The Shadow Prince

by Bree Despain

  “I don’t know what to sing.”

  “It’ll come to you.”

  “There are hundreds of people here.”

  “So?”

  “This is crazy,” she says.

  “This was your plan.”

  She groans, but I know she wants to sing.

  “Go,” I say. “Before the judges put a stop to it.”

  Daphne hugs me. She pulls away too quickly and heads for the stage, stopping only to beg a guitar off a guy who all too willingly hands it over.

  She stands on the stage, adjusting the guitar over her shoulder. I can’t help thinking she looks as bright and intangible as a ray of sunshine, standing in the spotlight. She leans into the microphone. “This is a song that I wrote with my dad. You may have heard it before.” She looks in the direction of where she left me standing. “For you, Haden.”

  She strums the first few notes on the guitar and then starts singing. “Shadow of a star …”

  Her voice echoes out from the speakers, filling the club. The entire room comes to a standstill. All other sounds, voices, movements stop. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m the one who stops, everything else disappearing. Nothing else exists. I can’t even breathe, for fear of missing a single note of her song. Watching her is like staring into the sun, but I can’t look away.

  When she finishes, the room remains frozen for a full three seconds, then explodes into cheers and applause. The judges hold up their cards. I can’t see what they say from here, but they make Daphne happy. She throws her hands up in the air and curtseys at the same time. I’ve never seen anyone look so alive.

  And that’s when it strikes me. How can I take Daphne away from this world? How can I take sunshine and life into a place of shadow and death?

  For the first time, I hope more than anything that the Oracle will tell me I am wrong. If my god were still alive, if I could pray, I’d send down a prayer. I’d beg him to tell the Oracle another way. I’d cry to him for another choice.

  Because Hades help me, I’m falling for this girl.

  Daphne runs toward me from the stage, the biggest smile on her face. I want nothing more than for her to throw her arms around me. If she doesn’t do it, then I will.

  “Are you Joe Vince’s daughter?” a large man asks, stepping between us.

  Daphne stops short. “Yes.”

  “Ah. I thought so. Do you mind if I get a picture of you for our ‘before they were stars’ wall? We’ve got a picture of your dad up there,” he says, pointing to a wall of framed photographs. “You’re going places, kiddo. I’ll be kicking myself if I don’t get a picture now.”

  “Um, yes,” she says, but her gaze flits to me.

  She smiles at the man as he takes a picture with his camera. “Someday, we’ll hang this right next to the picture of Joe!”

  When the man leaves, Daphne goes to the wall of photos. I follow her. There, right in the center of the wall, in a big black frame, is a picture of a much younger-looking Joe Vince. He poses for the photo with his arm around a girl who looks very much like Daphne.

  “Is that …?”

  “My mom,” she says. “Wow. This must have been taken the night they met. They were only together for a few days, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.… Who’s that with your mom?” I point to a second woman in the photo, standing off to the side a bit. She and Daphne’s mom wear matching silver bracelets that look oddly familiar to me. Like the one Brim wears as her collar.

  “Oh,” Daphne says. “That must have been Kayla.”

  That name strikes me so hard, I feel like the wind has been knocked out of my chest.

  “She and my mom were best friends until Kayla took off. I think that’s one of the reasons my mother never let me leave Ellis. Her one trip outside town—spring break, her senior year—didn’t exactly go as she’d planned. She ended up with a one-week marriage, a surprise pregnancy, and Kayla ended up running off with some guy to New York or something.”

  I stare into the eyes of the woman in the photograph. Jade green eyes just like mine. Kayla hadn’t gone off to New York with some guy; she’d gone to the Underrealm. And I know exactly who she went with.

  I search the faces in the background of the photograph and find the one I’m looking for: Ren. My father. He looks smaller than I remember in the picture, less regal, wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt. This is almost eighteen years ago. Back when he was a Champion. Perhaps only hours or days before he returned to the Underrealm. It’s obvious he’s watching the three main people in the photograph, but his eyes aren’t locked on my mother like I’d expect. The person he’s intently staring at is Daphne’s mom.

  “Come on,” Daphne says. “Let’s go.”

  “Don’t you want to stick around to see if you won?”

  She shakes her head. “Singing was prize enough. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair if I took home the trophy, since you bought my way into the competition.”

  chapter fifty-two

  DAPHNE

  “Tonight was fun. Thank you,” I say with a yawn as Haden slides the key card through the door lock. We’d stopped at an ice-cream parlor in the hotel and I’d forced him to try a scoop of mint chocolate chip. Despite his protests at first, he’d gone back for a second helping. “I think you’ve got a sweet tooth.”

  He gives me a small smile and pushes open the door.

  Garrick is out cold on the couch, Lexie is tucked away in the king room, with the door shut and the TV on a low murmur, and Tobin is asleep, sprawled in the middle of one of the queen-sized beds, with a few empty bottles from the minibar scattered around him. He looks like such a mess that I am happy Haden stopped me from taking that shot at the club. If I’d been able to stomach it, I know I wouldn’t have stopped until I was completely hammered.

  Haden pulls the latch on the lock and stands behind me. My arms prickle with static energy as I become aware of the electric current that surrounds him. I also become very aware of the fact that there is only one bed left, and two of us.

  I had wanted a distraction when I was in the club, and Haden had given me one—but not in the way he’d expected.

  He was the distraction.

  He’d known what I wanted—no, needed—before I even knew that I needed it. He’d been in tune with me in the same way I could discern the emotions of others.

  A lesser guy would have let me get drunk, maybe even tried to hook up.

  But Haden had stopped me from making a mistake, and helped me in the best way possible. What he’d done is unselfish and so surprising that it makes me see him in a new way—and not at all like the person Garrick had tried to convince me he is.

  I am aware of Haden in a whole new way.

  “Um, wanna flip for the bed?” I cringe, hoping that it didn’t sound as awkward to him as it did to me. “I mean, with a quarter. Not like gymnastics or anything.”

  “Thanks for the clarification,” he says from behind me. He’s standing so close, I can feel his breath brushing against my hair. “But I’m all right taking the floor.”

  Again with the being selfless.

  I don’t argue with him and get my pajamas from my suitcase and change quickly in the bathroom. The awareness that he’s just on the other side of the thin door makes goose bumps prickle up on my skin.

  When I return to the bedroom, I find that Haden has made a nest out of the blankets from the closet for himself between the two queen beds. He wears a pair of light cotton pajama pants … and no shirt. I am not sure I have seen someone with such defined abdominal muscles before. He lies on his right side so I can’t see his scars. His eyes are closed, but I know he’s not asleep as I crawl into the empty queen bed. I lie on the side closest to him. I am motionless for a long time, watching him breathe. He’s so still, except for his chest lifting and lowering ever so slightly, that he reminds me of a shadow. As sleep starts to creep into my mind, I relax on my side and let my arm drape over the edge of the bed. My hand dangles a few inches above h
is mouth. His warm breath sends tingles up my arm. After a moment, I feel his fingers close tentatively around mine.

  I don’t pull my hand away.

  A cool breeze awakens me the next morning. For a moment, I don’t know where I am until I realize that the cold wind is actually the air-conditioning kicking on. I open my eyes and find that I am lying on my back in the hotel bed.

  And Haden is gone.

  The blankets he’d used are folded neatly and stacked at the end of my bed. I sit up and look around the room. His duffel is gone, too.

  Sunrise peeks in between the curtains. Garrick is lying on the floor next to the couch like he’d rolled off it in the middle of the night, and the door to Lexie’s room is still closed. Tobin moans and rolls over onto his back on the adjacent bed. He holds his hand over his eyes.

  “Tobin?” I whisper. “Do you know where Haden went?”

  “No,” he moans. “But I heard him leave a couple of hours ago.”

  “Oh.”

  Where did he go? Why did he go?

  Is he having second thoughts about finding this new Oracle?

  Has he changed his mind about me?

  I thought maybe after last night he might …

  Then again, maybe I’d imagined what had happened between us. That new awareness of each other—a connection. Maybe falling asleep with our hands clasped had only been part of a dream?

  Or maybe he’s just as freaked out about all of it as I am.

  The hotel room door opens and Haden slips back inside, with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He acts like he’s trying to be quiet at first, like he’s slinking back in, but then comes to a halt when he sees me sitting up in bed.

  “Oh good, you’re up,” he says, but I can’t tell if he’s happy to see me. That strange sphere of silence surrounds him and his face is devoid of emotion. He holds up a sheet of hotel stationery. “I found her,” he says. “I found the Oracle.”

  “What? How?” I ask, practically jumping off the bed.

  “I only require four hours of sleep, so I thought I would get started on the day. I used a courtesy phone in the lobby and started calling every S. Smith in the Las Vegas directory like you suggested.…”

  “This early in the morning?”

  “Yes. Is that a problem?”

  “If you’re a normal human being, yes.”

  “Oh. That explains why so many people hung up on me.”

  “What did you even say? How do you know you’ve found the right Sarah?”

  “I said my name was Dax Lord and I was looking for a Sarah Smith who had helped me out with a problem a few years ago. I had no luck until the thirty-second S. Smith. An elderly man answered. He seemed quite happy to have someone to talk to and after he gave me a quite lengthy lecture on his political views concerning fluoridated water, I told him I was looking for a Sarah Smith, and he told me he had a granddaughter by that name, but that she’d been committed to Sunny Ridge Mental Hospital a few years ago. Because she kept claiming to have visions of the future. And then he gave me a health update on each one of his relatives, but I think Sarah sounds like the woman we are looking for. Don’t you think?”

  “Uh, yes, definitely worth checking out. But how are we getting into a mental institution?”

  “I called Sunny Ridge. I’ve got the address right here.” He waves the paper. “Visiting hours are from eleven a.m. to six p.m. We can go as soon as you want.”

  “Do you still want to do this?” I ask. I know he agreed to take me to the Oracle only because he thinks she’ll convince me that there are no other options than to surrender to my so-called destiny. I thought after last night, he might change his mind.…

  Haden stares at me for a few seconds, amber rings of fire dancing around his pupils. I wish I could read their meaning.

  “Yes,” he finally says, sounding more determined than even I had been when Dax first told us of this option.

  I want to ask him what he’ll do if the Oracle doesn’t give him the answer he’s looking for.

  “Freaks!” Lexie says, pulling open the door to her room. She’s clad in a hotel robe and has a sleep mask advertising the hotel spa pushed up on her forehead. “Do you realize it’s seven a.m.? On a Sunday morning? Stop yammering right outside my door!”

  Haden drops my gaze. “We’ll go as soon as you’re ready.”

  I nod, not knowing how long it will take me to ever be ready for this.

  “You people realize you’re going to visit a person who is clinically insane in order to find out your future, right?” Lexie says. “I mean, who’s crazier, the person who’s been put in a mental institution or the person who asks that person for advice?”

  “The rest of you can always stay in the car,” I reply, ringing the admittance bell at the main entrance to Sunny Ridge. It’s a small, shabby building at the end of a quiet street. Not the place where I would expect to find an Oracle living.

  “No way.” Lexie slings her purse over her shoulder. “I so want to see the look on your faces when this so-called ‘Oracle’ starts drooling on your shoes and you all finally realize how gonzo you’ve been acting. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

  “I’m not missing this, either,” Tobin says. “This Oracle lady had better have some answers about my sister.” He reaches out and rings the bell a second time.

  “I wouldn’t mind staying in the car,” Garrick says.

  “Not you.” Haden snags him by the back of his collar. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.” He had caught him trying to use the hotel room’s phone while the rest of us were getting ready to leave. “You might be here unwillingly, but I have a feeling Simon isn’t going to care about that if he finds us,” he had said to Garrick, and ripped the phone out of the wall. Which meant we’d had to go to the hotel buffet for lunch instead of ordering room service. “He’s going to be in an ‘order you to walk off a bridge, ask questions later’ kind of mood, don’t you think?”

  “What are you even going to say to get in to see this lady?” Lexie asks. “I doubt they’re going to let a bunch of teenagers stroll into this place.”

  “Maybe we can pretend to be a traveling choir or something?” Tobin says. “We sing to the sick.”

  Lexie snorts.

  There’s a rustle behind the door and it opens. A short, gray-haired woman dressed in scrubs is there.

  I fumble to find something to say and almost go with the traveling choir idea, but the woman claps her hands together excitedly. “Oh, you must be Haden and Daphne and the others!” she says. “Sarah has been waiting for you.”

  chapter fifty-three

  HADEN

  “Did you tell them we were coming?” Daphne whispers as we follow the woman through the building. The floor is made out of a hard substance I believe is called linoleum, which tries to stick to my shoes with every step.

  “No. I didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Here we go,” the woman says, ushering us into what must be some kind of common room. It is a warm room, even though it has several barred windows along the walls. It is filled with plush chairs, small tables, and a large green table in the center, with a small net stretched across the middle. Two men are using paddles to smack a small white ball back and forth across it. An older woman with stringy white hair sits in the corner, glaring at the wall. It sounds like she’s having an argument with it. Others seem to be wandering almost aimlessly about the room. “Sarah will be so pleased you’re here. She’s been talking about you all week.” She points us in the direction of a young woman who appears to be painting … with her fingers … at an easel at the far end of the room.

  I take a step back. “That can’t be her.”

  My memory jogs to my encounter with the Oracle of Elysium. Her skin was blue and glittery, and her veils swirled about her as if blown by an invisible wind. She emitted the power and majesty of the divine. But this young woman, this supposed Oracle in front of me, looks all too … human. Her skin is pale and pe
achy, and her hair is unkempt and matted in places. She licks the paint from one of her fingers and then looks up from her artwork as if she can feel my gaze on her.

  “Haden!” She smiles and waves with a familiarity that makes it seem as though we are old friends. But I don’t know how she sees me—her eyes are milky and clouded over with blindness. “You came!”

  She wipes her hands on her robe and bounds over to us. She clasps my hands before I can pull them away and then grabs Daphne in an embrace. “And you brought her! I knew you would.”

  “Is this some big joke?” Lexie asks. “Are you guys pranking me?”

  Sarah takes Daphne and me by the hands and pulls us toward a table near her easel. Lexie, Tobin, and Garrick follow tentatively behind. I notice then how quiet the room has become, and glance around. The gray-haired woman who brought us here and all the other patients have disappeared without my noticing. “You have many questions, I know, but we don’t have much time. Come sit. Please.”

  I am hesitant to take the seat she offers.

  “You are flummoxed by my appearance, Haden. I know. You also wonder what I am doing in this mortal vessel, allowing myself to be kept in an asylum. This is not my true appearance.” She taps her finger against her nose. “I am in hiding. Witness protection, you might say.”

  “What did you witness?” Daphne asks.

  “Everything,” Sarah says with a coy smile. “I see all the paths. All the possibilities. Not just the ones the gods want me to see.”

  “So there is another way?” Daphne asks, leaning closer to this Oracle. “I have other options? I don’t have to be a Boon or a Cypher or whatever?”

  “You were never meant to be a Boon.”

  Daphne gives me a satisfied look. “You hear that?”

  “But you are the Cypher. Your role in this is much greater than you can imagine, Daphne, Daughter of the Music.” Sarah reaches her bony hand across the table and places it over Daphne’s. “Being the Cypher is your destiny, no matter what path you take.”