We have a lot to talk about, my queen. As Landon’s words reverberate through my head, I trace the familiar inscribed letters on the journal. My fingers move in a hypnotic way as the breath stalls in my lungs. Because it’s one of my mother’s diaries, and even if he hadn’t told me it belonged to her, I’d recognize it by those initials written in elegant calligraphy.
“How did you get this?” My voice is sharp and brazen—the kind of tone that would earn me a session in the dungeon if I were still under the rule of Heath Bordeaux.
Landon glances at my lady. “Faye, will you give us a few minutes?” With a cooperative nod, she gets up to leave, and the fact that she’s not fighting him surprises me as much as the familiar way in which he addressed her.
After the door shuts upon her exit, he leans forward, hands clasped between his knees. “What do you know about your mother’s journals?”
An image of leather spines, sorted by color, comes to mind—a neat row kept dust-free on an oak shelf in her writing room. After she died, my uncle turned the space into storage.
“She had a collection. She was always writing between the pages. After the crash…” With a hard swallow, I pause. “My uncle boxed them up, but Faye’s mother gave them to me on my sixteenth birthday.”
“Did you read them?”
I shift, crossing my left ankle over my right. My mother was a romantic at heart, right until the day she died at my father’s side on that plane. She wrote everything from poems to artistic descriptions of the mundane hours that made up her days. Thinking of those journals renews my sorrow, and my eyes burn with it. No matter how much time passes, grief festers in my soul, a permanent scar waiting for the right trigger to peel away the scabs and uncover the hurt as if it burrowed there yesterday.
“I read every word she ever wrote.”
He points to the diary in my hands. “You didn’t read that one.”
“How can you be certain?”
“You’d know the truth if you had.”
“The truth?”
Rising to his feet, Landon wanders to the windows. Unlike last month, when the sun shone on the imposing form of Mr. Bordeaux, turning his midnight hair a bluish silver, cloud cover greets Landon on the other side of that glass. His faded black jeans and olive button-down shirt complement the tumultuous slate sky. Maybe it’s a fitting backdrop for whatever “truth” the man from the House of Gemini is about to impart.
A few seconds slip by before he turns to face me. “I don’t know how else to say this, so I’m just going to put it out there. Your mother and my father had an affair nineteen years ago.”
His “truth” blasts through my consciousness, as abrupt and loud as a gunshot, and my heart beats with an irregular rhythm. I work my jaw, mouth gaping and shutting before falling open again. “I don’t believe you.”
My parents loved each other. They were happy and faithful and…and my mother wouldn’t have done this.
Not nineteen years ago.
“It’s the truth, Novalee.”
The conviction in his voice shoots dread into my gut. “There must be some kind of mistake,” I say, smoothing my thumb over my mother’s initials on the cover, as if the action will smooth the ripples of turmoil bubbling inside me.
“There’s no mistake.” He nods at the leather-bound journal I’m clutching like a lifeline. “She wrote about it in detail.”
I toss the diary on the table as if it burned me. “Then it’s a forgery!”
“It’s not a forgery.” Reclaiming his seat, he softens his tone, and his emerald eyes bore into me, willing me to believe him. “Faye gave it to me when you arrived on the island. Her mother kept the journal hidden after your parents died.”
My eyes widen. “How long has Faye known about this?”
“As far as I’m aware, just a few months.”
Betrayal lingers on my tongue like a bitter pill I don’t want to swallow. “How could she not tell me?” The question is rhetorical, laden with stunned disbelief.
Landon answers anyway. “Her mother swore her to secrecy.”
“That’s no excuse! She’s my lady…my best friend since childhood. This doesn’t make any sense.” I narrow my eyes. “Why would she give the journal to you?”
“To ensure I don’t bid in the auction.”
I can’t breathe, can’t think…I don’t want to think. Because thinking means analyzing his explanation, rolling it around in my mind and coming to heartbreaking facts based on inference. It means admitting, even to myself, that what he’s saying might be true. The thought torpedoes through my mind, and I think back to the last two months.
Landon and his kind, secretive eyes.
The way he pushed back against Heath on my behalf at last month’s dinner.
And how he gave me an “out” at the medical examination and was the first to leave when given the choice.
How he didn’t touch me…at all.
“Just say it,” I demand, voice tremoring with devastation.
“You’re my sister.”
I shake my head…denying, denying, denying.
“But I have the Van Buren eyes, and…” As I bite my lip, a tear escapes my lashes.
“Biologically, you’re the daughter of Franklin Astor.” Glancing down at his joined hands, Landon pauses. “You have my father’s smile…not that you’ve had reason to smile since arriving on the island.”
The heaviness of his words, the quiet sadness in them, float between us for several moments, and the raging hurt in my soul ebbs a little. My gaze lands on the abandoned journal sitting between us. I wipe my cheeks, stowing away the anguish to deal with later when I’m alone.
“Did you know before Faye gave you the diary?”
“My father told me last year.”
“Who else knows?”
“No one, other than Faye and her mother.” He rakes a hand through his thick, dark hair, disrupting the combed-back strands. “If the truth comes out that you descend from Evangeline Castle…” Landon lets out a quick breath. “The Brotherhood will void the contract. There will be no auction for marriage.”
My heart skips a hopeful beat. “You mean I’ll be able to leave this place?”
“Where will you go? As the only living relative of King Van Buren, Rowan is the rightful heir to the throne of your lands.” He falls silent, letting the statement settle between us.
Letting it sink in.
Because if Franklin Astor is my father, then I have no legal claim on my home, other than the precious memories of growing up there. I’m parentless, and until my twenty-first birthday—when I can access my trust fund—I’m penniless.
“I want to go home.” I cross my arms, a pure display of defiance because deep down, I know I’m screwed whether I stay or go.
With a sigh, Landon rises and closes the few feet between us. Kneeling in front of me, he takes my hand in his. “Going home isn’t an option, my queen.”
I yank my hand free. “I’m not your queen. According to what you just told me, I’m nobody’s queen.”
“You are a queen, Novalee. For the sake of your nation, no one must find out about our shared bloodline. That’s why I’ll continue to address you so formally. The auction must go on.”
“So you won’t allow me to leave?”
He shakes his head. “You’re an Astor.” Something flashes in his emerald gaze, something I can’t define though it’s on the edge of my mind, scratching with a hint of clarity. “You belong on Zodiac Island, not with Rowan or out in the world on your own.”
I nod toward my mother’s secret journal. Her Pandora’s box. “You might have the power to keep me here, but you can’t stop me from revealing the truth myself.”
The transformation in Landon’s expression has me pressing into the back of the chair, regretting my threat. He leans forward, his face a harsh mask of warning. “You don’t want to see the other side of me. For the sake of you and your nation, this is a secret you will keep.”
“Issuing threats isn’t a very brotherly thing to do.”
His mouth flattens into a stubborn line. “I’m not the bad guy in this situation, Novalee, but I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect you and keep you here where you belong.”
I can’t help but glare at him because he’s treating me the same way every other man in this tower has—like a puppet to be mastered.
“You’d rather see me married to someone like Heath Bordeaux?”
“Heath won’t get his hands on you again.”
“But he has the means to win the auction.”
“He’ll have to stick to art and jewels. The auction for your hand isn’t one he’s going to win.”
“You sound certain.”
“I am.” He stands, and the weight of his stare presses on me. “There’s only one man I’ll allow to win that auction.”
“Who?” A dart of my tongue moistens my dry, nervous lips.
He folds his arms, a flawless statue of confident authority. “Someone I trust with my life. Someone I trust with this secret…someone you’ve got an eye for.” The knowing smirk on his face is a preamble, and he lets it hang.
“Who?” I demand again, bracing myself.
“Sebastian.”