A tile crashed to the ground. I jumped, scanning the roofline. I imagined the beasts there, watching, waiting, stalking, led by a black-clawed monster.
My hand found Edward’s doorknob and squeezed the odd latch. “We have to leave,” I said in a rush.
But the room was empty. The trace smell of sulfur hung in the air from a recently lit match. The lantern sat next to the pallet he used as a bed. Beside it was a pile of clothes borrowed from Montgomery, an old pair of shoes, a stack of books from the salon, and a crystal decanter.
We can sell that, I thought, and snatched it up.
The decanter left a wet ring on one of the books. The cover caught my eye. I’d seen this book on the shelves in the salon when I’d arrived, but then it had gone missing.
Edward III.
I’d read it, long ago, when it used to be in our library on Belgrave Square. It was a lesser-known play, attributed to Shakespeare by some. It was bound in dark-green cloth, standard size, nothing remarkable except for the gold foil imprint in the spine: three straight lines surrounded by a circle.
The same symbol Jaguar had carved into my skin.
My hands started shaking. I flipped through the book, nearly ripping the pages. Half the pages were dog-eared. Some had been torn out. A long gash sliced through the back cover, made by something razor-sharp. I let the book fall open to one of the marked pages. A few lines were underlined in black ink, over and over, so hard it ripped the paper.
And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths.
Witness our too-much-memorable shame
. . .
Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales.
Edward, the Black Prince. I tried to remember all I’d read of the Black Prince’s character is plays. To the French, Edward III was a young boy raised by a cruel father—a general—who pushed him to military victory through ambition and brutality, turning the poor boy into a fiend. Not unlike the snips of story Edward had given us. The feeling went out of my feet and I knelt on the ground, frantically pawing through to the marked pages.
It was all there. The same story. The same person.
Edward had lied to us. He wasn’t Edward Prince. He was Prince Edward—the Black Prince from Shakespeare’s plays. This was his mystery. He’d stolen his identity from a little-known play.
The book fell out of my hands. This discovery meant one of two things. Edward might just be a runaway like he claimed, giving himself a new identity to flee some crime or maybe a girl he’d gotten with child. Or it could mean . . .
Sweat dripped down the sides of my face. I brushed it away, taking deep breaths. I fought to think with my head instead of my heart, which wanted to shout Edward’s innocence. But my heart was weak. I had to cut it out of my chest and think logically.
Or it could mean Edward was one of my father’s creations.
Named after a Shakespearean character, just like Balthasar and Cymbeline and all the others.
Just like me.
A faint idea seeded in the back of my head. Alice had always avoided Edward, as had Cymbeline and the other servants. Had they known? Had they avoided him because they feared him—because they knew him to be the monster?
I collapsed to my knees. No, it was impossible. The monster’s murders began before we even arrived on the island. Unless . . . Edward had never been on the Viola. He could have left the island in the dinghy, running from something—my father—and fate had brought him back.
My mind raced, trying to remember where he’d been when the murders happened. Too many times he’d slipped away to his room or into the night. A hundred chances to kill. But he’d been with us in the village when Alice was murdered. No. That wasn’t entirely true. He’d run away after shooting Antigonus. He could have raced to the compound before us, killed her, and circled back later. He’d been covered with blood and scratches, after all.
Thorns, he’d claimed. More like Alice’s fingernails.
I tore through the pile of clothes, ripping at the hems, digging through the pockets, trying to find some further evidence. I yanked the sheets off his straw pallet. My heart refused to believe my head. Edward wasn’t a monster. He’d protected me. He’d protected my father! I’d seen his face when he shot Antigonus. He’d gone white as a cadaver, horrified by what he’d done. He could never claw a person to death. He didn’t have claws! And I’d seen the monster. I’d smelled its musty scent. I knew the weight of its presence.
I fumbled for the shears and thrust the sharp end into his mattress, ripping a gash into the burlap. I tore it open and pulled out handfuls of straw, feeling for anything that might tell me the truth.
Nothing.
I crunched handfuls of straw in my fists. Jaguar’s mark flashed at me, mocking. Jaguar had known. He’d tried to warn us. Father must have known, too, but led us to believe Edward was a total stranger. Had he meant to kill him, that first day, when he pushed him into the water? Punishment for leaving, maybe. A lesson to show his creation who was in command. He’d made Edward from what—another panther? A hound? He must have done it while Montgomery was away. How proud he must have felt, to create a creature even more perfectly human than Alice, smarter even than Jaguar. Until his perfect creation had abandoned him.
Furious, I threw the half-empty mattress against the back wall. Straw rained over the damp ground that had been hidden under the mattress. My breath caught. Claw marks sliced across the stone floor. Long. Deep. Furious. And between them, dark-brown streaks of blood dried. Tracks ran through them. Three-toed.
My blood went cold. Something shiny glinted among the claw marks, and I picked it up. A silver button just like the ones on Edward’s shirt when we found him in the dinghy.