by Erin Johnson
He blinked and shook himself. “I’m sorry. You’re right, let’s go.”
I sighed. “Well… now I’m curious.”
He grinned at me and I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help but grin back. When had I become so nosy? Something about curiosity and cats crossed my mind, but I shoved the thought away. “Okay, is there some way we could make ourselves hidden and try to catch sight of—”
I shrieked as all the lights snuffed out, leaving us in pitch blackness. High-pitched squeaks filled the air, along with the whoosh of hundreds of wings.
“Bats!” I screamed again and ducked as they winged overhead. Hank grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the outline of the door, barely visible as a slightly lighter patch in the blackness. “I knew I smelled bats!” I’d never been less pleased to be right.
We burst through the heavy tapestry into the lighted hallway. Hank and I whirled and pulled the heavy door shut behind us. Wings and little claws scratched at the other side of the door. Hank and I exchanged horrified looks.
“Bats weren’t the only thing in there.” His throat bobbed.
I panted for a moment before I could speak. “Run?” My chest heaved as I struggled to get a breath.
He gave a tight nod and we sprinted down the hall, hand in hand, down the winding staircase, and didn’t stop running until we reached Hank’s room in the royal wing.
4
Memories
I sat on the edge of Hank’s tall bed and kicked my feet as he paced up and down the room. It didn’t take long—he only got a few strides in each direction. Some of that was Hank’s long legs, but mostly it was because he had a surprisingly small room.
I remembered the first time I’d seen it, I’d been shocked at how simple it was. Hank said he’d chosen it—preferred its coziness over the bigger, grander rooms his brothers occupied. I glanced to my left at the exposed stone wall. That, and the view didn’t hurt. I stood and pulled back the blue velvet curtains that blocked nearly all the light and let some sunshine in. I then unlatched the leaded windows and pushed the glass open. I took a deep breath of salty sea air and closed my eyes as I listened to the crash of the waves on the rocks hundreds of feet below at the base of the cliff. Seagulls cawed, and a cool breeze rustled the curtains and my bangs.
I let out a happy sigh and turned to Hank. “That’s better.”
He didn’t answer, but continued to pace, a deep furrow between his brows. He made another pass and glanced at the file that lay open on the bed, the papers inside strewn everywhere. He came to a sudden stop and turned to me. I lifted a brow in question.
“Colin was like a big brother to me.” He grinned. “Well, not like my big brothers.”
“They’re terrible, agreed.” I nodded and grinned back.
Hank’s smile dropped. “I could tell Colin everything. He didn’t mock me when he found out I was missing lessons because I was sneaking down to the bakery—he encouraged me to keep going and worked out a deal with Nan where she’d teach me.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his chinos. “He taught me everything I know. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him.”
“Well, then, I am very grateful to Colin.” I moved past Hank’s worn leather reading chair and the stack of books on the table beside it to stand in front of him.
“He just—he had this way of appreciating the little things. It’s like, he didn’t take anything for granted.” He chuckled. “It used to drive me nuts sometimes. He’d take forever to eat, for example.”
I grinned and arched a brow.
“He’d take a bite, close his eyes, and just savor his food. I was about eight, I think, when he came to the palace. And I was so annoyed because I’d want to go play or run around, and would wolf my food down. But not Colin. Every bite was something to appreciate. And my mother insisted I mind my manners and wait until he was finished before I left the table.” He laughed. “It was torture.”
I grinned. “He sounds like a good guy.”
Hank nodded and his blue eyes darted to my face. “He was. He was always there for me. I mean, it was his job to mentor me, but… but I never felt like an obligation.” He sighed. “And I never felt like he was afraid of me.” His throat bobbed.
“Afraid of you?” I chuckled. “Why would anyone be afraid of you?”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t really remember much of my early childhood—it’s all kind of fuzzy.”
I frowned.
“But everyone tells me I was out of control—dangerous even, with my magic.”
“You were a kid and you didn’t know how to manage your powers.” I searched his face but he kept his eyes down.
“No one had met a swallow before, Imogen. They didn’t understand why I couldn’t learn the way they learned. They didn’t understand how I had so much magical power.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I think it scared people. I think I scared my family.”
“Oh.” I pressed a hand to my heart, then grabbed Hank’s arm. “That’s—what a terrible way to feel. Do you really think they felt that way?”
He looked up at me, his eyes glassy. He shrugged again. “Anytime it gets brought up….” He shook his head. “No one ever talks about me and the way I was before Colin came. It’s like this big family secret, or something.”
I stepped closer. “Well… I always did have a thing for bad boys.”
He chuckled. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” I slid up against him and wrapped my arms around his middle. He leaned his head against mine. “But it’s not like you actually hurt anyone or anything. You shouldn’t feel bad—you were just a kid.”
He let out a sigh. “You’re right.” He hugged me tighter. “How are you always right?”
I grinned and snuggled against his chest. “I’m actually wrong, quite often.”
He clicked his tongue. “I don’t believe you.”
I grimaced. “Well… I have falsely accused quite a few people of committing murder.”
“Just a few trivial things.” He laughed and leaned down. He pressed his lips against mine and I wrapped myself tighter around him. A wave of want flooded through me and I became conspicuously aware of the bed right beside us. After a few wonderful moments, I pulled away from the kiss. It took me a moment to come back to my senses.
I pressed a hand against his chest. “Look, I don’t want to bring up tough memories, but… I feel like we should probably focus on the body we found upstairs.”
Hank shook himself. “Right.”
“What happened to Colin? You said he left suddenly? That seems strange for a guy who sounded pretty contented.” I bit my lip.
“Colin lived here at the palace for… about six years, I suppose. I was about fourteen, almost fifteen when he just disappeared one day.” He shrugged. “He’d taught me quite a lot, and I had the hang of my powers, but we still worked together every day. It was sudden and shocking and—” He shook his head, his eyes glassy again. “I felt abandoned. I couldn’t understand it.”
I frowned. “He didn’t give you any notice or explanation?”
His throat bobbed and he stared to the side at the papers strewn all over his bed. “Nothing. I was desperate to find him.” His lips pulled to the side in a wry grin. “So desperate I actually went to my father.” He let out a humorless chuckle. “I tried to stay under the radar with my father as much as possible, so to actually seek him out to speak to him, was… well, it was a really big deal to me. I remember I found him in his study, behind his enormous, heavy desk speaking with his advisers. I interrupted—” His eyes darted to mine. “Again, very unlike teenage me, and asked if he knew what had happened to Colin. I think part of me thought he’d fired him or banished him or something.” His eyes dropped back to the bed.
“So… what did your dad say?” I squeezed Hank’s arm.
He blinked a few times and cleared his throat. “He said—he said Colin had left. And when I pushed him for more information, he told me to leave. But I wouldn’t, unt
il finally he barked at me that Colin had tired of being my mentor, that he wanted his own life, and so he’d quit. I asked him where he went, and he screamed at me to get out.”
“Hank.” I didn’t know what to say. How horrible for a kid to be treated that way, especially when he was clearly hurting. I took Hank’s hand in both of mine and rubbed the back of it.
He cleared his throat and his voice came out tight. “I didn’t stop asking. Every day, for weeks, I went to my father, my mother, the advisers—basically any adult I could find, and asked where Colin had gone. I was angry with him—and hurt—but I told myself I was only angry. I told myself I wanted to know where he was so I could find him and tell him what a jerk he’d been for leaving me like that.” Hank shrugged and looked up at me, a sad smile on his face. “I just missed him. I just wanted to know where he was, and if he was okay, and what I’d done to make him leave.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. “That’s horrible. I’m sure you didn’t do anything.”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Well, I kept asking and asking and it started happening again.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “The outbursts. I started losing my grip on my powers. I’d snap at little things.”
I cocked my head to the side. “You were a teenager. That’s pretty normal. In high school, I once threw a book through a wall, I got so mad at my adopted sister.”
Hank laughed. “What? You?”
I nodded, my face flushing warm. “I mean, I meant to throw it at the wall—I was pretty horrified when it actually went through it.”
“Sounds like your home needed better walls.”
I lifted my palms. “Right?”
He narrowed his eyes, still grinning. “So what did she do? Your adopted sister?”
I rolled my eyes at myself. “She borrowed a top without asking and stained it.”
Hank’s eyes flashed.
“I know, I know—stupid stuff.” I muttered to myself, “Though it was brand new and I’d saved up for it.”
Hank chuckled.
“But that’s my point—teenagers do stupid stuff. They lose their cool.”
He sobered, his eyes downcast. “I lit the royal forest on fire.”
My eyes widened before I could control my reaction. “What’d those trees ever do to you?”
His shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry, I was just teasing.”
He shook his head. “I know. It’s just—I love the forest. I couldn’t control myself when I got really upset. And that wasn’t the only incident.” He paced again, talking with his hands. “I snapped the dining hall table in two.”
I gaped. “That thing’s like a hundred feet long.”
He nodded. “I know, and about six inches thick. I snapped it like a twig while my family was eating together. No one could tell me what happened to Colin, and I just—lost it.” He threw his hands up and stopped in front of me. “I’m sure I scared them, because I scared myself.”
I gulped. “What happened?”
He walked to his closet. The light wooden closet doors took up an entire wall of his room. He opened one, revealing some leather belts hanging from the inside of the door and a rack laden with button-up shirts and tees. He rose on his toes to reach the highest shelf above the clothing, shoved a few hats out of the way, and retrieved a wooden box. He brought it over to the bed. We both sat on the white comforter, away from the file papers, and he set the box between us. He muttered a few words of a spell and the lid slid off. A few birthday cards and photographs lay inside, nestled among lots of postcards. I lifted a photo and looked at the grinning, skinny boy with dark hair and sparkling blue eyes.
“Is this you?” I grinned up at Hank.
Color flushed his cheeks. “Yeah.”
“You were such a cute little boy.” I bit my lip.
Hank pointed with a long finger. “And that’s Colin.”
The young man, I guessed he was in his late thirties, stood with his arm around Hank’s shoulders. Colin had dark hair, shaved on the sides and slicked back on the top. His pointy ears stood out from his head and he smiled a lopsided grin.
“Aw. He looks friendly… and kind.”
Hank nodded. “He was.” He sighed. “He didn’t deserve to end up hidden away in a box.”
I gulped. “We don’t know for sure that was Colin’s body. Maybe it was just his ring?”
“I had the same thought earlier.” Hank gently took the picture from me and looked at it. “He always wore that ring, though. He never took it off, except that once, to let me look at it. And why would anyone go to the trouble of setting a body up to look like it was Colin’s, only to hide it so thoroughly?”
I blew out a heavy breath. “Yeah. You’re right.”
Hank set the photograph down on the bed and rummaged around in the shoe-box-sized container. He pulled out a stack of postcards tied together with red and white bakers twine. He handed the stack to me. “About the time I started losing control again, postcards from Colin started showing up.”
“Really?” I undid the twine and flipped through the postcards. The first had a glossy image of hot air balloons linked by rope bridges and a printed message that read, Hi, from the sky. I flipped to the back. Small, neat handwriting covered the left-hand side of the card in a few level lines.
Dear Harry,
Please forgive my very sudden absence—I realize it must be such an inconvenience to you, and especially your parents. I am traveling the world and having such a grand time, you needn’t worry about me a bit. I hope you will forgive this terribly selfish act of mine, abandoning you to follow my dreams of seeing it all, but I suppose I had to leave you someday. Remember all I’ve taught you, but forget about me… please.
X Colin
I frowned at the postcard and flipped it over again to look at the hot air balloons. Hank watched me, brows lifted.
“The way you talk, Colin sounded thoughtful.”
“He was.”
I shook the postcard. “He doesn’t sound like it in this letter. It’s distant and flippant and—and strange. Did he mention wanting to travel to you before?”
Hank shook his head. “Maybe—yes, I think so, a few times. But it didn’t seem urgent.” Hank frowned. “Plus, he went with my father on trips to the Air Kingdom fairly often.”
I cocked my head. “Why?”
“I can’t quite remember… my father had some errands for Colin to run, or something.”
I furrowed my brow deeper as I flipped through the other postcards. One featured a giant bear, another the dunes of the Fire Kingdom. And each had similarly sparse, vague messages. “If he wanted you to forget him, why did he keep writing?”
Hank’s throat bobbed. “I don’t know. None of it made sense to me. After the first one, I felt such a mix of emotions. Relief and gratitude to know he was alive and thinking of me, but then anger and hurt—if he cared, why leave so suddenly? Why not give me any answers? I got worse for a while, more turbulent—I was positive I’d never hear from him again. But then the next letter came, and the next. It went on for nearly a year and then stopped as suddenly as it started. He just said he wouldn’t be writing anymore.”
“And he never did?” My lip curled in indignation.
Hank shook his head.
My nostrils flared as an angry flush crept up my neck. “Well, if he wasn’t already dead, I’d hurt him for you.” I covered my mouth. “I’m sorry. Way too soon.”
Hank smirked, but his smile quickly dropped as he stared at the postcards fanned out on the comforter between us.
I sighed as I watched Hank’s downcast face, and had a thought. “You said these don’t sound like him. This might be crazy, but… are you sure he wrote them?”
Hank picked up a card and looked at the script. “I wondered the same thing back then. But… it’s his handwriting.”
I blew out a breath. “Well, I guess that’s pretty concrete then. Maybe he wrote them under duress? Lik
e someone kidnapped him or something?”
He shook his head, a sad grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “Thanks for trying. Believe me, I’ve thought up even crazier ideas. But if he were kidnapped, why would someone go to the trouble of getting postcards from all over the kingdoms and sending me letters?” He let out a dry chuckle. “And even the handwriting thing—someone could have stolen his quill, but again—why bother?”
I lifted my brows. “Stolen his quill?”
“Yeah.” His eyes searched my face. “Wait, you’ve never noticed?”
I turned my head. “Noticed what?”
“The enchanted quills, they have the handwriting of the person who owns them. So in theory, someone could have used his quill—but again, why go to such great lengths?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Huh. I never noticed that before you just said it. I guess my quill does have my handwriting.”
He nodded. “So if he was traveling the world, when and how did he end up dead in that box in the palace attic?”
I shrugged.
A little crease formed between Hank’s thick brows. “Did he come back to see me?” His voice was so low I had to lean closer to make out his words. “Is that what got him killed?”
I moved the box of keepsakes and slid up to sit next to Hank. I wrapped my arms around him. “I’m sure he cared about you. I don’t know why he left, but none of this is your fault—I guarantee it.”
He reached up and squeezed my hand, which rested on his shoulder. He took a deep breath and as he exhaled he turned to me, his eyes wary. “I need to figure out what happened to Colin.”
I nodded.
“I can’t go to the police.”
My brows lifted. Was a prince of the Water Kingdom suggesting we circumvent the law? I mean, I did it all the time, but Hank was a prince! “Why?” I lifted my eyes to the ceiling. “I mean, I know Inspector Bon is a total incompetent, but it wouldn’t hurt to have them look into it, right? Maybe one of his officers has some talent and common sense?”
Hank shook his head. “I can’t go to them, because I don’t want my family to know—I don’t want anyone in the palace to know what we’re up to.”
