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“Do you need to get that?” she says, and I shake my head.
“Whoever it is will go awa—”
The urgent knocks quickly turn into demanding thuds, and I hear a muffled voice through the wood.
“Evan, you better bloody be in there. I need to talk to you.”
I groan inwardly. “Mom, it’s Maisie,” I say. Out of all the people in Windsor tonight, she’s one of the few I can’t ignore. “Could I—”
“Of course, sweetheart. I need to start dinner anyway,” she says. “Call me back when you can.”
After closing my laptop, I mutter a few deeply unkind things about my half sister as I throw off my blanket and climb to my feet. The fire crackles cheerfully, its warmth fighting the castle chill, and I yank open the door that leads into the hallway. “Whatever this is about, it better be—”
“The head of palace security cornered Daddy after dinner,” says my sister as she sweeps into the room, the hem of her sapphire gown billowing behind her. “One of the protection officers stationed on the reserve in Kenya called. Benedict is missing.”
It takes me a beat to fully absorb what she’s saying, and I stare at her, stunned. “Wait—what?”
Maisie rolls her eyes. “Benedict,” she says slowly, “our traitorous swine of a cousin, is gone. Absent. In the wind. Vanished—”
“I know what ‘missing’ means,” I say in a strangled voice. “How did he slip past his protection officers? Wasn’t the whole point of Alexander sending him to the reserve to keep an eye on him?” And to keep him away from Maisie and me. But five months and thousands of miles aren’t enough to erase my memory of the look on Ben’s face when he realized he was caught, and a shiver runs through me.
I’m going to destroy you.
His Royal Highness Prince Benedict of York was the first member of the family to treat me with any decency after I arrived in London, but he was also the one who leaked a video of me pushing Jasper Cunningham off a balcony after the sleazy asshole tried to rape me. The footage was edited, of course—Jasper and Ben had drugged my drink, and I couldn’t even walk straight, let alone shove an athletic nineteen-year-old hard enough for him to fall to his death. But Ben made the entire world believe it was me, and even after untangling the truth, I still have no idea why.
“Uncle Nicholas is trying to track him down,” says Maisie as she begins to pace with the energy of a restless raccoon. “But Benedict has plenty of friends, and he could be anywhere by now.”
“We live in the twenty-first century. Someone has to know where he is,” I argue, fighting the urge to pace, too.
“I’ve already scoured the gossip sites and social media,” says Maisie. “There’s no sign of him.”
My hands start to sting, and with vague bewilderment, I realize my nails have dug into my palms, causing eight dark red crescent marks in my pale skin. The color is nearly identical to the ink Ben used for the note he sent me shortly after he was shipped off to the reserve, and even though I haven’t looked at it in months, I remember every word.
No matter where I am in the world, I still know your secrets. Enjoy this while it lasts.
“What are the odds he’ll disappear for good and leave us alone?” I say, rubbing my hands together to soothe them.
“Exceptionally low, unless we’re lucky and he’s been eaten by a lion,” says Maisie. “Benedict’s never been one to take blows to his pride lightly, and I guarantee you he won’t go quietly.”
From anyone else, I’d take this dramatic proclamation with a grain of salt. But Maisie knows Ben better than anyone, and while she’s prone to theatrics—something about being a princess, probably—I saw enough of Ben’s dark side over the summer to believe her.
“Do you think he’ll tell everyone what really happened?” I say, almost too afraid to suggest it. No use giving the universe any ideas, after all.
For a split second, I see a flicker of very real fear in Maisie’s eyes. While there’s nothing Ben can do to me that he hasn’t already tried, he could still destroy Maisie’s life with bone-chilling ease—because while I might not have been the one who pushed Jasper to his death, she was. And even though it was an accident, even though she was acting in self-defense, if the truth gets out—if Ben goes public with what really happened that night, and everything we did to cover it up—there’s no telling what the fallout might be. But I do know, without a sliver of doubt, that it would be catastrophic—not just to me and Maisie, but to the entire royal family and the monarchy itself.
“He won’t,” she says at last, as if her stubbornness alone can make it so. “He has no way of proving it, not after we deleted the video.”
“But he’s third in line to the throne,” I point out, though we’re both keenly aware of that nasty little fact. “He has credibility on his side, and even if the palace denies it, some people will still believe him.”
“Let them,” she says coldly. “There are some who believe I died at birth and was replaced with another baby, you know, but their conspiracy theories are just that.”
This is news to me—weird news, but still news—and I blink. “But this is true, Maisie. And if he somehow managed to copy the video—”
A ding echoes from inside her clutch, and without waiting for me to finish, she pulls out her phone. Her pinched expression grows even more haggard at the sight of whatever’s on her screen, and she turns toward the door. “I can’t stay. I only wanted to warn you.”
“Thanks,” I say dryly. “I’m sure the thought of Ben peeking through my window will lull me to sleep tonight.”
Maisie gives me a withering look, though it’s tempered by the way she tugs anxiously on one of her strawberry-blond waves. “Don’t be daft. You have curtains.”
