Page 55 of Royal Fate

I shook my head, sorrow flooding my bones.

“It was idyllic, or at least that’s what I tell myself when I think about it,” I mumbled. “My dad was a carpenter, I think. He used to be gone for days at a time, leaving me and my mom alone.”

A small smile crept onto my face.

“She was a terrible cook, but she insisted on making pies and cakes for him when he returned.”

In my mind’s eye, I could see my father choking down her latest concoction and pressing a finger to his lips when I giggled at his expression.

“She was a princess,” Zen reminded me, as if I could have forgotten now. “She had servants waiting on her hand and foot her whole life.”

“She never mentioned anything like that to me,” I muttered, my grin fading. “She never wanted me to know. She made it a point to keep it from me.”

“But the cottage is here,” Zen insisted. “She must have wanted you to learn the truth, eventually. She kept it here, hidden for you to find one day. If she didn’t want you to know, she would have just left it to rot and decay like things do in the woods.”

I had no response to that.

“Do you suppose there’s something in here that Agnan wants?” he asked, sitting up in the brass bed and looking around. “Like the family tree. Could there be something of value hidden here?”

I shrugged helplessly. “He always talked a big game about getting rid of all the royals. I can’t imagine what he might want.”

“Where were your parents killed?” Zen asked.

“In a car accident on the freeway,” I answered. “Or that’s what I was told.”

My mind twisted back to the fateful day when I had been picked up from school and whisked off to the orphanage without a chance to return home for even a change of clothes.

“You never looked into it?” my mate prodded.

“How? When?” I laughed mirthlessly. “I was a child. Agnan picked me up when I was nine. I didn’t even see a computer until I was sixteen, and I barely know how to use one now. I wouldn’t know how to look into it. Agnan saw to that.”

I pursed my lips, embarrassed to point out that I never had a formal education.

“Agnan wasn’t going to let me investigate their deaths—not that I ever thought to ask him.”

“That bastard really had you manipulated, didn’t he?”

“Not just me.” I frowned deeply, thinking of how many others he had scooped out of foster care and taken into his fold.

An epiphany struck me then, and I was shocked it hadn’t occurred to me before.

“The prisoners! You still have the prisoners in the dungeon!”

He eyed me. “Yes…?”

“They could help us if we deprogram them, too.”

Zen didn’t look convinced. “And how do you propose we do that?”

I wrung my hands in front of me, shaking my head. “I don’t know, but it worked with me, didn’t it? They need to see Agnan for what he is.”

“I think that’s a tall order to fill.”

“I think we can make it happen,” I insisted. “Once we get back, let me talk to them—”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Zen interjected.

“They know me. I’ve worked with some of them for years. Do you even know their names? Who you have?”

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