Page 120 of Stolen Princess

“Yes. I killed her, and I’m definitely not sorry about it. Much like your friend, I have a bit of a dark past. After that, we’ve been unable to track her.”

“She only came home once a week on Saturdays. That’s it. She never lived there with me. Not that I can remember anyway, though perhaps more when I was little.”

“She made a rendezvous point with Lars, Sven’s twin brother, to meet at an address up north by the Swiss border,” Ferrin says, leaning against the bookshelf. He looks pale, and I wonder if that’s from pain or exhaustion or both. He was shot and lost a lot of blood.

“Do you happen to remember the location?” Javier presses.

“Not exactly,” he admits. “Only that I was surprised it was that far north from where we were at the time, which was near the sea. Antonia wired them ten grand and was going to give them another ten when Lars delivered Desta to her there, followed by another ten when they killed her sister, Marie.”

“My mother,” I whisper, and all eyes return to me. “Right? Is that true? Antonia told me she’s my biological aunt this morning. That her sister is my actual mother. She told me she loved the king but got pregnant, and he made her get an abortion. Then he ended it with her and started up with Marie. She had me, and Antonia couldn’t take it. She kept telling me I should have always been hers.”

Sebastian and Rowan exchange weighty glances. “We didn’t know that about Antonia and a pregnancy,” Rowan starts slowly. “But we did know that about Marie being your real mother. Antonia is the one who killed our father, and now that makes more sense.” He scrubs his hands up and down his face. “Jesus, this is a mess.”

“May I ask, that is, and I don’t want this to be… Sorry. I want to ask about the dowager queen, but I’m not sure how to.”

“She knew about Marie and obviously knew you weren’t hers,” Sebastian informs me. “She’s who gave her the tiara, supposedly in exchange for you, though Marie took the tiara and ran. She told her you were dead. We don’t know more than that, and truthfully, our trust with her is limited. She’s hidden facts to save face and appearances, as those are the most important things to her, but she doesn’t know all that we know, and for now, we’d like to keep it that way.”

I nod. “Am I to meet her? Pretend to be her child?”

“No. Not now, and we’d certainly never ask you to pretend to be her daughter. Truthfully, she’s not much of a mother to us, so it won’t impact you.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a relief or not.” I grin ruefully.

“So for now, what we know is that Antonia and Marie hate each other. Antonia hired me to steal the tiara from Marie.” Ferrin comes over and kneels on the floor beside me, his good hand on my knee. “I held onto the tiara before it was stolen from me a few months back by a woman. That’s all I knew, but I assumed it was Antonia since she’s the only person who knew I had it. Then this week, she claimed her sister had it and that if I killed her, I could keep the tiara. As long as I returned you.” He taps my knee.

“She won’t be at the cottage,” I tell them. “She’s not stupid. She may also know I’m here or have been in contact with you all. What do we know about Marie?”

“Not a lot other than she’s been impossible to locate,” Gabe announces. “She had another daughter whom she abandoned before she broke into the palace to steal you.”

I meet Ferrin’s gaze. “That has to be who I told you about.” I look toward Gabe. “The night I was taken from the festival all those years ago, we were at the festival to find a man and take a girl. She called her my sister and told me she’s quite a bit older than me.”

“Yes. Charlotte was our nanny here for a while,” Bellamy chimes in. “We didn’t know who she was, but she was trying to find you and Marie. She was out for vengeance. She kidnapped and attacked me and is now in prison.”

I whistle through my teeth and fall back against the sofa. “So we don’t know if Marie is currently involved in anything, if she stole the tiara from Ferrin, or if she has any clue that I’m alive. So what happens now? I don’t know if Antonia will simply let me go and fade into the void, but somehow, with how everything has gone, I doubt it.”

“You’re safe here,” Gabe insists. “There is no record of a Genevieve or Desta at the hospital. We’ve had everything wiped. But our helicopter was there, and people talk. If Antonia or even Marie wanted to know if you were still alive or who rescued you, it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out.”

“We’ll have to find them. Both of them. And end this madness once and for all,” Sebastian says, and all the light and joy we had moments ago is crushed. Because none of us knows how to find them. And if they want to stay hidden, my guess is they know exactly how to do that.

39

DESTA

We leave the room in a bit of a daze. Or perhaps that’s me. I’m missing pieces. I know I am. I just don’t know what those pieces are. It’s as if I’m not only trapped underwater but also in corn syrup. It’s too thick and suffocating. There’s no breathing through it.

Yet I don’t feel so alone. Not anymore.

And I’m safe here. Safer than I am probably anywhere. Not a lot is making sense to me, and it seems I’m not the only one with that. I destroyed my phone, and now part of me is wishing I hadn’t. But what do I hope to have happen to Antonia? Was she going to kill me? She said she wasn’t. That she loves me. But why can’t I shake the feeling that even though she does love me—I do believe that—that she was also planning to harm me?

Ferrin leans in and kisses my neck as we walk through the palace toward a dining room where the children are going to meet us. “You doing okay?”

“Kind of,” I say in a low tone. “What about you?”

“Could be worse, honestly. It’s not what I imagined the king and prince were like.”

“Same.” I lean over and kiss his left shoulder. “We need rest.”

“Yes, but food first.”