Being told that my movements are to be monitored and restricted is irksome enough, but the fact that he’s holding the music program out like some carrot he thinks he can snatch away based on my behavior makes me angry.
“You are not my king. I don’t have to answer to you in this way.”
“I am your father’s emissary, which means here, in this place, when you look at me, all you should see is your father. I speak for him. I act for him. I report everything back to him. You will treat me as though I am him.” The cup Simon has just scrubbed clean cracks in his gloved hand. “Is that clear?”
“Yes,” I say, leaving my half-eaten apple on the polished mahogany banister, and head up the stairs to my room.
“Good night, then,” Simon calls merrily after me. “Oh, and please try to keep your daily spending to at least a ten-thousand-dollar minimum.”
I dream fitfully, waking and falling back asleep, for the rest of the morning. I see my mother’s face. I hear her voice. I remember that she used to whisper a lullaby in my ear when I was too young to tell anyone. I can’t quite hear the little melody, but I can feel it.
I hadn’t allowed myself to fully think of her in so long, but once I did yesterday, it’s like I can’t push away her ghost. She haunts me.
I see her standing in my bedchamber, looking pale and withered. I am sitting at a table, playing chess with Rowan. We are both seven years old. I am bigger than Rowan, but he always beats me when we play strategy games. I prefer to wrestle. I ask our mother for a glass of water and she reaches for the pitcher that sits on the mantel of the fireplace.
She cries out and collapses, falling face-first against the marble fireplace. I hear the crack of her skull against the stone hearth.
“Mother!” I shout, and run to her. It takes most of my strength to turn her limp body over. A gash in her forehead weeps blood. Not knowing what else to do, I clasp my small hands over it, trying to staunch the bleeding, and shout at Rowan to run for help.
“I’m not your servant, Haden,” he says, and moves his rook forward to capture the queen I’d left unprotected on the chessboard when I rushed from the table. “We’re better off without her. Now come finish our game. I just put you in check.”
Blood seeps out from under my fingers, staining Mother’s ashy hair red. I can’t stop the bleeding. I hear a gasp from the doorway and notice Garrick, small and scrawny, lurking in the corridor, only a few feet away from us, as usual. He blinks at me. The boy is a Lesser. Bred for following orders. “Go!” I shout to him. “Get help! Get my father!”
Garrick, only five years old, half my size and almost as bony as my mother, bounds away. I hear the smack of his sandaled feet against the stone floor as he heads down the corridor toward my father’s chambers.
My mother’s eyelashes flutter open, but her jade green eyes seem unable to focus.
“I’m here, Mother,” I say.
She seems to recognize my voice. She lifts one finger as if she is trying to raise her whole hand but the rest won’t cooperate. “Haden, my son,” she whispers. “Always remember who you are.” Her eyelids slide shut, a low rattle echoes from her throat, and her finger trembles as it lowers to lie as still as her others.
“No, Mother!” I shout at her. “Don’t leave me!”
I try shaking her, but she doesn’t move. I clasp my hands over her head wound again, determined not to let her go. It takes so long for my father to return with Garrick that my mother’s warm blood has grown cold and thick under my hands. “She’s dying,” I say to him when he finally enters the room with two of his advisors and a couple of servants. My father nods. He snaps his fingers and says, “Clean up this mess,” to his attendants. He turns to leave without giving his wife a second look.
“No, no, no,” I scream at him. “You have to do something! Save her. Take her to the healing chambers!”
“It’s too late,” one of the servants says.
The other attendant tries to pull me away from my mother’s body. Anger, and another emotion I don’t understand, surges through my small body. I scream and kick at the servant’s legs. A stinging pain pricks at the backs of my eyes. A terrible wail fills my ears.…
I sit bolt upright in my bed. I am cold, but my chest is damp with sweat. My phone wails again from the top of my dresser. I am grateful for the sound—grateful it awakened me before the rest of that memory can play out in my dream. Grateful not to witness what I did next—not to relive the moment of my unforgivable shame.
Brimstone shifts and yawns at my feet. I nudge her off my toes and stumble to get my phone from the dresser. I hurry to answer it when I see Daphne’s name.
“Hello?”
“Were you still asleep?”
“Long night.”
“Me, too,” she says. “But I’ve been up since seven.”
“Did you go with your father, then?”
“Yeah,” she says. “And you know, it was better than I thought it would be. Got a little odd toward the end, but it was actually kind of fun.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“The only problem is, now Joe thinks I’m going to go on tour with him this summer.”
“This summer?” A pang of guilt hits me in the chest. Daphne may not ever see a summer again.
“Yeah, can you imagine? I can barely stand sharing a mansion with the guy; can you picture us in a tour bus? And his drummer is kind of a weirdo.” She pauses to take a breath. “But, hey, I’m guessing you haven’t checked your email yet. Considering you’re Sleeping Beauty and all.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Anyway, check your email. I think I’ve found the perfect song for our duet. I sent you the music.”
“Give me a minute.” I open my email app. Other than the welcome packet that came from the school at the beginning of the year, her message is the only one in my in-box. I open the file she’s sent and peruse it, glad I’d used a YouTube video to learn how to read music since my first lesson with her. “This is good,” I say, imagining the sounds of the notes as I read them.
“It’s ‘Falling Slowly’ by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová—from one of my favorite movies. It’s the first duet I thought of, but after looking at several others, I think it’s the best option.”