June did not sleep.
She told herself she would. She lay down on the too-soft bed, pulled the too-fine sheets up to her chin, and stared at the too-smooth ceiling while the house settled around her into nighttime quiet. Somewhere below, floorboards creaked as guards changed shifts. Somewhere distant, an owl called its lonely question to the dark.
But sleep did not come.
Her mind refused to stop turning. Every conversation replayed itself on loop—Carmine's gentle probing, Isabelle's tear-streaked face, Colden's anger burning bright enough to scorch. The way his blue eyes had gone flat when he realized everyone had known. The way his hands had shaken at his sides.
He has every right to hate me, she thought. I accused him of wanting me dead. In his own home. In front of everyone.
She rolled onto her side.
Then onto her other side.
Then onto her back again.
The window caught her attention. It stood open—a habit she couldn't break, even here, even surrounded by walls that were supposed to be safe. Always leave yourself an exit. Always know where the door is. Always sleep between yourself and the only way out.
June swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Crossed to the window. Climbed through onto the narrow stone ledge of the archway outside, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, back pressed against the cold glass.
The night air hit her face like water.
Stars scattered across the sky in patterns she'd memorized years ago, when the ceiling above her head was tree canopy instead of painted plaster. She knew these stars. Had said goodnight to them a thousand times in a hundred different hiding places.
I have to go, she thought. As far away as possible. Before the bounty hunters pick up my trail. Before the Lavenders figure out where I've been. Before anyone else gets hurt because I was selfish enough to want to see my mother's face one time.
The thought should have felt like freedom.
It felt like drowning.
Colden woke to silence and moonlight.
His internal clock—honed by years of dawn councils and midnight emergencies—told him it was somewhere near midnight. The space beside him was warm but empty; Marco had shifted in his sleep, curling toward the wall, one hand tucked beneath his pillow in a gesture that spoke of old habits and older fears.
Colden lay still for a long moment. Watching the shadows play across the ceiling. Listening to the sound of Marco's breathing.
And thinking.
The thoughts came unbidden, insistent, impossible to ignore.
You acted like a child.
Everyone knew except you, and instead of trying to understand why, you lashed out. You made it about your hurt. Your betrayal. Your feelings.
Marco tried to tell you. He sat there and held your hand and reminded you that having family is a gift—and you barely heard him because you were too busy nursing your own wounds.
A familiar twist in his chest. Not quite guilt—not yet—but something adjacent to it. Something that might grow into guilt if he let it.
Envy.
The word surfaced from somewhere deep in the memory of this afternoon's conversation. Marco's voice, quiet and raw: "All I feel is wonder. That that kind of connection is even possible."
Colden turned onto his side. Watched the rise and fall of Marco's shoulders.
He lost his mother. He has no siblings. No family except what he's built himself—the found family we've all cobbled together from broken pieces and stubborn hope.
And I sat there complaining because the family I do have turned out to be bigger than I expected.
The guilt crystallized. Sharp and clean and thoroughly deserved.
He needed air.
The veranda was empty when Colden reached it.
Open to the night sky, framed by carved stone pillars that had stood for centuries, it offered a view of the grounds stretching away toward the distant treeline. Moonlight painted everything in silver and shadow. The air was cool against his bare arms—he hadn't bothered with a jacket, just trousers and an undershirt, feet bare on the cold stone.
He leaned against the railing. Breathed. Let the quiet work on him.
And then he looked down.
Movement. Below. A figure perched on the window arch of one of the guest rooms—knees drawn up, arms wrapped around legs, silhouette sharp against the moonlit glass.
June.
She looked miserable.
Not sad-miserable. Not crying-miserable. But twisted-up-miserable, like someone whose body had forgotten how to hold itself comfortably, whose muscles had locked into a posture of perpetual readiness for a blow that might never come.
Colden watched her for a long moment.
If she's my sister, he thought, and she was born three years after me—no, wait. Mother said three years after. So she's younger. Which means I'm still the eldest. But if there are three heirs total, and I'm the oldest, and she's...
He lost track of the math. It didn't matter anyway. What mattered was the figure below, hunched and alone, looking exactly as lonely as he felt.
We're both idiots, he realized. Sitting awake in the middle of the night, angry and scared and too proud to make the first move.
Well.
Someone had to start.
The knock on her door was so soft that June almost missed it.
She tensed immediately. Hand moving toward the knife that wasn't there. Body coiling toward the window—the exit—the way out—
Another knock. Slightly louder this time. Hesitant. Almost apologetic.
Not a bounty hunter. Not an assassin. Not a threat.
She knew that knock. Had heard it before, hours ago, when a different version of herself had opened this same door to find a different version of her brother standing on the other side.
June crossed the room. Unlocked the door. Pulled it open.
Colden stood in the corridor.
Barefoot. Rumpled. Hair sticking up in directions that defied physics. Looking, for the first time since she'd met him, less like a king and more like a young man who couldn't sleep and didn't know what else to do.
"I want to talk to you."
Four words. Simple. Direct. His voice was rough around the edges—either from sleep or from something deeper.
June's hand tightened on the doorframe. She stepped backward. Made room.
Colden entered.
They sat across from each other—him on the edge of the bed, her in the chair by the window. The moonlight fell between them like a curtain neither of them wanted to cross.
The silence stretched.
Then Colden exhaled. Long and slow. Like he was bracing himself for something painful.
"I'm sorry." The words came out stiff. Unpracticed. "For all the rukus. For the inconvenience I caused this morning. For making everything about my feelings when you were dealing with just as much."
June blinked.
That was not what she'd expected.
"Well," she said carefully, "you should be."
A pause.
Then—impossibly—something flickered at the corner of Colden's mouth. Not quite a smile. More like the ghost of one, haunting the edges of his expression.
"Okay." He nodded. "Fair. So now it's your turn."
June frowned. "My turn for what?"
"You know." He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Forgive and forget? We both say sorry, we both move on, we pretend this morning didn't happen?"
The words hung in the air between them.
June felt something shift in her chest—something hot and complicated that she didn't have a name for.
"No."
Colden blinked. "No?"
"No. I can't do that." She shook her head slowly. "I don't have anything to forgive you for. And I don't feel sorry for anything I said."
His expression flickered. Confusion. Fruation. The beginning of something that might become hurt.
"Well, of course you think that."
The words came out sharper than he'd intended. Sharper than he'd meant. And the moment they left his mouth, he saw June's spine straighten, saw her eyes narrow, saw the walls slam back up behind her eyes.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing." Colden stood. Ran a hand through his already-disastrous hair. "Nothing. I shouldn't have—I shouldn't have come here. I should just go back—"
"To your nice warm bed? Your nice warm life? Your nice warm kingdom where everything works out because you're the one in charge?" June's voice rose with each word. "Yes, please. Go back to that. Forget you ever had a sister who—"
"I'm not forgetting!"
The shout surprised both of them.
Colden stood in the center of the room, breathing hard, fists clenched at his sides. His chest heaved with something that wanted to be rage but kept transforming into something else—something more vulnerable, more honest.
"I'm not forgetting," he repeated. Quieter now. "I'm not going anywhere. I just—" He laughed—a short, bitter sound. "I don't know how to do this. Any of this. I say the wrong thing and then I try to fix it and I make it worse and I can see you closing yourself off and I don't know how to stop it."
Silence.
June studied him. Really looked—at the tension in his shoulders, the frustration in his jaw, the genuine bewilderment in his eyes. This wasn't performance. This wasn't politics. This was a young man who had spent his whole life learning to wear masks and had suddenly found himself in a situation where none of them fit.
"Okay," she said finally. Her voice lost its edge. "Well. I appreciate the pettiness, at least."
"The what?"
"The 'I should just go back' line. Very dramatic. Very self-pitying. Ten points for theatricality." She paused. "I'm sorry I said what I said this morning. About you wanting me dead. That wasn't fair. You had every right to be angry. I just—I reacted. The way I always react. Assuming the worst because the worst is usually what happens."
Colden sat back down. Slowly. Carefully. Like approaching a wounded animal.
"There's no use fighting over it," he said quietly. "We both know you're going to leave anyway. Escape. Go as far away from this family as you can get. Find another hole to hide in until the Lavenders give up or you find a way to disappear permanently."
June's expression flickered.
"Well," she said slowly. "You thought right."
Something shifted in Colden's face. The tension eased. The corners of his mouth twitched upward—not a smirk this time, but something softer. Realer.
"Then I'm glad," he said.
June frowned. "Glad? Glad that I'm leaving?"
"Glad that I have a sister." He met her eyes directly. Held her gaze. "Even if she's only going to be my sister for a few days. Even if she's planning to run the first chance she gets. I'm glad. Because for however long you're here—you're mine. My blood. My family. And nobody can take that away. Not distance. Not time. Not secrets or lies or any of the garbage that kept us apart for so long."
June's throat closed.
Her eyes burned.
Don't, she thought desperately. Don't you dare cry. Don't you dare let him see—
But it was too late.
A single tear escaped. Tracked down her cheek. Then another. And suddenly she was crossing the space between them and throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder and sobbing like a child who had finally, finally been given permission to fall apart.
"I'll always be your sister." The words came out muffled and wet and broken. "No matter where I go. No matter how far. I'll always be your sister."
Colden froze.
For one heartbeat—two—he didn't move. Didn't breathe. Couldn't process the sensation of arms around him that weren't Marco's, the feeling of someone else's tears soaking into his shirt, the reality of a family he hadn't known existed suddenly becoming unmistakably, irreversibly real.
Then his arms came up.
He hugged her back.
Tight. Tighter. As tight as he could without hurting her, which was probably pretty tight because he was shaking now too, shaking with something that might have been grief or joy or relief or all three tangled together into an emotion that didn't have a name.
They stayed like that for a long time.
Two siblings who had spent their entire lives as strangers, holding each other in the dark while the world slept around them.
When they finally separated, June's face was blotchy and her nose was running and she looked absolutely nothing like a princess or a fugitive or any of the things she'd been pretending to be.
She looked like exactly what she was: a girl who was tired of running.
"So," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "You could start calling me 'Big Sis' now. If you want. I think that's traditional."
Colden's expression shifted from tender to horrified in approximately half a second.
"Heck no."
"It's perfectly reasonable! I'm older than—"
"You're younger. Mother said three years after me. That makes you the baby."
"Baby sisters still get respect! And titles! And appropriate forms of address!"
"I am a king. Kings do not call their younger sisters 'Big Sis.' It's undignified."
"You're also a brother who just cried on my shoulder, so I think dignity left the building a while ago."
"That's—that's different—that was a moment—we don't talk about—"
"Big Sis. Come on. Just once. Just to see how it feels."
"No."
"Big Sis. Big Sis. Big Siiiiiis—"
"I will have you exiled. I swear on my crown I will have you—"
"Big Sis!"
"—sent to the coldest, most remote corner of—"
"BIG—"
"Stop!"
They were both laughing now. Real laughter—the kind that comes from somewhere deep and unexpected, the kind that catches you off guard and refuses to let go. June was grinning—actually grinning, teeth and all—and Colden was trying to look stern and failing spectacularly, and somewhere in the hallway outside the door, a third party was witnessing the whole thing.
Marco had woken to an empty bed.
This was not unusual—Colden often couldn't sleep, often wandered the mansion at odd hours, often needed to move when the weight of everything became too much to lie still beneath. What was unusual was the sound of voices drifting up from below. Familiar voices. One unmistakably Colden's.
The other...
He padded to the door. Opened it just enough to peek through.
The corridor was empty. But the sounds led downward—to the guest wing, to the room where the mysterious June had been installed, to whatever was happening behind that closed door.
Marco crept closer.
He wasn't eavesdropping. Exactly. He was just... concerned. And curious. And maybe a little bit protective of his partner, who had a tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and then spiral about it for hours afterward.
The door was slightly ajar.
Through the gap, Marco could see Colden sitting on the edge of the bed. Could see June across from him. Could watch the conversation shift from tense to heated to—unexpectedly—to something else entirely.
He watched them fight.
He watched them apologize.
He watched June cry.
He watched Colden hug her back.
And when the laughter started—when the bickering about "Big Sis" began, when his partner's face contorted into that particular mixture of exasperation and reluctant affection that Marco had learned to recognize as the sign of someone actually, genuinely caring about another person—
Marco smiled.
Leaned against the door frame.
Let the warmth of the moment wash over him like sunlight.
I'm glad, he thought. I'm really, truly glad.
Whatever happened next—whatever secrets the box held, whatever dangers lurked beyond the walls, whatever war was brewing on the horizon—for right now, in this moment, two siblings were finding each other.
And that was worth something.
That was worth everything.
The laughter faded eventually. Died down into comfortable silence. Into the kind of quiet that exists between people who have shared something real and are still figuring out what to do with it.
Colden wiped his eyes—when had he started crying?—and shook his head at June, who was looking far too pleased with herself.
"You're insufferable," he informed her.
"You love me."
"That remains to be seen."
"I'm your Big Sis. You're contractually obligated to love me."
"There is no contract. There never was a contract. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any contract."
June grinned. Unrepentant. Impossible. Already, impossibly, dear to him in a way that Colden was still processing.
He needed to change the subject before she started again.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
"Anything, little brother."
"I will exile you."
"Try it. See what happens."
He glared at her. She glared back. Neither of them meant it.
"The box," Colden said, steering the conversation toward calmer waters. "Mother's wooden box. The one she was holding this morning. Do you know anything about it?"
June's grin faltered. Just slightly.
"The wooden box?" She shook her head. "I don't... I've never seen it before. She never mentioned anything like that when I visited her. What's in it?"
"I don't know. She wouldn't show me. Wouldn't even talk about it. But she carries it like..." Colden searched for words. "Like it contains something precious. Something she's terrified of losing—or of anyone else finding."
June's eyebrows rose.
"Mysterious," she said. "Dramatic. Very on-brand for our family."
"Our family." The phrase felt strange on his tongue. New. Unfamiliar. But not unwelcome. "Is that what we are now? A family?"
"Do you want to be?"
He thought about it. About the morning's revelations. About the fight and the tears and the hug and the ridiculous argument about honorifics. About the lifetime of separation and the handful of hours it had taken to start bridging the gap.
"Yes," he said. "I think I do."
June smiled. Softer this time. Less teasing.
"Then we are." She stood. Stretched. Her joints popped audibly. "Now. About this mysterious box..."
"What about it?"
"We should check it out."
Colden blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. If Mother won't tell us what's in it, and it's clearly important enough to cause all this drama, then we should just... look. Ourselves. Together."
"That's—"
"Sneaky? Possibly illegal? Definitely against the spirit of familial trust?" June's grin returned, sharper this time. Edgier. "Yes to all of the above. Are you in or not?"
Colden opened his mouth to refuse.
Closed it.
Thought about a lifetime of secrets kept from him. About decisions made without his knowledge. About a wooden box that his mother clutched to her chest like a shield and a weapon and a treasure all at once.
"In," he said. "God help us both, I'm in."
Isabelle's room was on the second floor of the east wing.
They moved through the mansion like ghosts—bare feet silent on cold stone, breath held, hearts pounding with the particular thrill of doing something you absolutely should not be doing. Marco, watching from the doorway of their shared chamber, raised an eyebrow as they passed but said nothing. His expression suggested he would be asking questions later.
Colden pretended not to notice.
The door to Isabelle's chamber was unlocked. Careless, perhaps, or perhaps simply confident that no one in this household would dream of intruding on the queen's private space.
June pushed it open.
The room beyond was dim—a single candle guttering on the bedside table, casting long shadows across rich fabrics and polished wood. And there, on the dresser near the window, exactly where Colden had last seen it:
The box.
Wooden. Plain. Unremarkable in every visible way, except for the way Isabelle handled it—as if it were made of glass, or gold, or something far more precious than either.
Isabelle herself was asleep in the bed. Breathing deep and even. Unmoving.
June crept forward. Heart hammering. Fingers trembling slightly as they closed around the box.
It was lighter than she expected.
She lifted it. Turned. Met Colden's eyes in the darkness.
This is it, her expression said. Whatever secrets Mother has been keeping—they're ours now.
He nodded. Once. Sharp.
They retreated.
Back through the doorway. Down the corridor. Up the stairs. Into June's room, where they closed the door softly and stood breathing hard in the moonlight, the box held between them like a bomb that might detonate at any moment.
June set it on the bed.
They both stared at it.
"Well," June said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Here we go."
Her fingers found the lid.
It's time we know what the secrets in the wooden box are.
To Be Continued...