The Shadow Prince

chapter forty-one HADEN

It is nearly dawn by the time I return to the house in Olympus Hills. I have been gone for nearly a day, but I am heady with music and emotion—like an Heir who’s imbibed too much nectar at a feast—and I don’t care. I bang into the kitchen, singing one of the many songs I have memorized during the night.

Someone is waiting for me, but it isn’t Dax, as I expect.

“Care to tell me where you’ve been?” Simon asks. He sits at the kitchen counter with a mug of his coffee. Based on the dregs left in the pot, he’s consumed quite a few cups while waiting for me.

“No.” I pick up an apple from the centerpiece on the table.

“Do you know where I was?” he asks.

“Nope.” I whistle a tune, heading for the stairs.

“I was at a friend’s restaurant opening. And the darnedest thing happened. Something that has never happened in all my years. My platinum card had a hold on it.”

I stop at the front of the stairs.

“You can imagine my surprise when I called the credit card company to clear things up and found out that somebody in my household put a fifty-eight-thousand-dollar expense on my card yesterday afternoon.”

I take a bite of the apple. I don’t realize how hungry I am until the sweetness touches my tongue. I look at Simon while I chew.

“Not that I’m not good for the money. Not that I don’t have the room in my account. They were just concerned. As was I. Do you know why I was concerned?”

I shake my head.

“Because someone in my charge didn’t come home last night and wasn’t answering his phone. I thought maybe this someone had decided to skip town. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? Skip town? Abandon your quest? Run away? Like a coward?”

I suddenly find it hard to swallow. “I am not a coward. And I didn’t run.”

“I know that now,” he says. “But you wouldn’t be the first to try. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I almost came after you. That wouldn’t have been pleasant for anyone involved—just ask your friend Dax. However, luckily for you, I took a closer look at the charge on my account. What exactly was so fascinating at Pacific Coast Records that you felt compelled to spend nearly sixty thousand dollars on it?”

“Music.”

“Music?” Simon pours soy milk into his coffee and stirs it with a dainty spoon. “Sixty. Thousand. Dollars’. Worth of music?” He takes a sip and pulls a face like the milk has gone bad. “You know music is forbidden in the Underrealm?”

“Yes, but I’m only using it to get closer to Daphne. It’s part of my quest. Dax said it’s okay for Champions to bend the rules occasionally.…”

“I know what Dax says. He used the same argument on me when he convinced me to get you a spot in the program. I question whether it was wise.”

“It’s working. That’s where I was yesterday. I was with her.” At least part of the day.

“Do you know why music is forbidden?”

“Because it’s too human?”

“Because of the Traitor. Because of what he did. He used his music to manipulate the god of the Underrealm. To trick him, deceive him. To distract him so he could steal the Key to the underworld. To trap the Underlords down there. Your god would still be alive today if not for that man’s filthy manipulations.”

“That has nothing to do with my—”

“That’s what music is. It’s manipulation. It plays on your emotions. Makes you think and feel things that aren’t true. It distracts you.”

“I’m not distracted.”

“You sure? There’s sixty grand and a full day of unaccounted time that tells me differently. You stink of emotion.” He pushes his coffee cup away. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were having second thoughts about your assignment.” He stares at me, his dark eyes boring into me.

“I’m not,” I say softly.

“You sure, boy? I’d hate to tell dear ole Papa Ren that his son is an even bigger disappointment than anyone imagined. Tell him not to keep that seat next to his throne warm for you. Tell him you’re just some nursling who can’t keep his head on straight around some skirt who can spin a couple of pretty little songs.”

“I’m sure.”

“Good.” Simon takes his cup and plate to the sink. He pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and turns on the water. “Just to make sure, I’m going to be keeping you on a tighter leash,” he says, taking a scrub brush the color of limes to his dishes. He cleans them with an intensity that makes me glad I am not a plate. “Under no circumstances are you allowed to leave Olympus Hills again. I have activated the GPS in your phone. I am to know where you are at all times. You will be home no later than midnight every night, and you will give me a full account of your daily doings. If I find that the music program is indeed becoming too distracting, I will terminate that arrangement immediately. You will have to find other avenues for getting close to your Boon. Less emotional ones. Do you understand me?”

Being told that my movements are to be monitored and restricted is irksome enough, but the fact that he’s holding the music program out like some carrot he thinks he can snatch away based on my behavior makes me angry.

“You are not my king. I don’t have to answer to you in this way.”

“I am your father’s emissary, which means here, in this place, when you look at me, all you should see is your father. I speak for him. I act for him. I report everything back to him. You will treat me as though I am him.” The cup Simon has just scrubbed clean cracks in his gloved hand. “Is that clear?”

“Yes,” I say, leaving my half-eaten apple on the polished mahogany banister, and head up the stairs to my room.

“Good night, then,” Simon calls merrily after me. “Oh, and please try to keep your daily spending to at least a ten-thousand-dollar minimum.”

I dream fitfully, waking and falling back asleep, for the rest of the morning. I see my mother’s face. I hear her voice. I remember that she used to whisper a lullaby in my ear when I was too young to tell anyone. I can’t quite hear the little melody, but I can feel it.

I hadn’t allowed myself to fully think of her in so long, but once I did yesterday, it’s like I can’t push away her ghost. She haunts me.

I see her standing in my bedchamber, looking pale and withered. I am sitting at a table, playing chess with Rowan. We are both seven years old. I am bigger than Rowan, but he always beats me when we play strategy games. I prefer to wrestle. I ask our mother for a glass of water and she reaches for the pitcher that sits on the mantel of the fireplace.

She cries out and collapses, falling face-first against the marble fireplace. I hear the crack of her skull against the stone hearth.

“Mother!” I shout, and run to her. It takes most of my strength to turn her limp body over. A gash in her forehead weeps blood. Not knowing what else to do, I clasp my small hands over it, trying to staunch the bleeding, and shout at Rowan to run for help.

“I’m not your servant, Haden,” he says, and moves his rook forward to capture the queen I’d left unprotected on the chessboard when I rushed from the table. “We’re better off without her. Now come finish our game. I just put you in check.”

Blood seeps out from under my fingers, staining Mother’s ashy hair red. I can’t stop the bleeding. I hear a gasp from the doorway and notice Garrick, small and scrawny, lurking in the corridor, only a few feet away from us, as usual. He blinks at me. The boy is a Lesser. Bred for following orders. “Go!” I shout to him. “Get help! Get my father!”

Garrick, only five years old, half my size and almost as bony as my mother, bounds away. I hear the smack of his sandaled feet against the stone floor as he heads down the corridor toward my father’s chambers.

My mother’s eyelashes flutter open, but her jade green eyes seem unable to focus.

“I’m here, Mother,” I say.

She seems to recognize my voice. She lifts one finger as if she is trying to raise her whole hand but the rest won’t cooperate. “Haden, my son,” she whispers. “Always remember who you are.” Her eyelids slide shut, a low rattle echoes from her throat, and her finger trembles as it lowers to lie as still as her others.

“No, Mother!” I shout at her. “Don’t leave me!”

I try shaking her, but she doesn’t move. I clasp my hands over her head wound again, determined not to let her go. It takes so long for my father to return with Garrick that my mother’s warm blood has grown cold and thick under my hands. “She’s dying,” I say to him when he finally enters the room with two of his advisors and a couple of servants. My father nods. He snaps his fingers and says, “Clean up this mess,” to his attendants. He turns to leave without giving his wife a second look.

“No, no, no,” I scream at him. “You have to do something! Save her. Take her to the healing chambers!”

“It’s too late,” one of the servants says.

The other attendant tries to pull me away from my mother’s body. Anger, and another emotion I don’t understand, surges through my small body. I scream and kick at the servant’s legs. A stinging pain pricks at the backs of my eyes. A terrible wail fills my ears.…

I sit bolt upright in my bed. I am cold, but my chest is damp with sweat. My phone wails again from the top of my dresser. I am grateful for the sound—grateful it awakened me before the rest of that memory can play out in my dream. Grateful not to witness what I did next—not to relive the moment of my unforgivable shame.

Brimstone shifts and yawns at my feet. I nudge her off my toes and stumble to get my phone from the dresser. I hurry to answer it when I see Daphne’s name.

“Hello?”

“Were you still asleep?”

“Long night.”

“Me, too,” she says. “But I’ve been up since seven.”

“Did you go with your father, then?”

“Yeah,” she says. “And you know, it was better than I thought it would be. Got a little odd toward the end, but it was actually kind of fun.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“The only problem is, now Joe thinks I’m going to go on tour with him this summer.”

“This summer?” A pang of guilt hits me in the chest. Daphne may not ever see a summer again.

“Yeah, can you imagine? I can barely stand sharing a mansion with the guy; can you picture us in a tour bus? And his drummer is kind of a weirdo.” She pauses to take a breath. “But, hey, I’m guessing you haven’t checked your email yet. Considering you’re Sleeping Beauty and all.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. Anyway, check your email. I think I’ve found the perfect song for our duet. I sent you the music.”

“Give me a minute.” I open my email app. Other than the welcome packet that came from the school at the beginning of the year, her message is the only one in my in-box. I open the file she’s sent and peruse it, glad I’d used a YouTube video to learn how to read music since my first lesson with her. “This is good,” I say, imagining the sounds of the notes as I read them.

“It’s ‘Falling Slowly’ by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová—from one of my favorite movies. It’s the first duet I thought of, but after looking at several others, I think it’s the best option.”

I read over the words. Imagining the lyrics with the notes evokes an uncertain, wanting ache in my chest. “It’s perfect.”

“It’s going to take a lot of practice,” she says. “Are you up for spending that much time with me over the next couple of weeks?”

“Yes,” I say.

At this moment, there’s nothing I want more.