Page 76 of A Fragile Enchantment

Kit looked as though he were about to tease her for sneaking into people’s bedchambers again, so she said, “I do not want to hear anything out of you!”

Without thinking, she grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him along. It was only once they crossed the threshold into the princess’s room that she realized he hadn’t pulled away or fought her at all. She released him and took in the room.

Everything was upholstered in soft white and gray fabrics, as drab as a forest in midwinter. Niamh went to the writing desk first. Nothing cluttered the surface of it—nothing but half-started letters in a language she couldn’t read. The handwriting did not look at all familiar. Her heart dropped. But perhaps there was something in the content of the letters that would prove her theory.

“Can you understand Saksian?” she asked.

“Some.” He held out his hand. “Let me see.”

She passed him the letter. While he scanned it, she rummaged through the drawers. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just plain wax seals and sharpened nibs of pens, lined up in rows like surgical instruments.

“Nothing of interest,” Kit said. “She’s telling her sister she’s unhappy here.”

Niamh didn’t need to read her correspondence to learn that. She took the letter back from him and carefully replaced it. “I see.”

Maybe she was wrong. But just across from her, a floor-to-ceiling window opened onto a balcony. It overlooked a view of the sprawling front lawn—and there, like a slim ghost against the night, was the lightning-struck tree. Niamh remembered it now: how she’d seen Sofia standing out there on the balcony, the curtains billowing in the breeze, her robe clasped tight around her. Sofia must have seen her, too.

She must have.

“You seem disappointed,” he said.

“It’s nothing. Let’s try another room.”

When they tried the handle to the room next door, however, it rattled. Locked. Kit closed his eyes and pressed his hand against the door. A faint golden light shattered across his cheekbones, spidery and shadowed from beneath his eyelashes. A vine slithered through the lock from the other side. It wrenched the lock from the door, and it swung open with a pitiful groan.

“Well done,” Niamh said wanly. The brazenness of it astounded her. As unprincely as he was, he couldn’t completely deny his nature. She supposed this was what happened when you were raised knowing you owned the earth you walked on.

Kit stepped into the room and turned on the gas lamp mounted on the wall. Oily light settled thick over the room. Jack’s was exactly as she remembered it: everything just so.

“I used to come and bother him while he was working.” He scuffed the toe of his shoe against the floor. “If you moved anything even an inch, he would know. It’s like a museum in here.”

“Then we shouldn’t touch anything. Oh. Right. The door.”

Too late for caution now.

“I want to take a look around while we’re here,” he said.

She supposed she was curious to know what kept Jack so busy in here, too. Kit traced slow circles around the perimeter until he came to stand behind the desk. He grabbed the glass decanter of whisky from a shelf, unlatched the window, and promptly poured it out. A muscle in his jaw feathered as he replaced it on the shelf. A cool breeze stirred through the room, rustling all of Jack’s papers.

Niamh joined him hesitantly. Between the shelves and the wingback chair, there really wasn’t much room to navigate. Her elbow bumped against his as she began to shuffle through the papers stacked in neat piles. There were seating charts—names added and crossed out and rearranged a hundred times over—and menus with his meticulous notes (the sponge is far too dense,read one,and the tea flavor is overpowering. I cannotstandlavender).

It was all terribly ordinary.

She put them in what she believed was the correct order, then turned her attention to the drawers. Inside, she found ledgers—tonsof them, all identical and bound in leather. She heaved the most recent one onto the desk. It landed with athump.

“He’s always scribbling away in those,” Kit said. “He’s never let me look at them.”

“Shall we?”

They each took one. The tiny precision of Jack’s handwriting addled her, and the sheer amount of numbers made her head throb in protest. She’d learned some basic math for the running of the shop. But it wasn’t a strong suit of hers, and it was hard to make sense of what exactly she was looking at. Filed away herewere letters and documents; each looked more official and dire than the last.

Beside her, Kit paged through them with the same unyielding focus he applied to everything else in his life. But his eyes were wide, and his skin paled with every page he turned. He read for what felt like an eternity before setting the ledger aside and flipping through another. Eventually, the color returned to his face with a fury. “This can’t be right.”

“What is it?”

He took a step back and glared down at the desk, as though it had bitten him. “The royal coffers are nearly empty.”

“What?”