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“You already know who,” she whimpers.
Maisie advances across the threshold and into the sitting room. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Say his bloody name, or so help me—”
“I can’t!”
Rosie flies to her feet again, and Kit barely manages to dodge out of her way as she takes a few furious steps toward us. Then, almost as if she loses her nerve, she backtracks until her legs hit the edge of the armchair once more.
“I can’t, Maisie,” she whispers. “You don’t understand. The things he has on me…the things he could do to me…”
“What about the things I could do to you?” growls my sister. “Because believe me, I am sorely tempted.”
Rosie wipes her eyes. “He could do so, so, so much worse. Hehas pictures…and video…he could ruin my family…he could ruin everything.”
With nauseating clarity, I flash back to the night that the Regal Record posted the video of Jasper assaulting me. I remember how it felt, watching it all unfold, knowing that millions—billions of people could watch it, too, if they wanted. With a single click of a button, the worst thing that had ever happened to me was viewable to anyone with an internet connection and a questionable moral compass. And there isn’t a doubt in my mind that if Ben had given me a chance, I would’ve done damn near anything to prevent it from going public.
“Do you swear on your life—on Snickers’s life—that you had nothing to do with the fire?” I say, as Maisie struggles to sputter out a coherent response. Clearly Rosie has never told her no before, and the idea isn’t landing well.
Rosie nods miserably. “I can show you the texts. He gave me a prepaid mobile—it’s how he keeps in touch. He told me to spread the paint thinner and sneak the cans into Evan’s room, and he said someone else would light it so it couldn’t be traced back to me. I didn’t want to, but maybe—maybe I would’ve—but as soon as I saw you and your mum there, I knew I couldn’t. I swear,” she says, crying again. “Evan, I swear.”
“Okay,” I say quietly, my stomach churning with acidic fury that has nowhere to go. “Right now, until you give us a reason to change our minds, we’re going to move forward like that’s the truth.”
“It is,” wails Rosie, even as Maisie hisses my name, but I ignore them both.
“Now let’s talk about the rest of this,” I say, the steadiness of my voice an act of sheer willpower. “Is it true? That if my parents get married, I’ll be legitimized?”
“Yes,” says Maisie before Rosie can answer. “Though Kit’s right—you wouldn’t be in the line of succession, not without an act of Parliament that will never, ever happen.”
“But my theoretical heirs would be,” I say, and now it’s Kit who nods.
“The line of succession would treat you as if…well, as if you weren’t alive,” he says. “But you’re still the King’s daughter, and if you were legitimized, your children would be placed after Maisie.”
“And ahead of Ben,” I say, and this time it isn’t a question.
Silence settles between us as everything—everything finally falls into place. Why Ben’s been after me since the moment I stepped foot in the UK. Why he’s dragged my name through the mud again and again. Why he tried to make me question my own mental health. Why he convinced an actual terrorist group to claim me as one of their own and brand me a traitor who tried to kill my own father.
It’s because he’s afraid of me. And he’s afraid of losing the crown that, since the moment he found out about Maisie and Gia, he thought was his for the taking.
I swear softly and lean against the archway, not sure I can hold my own weight anymore. Kit steps toward me, but I shake my head. He has to stay where he is, as close as Rosie will let him, in case she bolts.
“He’s been doing this from the start,” I say, a little light-headed as it all clicks. “He and Jasper—they drugged me and assaulted me and filmed it to try to chase me out of the country. To make sure I was too humiliated and broken to stay. And when that didn’t work, when we figured out Ben was behind it and Alexander banished him, he stopped playing nice and tried to have me killed at Sandringham. And the bombing…he knew about it beforehand. What he said to me and Kit—he’s connected to the ABR somehow. I know it. I know it. And the fire…” I grit my teeth. “Maisie’s right. It should’ve killed my mom. He must have someone else in the castle, too—someone who really did light it, without realizing my mom was in my room instead.”
Kit is already on his phone, texting someone—palace security, I assume, or maybe Helene—but Rosie looks back and forth between Maisie and me, terror written on her face.
“So—the whole point was to…to hurt your mum?” she manages.
“The whole point was to murder her mother,” says Maisie flatly, but her eyes are wide now as she puts the pieces together, too. “Daddy, Laura, and Evan are the only ones standing in Ben’s way now. If one of them dies, it’s over—the line of succession stays as it is, and he’s safe. That rotten bastard,” she mutters. “That knob-headed, spiteful maggot—”
She goes on for several rounds, and I let her, mostly because I’m still stunned by how simple it is. How utterly transparent, now that I have all the facts. I’m not paranoid. I’m not imagining things. I’m not connecting dots that aren’t there.
Ben really is behind every horrible thing that’s happened, and we can almost—almost prove it.
“Rosie,” I say, interrupting Maisie as she delves into what I’m fairly certain are curses in several different languages. “Has he ever mentioned the ABR to you?”
“The what?” she says faintly as she wipes her eyes again, creating a black smudge of mascara on her cheeks.
