“I don’t either, so what are you scared of?” It was amazing hownot yellingsoftened his voice.
“I’m not scared. You’re scared.”
“I’m not,” he said, in the steadiest voice I’d ever heard him use, even though vulnerability stabbed through his expression.
My pulse drummed like impatient fingers on a tabletop.Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, my stupid crush-filled heart said. But kissing made things complicated. If we kissed, I’d catch feelings for him the way you caught any other fatal illness—by licking something you have no business licking. Kissing led to me losing myself as I searched desperately for True Love, only to find out, yet again, that it didn’t exist.
I took a step back. “I watch TikTok videos at full volume in public spaces. I unironically chew on toothpicks sometimes. I’m atoothpickguy, Bryce. No one likes a toothpick guy.”
The corners of his mouth lifted. “That’s what I thought,” he said, backing out of reach. “Don’t start games if you can’t finish them.”
So that’s what this was. Him teaching me a lesson. Calling my bluff. Ensuring I’d never do it again. It had to be. That was why he was so confident; he knew I wouldn’t say yes.
I desperately wanted to say yes.
My secret love for stalker romance books had given me a surprisingly useful skill set when it came to tracking down the Evil One. Like now, for instance: I was tailing the king like I was in love with him.
The king had a cushy schedule for someone who was supposed to be leading a country. As far as I could tell, it was Amy who made most of the actual decisions, and the king was more of a mascot. I followed him around as he drifted aimlessly through the castle for a while. Then we spent an hour in the parlor for tea, during which a bunch of other nobles sat around talking shit about everyone who wasn’t there. It reminded me of work; the parlor was a break room, and tea was basically the water cooler.
The king looked a little shifty when he finally got up and left the parlor. I crouched around the corner in the hall as he stepped out and murmured something low to his attendants. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I heard the servant’s reply.
“We’ll tell everyone you retired early. You won’t be disturbed.”
It was still light out, far too early for bed. No doubt his real plans involved more kidnapping.The king is a traitorous sneak, leading the downfall of his own country.Though I wanted to leap out of the shadows and shoutgotcha!I refrained. I needed further proof.
So, after I heard the servant’s shoes clicking down the hall, I scuttled from my hiding place and resumed my pursuit.
The king displayed more excitement than I’d ever seen from him as he moved swiftly through the castle. Probably, the sick bastard enjoyed whatever evilness he’d been up to.
We stopped at his chambers, where he collected a large black pack—probably his murder tools. After that, we traveled all the way out of the castle, across the courtyard, and into the garden. I nearly lost him when he entered the hedge maze but managed to find him again by cheating the maze and burrowing through the hedges.
I tripped and nearly crashed out of a bush in full view of theking but managed to catch myself on a limb. In the center of the maze, the king sat on a bench drenched in late afternoon sunlight. I peered through leaves, trying to figure out what he was doing as he reached into his pack and drew out—
A lyre.
He fiddled with the strings, tuning the instrument before he launched into a catchy little tune about a frog and a unicorn.
The king wasn’t the culprit. He just had a secret, harmless hobby. I doubted kings were allowed to perform, so he probably did it at night in disguise, and that was why he’d been absent yesterday evening and slept in this morning.
While part of me was relieved I didn’t have to accuse the kingdom’s monarch of being evil incarnate, now I was back to square one.
CHAPTER 21INWHICHWEFINDAFAMILY
BRYCE
By early evening, Courtney had been missing for hours. A maid said she spotted her heading into the city. Having a suspicion that her whereabouts had something to do with the village girls she’d befriended, I asked a villager where the flower shop girls lived.
I found Courtney sitting on a curb, eyes fixed on a tiny, leaning house on the other side of the twilit street. She had a sword strapped to her hip, and every so often, she looked up and scanned the dimming sky.
“What are you doing out here?” I settled beside her.
She tossed a few flakes of cobblestone into the street, watching them skitter and bounce. “You know what Amy said… about how we’d only endanger people we grow close to. Plus, with the dragon on the loose and the kidnappings… I wanted to make sure they were safe.” She tilted her chin toward the house. “I don’t think I could handle it if one of them went missing next.”
I could hear the faint ring of laughter from inside. Shapes moved within, silhouetted against the sheer curtains hanging in the windows.
Someone inside pushed the curtain away, revealing the scene of a very full kitchen. It looked like they were all working together to bake something, with flour-dusted cheeks, rolled-up sleeves, and doughy hands. “It looks like a Christmas commercial,” I said, and I knew I sounded a bit too wistful for someone who hated Christmas.
“Or Thanksgiving, if your family was functional and actually liked one another,” she said, her voice heavy, maybe with the weight of her own memories. Even though she’d mentioned having a mother and a father, I wondered if she felt like I did sometimes. Alone. Apart. Maybe they were distant in a different way than my family had been distant. Distant while present.
