Be Careful of Julia
Convinced she had said enough for her warning to sink in, Julia lifted the hand she had pressed to Diana's shoulder.
But Diana was not cowed in the slightest.
"Oh, don't trouble yourself over that. My eyesight happens to be second to none."
The Queen clearly judged there was nothing to gain from raking Diana's nerves any further, and meant to end the war of nerves there. Diana had no such intention.
The girl pretended not to notice the pressure to leave and stayed exactly where she was. Nor did she stop there — treating Julia as though she simply did not exist, she strolled up to Cassion. "Your Highness, did you hear the news?"
"What news?"
Cassion tilted his head, puzzled that Diana had addressed him out of nowhere.
"About Phoenix Bank!"
"What's that?"
The follow-up topic was every bit as abrupt, and Cassion's brow creased. Diana raised her voice as though daring the whole room to listen.
"They say Phoenix Bank is in an uproar!"
"Why are you telling me that?"
Oh, for pity's sake — just hush and listen.
Diana was looking at Cassion as she spoke, but her words were aimed squarely at Julia. Phoenix Bank was one topic the woman could not afford to ignore; the bank maintained some manner of private arrangement with her.
Right on cue, Julia came over wearing a sour face and asked Diana, "What is that supposed to mean?"
Diana put on a perfect show of having blundered and murmured, "Oh — I was told I shouldn't mention that."
"Lady Diana. I am the Queen of this realm. Nothing may be withheld from me. Out with it, now."
Julia pinned Diana in place with those words. She assumed that, as a daughter of House Ehrenberg, the girl would be well informed despite her tender age.
"Then it has to stay between the two of us, Your Majesty. I would be telling you in secret, after all."
Winking as she said it, she looked every inch the child of her years. Julia thought, not for the first time that day, just how much her impression of Diana had changed.
"They say Phoenix Bank is about to go under. People are lining up out the door to pull out their deposits."
The corners of Julia's smiling mouth gave a violent twitch. Her hands seized her skirt.
"My, you do know a great deal for a young lady. Wherever did you hear such things... Oh dear, look at the hour. I think we had better save the rest for another day. I must be off."
Feigning shock at how late it had grown, Julia put off their talk for another time, drew herself up ramrod-straight, and turned her back.
She had played it cool. But Diana, whose ears were every bit as sharp as her eyes, caught it plainly — the instant the door clicked shut behind the Queen, Julia ran.
"Haah — you, honestly!"
The moment Julia was gone, Cassion sagged. He braced a hand against the desk and let out a long, deep sigh.
They had sent the Queen off without a proper blow-up. Relieved, I reached out to steady him — and a thin arm came up and pushed me away.
Prickly-cat mode, then.
He had been startled and rattled by Julia, so I could hardly blame him. That viper's stare could make a grown adult's knees buckle; for frail Cassion to have stayed on his feet in front of her at all was commendable.
"Sit down. No — lie down, Your Highness."
Cassion drew one enormous breath and did as he was told. When I moved to support him, he shoved me away again.
Twice! He's refused me twice now!
I have my pride too, you know!
...But you can't stand on pride with a sick person, can you.
Besides, those drooping shoulders made him a dead ringer for a cat caught out in the rain. And through it all, the back of his head stayed perfectly round and adorable. Perhaps I truly had grown attached over the past few days, because his prickly attitude looked to me like nothing but charm.
Undeterred, I saw him through to the end. The third time I held out my hand, he didn't swat it away.
Meekly accepting my help at last, Cassion lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.
"Were you badly frightened, Your Highness?"
"Of course I was. Who wouldn't be?"
Fair enough. Even I had flinched at the sound of Julia's voice in the corridor — and Cassion had heard that frost-edged cursing from an arm's length away.
Still, it was a mercy she had withdrawn so quietly. I had fully expected her to grill me — why I had come to the Third Prince's Palace, what exactly I knew about Phoenix Bank.
Good thing I moved on Phoenix Bank first.
I could still picture Julia, wavering the moment she heard the bank was in trouble. It wasn't the decisive blow I would have liked to land, but it was the best I could manage for now.
When Phoenix Bank comes crashing down, Julia takes the hit with it.
Focus on that.
Phoenix Bank was the institution that stewarded the Queen's slush funds. And that same bank held Twilight Mansion as collateral.
Julia. Twilight Mansion. Phoenix Bank.
Something stank here. Badly.
"What are you thinking about?" Cassion asked when I went quiet, sounding sulky.
"Hmm — I was thinking of planting an informant in the Queen's palace. If we knew she was coming before she ever arrived, you could make yourself scarce, Your Highness. I would love to repay her, blow for blow, for every fit she's thrown at you — but I don't have the power for that yet."
"What on earth are you saying?"
Cassion's brow knitted — apparently the suggestion that he hide had stung his pride.
"Think of her as a gnat, Your Highness. It doesn't bite me — it's just an unsightly little thing, so best avoided."
Truth be told, the analogy was flawed. Unlike a gnat, Julia bit. She was worse than any venomous insect. I almost set him straight, then let it go.
"Julia has nothing to do with it."
"Then are you upset over Her Majesty instead?"
Cassion clicked his tongue. His eyes traveled over me, up and down.
That look is seriously getting on my nerves.
I almost gave him a piece of my mind, bit it back, and asked instead, "If it isn't Her Majesty, then why are you so put out, our Highness?"
"You…"
He had been answering briskly enough a moment ago, but now Cassion let the words trail away, his voice sinking too low to catch.
"Pardon? What was that?"
"You! Be careful around Julia!"
Cassion barked it out — and a flurry of hacking coughs followed from his mouth.
He muffled his lips with one hand and coughed for a good long while before diving under the covers.
Wafting away the little cloud of dust he had stirred up, I stared at the round mound the blanket had become.
"Be careful of Julia? Not I'll be careful — you be careful…?"
As I turned his words over and over in my head, heat came flooding up my face.
So what you're saying is — you, for me—
"Were you worried about me, Your Highness? You were worried about me, weren't you? Right? Am I right?"
Beaming from ear to ear, I found that the smile absolutely refused to leave my face.
"Don't smile, Diana."
"How could I possibly not, when you just worried about me!"
Cassion's eyes narrowed to slits. I did my level best to look solemn, but the corners of my mouth kept twitching all on their own.
And then Cassion said, in a tone that stung worse than a slap:
"Is it that funny, me worrying about you? A sickly weakling like me, worrying over you — you, who look like you could fell an ox with one punch. Is that the joke?"
…
That killed my laughter dead. The room went utterly still, as though a bucket of ice water had been emptied over it.
Cassion went on bristling; all I could do was blink.
He had misread why I was laughing. And the misunderstanding ran so deep that I couldn't lightly smooth it over.
I knew he had been ill for years, that he'd been twisted up inside by nothing but other people's contempt.
We had grown reasonably close of late, though, so I'd assumed he was fine now. He wasn't. He still could not bring himself to trust a living soul.
Because Cassion is still a child.
I resolved to be generous about it and began to speak.
"Listen carefully, Your Highness."
"Listen to what?"
When my expression softened and my voice turned gentle, he sat up and scooted his hips back until his spine found the headboard.
His face and his tone both announced that he had no interest whatsoever in hearing me out. His body told a different story.
That gap between them was so endearing my hand moved of its own accord — my fingers flitted through his bangs in passing.
It happened in a blink; even Cassion couldn't mount a defense. A beat later his face went red, and though he was clearly put out about it, he didn't blow up at me.
I really must break myself of this hand habit.
The moment something is cute, my hands go straight for it. Honestly.
Clenching my fist, I pressed on.
"Your Highness. The reason I laughed was that I was happy — happy that you worried about me."
Cassion wore the face of a man who hadn't the faintest idea what I was talking about.
Goodness. We speak the same language, and this still feels like talking to a foreigner.
Summoning every ounce of patience, I explained it step by step.
"Prince Cassion, think back to when you first met me. You could hardly bear to look at me."
"I did. You were rude, overconfident, and insufferably arrogant."
So that's how you saw me, huh.
Smothering the flare of indignation at the corners of my eyes, I carried on.
"Of course. You're entitled to think that. And when I came begging for your help, what did you say? That you couldn't care less whether I lived or died. And since you truly didn't care, you wouldn't even agree to the marriage—"
The moment I let the sentence dangle, Cassion sat up straighter.
"I never went so far as to say you would die."
"It was the obvious conclusion. That is simply what a succession struggle in a noble house is."
I paused to draw breath. Cassion waited for me to go on.
"My family is hardly an ordinary one, after all."
Awkward as it was to have to say that about my own house.
When I laughed, Cassion lowered his head. It seemed my death had only just begun to weigh on him — funny, considering how easily he spoke of his own.
"Then put it more simply."
"My succession fight is no different from a battle for the throne. A war of princes, essentially — history books are full of them. What do men who want to be king do to one another? It's kill or be killed, isn't it? You didn't imagine they'd sit down, pour each other tea, and debate — 'you take the crown,' 'oh no, after you' — did you?"
"Of course they wouldn't."
Anyone who had studied even a sliver of history knew how those desperate, clawing fights for a seat of power always ended.
"Do you know the easiest way for Count Kolkos to take House Ehrenberg for himself?"
It was phrased as a question, but I had no need to hear his answer. Cassion's lips pressed shut.
"By killing me."
Gentler words existed — remove, eliminate, be rid of. I said it plainly. Blunt landed harder.
"He could spare you. If you stepped aside."
How naive.
"If there were even the slightest chance of that, do you think I would ever have come to you?"
Count Kolkos had sold me to Dayson to get his hands on the family — and in the end, he had slandered me into my grave.
Cassion's face darkened by degrees. At last, he was grasping the true weight behind my proposal of marriage.
His fingers twisted hard into the blanket, his eyes flicking violently from side to side. Apparently he was only now realizing that my situation was far more dire than he had imagined.
Should I have led with pity from the very start? "Marry me or I die"?
I shook my head where he couldn't see.
He listened now because we had built something friendly first. Had I blurted all of this out the moment we met, the only reply I would have earned was something like, Doesn't matter — I'll die first anyway.
"So?" Cassion asked.
What were we talking about again? Oh — the laughing! I'd laughed because it made me happy that he worried about me, and he'd taken it entirely the wrong way.
"As you know, Your Highness, I don't have parents."
...Argh, why do I suddenly feel like crying?
No matter how grown-up and composed a person was, bringing up their dead parents never got any easier.
"So there is no one who truly worries about me."
Aunt Cho and Jenice flickered through my mind — but neither of them could ever fully, a hundred percent, share in my grief and my pain. Their circumstances, their whole worlds, were simply too different from mine.
And they were adults. If I ever poured my heart out to them, they would rush to fix things — not to feel them alongside me.
Cassion was different.
He had spent his whole life tormented by silence. He knew what it felt like for a powerful adult to bare their fangs at you and come for you — knew the terror that pooled in your stomach in their presence.
And he was a child, same as me.
"And yet you did it, Your Highness. You worried about me. And you meant every word of it."
He had no idea just how much joy that had given me.