Page 53 of The Forgotten Prince

Gwendolyn knew full well Esme would rise when it pleased her to do so and not a scant moment before—not even at the point of a sword. Even now, she proved that theory true by ignoring Gwendolyn and changing the subject.

“I only wonder if you will heed some advice?” Esme asked, though she didn’t wait for Gwendolyn to agree or disagree before continuing. “Find your true self, Gwendolyn. But do not seek her in a glass. You will not find her there. And regardless, if you manage to do so, you might yet earn that reward you seek without bringing war to both our realms.”

“Esme,” Gwendolyn said impatiently, begging now. “I haven’t the presence of mind to decipher your riddles. If there is aught you came to say, please speak, then go. I am weary to my bones!”

“I only came to help.”

“Isn’t that what you claim to have been doing all along?” Gwendolyn countered. “Or will you confess, as Málik appears to believe, that you have been working at cross-purposes with me all along?”

As nothing else seemed to, that revelation appeared to wound her. Esme’s smile faded. “Málik said that?”

“Not precisely,” Gwendolyn allowed. “Though I can tell he does not trust you.”

She sounded affronted. “I have never worked at cross-purposes with you, Banríon.” And then, having declared as much, she glanced away. When she turned again to meet Gwendolyn’s gaze, there was a suspicious gleam in her eyes that gave Gwendolyn pause. “At any rate, I have come to beg a favor.”

“You, beg?” Gwendolyn responded. “Alas, no favor you ask will come without a price.”

“You wound me,” said Esme.

Gwendolyn sighed. “I do not wish to wound you, Esme. Truly, I do not. But I am exhausted. I have tried so desperately to befriend you. You have called yourself my friend, and I once believed you. But I do not understand why you have become so bitterly disagreeable.”

Esme shrugged, then sat upright, dropping her legs off the side of the bed, all trace of her belligerence gone. “I have good reason.”

“Explain.”

“I cannot,” she said. “But you well know I have had much discord with my father.”

Perhaps some answers at last? Gwendolyn secured her towel as she approached the bed, interested.

“As I have said—as Málik has told you—my father took his crown without right, and his rule has been… well, difficult. You must know I have worked at cross-purposes with him, but—”

“Yet you do not lie? How is it possible to work at cross-purposes with your own father and not lie?”

Esme shrugged. “Clearly, he has never challenged me. I’ve never given him any cause to doubt me and he believes I come to spy… when I come… to protect you.”

“Me?”

Esme nodded somewhat petulantly. “You.”

“From?”

She was silent a while, clearly reluctant to answer, and then she did. “Málik.”

Something about her confession summoned a memory… of Gwendolyn with Málik in the fogous…

How came you to be in my father’s employ?

I was sent.

By whom?

My father.

Gwendolyn’s heart twisted.

She sank beside Esme on the bed, the truth apparent to her in that moment of clarity. “He came to assassinate me, didn’t he?”

Gwendolyn knew the answer to this question before she asked it.

---