Princess at Heart (The Rosewood Chronicles)

The school grounds were empty, fog hanging low and dense. Trudging through the grey, Jamie shivered in his limbs.

The chimes at the Ivy Wood gate welcomed him, their hollow sound echoing through his head. All the while Jamie sensed Haru lurking, his words following him through the baffling mist. He recognized the symptoms of shock, the numbing cold, the dream-like calm, all of them pushing his legs forward. All he knew was that Haru was waiting, and so was his princess.

The gravel crunched beneath his feet as he approached the side of the building with the girls’ dorm. By the time he’d reached the front door he was already starting to feel his senses returning, as if he was waking from a strange nightmare.

What am I doing? Going to accuse his princess and the girl he’d sworn to protect of lying to him? None of it made sense.

Catching sight of his reflection in the glass of the door, he paused. His eyes had turned from golden to green, an emerald sheen like staring into the heart of a forest. There was nothing controlled about the figure staring back at him.

This was all wrong. He should tell Ellie and Lottie that he knew about Haru, demand they hand him in, and fly the three of them back to Maradova. Yet Haru had let him go. He’d trusted Jamie not to turn him in. He’d agreed to vanish forever if only Jamie asked.

As his hand hovered over the door handle, a familiar stubborn howling drifted over, and a big lump of spoiled cat appeared. Vampy began weaving round his feet, nudging his legs until he had to take a step away from the door.

A sound tore through the fog, setting his body on fire. A sound drenched in pain. Lottie.

‘You’re lying!’ he heard her cry.

Jamie began running round the side of the building, following the sound like a beacon at sea. Skidding in the mud, he stopped at the corner of the building, peering round to see the girls’ balcony door open. The two of them stood framed in the light of their dorm. Lottie and his princess intertwined, tangled together, locked in a kiss.

The fire inside him slowed to a simmer, and he felt it rising to his throat like acid. It boiled inside him: betrayal and treachery. He didn’t realize how hard he was gripping his fists until he felt blood in his palms from where his fingernails had dug into the skin. He watched, sick to his stomach, as Ellie brushed Lottie to the side with a cruel smile. She mumbled something he couldn’t hear, something that had Lottie gasping.

That was all he could manage. He stumbled back, and, before he could register what he was doing, he was sprinting away, his legs carrying him to his dorm, where he threw open the wardrobe, rifling through his possessions until he found the velvet box. Plucking it from its slumbering tomb, in his hurry, his elbow hit the side of the dresser hard enough that the makeshift back wall fell away. There, etched in the wood, was the question he’d been seeking the answers to all this time. Where is my enemy?

With the box stashed in his pocket, Jamie looked over his room, knowing Percy could return at any moment. The space at once felt too small, too much a false and cloying part of the lie he’d been living. He had to get away, somewhere soothing, where no one would interrupt. Taking off as fast as he could, Jamie ran from the Ivy Wood dorm, knowing exactly where he was heading. Each time his legs pounded the path, a different image would pound inside his skull. Haru in the rain, Ellie betraying their pact, Lottie screaming and finally his own reflection. Not until he reached Stratus Side did Jamie stop for breath. Then with methodical calm he began his descent to Liliana’s study.

The hidden room was filled with the scent of roses and lavender, the same comforting aromas he’d come to associate with Lottie. She smelled of Rosewood Hall, its spirit in her blood. The room came to life with the pink glow of the fairy lights she’d draped along the walls, hanging stars twinkling above him as though he was floating in space. The whole room was Lottie, and right now all he wanted was to wrap himself in her.

Taking deep, slow breaths he tried to make sense of the mess in his head, knowing that Haru was waiting for him, that Lottie and Ellie were in the school somewhere, that they knew something he didn’t, and that Ellie had betrayed him. And the most unforgivable part? Ellie had forced him into a pact that would protect Lottie, one bound by their allegiance to the throne, and she’d destroyed it – just like she did everything.

As he went over it all, he moved around the room, picking up items and putting them down. Liliana’s old work and Lottie’s blended together like a conversation centuries apart. He paused at the desk, one of the drawers still open a little, and, without a second thought, he tugged it the rest of the way. Inside was Lottie’s sketchbook, the moleskin glistening, and the pages split like the slit of an eye in the centre where she’d shoved something into the creases. Usually he wouldn’t dare pry, but he was so desperate for something to ground him, something of Lottie’s, that his hands acted for him. The pages were filled with strange sketches of everyone and everything from her life, including Ellie and himself. But they weren’t simple portraits – Lottie had drawn them in a myriad curious get-ups, mostly regal. One of them caught his attention. It was a sketch of Jamie on a throne. His eyes were pure green, the same green he’d seen in his reflection a mere moment ago; there were no flecks of gold. But strangest of all was the crown on his head. No, not a crown, these were great stag antlers. The image felt prophetic, and he could almost hear it whispering to him.

Jamie, you are so much more than you know, Haru breathed over his shoulder.

Trapped in the spell, he flicked through the rest of the pages, with more alluring images revealing themselves. Cats with horns, Jamie with horns, Ellie stuck in a cage shaped like a crown, Ellie smiling, Jamie frowning, and soon they all blurred together, until he fell upon what was hidden at the centre in the book’s creases, something that was entirely out of place. Handwritten letters spilled out on to the floor as he pulled the papers free, the script elegant and seductive like a siren’s call.

At first they made little sense. Cryptic messages. Then his vision began to focus, and bile rose to his throat. Choking, he read the name at the bottom: Your uncle, Claude.

The Goat Man from the roof in Tokyo. Slowly he realized what this meant, why it made him feel so dirty and ill. All this time Lottie had been corresponding with Claude. But it wasn’t over. With his body shaking, the rest of the contents in his hands fell around him, a paper rainfall of secret: a photograph, cards with images he couldn’t decipher, and a folded piece of parchment. It wasn’t until he reached down to pick them up that he realized what he was looking at. From the stone floor his own mother stared up at him.

She was smiling, a wry intelligence, a curve in her lip that he recognized in himself. His trembling fingers moved instinctively to touch his own mouth, his nose, his hair, everything he could see reflected within the ghost of his mother.

Below her was the folded paper, and somehow he knew, from the way the edges fluttered in an impossible breeze, and the way his mother beckoned up at him, that once he opened it, he’d understand all this clutter around him.

‘OK.’ He spoke into the empty room. ‘Tell me everything.’

He picked up the photograph and the folded paper that lay beneath, letting the pages fall open, a family tree unravelling in front of him. And there it was, screaming in his face, and the truth didn’t feel like a slap as he expected; it was a caressing, delicate touch. It was Haru’s hand on his shoulder, it was the way the king and queen shared a look he could never understand, and it was the shadow of Claude in the palace hallway. Jamie finally knew who he was.

The calm that took over him now was nothing to do with shock. It was thoughtful and decisive. He turned to the desk and wrote a brief note, then he tucked it into the dressing table mirror. Next, he pulled the velvet box from his pocket, opening it to see the chain he’d worn for so long snarling up at him. Laying it on the table with care, he grabbed the knife that was strapped to his ankle. The blade glinted in the light. He brought it down as hard as he could upon the silver wolf, severing it down the middle.

His link to the Wolfsons was torn asunder.

Making his way out, he paused where he lingered over the switch for the fairy lights with which Lottie had adorned the room. On a whim, he turned back to the room, looking around. Then he grabbed a blanket – one he’d seen Lottie curl up in so many times. He draped it over his arm, holding it up to his nose to inhale the scent, and took it with him up the stairs.

He didn’t need to find his princess. He didn’t need to ask her what she was keeping from him. She wasn’t his princess at all; she never had been. He understood that now. As he stepped back out into the rain, he began to walk down to the cast-iron school gates. He laughed to himself. All this time he’d been looking for his enemy, looking for where they were hiding, determined to stop them from getting to Lottie. It turned out he’d been their prisoner all along.

Haru was waiting for him at the main gate, a bag over his shoulder and an umbrella held aloft for Jamie. He ducked beneath it and finally found shelter from the rain.

They didn’t smile. Instead Haru waited for Jamie to speak.

‘Haru,’ he began, his voice hard and strange to his ears. He didn’t bother to look back at Rosewood. There was nothing there for him any more. ‘Take me to my father.’