Of Heirs and Havoc ✔️ | Of Crimes and Crowns Book 2

twenty-nine : of fires and fury

Blake woke up to the smell of smoke, acrid and choking. With a panicked gasp, he threw a robe over his nightshirt and stumbled out into the hall, where servants were dashing about in a frenzy.

One of them caught sight of him and waved a frantic hand. "We must hurry, milord! The east wing has been set afire by the rebels!"

He followed the harried servant along a dark, cramped corridor that must have been a servants' passage. "Is anyone outside? My sister, has she been evacuated?"

Victoria was in the east wing. What if she had been—

No.

He could not lose his sister. Not again. She was far too valuable to him.

"We don't know yet, milord. But follow me, and perhaps we'll soon find out."

He sucked in a breath of stale air, trying to slow his racing heart. The servant was right. Blake would be of no help to his sister if he himself panicked and was dead or injured. Finally, after an immeasurably long trip that was half-walk and half-run through the corridor, they stumbled out the door and into the damp air of the Sleeping Island's humid night. Immediately, his eyes scanned the the stretch of sand between the forest and the manor for his sister. Victoria...

Finally, after an agonizing search that must have taken only seconds, but felt like lifetimes, he spotted her. Yet the sight of her gave him no relief: she was disheveled, a smear of soot on her brown cheek, and wrapped in a wool blanket... as well as the arms of one duke, Francisco Mendoza. Brotherly reflex, combined with the adrenaline rushing through his veins, begged him to march towards the two and separate them. However, his mind, his irritatingly rational mind, reminded him that she was his sister, not any possession of his. That he had given the two permission to court. That he needed to give Victoria the freedom to make mistakes of her own, even if they hurt her in the end.

Surely, a romantic tryst that ended badly was better than involving herself in a rebel sect against the queen. Of course, he doubted any other Arlean lords had to make such comparisons when discussing their sisters, weighing the bad scenarios against the worse ones.

"Blake!" He did not have to make the decision, then. It was a bit of a relief, considering he was typically the responsible Rutherford while Victoria was the wild one. Victoria, who headed over to him with arms thrown open that she wrapped tightly around him. "Oh, thank heavens you're here, thank heavens you're safe!"

"You sound like our mother," he teased when they separated, Francisco nowhere to be seen.

She gasped, jabbing him in the chest with a finger. "You take that back!"

He chuckled. "What were you doing when the conflagration began?"

"I was..." Suddenly, she became uncharacteristically meek. "Doing nothing special in particular"

"I asked for your whereabouts, not your activities." He examined her more closely. The smear of soot on her cheek was not soot after all—it was caked mud. "Although I thank you for volunteering such a vague answer."

"Don't be sarcastic, dear brother, it doesn't suit you at all," she retorted with a grin. "I was down by the stables. I had just finished riding when I saw the flames."

"And who were you with?" He continued the interrogation.

"What makes you think I was with anyone at all?" Her temper flared, green eyes flashing in anger. "Perhaps I enjoy solitude and not being questioned as though I am some runaway criminal rather than your beloved sister. I am a human being with a will of my own, not some valuable trinket that insists on being misplaced."

"Victoria—" he began, then sighed. "I do not question you because I do not see your worth. I do so because I see it. Because the thought of losing you, yet again, terrifies me."

"I am not some object to be lost and found, to be put in a box for fear of breaking!" She screamed, stomping her foot. "I refuse to be caged, brother. And like it or not, that is what you always attempt to do."

He saw her run away before he could catch her, her yellow riding habit streaming out behind her in the night like some canary bird's wings. Sighing, Blake turned away. It would do him no good, after having just broken his own promise to himself, to chase after her. She would cool down and then he would apologize. A flash of white on the ground caught his eye; he bent down and picked it up. It was a handkerchief, woven from fine silk fabric and embroidered with... an interesting floral depiction. There was a garden with flowers, but the vines were oddly shaped—no, they were not vines at all they were snakes, seething venom and hissing poison. Flowers of death.

Scanning the area, Blake looked for the person who could have dropped it. Victoria never embroidered, as it required sitting still for extended periods of time—a feat she did not even try to accomplish. None of the female servants huddled outside would have access to such rich materials or have the time to create such a complex picture. No, there was only one person who could have left such a kerchief on the ground. And it was Celeste Mendoza, who looked utterly put-together, entirely unaffected, and composed... completely unlike someone who had just been caught in a fire. But entirely like someone who had set the fire.

Blake sighed. It seemed there was more than one female he would need to keep an eye on.

• • •

After some brave individuals had declared the manor once again safe to enter, the nobles returned. Victoria disappeared after reluctantly informing him that she was going to freshen up for supper, and Francisco had returned sometime after the commotion of everyone trying to stampede back into the building at once. Celeste and and the prince went to the drawing room, and on impulse, Blake followed them there. He darted past a matronly housekeeper who was ordering the servants into the kitchen, insisting that even a fire was no excuse not to work, and lost the two of them for a moment. Walking through the hallways briskly in the hopes of catching up, he could smell fresh flowers now instead of smoke, and marvelled at the servants' haste in turning the manor back into an oasis from a place of horrors.

The sound of crying—feminine crying, in a higher pitched voice—made Blake pivot to look for the girl despite himself. He was shocked to see Celeste bent over in tears, with a hand on her back that belonged to the prince of Arlea himself. He had drawn her into an embrace, the two of them in an alcove yet still in plain sight for any servants or her father, even, to see them in a display of such emotional vulnerability, not to mention utter impropriety. That was strange. He had always thought of Celeste—and the prince—as paragons of propriety and guards of their reputations. After all, the prince was drastic enough to not want to risk humiliation and the appearance of weakness in his return to Arlea. But perhaps there were more sides to people than the one they always let show.

Certainly, he found himself rooted to the spot by surprise and shock, watching the two. There was nothing romantic in the embrace; he could only view a man's instinct to comfort and protect a distraught woman. Embarrassed for once, his cheeks flaming red, he stepped behind a potted plant until they left, and then wandered away himself.

Blake had had his fill of being dragged into dark schemes. His sister's kidnapping had shown him that. But he had a feeling that this one would harm him and those he loved most, no matter how he tried to avoid it.

AN: Sorry for such a long wait between updates!