“Yes. You really do have a lot of money,” Finn said. “More than even Elora had originally thought. ” I nodded and looked at my feet. “You lived well below your means. ”
“I think Maggie thought it would be better for me and Matt, and I never really cared that much about money. ” I kept staring at my feet, and then finally I looked up at Finn. “They would give me anything. They would give me all of it if I asked. But I’m never taking any money from them, not for myself and certainly not for Elora. Make sure you tell her that when you go back to her. ”
I had expected him to protest in some way, but Finn surprised me. His lips curled into the hint of a smile, and if anything, he looked almost proud of me.
“I will,” he promised, amusement tinging his voice. “But right now you should shower. You’ll feel better after. ”
Finn helped me settle into my room. My closet was massive and overstocked, but he knew exactly where my new pajamas were. He taught me how to close the blinds for my windows, which were run by remote control, and how to turn on my overly complicated shower.
Once he left, I sat on the edge of the tub and tried not to let this all get to me. I was starting to think that Matt and Maggie might have been the only people who loved me for me, and now I was supposed to steal from them. Even if it wasn’t really stealing. I knew they would freely give me anything I asked for, and that only made it hurt worse.
NINE
homesick
When I came out of my shower, wrapped in a fluffy bathrobe, I was surprised to find Rhys sitting on my bed. He had my iPod, the one that had come with the room, and he was scrolling through it. I cleared my throat loudly, since he apparently hadn’t heard me exit the bathroom.
“Oh, hey!” Rhys set aside the iPod and got to his feet, grinning at me in a way that made his eyes sparkle. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to see how you were doing, how you liked it here. ”
“I don’t know. ” My hair had to be terrible mess, and I pulled a hand through the wet tangles. “It’s too soon to tell yet. ”
“You like the stuff?” Rhys asked, gesturing around the room. “I picked out everything that I liked, which I know sounds kind of vain. I asked for some input from Rhiannon, because she’s a girl, but it’s still so hard to pick out stuff for someone you’ve never met. ”
“No, it all looks really good. You did a great job. ” I rubbed my eyes and yawned.
“Oh, sorry. You’re probably exhausted. ” Rhys stood up. “I just got done with school, and I didn’t have a chance to talk to you earlier. But . . . yeah. I’ll leave you be. ”
“Wait. You just got done with school?” I furrowed my brow, trying to understand. “Does that mean you’re a tracker?”
“No. ” It was his turn to look confused. “I’m mänks. ” When he saw the perplexed look on my face, he corrected himself. “Sorry. It’s just short for mänsklig. ”
“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded. My low energy made it hard to conceal my exasperation.
“They’ll explain it to you later. ” Rhys shrugged. “Anyway, I should let you freshen up. If I’m not in my room, I’ll be downstairs, getting some food. ”
“Are you happy here?” I blurted out before I could think about how rude that sounded. His eyes met mine just for a second, revealing something intense I couldn’t quite decipher, but then he quickly dropped them.
“Why wouldn’t I be happy?” Rhys asked wryly. He ran his fingers along my silk sheets, staring at the bedspread intently. “I have everything a kid could want. Video games, cars, toys, money, clothes, servants . . . ” He trailed off, but then a slow smile returned to his face and he looked up at me. “And now I have a Princess living across the hall from me. I’m ecstatic. ”
Page 25
“I’m not really a Princess. ” I shook my head and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Not in the real sense of the word. I mean . . . I just got here. ”
“You look like a Princess to me. ” The way he smiled at me made me want to blush, so I looked down, unsure of what else to do.
“So what about you?” I kept my head down, but I raised my eyes to meet his. The smile playing on my lips felt oddly flirtatious, but I didn’t mind. “Are you some kind of Prince?”
“Hardly. ” Rhys laughed. He plucked at his sandy hair, looking rather sheepish. “I should probably let you finish getting dressed. The chef is off tonight, so supper is on me. ”
Rhys turned and walked down the hall, whistling a song I didn’t recognize. I shut my door, wishing I could understand this all better. I was a Trylle Princess to a grifter empire, and I had a mänsklig living across the hall from me, whatever the hell that meant.
I lived in this amazingly stunning house with these cold, indifferent people, and the price of admission was stealing from the only people who cared about me. Sure, Finn was here, but he had made it perfectly clear that his only interest in me was business.
I went through my closet, looking for something to wear. Most of the clothes seemed too fancy for me. Not that I had grown up wearing rags or anything. In fact, if my mother . . . er, Kim . . . hadn’t gone crazy and left, these would be exactly the kind of clothes I’d be expected to wear now. All high-class fashion pieces. Eventually I managed to dig up a simple skirt and shirt that resembled something I’d actually wear.
I was starving, so I headed off to find the kitchen to take Rhys up on his offer. The tile floors were cold under my feet, and strangely, I had yet to see any rugs or carpet in the entire house.
I had never been fond of the feel of carpet on my feet, or really the feel of anything on them. When I thought back to my glimpse of the closet here, as large and full as it had been, there hadn’t been any shoes. It must be a Trylle thing, and that thought was oddly comforting. I was part of something.
I passed through the living room, where a fireplace filled the partial wall separating it from an elegant dining room. The furniture appeared to be handcrafted wood and was upholstered in white. The floors were all smooth golden wood, and everything was aimed toward the glass wall, forcing you to admire the view.
“Nice digs, right?” Rhys said, and I whirled around to find him standing behind me, smiling.
“Yeah. ” I looked around the room appreciatively. “Elora definitely has good taste. ”
“Yeah. ” Rhys shrugged. “You gotta be hungry, though. Come on. I’ll whip you up something in the kitchen. ” He started walking out of the room, and I followed him. “You’ll probably hate what I make, though. You’re into all that health food junk like everybody else, right?”
“I don’t know. ” I had never thought of myself as a health nut, but the things I preferred tended to be organic and vegan. “I like natural things, I guess. ”
He nodded knowingly as he led me past the ornate dining room into a massive kitchen. There were two professional-grade stoves, two massive stainless-steel fridges, a gigantic island in the center, and more cupboards than the residents in this house could possibly use. Rhys went over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of water.
“Water, right?” Rhys held it out to me, and I took it from him. “I’m really not the best cook, but you’ll have to settle for my cooking. ”
“How often do you have a chef?” I asked. In a place like this, they definitely had some kind of staff.
“Part-time. ” Rhys took a sip from his Mountain Dew, then set it on the island and went to the other fridge to start rooting around. “Just weekends, but that’s because it’s usually when we entertain. I don’t know what Elora eats during the week, but I’m on a fend-for-yourself basis. ”
I leaned on the island, drinking my water. This kitchen reminded me of the one in our house in the Hamptons, the one Kim had attempted filicide in, but that one had been smaller. If she hadn’t left, this was probably how I would’ve been raised. In fact, I’m sure this was how she had been brought up.
Maggie easily could’ve lived like this. I thought back to what Finn had told me about Matt and Maggie living well below their means. I wondered why it was so important to them to preserve the family nest egg.
The only explanation that made sense was that they were saving it for me—to make sure I was taken care of for the rest of my life. Which probably seemed all the more necessary given my problems at school.
Funny that the very thing Elora planned to steal from them was precisely what they planned to give.
And Maggie had made it clear through her choices that taking care of me herself was more important than spending money. She had made a choice that my own mother never would have.
“So you like shitake mushrooms, right?” Rhys was saying. He had been pulling things out of the fridge, but I had been too lost in thought to notice. His arms were overflowing with vegetables.
“Uh, yeah, I love mushrooms. ” I straightened up and tried to see what all he had, and for the most part it looked like things I enjoyed.
“Excellent. ” Rhys grinned at me and dropped his armload of food into the kitchen sink. “I’m going to make you the best stir-fry you’ve ever tasted. ”
He went about chopping things up, and I offered to help him, but he insisted that he could handle it. The whole time, he talked amicably about the new motorcycle he’d gotten last week. I tried to keep up with the conversation, but all I knew about motorcycles were that they went fast and I liked them.
“What are you making in here?” Finn came into the kitchen, his expression vaguely disgusted.
His hair was damp from a recent shower, and he smelled like the grass after a rain, only sweeter. He walked past me without even a glance in my direction and went over to where Rhys had thrown everything into a wok on the stove.
“Stir-fry!” Rhys proclaimed.
“Really?” Finn leaned over his shoulder and peered down at the ingredients in the pan. Rhys moved to the side a little so Finn could reach in and grab something out of it. He sniffed it, then popped it into his mouth. “Well, it’s not terrible. ”
“Stop my beating heart!” Rhys put his hand over his heart and feigned astonishment. “Has my food passed the test of the hardest food critic in the land?”
Page 26
“No. I just said it wasn’t terrible. ” Finn shook his head at Rhys’s dramatics and went to the fridge to get a bottle of water. “And I’m certain that Elora is a much harsher food critic than I’ll ever be. ”
“That’s probably true, but she’s never let me cook for her,” Rhys admitted, shaking the wok to stir up the vegetables more.
“You really shouldn’t let him cook for you,” Finn advised, looking at me for the first time. “He gave me food poisoning once. ”
“You cannot get food poisoning from an orange!” Rhys protested and looked back at him. “It’s just not possible! And even if you can, I handed you the orange. I didn’t even have a chance to contaminate it!”
“I don’t know. ” Finn shrugged. A smile was creeping onto his face, and I could tell he was amused by how much Rhys was getting worked up.
“You didn’t even eat the part I touched! You peeled it and threw the skin away!” Rhys sounded exasperated. He wasn’t paying attention to the wok as he struggled to convince us of his innocence, and a flame licked up from the food.
“Food’s on fire. ” Finn nodded to the stove.
“Dammit!” Rhys got a glass of water and splashed it in the stir-fry, and I started to question how good this was going to taste when he was done with it.
“If being picky is a Trylle trait—and it sounds like it is—how come Rhys isn’t picky?” I asked. “Is it because he’s mänks?”
In a flash, Finn’s face changed to a mask of stone. “Where did you hear that word? From Elora?”
“No, from Rhys,” I said. Rhys was still bustling around the stove but something about his posture had changed. He appeared almost sheepish. “And I wish one of you would tell me what that means. What’s the big mystery?”
Rhys turned around, a nervous glint in his eye, and exchanged a look with Finn that I couldn’t read.
“Elora will explain everything in time,” Finn said. “But until then, it’s not our place to discuss it. ”
Rhys turned around again, but I knew that the icy edge in Finn’s voice hadn’t escaped him.
On that note, Finn turned and walked out of the kitchen.
“Well, that was weird,” I said to no one in particular.
When Rhys finished cooking, he pulled stools up to the island. Fortunately, the awkward moment had passed and our mood lightened again.
“So what do you think?” Rhys nodded at the plate of food I was trying to eat.
“It’s pretty good,” I lied. He had obviously worked hard on it, and his blue eyes showed how proud he was of it, so I couldn’t let him down. To prove my point, I took a bite and smiled.
“Good. You guys are hard to cook for. ” When Rhys took a mouthful of his own food, his sandy hair fell into his eyes, and he brushed it away.
“So . . . you know Finn pretty well?” I asked carefully, stabbing my fork into a mushroom.
Their banter earlier had left me curious. Before things got weird, Finn seemed to genuinely enjoy Rhys, and I had never seen Finn enjoy anybody. The closest he came was respect and obedience for Elora, but I couldn’t tell what his true feelings were for her.
“I guess. ” Rhys shrugged like he hadn’t really thought about it. “He’s just around a lot. ”
“Like how often?” I pressed as casually as I could.
“I don’t know. ” He took a bite and thought for a minute. “It’s hard to say. Storks move around a lot. ”
“Storks?”
“Yeah, trackers. ” Rhys smiled sheepishly. “You know how you tell little kids that a stork brings the babies? Well, trackers bring the babies here. So we call them storks. Not to their faces, though. ”
“I see. ” I wondered what kind of nickname they had for people like me, but I didn’t think that now was the best time to ask. “So they move around a lot?”
“Well, yeah. They’re gone tracking a lot, and Finn is in pretty high demand because he’s so good at it,” Rhys explained. “And then when they come back, a lot of them stay with some of the more prestigious families. Finn’s been here off and on for the past five years or so. But when he’s not here, somebody else usually is. ”
“So he’s a bodyguard?”
“Yeah, something like that. ” Rhys nodded.
“But what do they need bodyguards for?” I thought back to the iron gate and the security guard who had allowed our entrance into Förening in the first place.
When I had looked around the entryway, I remembered seeing a fancy alarm system by the front door. This all seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a small community hidden in the bluffs. I wondered if this was all for the Vittra, but I didn’t want to ask.
“She’s the Queen. It’s just standard procedure,” Rhys answered evasively, and he purposely stared down at his plate. He tried to erase his anxiety before I noticed, and forced a smile. “So how does it feel being a Princess?”
“Honestly? Not as awesome as I thought it would be,” I said, and he laughed heartily at that.
Rhys kind of straightened up the kitchen after we finished eating, explaining the maid would be in tomorrow to take care of the rest of it. He gave me a brief tour of the house, showing me all the ridiculous antiquities that had been passed down from generation to generation.
One room only held pictures of previous Kings and Queens. When I asked where a picture of my father was, Rhys just shook his head and said he didn’t know anything about it.
Eventually we parted ways. He cited some homework he had to get done and having to get to bed because he had school in the morning.
I wandered around the house a bit more, but I never saw either Finn or Elora. I pl
ayed around with the stuff in my room, but I quickly tired of it. Feeling restless and bored, I tried to get some rest, but sleep eluded me.
I felt incredibly homesick. I longed for the familiar comfort of my regular-sized house with all my ordinary things. If I were at home, Matt would be sitting in the living room, reading a book under the glow of the lamplight.
Right now he was probably staring at the phone, or driving around to look for me. And Maggie was probably crying her eyes out, which would only make Matt blame himself more.
My actual mother was somewhere in this house, or I assumed she was, anyway. She had abandoned me with a family that she knew nothing about except that they were rich, and she knew there was a risk that I could be killed. It happens sometimes. That’s what she said. When I came back, after all these years away from me, she hadn’t hugged me, or even been that happy to see me.
Page 27
Everything felt way too big in this house. With all this vast space between everything, it felt like I was trapped on an island. I had always thought that’s what I wanted, to be my very own island. But here I was, and I felt nothing but isolated and confused.
It didn’t help that people weren’t telling me things. Every time I asked something, there were only half answers and vague responses before the person I’d asked quickly changed the subject. For being set to inherit a kingdom of sorts, I was pretty low on the information ladder.
TEN
precognition
After sleeping fitfully, I got up and got ready for the day. I wandered around the house, but not intentionally. I had been trying to get to the kitchen, but I took a wrong turn somewhere and got lost. Rhys had given me an explanation of the palace layout the day before, but not enough, apparently.
The palace was divided into two massive wings, separated by the grand entryway. All official business took place in the south wing, which housed the meeting rooms, ballroom, a massive dining hall, offices, the throne room, as well as staff quarters and the Queen’s bedroom.
The north wing was more casual and contained my room, guest bedrooms, a living room, the kitchen, and the sitting parlor.
I was wandering around the north wing, opening doors and investigating. As far as I could tell, this place had almost as many guest rooms as a Holiday Inn, only they were a whole lot fancier. I eventually found Elora’s parlor, but she wasn’t there, so it didn’t help me any.
I moved on and tried to open the door across the hall from Elora’s space, but it wouldn’t budge. So far, this was the only door I’d found that had been locked, and I found that strange. Especially in this wing. I suppose in the south wing, locking up official business would make sense.
Fortunately, I knew a thing or two about lock-picking. In attempts to keep from being expelled, I had broken into a few school offices and stolen papers. I don’t recommend it, and in the end, it was usually ineffective.