Page 48 of Adoringly, Edward
She’d find a way to stop it.
“STOP IT!” EDWARD LAUGHED as he shoved his friend, Charles, in the shoulder but nearly missed, narrowingly avoiding falling flat on his face. “I’ve had enough of all your teasing for one night.”
He hobbled through the hallways of the palace with the remaining strength in his body. True, he should have rested more considering it was the night before the wedding, but at least his friends had allowed him to sit as they’d played cards and games and regaled each other with memories of the past.
Two of his friends, Charles and Barnaby, were already married, and now Edward would be the third. But their friendship hadn’t missed a single step because of it.
“Someone has to do it,” Tobie said as he roughed up his hair. “After tomorrow, you’ll be a married man.”
Flickering torchlight lining each side of the hallway cast shadows across the walls, creating a sudden sense of uneasinessas his new, temporary room came into sight. Two guards stood on either side of the door, staring forward, each wearing leather armor. Their leather helmets hid most of their faces, which only amplified his anxiety.
But as Barnaby squeezed his shoulder and ribbed him again about this being his last night alone, he forced a tight smile, reminding himself he was safe here. No harm would come to him.
His friends bid him farewell, and he sent Cedric away to get sleep, promising he would send for him if absolutely necessary.
Heart pounding with discomfort, he approached the two guards with his room key in hand. Neither glanced his way, but one of them held out a familiar book with an envelope tucked inside the pages.
“For Your Lordship,” the man said with a brief nod. “From the Lady Vivienne.”
Edward eagerly took the book from him, thanked him, and disappeared inside his room. His fingers trembled with excitement as he lit his lantern, bathing the room in a soft orange glow.
When his legs refused to hold his weight any longer, he sank onto the soft mattress of his bed and didn’t hesitate a moment longer as he slipped the envelope out of the book, broke the seal, and read the letter within.
At first, he smiled at her sweet words. But slowly, his smile melted into a confused frown when she mentioned a rather dreary fairy tale. Her favorite? He knew without a doubt it was one of herleastfavorites.
I ask that you read it to remember me in our short time apart.
“Can I not read it tomorrow?” he chuckled to himself. “I’m bone tired.”
But as he loosened his cravat with the intention of sleeping fully clothed when he was too exhausted to dress himself down, he glanced again at the book and the letter keeping the page bookmarked.
With a sigh, he carefully opened the worn-out pages of the tome, his eyes traveling over the words but his mind not making sense of them in its weary state. Surely, this could wait a day or two, even if he wanted to give Vivienne the world. Including this very simple request.
He started to close the book when he noticed one of the letters was darker than the rest, as if someone had intentionally traced over it with ink.
C.
His eyebrows drew together when another letter on the next page looked similar.L.He knew for a fact that he hadn’t drawn over it himself. Had Vivienne? Or perhaps he hadn’t read this story enough to realize it had always looked this way.
Sure enough, several more letters throughout the story were colored the same. Sporadic. Without a pattern. Almost like a game. Like a…
Hidden message.
Quickly, he turned back to the beginning and began stringing the letters together in his mind. C. L. A. R. A.
What did that spell? Was he missing a letter? Were there any other letters hidden throughout the pages of the other stories?
But as he searched for similar letters, he found none, which brought him back to the ones he’d discovered. It wasn’t like any word he knew. It was closer to nonsense than an actual word or phrase. Kind of like…
A name.
His blood ran cold as he finally pieced together what the message said. Clara. His sister. And considering the story he’d found her name in…
Vivienne thought Clara was his would-be killer.
“No, no stop!” someone shouted from the corridor.
A gurgled grunt, followed by a thump in the hallway, snapped his attention toward his closed door. His heart shot to his throat. He stumbled to his feet, blindly grasping for anything to use as a weapon on the nearby table until his fingers clasped around the hilt of the jeweled dagger given to him by Vivienne’s father.
