Resurrected

The heavenly stained glass window, the holy painting illuminated through by the truthful light of day, was now a shattered illusion, sending its broken shards raining down on Julianna, each piercing shard a painful reminder of what happened when she let her guard down.

The delicate yellow canary that was once Charlotte Murray, seemingly too small, gentle, fragile, and innocent to cause any harm, now lay dead in a pool of its own blood, its neck impaled with the arrow of sin and deception.

It's always the ones you least expect.

The newfound possibility of Charlotte and Jameson's secret meeting led Julianna to imagine all sorts of scenarios, ranging from harmless to childish to dangerous.

They could have been in two separate places, both with red soil mockingly laying around. A field, the forest, or maybe even the Segments.

Or they'd coincidentally come upon each other and clumsily knocked something on themselves. Perhaps something from the myriad of jars that lay in Alexander and Arabella's laboratory. Then Jameson could have tumbled down a flight of stairs and had a wrestling match with Scarlett's dog, Archie.

Or, perhaps, they'd secretly met up somewhere. Sneaked out to the wild, traipsed in the red soil, picked wildflowers, climbed the trees, and maybe escaped from a rabid wolf, which would finally explain the tornado of clothing Jameson appeared in.

But Jameson had no justified reason to go outside the walls of Semper. Julianna may no longer have been able to recite his schedule by heart, but she would still be informed if her brother was headed out that day, and no such notice had been given to her.

And Julianna supposed that such outings weren't on Miss Murray's agenda either, or in her interest. Put her next to an ivory statue and no one would have been able to differentiate human from sculpture.

Not to mention the chances of Jameson taking Charlotte to Alexander and Arabella's laboratory, the only place on the impeccable grounds of Fort Semper where they could find soil, were slim. Their older siblings kept their laboratory under lock and key. It was their sanctuary, so the rest of the family stayed out of it out of respect, and Julianna could not picture her twin asking their siblings for entrance just for the sake of Charlotte.

Plus, Jameson never allowed Archie within six feet of him. Or walked down stairs without a hand on the railing.

All this proved two of her theories wrong.

However, for some reason, despite it being the most eccentric and anomalous of all, Julianna could not find anything reasonable to contradict her third and last theory.

Julianna had made a point of pulling away from Jameson over the course of the last eight months. Their distance could have pushed Jameson into a relationship with Charlotte Murray. They were both well-educated, civilized people of good blood, had plenty of opportunities to see each other, and had been acquainted since they were three years old. A friendship between the two was perfectly possible, even encouraged.

So why sneak out together? Why slip away into an environment where these two obedient teenagers weren't supposed to be in when they could have just stayed in the fortress, where everything they could possibly want would be at their fingertips? Why the strange reactions to each other? And why did they both not change? Jameson may have been inexperiecned in the outdoors, but he wasn't stupid enough to wear a suit to the forest. He was clumsy enough as he was without a suit restraining his movement further.

And even if, under unforeseen circumstances, he did go in a suit, he would change the first chance he got! Their father had strict rules concerning how each of his children were supposed to act and dress. Every Blackguard child was meant to be a specific piece in the king's plans, and disobedience concerning the plan would result in punishments of all sorts of natures.

No one in their right minds would willingly put themselves through that.

And Charlotte, the girl known for being sensitive and immaculate, would never meet the king in soiled shoes, no matter how miniscule the damage. She seemed to be one who would cancel all her plans for the day just to fix her attire to the maximum perfection.

However, not if her sudden appearance outside hadn't been planned. Perhaps caused by the sudden calling of a charming prince from the intriguing shadows of the bushes.

This level of secrecy could only mean one thing.

Whatever they'd been doing was forbidden.

Julianna's stomach dropped to the floor, her heart stopped, and the air in her lungs gasped out. She saw her little sister's face in her head, cackling and tapping her fingers together like an evil genius.

She'd been right.

Everything Julianna had been dreading. Everything she herself had done, knew the dangers of, and had been silently begging Jameson to stay away from, was taking form right before her eyes.

And she'd let it happen. She'd pulled away from her twin out of cowardice and pride, and in the process forced him into the arms of someone who could ruin his present and future lives.

What would Sebastian do? Julianna could only shiver in fear at the thought.

Suddenly, a large, cold hand squeezed her knee, and she snapped her head up, almost knocking into her father's chin. Julianna hadn't realized that she was literally shaking. Her fingers were trembling branches in the unforgiving wind of terror, her shoulders quivering like a canoe on stormy waves, and thank God she was seated, or her legs would have tumbled beneath her.

She stared into her father's deep, maroon eyes, seeing the confusion, warning, and inpatience displayed over their opaque surfaces. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, and glanced over at Mr. Murray. His tanned, leathery face was plastered all over with concern and fright.

He was more worried about her than her own father was!

She laughed it off, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, staring down at her lap in embarrassment and tension

"My apologies," she addressed, still laughing airily. "I recently received a serious wound while tempering down a fight at the coal mines. The pain tends to make me space out, I'm so sorry."

"That is perfectly fine, Princess Julianna. I can only imagine what you must go through on a daily basis. Take all the time you need," Lawrence reassured as he patted her shoulder, which was finally beginning to settle down. "Should I get you something? Perhaps some water? Or a doctor?" Lawrence continued, scaring himself into believing the situation was more serious than it really was. He began lifting himself off his chair, but Julianna held her palm out to him and shook her head, laughing again.

"I am positively fine, Mr. Murray, thank you very much for your care and concern. The pain has passed, I assure you. Why don't we get back to business?" she suggested, just now realizing she'd missed the two mens' entire conversation.

Her father, not wasting a second, immediately cut to the chase, leaning forward to seize the folder in the middle of the coffee table. Lawrence's distress was instantly lifted off him like the folder off the desk, his focus now solely on the stack of paper in her father's hands.

It seemed she'd regained focus just in time.

King Sebastian untied the golden rope binding the document together and gathered the strand in his fist before opening the folder and flipping to a page around the middle. He scanned it up and down for a few moments before setting it back down, flat open on the page he'd been reading. The words were laid out in Lawrence's reading direction, so Julianna leaned slightly sideways to catch a glimpse of the document, which was apparently the most important physical form in this room.

All she saw were endless lines of neat black words, with an occasional red stroke or circle around the text. At the bottom of the page were three pictures. One seemingly of a battle, in a wide field of yellow and pale green grass. Nothing out of the ordinary, just one of the many armed conflicts that occurred more than Julianna cared for.

The second one was of a bald man, with bronze skin, a goatee, and squinted eyes. He was standing in front of a wood and brick building, a yellow sign hanging over the entrance, just above his head.

And the final picture was one of three fancily dressed people, their hands all linked together in a human chain, in the iconic grand hall of Fort Semper. The picture was quite grainy, as if it had been drawn a long time ago by an unprofessional hand. It took Julianna a minute to realize that the person in the middle was her grandmother, the late Queen Lorelai. Even in this poor picture she was ravishing in a long flowing dress, speckled with gleaming gemstones. To her sides were two men, both shorter than her, with light hair and bulky frames. One with green eyes, the other simple brown ones.

Julianna stared at the green-eyed man at her grandmother's left side, her mind rummaging for something.

He looked familiar.

Obviously, she'd never met him before. This drawing was made back when her grandmother was a young woman and this man was already middle-aged. But there was something so perplexingly calling about him.

In the midst of her thoughts, her father spoke up in his typical sudden manner. What he said next, his daughter only remembered the last sentence. It left her staring at him for what felt like a lifetime. Her heart slowed to a dangerous slow pace, her back frosted over with a thin sheath of sweat, and her previously racing brain slugged in the information it had just received.

How could it be?

It wasn't possible.

Simply impossible.

Six simple words.

The most terrifying words Julianna had ever heard.

"The Cadwells seem to have returned."