Page 35 of The Prince of New York

I snickered. “And how is Pink Lady doing?”

Terry opened his suit jacket, revealed his inner pocket, and showed me his pet squirrel, who was curled up for a nap. “She’s on another round of medications, so she’s extra sleepy right now. Had she been more active, I would have needed to leave her in her cage at work. She’s no longer contagious, but she’s still recovering.”

“She’ll be all right, though?”

“She will be. She was pretty weak when I adopted her, which is why she’s slow in recovering. The other palace squirrels are doing much better. We’re still taking care with your sister’s rats, but that’s just due to an overabundance of caution. Mostly, she’s regrowing her fur and gaining weight. She’s still tender in a spot or two.” Rather than let the sleeping beast lie, he retrieved his pet from his pocket, waking her up with a little kiss on her nose. Pink Lady squeaked, and then she snuggled with her owner. “I have a theory that she used to be someone’s pet.”

I could believe it; people seemed to think the palace grounds were a good place to dump unwanted pets. “There are currently four cats, six dogs, three peacocks, and a turkey indicating you are likely correct.”

The turkey had been the latest arrival, having been dumped, bound in a burlap bag, near the gate a few days before Thanksgiving. I questioned the turkey, as it was a rather rare color mutation. She would live out the rest of her life in turkey paradise, as my sister was incapable of turning animals away.

“We figured out where the turkey came from,” Terry said with laughter in his voice.

“Oh? I hadn’t heard.”

“Illinois holds responsibility. We are deciding on retaliatory measures. In good news for Illinois, there was somebody on hand keeping an eye on the bird to make certain her delivery was without incident.”

Of course. Who else would send us a fancy turkey? “I don’t suppose I can help with the retaliatory measures?”

“You can. In fact, I think it’s an excellent idea. We can do some planning while in California. That leads me to some issues with the trip.”

“My sister, aware our parents are hovering, is going to want you to stick close because there is almost no chance they’ll do anything to you other than potentially disable you temporarily, where unknown agents might not be so fortunate.”

I could read the writing on the wall, and for the most part, I even agreed with it.

“When honest about it, I was expecting it to work out like this. Your sister would never forgive herself if anything happens to you and she could have prevented it, and this has the least risk to everyone involved. It’s also part of why Eddie is going to be with you at all times. We’re using their beliefs and feelings against them. If you’re surrounded by those theywon’thurt readily, we have the highest chance of nobody getting hurt at all. The problem with this?You’rethe one most likely to be hurt as a result. And yes, your sister is aware of this reality. But while you run high chances of being hurt, you will have low chances of being killed—and she’s mostly all right with that. Injuries can be healed. Death can’t be.”

Those bastards. The fact they worried Rachel bothered me. For our family’s dark legacy to end, I would need to be the one to end it. Knowing my family, there was only one option: lethal force. “Does dead count as hurt? Because I have every intention of making them come down with a severe case of dead, Terry.”

“For this, nobody getting hurt applies only to us. But the hard part of this will be putting you in a position where you can eliminate both in one shot. They are not without their defenses, Ian. And I’m genuinely concerned they will go for a non-fatal injury to contain everyone. If they are wise, they’ll understand their best course of action is to injure you. They know we’ll cooperate to make certain you recover, and thatwillbuy them time.”

I nodded, well aware of how the family magic worked. “I can overpower their defenses, but I do need to strike without warning. There will be no snapped fingers, no gestures, nothing. I will simply will them to become ash and smoke, and that will be their fate.”

Terry sighed, and I wondered how he handled the reality I had no issues with being injured if it meant my parents would never be able to hurt anyone else. He regarded me with a solemn expression before asking, “Will you be all right, Ian? We’re asking a lot of you.”

I took my time thinking about it, knowing I would not be able to lie to the empath. Finally, I sighed and nodded. “I would do far more than kill our parents for my sister and my kingdom, Terry. And I’d do so without hesitation if it means protecting Madelyn. I’m willing to live for them. Killing for them is a small ask in comparison.”

“Yes, it is. Things will get better. It will take some time, but things will get better. I wish I could promise the when and the how, but there you have it.”

I wondered what my sister and I had done to deserve someone like Terry sweeping in and restoring order to the mess that was our lives. Rather than ask, I watched Madelyn and allowed myself a smile. “They already are.”

* * *

Madelyn managedto drain four cameras out of juice, taking thousands of pictures during our tour of the vineyard grounds. She dove into the grape juice flight with amusing enthusiasm, earning the adoration of the staff. Then, in what I viewed as one of the kindest gestures anyone had done in a while, the manager presented a bottle of wine that had been stripped of its alcohol.

It was an experiment to determine if it would make wines accessible to people like me and my sister, who couldn’t enjoy traditional vintages.

I conferred with Dr. Stanton, who was on hand in case of any incidents, and she agreed to the test.

Somehow, the wine tasted like wine without trying to kill me. I stared at the doctor with wide eyes before turning to the manager and asking, “Is this the only bottle of it?”

“We prepared an entire case hoping it would make our wine accessible to you,” he replied with a smile. “It has different tones than our regular wines, but we slipped it into a tasting recently, and it scored quite well. We are using the alcohol stripped from the wine for some specialty liquors. The process isn’t as expensive as we anticipated with the right talents on hand, and we have several staffers who can handle the work.”

“When we get back to the palace, we should prank my sister with this,” I informed Dr. Stanton.

The woman grinned at me. “That seems like a reasonable plan. We’ll take the whole case, and we’ll place an order to stock the palace with it. We’ll need cooking sherries and other good wines for the chefs; that will make everyone in the palace rather happy with you.”

“We can remove the alcohol from any of our products. I’ll get in touch with the palace kitchen and find out what they need,” the manager promised. “We’ll also send samples of our latest vintages in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic variants. His Royal Majesty, from my understanding, enjoys wine?”

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