Thorns of Decision (Dusk Gate Chronicles) (27 page)

And she knew. Before she could bring herself to actually look at her own pendant, she knew. She’d heard the name, Samuel, only a few short weeks ago. The name, as it always did, had sent a little jolt of familiarity through her. Samuel was a common name; there were two of them at Bristlecone High School. So when she’d heard the name as she hid in Ellen’s basement in Philotheum, she’d written it off as a coincidence.

Ellen. The second-born child of King Jonathan. Tolliver’s older sister.
Samuel’s
younger sister. Her
aunt.

The shock was gone by the time she read her name at the bottom of her own pendant. Quinn Katriel Rose, the same as the name on her certificate. The royal crest of Philotheum was on the back, the symbol of the first-born child on the front. She was the daughter of Samuel Rose. Not Samuel Barten, a store manager from Bristlecone, Colorado. No. Samuel Derek Rose, the first-born son of King Jonathan. The rightful heir to the Philothean throne. And he was dead. And she was his firstborn.

When she first woke up on Monday morning, Quinn wasn’t sure where she was. She was startled at how unfamiliar her own bed in her own room felt. She was surprised, too, when she looked at the alarm clock beside the bed and saw that it was almost nine. She hadn’t slept that late in a long time, and she couldn’t remember dreaming about anything.

Aside from the fact that her whole body felt heavy, weighted down, almost as if she were underwater, she was actually almost
rested.
For just a moment, she couldn’t remember why she was here, or why she felt so strange, and then a glint of sunlight reflected off the golden disks on her nightstand, and
everything
came slamming back.

Sitting there on her bed, she reached over and pulled the framed picture of her father and her toddler self into her lap.

“What were you
thinking
, Dad?” she whispered to the smiling image. “How could you keep this huge secret, and then
die
and leave me to deal with this? I’m only sixteen, and I only just found out about your world. What am I supposed to do now?”

She stared at the picture for a long time, the questions filling her brain, but no answers in sight. In the end, the only thing she knew was that she was
not
prepared to deal with being the heir to the Philothean crown. That was absurd.

After a while, there was a soft knock at her bedroom door. “Are you awake, sweetheart?” Megan asked, poking her head through the door.

“Yeah.”

“Are you doing okay? You seemed pretty upset last night.” She came all the way into the room now, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I think so.”

“You want to get dressed and we could go out for breakfast?”

An hour later, Quinn and her mother were sitting in one of the familiar upholstered booths in
The Egg’s The Thing
, a tiny breakfast cafe on Bristlecone’s only main street. Although it was still chilly outside, the Colorado sun was shining brightly, and the little business district was bustling.

Quinn’s thoughts, which had been so wrapped up in what she’d learned the night before that she’d barely spoken to her mother, were suddenly spun in an entirely different direction when she glanced out the paneled window of the cafe.

Abigail was out on the sidewalk, holding hands with her boyfriend, Adam, smiling and giggling about something with him, and their two other companions. Right next to Adam was Zander. And on Zander’s other side was Melanie Fisher, a cheerleader whom Quinn barely knew.

She swallowed hard.

It wasn’t fair, of course – even a little bit – for her to be upset. She was the one who had broken up with him, who had – as Thomas had said – broken his heart. And she was dating William. It wouldn’t be right to be mad at Zander for moving on. It wasn’t like she wanted him to be miserable. But it still stung to see it, to realize that she actually had really broken up with him, and that it wasn’t going to be something she could just go back and undo.

She wondered how mad Abigail still was. When she’d found her cell phone in her room last night, there hadn’t been any missed calls or messages at all.

When she looked back up, she saw that her mother had been looking in the same place she had. Her expression was sad.

“Zander was really upset when you broke up with him,” Megan said. “He’s having a pretty hard time with it, I think.”

Quinn wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make her feel better, but she felt worse.

“We were all pretty shocked, actually, Quinn. He told Maggie that he thinks you broke up with him because William’s your boyfriend now. Is that true?”

Her hands twisted in the paper napkin under the table, shredding it into tiny pieces, and she blinked a few times, trying to keep her eyes dry. “It wasn’t true when I broke up with him.”

A deep crease appeared in the middle of Megan’s forehead.

“I just – I knew I was lying to him, and I knew there were so many things I couldn’t tell him, and that wasn’t fair. There’s been so much going on, Mom. I knew I couldn’t give back to Zander what he was trying to give to me.”

A few stray tears made their way down her cheeks. She reached up to dab at them with the napkin, but the whole thing fell apart, so she reached into her pocket for William’s handkerchief that she’d made sure to stuff inside while she was getting dressed.

“And what about with William?” her mom asked. “You’ve just barely met him. Four days after you break up with your first boyfriend and you think you’re ready to be dating
him
?”

“It’s been a little longer than that for me, you know.”

Megan closed her eyes and sighed. “Right. I always forget about that. It’s so weird.”

“It’s very weird,” Quinn agreed.

“Still, though, it’s not like you have any less going on with William. How is it that you think you’re ready for a relationship with him when you’re telling Zander something different?”

She took a deep breath, trying to soothe the irritation from her mother’s words, trying to stay calm and not begin a battle. Starting a new fight with her mom was the last thing she wanted right now.

 She could see in Megan’s expression that she really was confused, and she knew she was sad, too. Zander was her best friend’s son. Megan and Maggie had no doubt been indulging in dreams of a future with Quinn and Zander together. It wasn’t their decision, though.

“At least I’m not lying to William, mom. It’s not like I could just tell Zander ‘oh by the way, my dad was from a different world and I’ve been visiting there.’ William knows.”

“Just how are you planning on having a boyfriend who lives most of the time in another world?” Megan asked, nearly whispering in the small restaurant. “From what I understand, he’s not planning on spending a lot of time here once he’s finished with school. You still have another year of high school, and he’ll be gone. What will you do then?”

She sighed. She could see that her mom had no interest in discussing the biggest, most obvious possibility. Not that Quinn was quite ready to think about that herself, especially with what she had learned last night.

“I don’t know, Mom. I still have a lot of things I need to think about. I don’t
know
what’s going to happen. I do know that I really like William, okay? He gets me. Zander is a fantastic guy, and I hope that someday we can be friends again, because he was always such a wonderful friend, and I do care about him. But it’s different with William.”

The server brought their food then, and she and her mom busied themselves for a few minutes with salt and pepper and trying a few bites. Quinn had ordered a big bowl of cantaloupe, a favorite of hers, and something they didn’t have in Eirentheos.

After a while, her mom looked up at her. “You’re going to go back there, aren’t you?”

Quinn nodded. “Tonight. William is having a big celebration for his birthday next week, and if I don’t go back this evening, I’ll miss it.”’

“It’s not just because you’re still mad at me for not telling you?” Megan’s voice broke at the end, and the sound tightened something in Quinn’s chest.

“No. I am still upset about that, but I kind of understand it more now that you gave me the pendants.” Inside her other pocket, the pendants were smooth and cold, an unexpectedly heavy sensation against her leg.

“Are you going to tell me what upset you so much about those necklaces last night? I really thought you knew you were related to the – to Stephen and Charlotte.”

“Actually, I’m not. Not really.”

Megan frowned. “I always thought …”

“I didn’t think anything mom. I didn’t have any idea about any of this until Thursday when I left. And now … those pendants … I’m not ready to talk about it yet, Mom. I need to understand more before I am.”

“You’re kind of scaring me, Quinn.”

“I’m sorry. I need to … I need to talk to Nathaniel.”

*          *          *

Quinn’s stomach churned as she turned onto Bray Street, heading for Nathaniel’s house. Her heart had started pounding in an abnormal rhythm about an hour ago, when she’d first picked up the phone to call him, and now that she was almost here, her stomach had joined the fray.

She wasn’t certain why she was so anxious about having this meeting. She should have been chomping at the bit to ask her questions and finally get – demand – some real answers, but she wasn’t. After what she’d learned last night, she was afraid of what else she might learn, and what it would mean.

Nathaniel was waiting for her in the driveway –
of course he would be
;
why would she have expected some time to pull herself together before she went inside
? Her irritation faded only a little when she saw the expression on his face. He was much more nervous about this than she was.

Inside, Nathaniel’s house looked as warm and welcoming as it ever had. A low fire crackled in the hearth near the couches where they sat down, facing each other.

They hadn’t spoken at all since Nathaniel had opened her car door and given a tentative “Hello,” to which she had nodded. Now in his living room, they were silent for several more minutes, until Nathaniel finally swallowed hard, and then said, “So your mother gave you the pendants?”

She reached into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew the small, cloth pouch she had found to keep them in. Pulling open the strings, she shook the little bag, and the pendants fell heavily into her hand. The image of the royal crest in the center of her father’s pendant sent a little thrill of fear rumbling down her spine, as it had done every time she’d looked at it. Nervous, she rubbed it with her thumb. “Does this mean what I think it does?” she asked, although she didn’t really have any doubt.

“Yes.” Nathaniel’s voice was soft and low but definitive.

“Why does everyone think he died in a river in Philotheum?” This was the question she’d fallen asleep to last night.

Nathaniel sighed. “I should have guessed you’d go for the hardest questions first.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think that’s the hardest question?” It wasn’t. Not by far.

He chuckled, and the tension between them eased, if only slightly. “No, you’re right. I suppose it isn’t. And I guess it’s one that you really need the answer to, anyway.”

Quinn waited as Nathaniel fidgeted with his hands before he started telling the story.

“I think you know some of this, Quinn, but I will start at the beginning. My father was King Jonathan of Philotheum, as I’m sure you have figured out. I was the fourth born child of Jonathan and my mother, Sophia. Samuel was my oldest brother. He was eight cycles older than me, but we were always close. I’ve heard stories that he doted over me, even in the cradle. We both loved our other two siblings, Ellen and Charles, but the two of them were only a cycle apart in age, and were usually in their own little world together.”