Page 3 of Only Hard Problems

I had no idea how Kyrion had figured out that Vesper was my sister without the DNA confirmation. Perhaps I would ask the smug bastard when I finally caught up with him.

But the more important question was: What didVesperthink about the information? That she was a Zimmer? That Wendell was her father? ThatIwas her brother?

Most people would have been absolutelythrilled, especially since House Zimmer was among the most powerful Regal Houses, with an abundance of wealth and influence. At the very least, Vesper could have engineered a hefty payday out of the information. Many Regal lords and ladies were known for having ill-advised dalliances, especially when they were away from their home planet of Corios, and it was quite common for Regals to pay off unwanted children to disappear back to the tourist planets and other distant reaches of the galaxy from whence they came.

But so far, there had been no communication from Vesper. No demands for money, no threats to sell the scandalous story to the gossipcasts, no dire warnings about all the ways she was going to torture us with the information.

The silence worried me. I didn’t know Vesper Quill very well, but she was smart, strong, and more than capable of causing immense financial pain to House Zimmer and severe emotional trauma to my family. More so than she had already caused by simply existing.

My tablet chimed again, a little louder and sharper. I sighed. Like a prince out of an old-fashioned fairy tale, it was time for me to attend the ball, whether I wanted to or not.

So I shoved my stormsword into a slot on my belt and stomped out of the library, secrets and schemes still swirling around in my mind.

Iwentdownstairs,knockedon an open door, and stepped into the enormous library that was my grandmother’s domain, and thus the heart of Castle Zimmer.

Beatrice’s library was easily five times the size of my own cozy, cluttered tower and was far more ostentatious, with polished wooden tables, glittering jeweled knickknacks, and delicate, spindly chairs and settees covered with velvet cushions and plump pillows. The area was absolutely immaculate, with everything in its place and a place for everything, from the perfectly aligned books on the shelves to the fresh blue-moon peonies standing tall in their vases to the three separate tea sets arranged on three separate tables, complete with serving platters, silverware, napkins, and delicate porcelain bowls brimming withZ-shaped sugar cubes.

Even my grandmother’s desk was spotless, with a fresh pad of ice-blue paper, a pot of dark blue ink, and an old-fashioned crystal ink pen resting on a white lace doily. Seeing the House Zimmer colors on her desk further soured my mood.

My father, Wendell Zimmer, was already in the library, standing in front of a large silver-framed painting that hung between two bookcases. In the portrait, my father beamed at my mother, Miriol, who beamed right back at him. My mother had been quite lovely, with light brown hair and eyes and pale skin, although I had my father’s blond hair, tan skin, and the ubiquitous blue eyes of House Zimmer.

Miriol had died of a sudden illness a few months after I’d been born, so I had never known her. Even now, thirty-eight years after her death, my father didn’t talk about her much, as though simply saying her name was still too painful.

“Your mother always loved the solstice celebrations,” Wendell said in a low, wistful voice when I stopped beside him. “That’s how we met. At a summer solstice celebration. Miriol had flowers and ribbons in her hair, and she was dancing with her friends like she was a fairy goddess come to life. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I desperately wanted to talk to her, but I was so nervous and awkward that I couldn’t make myself approach her. I was still working up my nerve when . . .”

“. . . when she danced right up to you, gave you a crown of braided flowers, grabbed your hand, and pulled you along with her. Naturally, you fell in love with her right on the spot.” I finished his thought in a gentle voice.

A faint smile flickered across his face. “I might have told you this story before.”

“Just a few dozen times,” I said, keeping my voice light.

Father smiled again, but the expression quickly wilted. “But I’ve never told you much about what happened after your mother died. How . . . distraught I was. How I . . . lashed out at the galaxy at large. How I made some . . . foolish choices, especially when it came to the company I kept.”

Wendell looked up at the portrait again, but his eyes were dark and distant, as though he was peering back into his troubled past.

I tensed. He had to be talking about Nerezza Blackwell, Vesper’s mother. I’d made some discreet inquiries and had my spies and other contacts dig up all the dirt they could find on Nerezza. As a teenager, she had been a poor nobody from a Temperate planet, but the Regals were always looking for psionic outliers to bolster their numbers and bloodlines, and Nerezza had had enough power and potential to be invited to attend a prestigious academy here on Corios. Somehow her path had crossed with my father’s, and Vesper had been the result.

“What sort of company do you mean?” I asked in a careful voice.

Father opened his mouth, then stopped and cleared his throat, as though he wanted to tell me something important but wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it.

Howdidone reveal he had a daughter he’d never known about? Even among the Regals, with all their archaic societal rules, there was no procedure for such a thing. For once, even my grandmother, with all her conniving, didn’t have a Regal rule book she could follow, no accepted or proper or patented method to break the shocking news. Or perhaps she was determined to keep me in the dark along with everyone else, to quietly sweep aside this untidiness with Vesper the same way the servants removed the smallest specks of dust from her library. Hard to tell. Beatrice was always playing her own games, even within our family.

Either way, neither my father nor my grandmother had revealed that I’d gone from an only child to a big brother overnight. At first, I thought they had been as stunned as I had been, but as the days had gone by with no confession from either one of them, and not so much as the smallest bloodyhintthat anything had changed, their silence had begun to anger me.

“What do you want to tell me, Father?” I asked, my voice rougher and more insistent than before. “Just go ahead and say it. Whatever it is, I will understand. I promise.”

Especially since I already knew his deep, dark secret, but I was determined to be as kind as possible. My father might be second-in-command of House Zimmer, but he wasn’t brash and ruthless like me and my grandmother. Wendell was a kind, gentle, sensitive soul, and he would have been quite happy to spend the rest of his life puttering around in his workshop rather than dueling with the other lords and ladies in Regal society.

Father looked me in the eyes, sucked in a breath, and opened his mouth—

“Sorry I’m late,” a familiar voice called out. “I had to make sure our gift had arrived.”

Heels clacked against the stone floor in a high, sharp drumbeat. My father flinched and snapped his lips shut.

Beatrice Zimmer, my grandmother, swept inside the library with all the grace and elegance of a queen, and her long ice-blue gown swished around her legs like a bell swinging back and forth, softly announcing her arrival. Her silver hair was piled on top of her head, and blue opals glinted among the curls like a hidden crown. Her skin was more rosy than tan, but her eyes were the same ice-blue as my father’s—and just as cold and calculating as mine.

Beatrice’s gaze zipped between my father and me before shooting up to my mother’s portrait on the wall. She raised one eyebrow in a chiding motion at my father, who glared right back at her. I didn’t have all the details, but from what I’d overheard, Beatrice had kept Vesper’s existence a secret from my father, something Wendell was furious about. Most of the Regals might shun their bastard children, but my father was too softhearted to ever do anything that cruel. If he’d known about Vesper, he would have immediately welcomed her into our home, scandal be damned, and doted on her as much as he had always doted on me.

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