’t old. I mean, it’s not an antique,” she says, turning it over and putting it under a lamp to further examine.

“I honestly don’t know where she got it from. I have a vague memory of her showing it to me when I was a kid. Actually, it was the day before I left for camp,” I say.

“Strange,” she says as she hands it back to me. “It looks like your eye.”

“Yes. I wonder now if she had it made with a photograph of me,” I ponder.

She shrugs and looks back at the box. “Is that a photo of your parents?” she asks.

I nod and hand the photograph to her. “I saw photos of your mom at your grandparents’ home,” she murmurs as she surveys the photo. “This was taken before Uncle Eddie was king.”

“Yes, it’s around the time they met,” I explain.

“What else is in there?” she asks, pointing to the box. I hand her a stack of newspaper articles and some photographs. She sifts through them.

“What was she covering? I mean, she was in Europe to cover a story, no?” Anna asks, glancing back up at me.

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