Page 24 of A Treachery of Swans

At his approach, the maid drops into a startled curtsy, talking with rapid excitement. She must be past my father’s age, her black hair streaked with gray; what little I can see of her face is etched with lines of exhaustion. I frown as she grips the Prince’s hands tenderly, gazing at him with shining eyes. She seems far too old to be a lover, but truly I wouldn’t put any level of poor taste past the Dauphin of Auréal.

Finally prince and maid finish their hushed exchange, and the maid hurries off.

I give the Dauphin a questioning look as he returns to my side. He shakes his head, his lips pressed together. “Never mind that,” he says, strangely sheepish.

I don’t comment—I have bigger fish to fry than the prince’s torrid affairs. I’m growing weary of trying to be delicate, tiptoeing around the subjects I truly want to discuss.

“Aimé, I’ve had a thought,” I say.

He glances at me, his blue eyes nearly colorless in the rheumy light.

I lower my voice further, carefully keeping it out of earshot of nearby guards. “Has D—the man they arrested for murder been questioned yet?”

The Dauphin looks away, swallows tightly. “He— Yes. I tried to stop them, but my uncle said it was… necessary. No one would tell me how the… interrogation went. So I’m in the dark. Unsurprisingly.”

Oh, Mothers. “Have you tried to speak to him yourself?”

He shakes his head. “My uncle has forbidden it.”

“Are you not the King? Why would that stop you?”

His hands turn red where he is wringing them. “I disobeyed my father, and now he’s dead. I’m afraid to… to do something like that again. It’s probably better to let my uncle make the decisions.”

I feel the same frustration I did last night, when he’d let himself be dismissed from the entrance hall. How can he let his power be stripped from him so easily? “The King was murdered, Aimé,” I say firmly. “We hardly know how. Or why. Do you really think it’s wise to let yourself be kept in the dark?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Start by speaking to the prisoner,” I say. “I imagine he is more likely to talk to you than to anyone else. And think about who might stand to gain from King Honoré’s death. And why.”

He gives me a strange look. “You really have changed,” he says, and I suppress a wince.

“Is that… a good thing?”

He laughs. “It’s neither good nor bad. I simply miss when we were children, playing by the lake. Everything was so simple back then.” He taps his chin, then exhales heavily. “I do not like this, Marie. I fear he will not want to speak to me.”

“I will go with you, if it helps.”

To my relief, he nods. “With you… perhaps I can try. But I don’t think it will go well. I don’t think it will go well at all.”

Damien, the Dauphin tells me, is being kept in a holding cell beneath the guard’s garrison for the time of his interrogation. As we walk, thunder snarls in the distance, the sound muffled by a wadding of ragged clouds. Behind us trail two guardsmen in musketeer blue, silent and stoic, their sharp gazes sending discomfort crawling up and down my spine. I try to ignore them, focusing on the mission at hand—a task made difficult by the Dauphin’s nervous silence.

The cells are located beneath the building, in an unforgiving pit not unlike a cellar. The space is vengefully cold, the sharpness of it crawling into the roots of my teeth and making them chatter. It reminds me, horribly, of the weeks Damien and I spent in the Verroux slums.

There are only two cells, both hollow, echoing things strewn with filthy straw and caged by crooked bars. One of the guards lights a torch and holds it out, the flame highlighting old streaks of filth along the floor. There are splatters on the wall that look dreadfully like blood.

The Dauphin flinches when he sees them.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he whispers.

“Nonsense,” I say. “I want to be involved.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but in the same moment, the torchlight falls on a figure curled up on the floor of one of the cells. Despite everything, my heart seizes. I know that mess of hair, that broad back.

“Damien?” the Dauphin calls gently.

My brother is on his feet in an instant, his eyes searching and wild, straw flying off the tattered remnants of his clothes. Bruisesmottle his cheekbones, and dried blood cakes the lobe of one ear—no doubt the result of the guard’sinterrogations.When his attention lands on the Dauphin, his shoulders slump.

“You should not be here.” His eyes dart from the Dauphin, to me, to the guards behind us. The Dauphin seems to understand his meaning, because he turns.

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