“What are you doing?” I gasp as the chill cuts right through my sweater and leggings, my feet still bare.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” she says.
“Like Lady Thomley did?” I ask.
“Smart girl, she says. “You know what they say about curiosity and the cat, don’t you?
“I’m not suicidal.”
“Sure you are,” she says. “You’ve been very sad, inconsolable really. You’ve never really fit in here and you were never going to. You realize that now but there’s tragically no going back to your old life, so you took the only option available to you.”
“No, I’m not,” I say firmly, finally standing up for myself. For Rhys and our baby.
“You are,” she snaps back. “Or else I will expose Dahlia for the fraud that she is.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. I can’t let anything happen to Dahlia because of me.
“The late king wasn’t her father, obviously,” she says as she flings the gun around. I don’t remember her talking this much with her hands before. She’s clearly snapped, like the TV show about badly concealed murders,Snapped. “It’s treason to have passed as royal lineage when she’s decidedly not.”
“Who’s her father then?” I ask.
“Uh-uh-uhhh,” she sings as shewaves the gun some more. “That’s for me to know and you not to.”
“Why are you even doing this?”
“Because I have to,” she says. “If I don’t, my father will kill me.”
“Your father is dead, you daft cow,” I snap but she just laughs.
“Hardly.”
“I’m serious.”
“Stop lying!” she screams as the door to the battlements crashes open.
I think I’m about to be saved when a tall man with dark hair ducks through the doorway, but then he looks up and I realize that it’s Taylor, not Rhys and I’m…well…fucked. If now at the end of my life, when I’m about to die, I can’t curse, when can I?
“Hey there,” she smiles and I know the end is close. “We’re almost done here. Then we can be on our way.”
“Sure thing, babe,” Taylor says and I feel white hot rage course through my veins.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, but the look he shoots me to shut up has me more confused than ever. “Why did you try to set me up?”
“To get you out of the way, obviously,” he says.
“And your brother?” I ask.
“What about him?”
“He loves you and this is how you repay him?” I ask.
“It’s nothing personal,” he shrugs his shoulders as he looks from me to Saoirse.
“Clearly,” I bite out.
“Ugh, shut up already!” she snaps. “Come help me shove her over.”
I start backing into the corner. I can’t just let these people throw me off the freaking castle. That’s crazy. I need a plan. I have to fight for me and my baby.