As the council arrived and settled in the throne room, Henry headed toward Ingrid’s suite. He was on edge, his nerves frayed and his stomach doing flip-flops, but he did his best to appear as calm and composed as he normally did. Even if Ingrid did not make the best of impressions on the council, it didn’t matter what they thought of her. What mattered was that she pass the tests, and so far she was doing marvelously. Everything would be all right.
Knocking on her door, he waited, expecting she was putting the finishing touches on her hair. She wouldn’t be late, after all, not to her own party. But as the seconds ticked by with no answer, he knocked again.
Silence.
“Ingrid?” he called. Had he perhaps missed her on the way to the throne room? No, there was only one direct path, and she had no reason to take another. “Ingrid, I am coming in.”
Opening the door, he didn’t know what he expected. Ingrid curled up in bed, perhaps, struck down by anxiety. Or her with pins in her mouth, putting the finishing touches on her hair.
What he did not expect was to see her crumpled on the floor, lost in the layers of her yellow dress. And bleeding from the head.
He was by her side in an instant, his body numb as he searched her for signs of life. But as soon as he’d spotted her, he’d known: she was gone. His best friend was dead.
A scream unlike any other ripped through the halls of Eden Manor, and it took Henry several moments before he realized it was him. He cradled her body, trying to will life back into it, but the bubbly girl he’d loved was lost.
“Brother?” Diana’s voice whispered toward him, and the air beside him shifted as she appeared. “Oh. Oh. Is she…?”
He nodded, his eyes filled with tears and his throat closed. He clutched her fragile body to his chest, his fingers tangling in her blood-soaked hair. This wasn’t an accident. She was in the middle of the suite, far from anything that could’ve caused so much as a knock on the head, let alone a fatal injury. And her skull was all but crushed.
“Who did this?” Walter’s voice rumbled behind Henry, but he didn’t turn toward him. He couldn’t move.
“I don’t know. Perhaps she fell,” said Diana tightly, but even as she said it, Henry heard the doubt in her voice. Not even she believed it.
As she set her hand on his shoulder, he shrugged it off. This was his fault—if he hadn’t let Diana convince him to do this, if he had just stepped down and faded as he’d wanted, Ingrid would still be alive. She would grow old, she would have children and she would have a full and satisfying life. But because she’d had the misfortune of knowing him, she was nothing more than a lifeless body now.
Calliope knelt beside him, her eyes huge as she clasped her hands between her knees. “Henry?” she whispered, but he couldn’t bear the pity in her voice. They were all there now, the entire council watching him, some horrified and others grimly neutral.
“Leave,” he said thickly. “I will have no more of this.”
He expected a fight, but miraculously they all backed away, disappearing one by one. And once only he and Diana remained, he looked at her, her face swimming through his tears.
“Please go,” he whispered, rocking Ingrid’s body back and forth. Diana touched his cheek, her own eyes red.
“I’m so sorry, Henry. I’ll find another girl—”
“I don’t want another girl.” His voice cracked, and he turned from her, burying his face in Ingrid’s hair. She grew colder by the second.
“Henry, you must—”
“I will not risk another life,” he said, and she took a deep breath, releasing it slowly.
“Very well. Then I will have another daughter.”
“No.”
“I’ve been thinking about it anyway, and if you don’t want to risk another girl’s life—”
“I said no.”
She sniffed. “Those are your choices, Henry. You may either allow me to select another girl, and we will do our utmost to protect her now that we know there is a threat, or I will have another child. It is up to you.”
He shook his head as tears streamed down his cheeks. She didn’t understand. How could she, when her goal was to keep him in this hell of an existence? “I wish to fade.”
“I’m sorry, brother, but you gave us a hundred years,” she said in a gentler voice, placing her hand over his. “We all love you too much to give up.”
He closed his eyes, struggling against the flood of anger and guilt and sadness inside him. “You will not have a child because of me. Any daughter you bring into this world will live the life she wants, and you will not force her to be with me. You owe Persephone that much.”
Diana swallowed, growing still for a fraction of a second. “And you will allow me to choose another girl not only so we can find you a companion, but so we can flush out the killer and bring them to justice. You owe Ingrid that much.”
The knife her words formed burrowed deep within him, becoming as much a part of him as his very essence. And as she stood and walked away, her bare feet silent against the thick carpet, he knew she was right. He owed Ingrid everything—even if it meant losing himself in the process.
* * *
Eleven girls.
That was how many he lost. After Ingrid, it was Charlotte; after her, Maria. And so on and so forth, as each name and face scarred another part of him until there was nothing left inside him but guilt and misery.
Some girls made it only a few days. Others, weeks—and the worst deaths were the ones who made it months, who came so close to the halfway point that he nearly let himself hope. But no matter how well protected they were, no matter what security measures he implemented, they always turned up dead. Some were clearly murder; others were questionable, with no visible signs of struggle or attack. Diana, Walter and other members of his family were certain they’d cracked under the pressure of the tests, which had never been meant for mortals. Henry wasn’t so sure.
After each girl, he tried to fade. And after each girl, another member of the council convinced him to keep going. Murder after murder, body after body, he selfishly allowed another girl to risk her life for him in hope that perhaps this time, they would discover the killer. Perhaps this time, they would win.
They never did.
“How did it happen this time?”
Henry tensed at the sound of her voice, and he tore his eyes away from the lifeless body on the bed long enough to look at her. Diana stood in the doorway, a beacon of calm in the middle of the storm that was his existence, but even her presence didn’t help rein in his temper.