“Excuse me?”
“Just think,” he muses, as if this line of conversation is at all appropriate. “If something were to happen to big brother, it’ll be me you join. And I know I’d thoroughly enjoy that. We have to uphold the peace between our countries after all…”
“Excuse me.” I set my punch glass aside and head for the exit. I have to get out of here.
I make it just outside to the garden when Rhys grabs my arm and spins me around. “Where do you think you’re going?” he snaps.
“I had to get out of there.”
“Why?” he asks, studying me.
“It was too much.”
“Did someone say anything to you?” he asks.
“Yes, actually, but that’s only part of it,” I sigh.
“Who said what?”
“Taylor told me if you die, he gets to fuck me at his coronation to save the peace deal between our countries and that he would look forward to it,” I answer. “That was pretty much the final straw. And I need to tell you something and you’re not going to like it. But I guess it is what it is.”
“What’s that, hen?” he asks, a resigned tone to his voice. “Don’t tell me it’s about Suzanne being dead again?”
“It is and it isn’t,” I begin. “Listen before you haulme off to the funny farm.”
“Thewhat?”
“The asylum.”
“What the devil—”
“I said listen.”
“Fine,” he replies, crossing his arms over his chest.
I know he won’t be receptive and that’s fine. I’ll take whatever happens next.
“I’ve been seeing her… Lady Thomley.”
“Well, apparently, she’s on the castle grounds somewhere. Although Leo and his team can’t seem to find her,” he says. “So that makes sense.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
“It’s just glimpses like someone wants me to see her, or to think I do.”
“Explain it to me,” he says seriously. “Everything.”
“It’s little flashes of a blue skirt or blonde hair. Always the same, but never her face. I think she’s dead, Rhys. I know it in my heart, but someone is trying to scare me. I know you don’t believe me. I know you think I’m crazy, so ship me off. I’m ready for my grippy sock vacation.”
“Well don’t pack your bags just yet, hen,” he says quietly.
The about face knocks me off my mental balance and I just stare at him with my mouth hanging open. “What?”
Rhys just covers my mouth with hishand and turns me to watch a woman who is not Suzanne slink across an upper balcony above us in a blue dress and blonde wig. I know she’s decidedly not Suzanne when I see the profile of her face.
I know this woman.