Chapter 138

In the library, I manage to narrow down the dates to find Caleb’s coronation. Then, moving backwards, I try to discover the exact moment the news stopped talking about Evan, by searching for the first time that he’s mentioned.

I find Prince Evan’s obituary, which sounds very by the business and not terribly personal at all. It includes the dates of his birth and death as well as who he is survived by. There is no mention of his cause of death. All that is mentioned of any brotherly tension is that the crown has now passed to Caleb.

While I’m not terribly shocked that the news media had withheld many of the details that the royal family clearly wanted hidden, I am still disappointed to come away with absolutely nothing.

Well, at least not yet.

Clicking on the previous newspaper, I go back in time. This one, at first glance, seems equally as tight-lipped. Yet as I look at it closer, I start to see more of Evan threaded throughout, though every time he is mentioned, it is spoken cryptically.

He is mentioned still as Crown Prince Evan, where in every following newspaper, it had read Prince Evan and Crown Prince Caleb.

In this paper, before Evan’s death, the duties has switched. I suppose, as Caleb was the King, I had naturally assumed he was the older brother. The details were fuzzy to me in my younger days; I had so much more personal things to worry about that royal politics.

But now that I’m looking at it, it makes sense for Caleb to take over after Evan’s untimely death.

Or his murder.

This newspaper was from the day before Evan’s death was announced, perhaps his last day on earth. Most of the mentions of him are innocuous. He held the flag for a race. He shook hands at a parade.

Then, buried in the back of the paper, in the gossip section, there was a grainy photo of a man who looked a lot like Evan in the park with an unknown young woman. The caption of the photo makes no mention of him, but I know Caleb’s face better than any other man’s in the world. And Evan looks very much like his younger brother.

Maybe it’s nothing. Chances are, it’s nothing.

Yet something about that photo stops me in their tracks. It makes me a while to realize why.

It’s their body language.

Evan and this unknown woman are facing each other, their heads bowed together.

Even the caption caught on the tension, reading, Young Love?

The editor of this newspaper had to know they were taking their life in their hands posting potential scandal about the royal family. Was that why they didn’t use any names?

Everyone probably knew, though. Well, at least, those who knew what the royal family looked like knew.

The question remained, however. Who was this woman?

And where is she now?

I selected to print of that page of the newspaper. The printer under the desk whirled to life.

Grabbing the sheet of paper, I fold it up and put it into my pocket.

I probably have enough to go on, but out of curiosity, I click to go back to the newspaper from the day before.

Evan’s face fills the screen, covering the entirety of the front page.

The headline read, Crown Prince Evan Beloved By All.

Beneath the large photo is an extensive interview from Evan himself.

Oddly, it mostly sounds like public relations non-speak. All of the questions are redirected to talk about how much Evan loves his country and his family.

There’s something very off about it. It doesn’t feel like someone would actually write for themselves.

“What are you?!” snaps an angry voice from behind me.

I jump at the sudden noise. It was so quiet in this library up until only a minute ago, I truly thought I was alone. How long has the intruder been watching me?

Turning around, I worry I might be faced with a nosy guard.

My stomach drops when I’m faced with the former king, Caleb’s father, Hector.

Caleb definitely inherited his furious glare from his father, who stares at me now like he wishes he could make my head explode with just his eyes. When his gaze fell onto the computer screen behind me, that rage amplified by a thousand. Reaching over me, he grabbed the computer screen, turned, and flung it across the room.

It crashed on the ground, sparking and shattering.

Hector then snatched the front of my shirt, dragging me up from the chair. He looked me over more closely, his narrow eyes doing little to hide his anger.

“Who ordered you to look at these old articles? Who even gave you permission to be in here?!” he demanded.

He lifted me up, my legs dangling.

“Wait,” he said suddenly. “I know you. You are Caleb’s little concubine. The one who always follows him around. Was he the one who called you here?”

“N-no… I just wanted to help him.”

“Help him? By drudging up the past?”

I grab his wrist, trying to angle so that I’m not choking on my own shirt. He doesn’t seem to mind my struggle. In fact, he almost delights in it.

“You are a treacherous little leech. Whether he ordered you to do this or not matters little to me,” Hector growls. “You are someone of no consequence.”

Carelessly, he tosses me to the side. I fall down onto the ground and then roll across the floor.

Hector does not wait for me to stop before he starts walking toward me.

Fear rises in my heart. Hector’s ruthlessness reminds me so much of Caleb, but without the mercy and favoritism Caleb already shows me, only the murderous desire remains.

Glancing around, I frantically look for something to help defend me. I have my small dagger, but against the former Alpha King, what chance would I hope to have?

“You shouldn’t go around, sticking your nose into other people’s business,” Hector growls. “You had a pampered little life, protected by my son. Why would you chance everything? What did you say – to help him? You are a damn liar.”

Hector steps closer, his heels crunching on the broken glass and technology of the broken monitor.

Just as he starts to reach for me once more, a new voice shouts from the doorway.

“Don’t touch her.”

I know that angry growl, and it makes my heart soar.

“Caleb…”

“Stay out of this, son,” Hector says.

“That is a member of my harem, father. She belongs to me, and I will not suffer anyone else to touch her, even to punish her.”

“Even me?”

Caleb walks closer. His eyes are on his father’s face, his irises flashing red.

Hector clearly has his answers. “Do you even know what she’s done?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Caleb says.

“Caleb…”

“Silence,” Hector snaps, just as Caleb says, “Stay out of this, Harper.”

Then they growl at each other.

Caleb is younger and presumably stronger. With him in my corner, I don’t feel like as I’m near death as I was just a few minutes ago.

But there’s something about Hector that feels vicious to me.

Why would he care so much about me looking up old articles about Prince Evan?