CROWN OF GLASS ✔

28 | ACT I, SCENE XXVIII

P R E V I O U S L Y

Blood was splattered everyone, pooling around the feet. And there was a very familiar looking bag of gold pooled near the ankles, stained with crimson. A sound of disdain escaped my lips.
It was Adam's corpse.

CALCHESTER CITADEL, STEFFITH.

ERIC

"OH LORD... I KILLED HIM," Edwina kept on repeating over and over, as we reached up and cut down the dismembered corpse.

I had the place cleaned up and the body taken away to be buried respectfully, but she sat down on the floor with her head in her hands, eyes alight with regret.

"I killed him. He's dead... Adam is dead because of me," she whispered, backing up against a wall and defensively curling up. "Oh lord... I'll never forgive myself for it."

"He was a mortal, cousin," I coaxed, trying to console her as she drowned herself in seas of regret. "Mortals die - one way or the other."

"You don't understand!" her head whipped up. "I called him here to help me. Adam tried to help me, he saw the piano! And now someone killed him after he revealed to me that there existed a secret passage...." she lamented, her shoulders visibly shaking.

"And you gave him a bag of gold to keep his mouth shut? Are you insane, woman?" he demanded, shaking the bloodied bag of gold in front of her. Dead man's gold.

"Can you stop being a dick for once?" I glared at him. "Or at least pretend to console her? She's regretting her mistake, the least you could do is to make her feel better!"

"You don't get it, do you?" Tristan fumed angrily. "Her single mistake has cost an innocent his life! And what's more, someone else now knows about the passage and the piano!"

His outburst left us in silence, the only sound being the harsh breathing as our heartbeats returned to normal. Edwina's face had completely drained of color, and she still looked very much shaken at what had transpired. It had been at chilling message, written in the dead man's blood.

Gold can only keep a mouth shut for so long, Queen Regnant. Try stopping his heart the next time.

Edwina had tried to keep Adam's mouth shut with her gold, but it had ultimately... resulted in his death.

"The music," I asked, putting my hand out for the sheets. "You found some papers down there, didn't you?"

"They're illegible and in pieces," she muttered, bending down to look at the sheets as some color returned to the face. I carefully extracted the first sheet and the three of us leaned in, poring over.

"You can read music?" Tristan asked her, eyes flickering with feigned surprise, as the nose turned up in irritation and annoyance.

"I'm not an insufferable know it all like you, Valmont, but I'm not as stupid as I look!" she snapped, skimming the music and trying to make sense of the notes. "Something is wrong about this," she concluded.