Chapter 13

Rhi

The fire flickers between us,the crimson flames reflecting onto the shining blade of my knife.

"My dad?"

Renzo crooks his finger and beckons me closer. The hook in my stomach responds, attempting to pull me his way. I stare into his face and down at the knife and for once I relent to my bond, walking around the fire and taking a seat on the ground beside the man who has tried to kill me more than once.

He holds the knife out to me.

"I went looking for answers about your mom, like you asked me to." Asked him to? I never asked him to… "Ignoring the answers resting right here in my palm." He tuts at himself.

"It was my dad's knife," I concede. The only connection to him I ever owned apart from my blood and my DNA.

"You know anything about him?" he says.

I shake my head. "Until recently nothing but his name. Caspian."

"That wasn't his name," Renzo says and I can't help frowning as I gaze back into the fire. Pip's watching us from the other side, his face only just visible through the flames, embers pirouetting into the black of the night.

"The chancellor said he was a dark magical from the West. But the chancellor is full of bullshit and I don't know whether to believe him or not."

"Can you see magical fingerprints, little rabbit? Can you read them?"

I peer up at the madman's face. "Can you?" I ask. Was he the one who read my fingerprints on this knife? Did he tell Marcus Lowsky that I was the one who killed his brother?

"Yes," he says, "one of my many talents." He offers me the knife. "But you try, little rabbit."

I stare down at the blade, my own reflection staring back up at me. It makes me jolt. I look a mess, my face pale, my cheeks sunken, dirt in my hair.

The knife glistens in the fire light and I long to hold it again. Is it strange that I've missed it? Strange how safe it made me feel? Renzo once said it was no ordinary knife and if it belonged to a dark magical, perhaps he is right.

I take it anyway, unable to resist the urge to wrap my fingers around the cool handle once more. I close my eyes and search for the fingerprints. It's much easier than it was in Stone's classroom without all the noise and magical interference. Out here in the forest with no one but Renzo, me and Pip it's much easier to focus my mind and search. A face emerges from the gloom of my subconscious. A young woman, the expression on her face startled, her hair dark, her eyes clear. The woman is me.

"I see myself," I tell him.

"Yeah," he says, amused. "You did kill Joey Lowsky after all. But search a bit harder, little rabbit, further back."

I scrunch up my eyes and do as he says. Pushing the image of myself to one side and gripping the knife more tightly, willing it to show me who else has wielded this blade.

At first nothing happens and I wonder if Renzo's simply crazy or I am unable to do this. But then, just like before, a face emerges from the gloom, blurry and murky at first like an out-of-focus photograph. Then gradually, gradually, the features sharpen, the colors intensify.

A man. The same man from the locket.

I snap open my eyes in frustration.

I already knew this knife belonged to my dad. This hasn't told me anything new.

"My dad," I tell Renzo, flinging the knife to the ground.

"So you know who he is?"

I shake my head in irritation. "I told you, my aunt said he was called Caspian. The chancellor said he was a dark magical. That's all I know."

The assassin watches my face, his eyes swinging from side to side. "Ahh you don't recognize his face."

I chew my lip. "What do you mean?"

"Little rabbit, I do. I know that face. And his name was not Caspian. And he wasn't any ordinary dark magical."

"Who … who was he then?"

"Little rabbit, your father was the … Black Prince." He grins at me like he just delivered the most precious of gifts straight into my hands. I stare back at him blankly. He waits. I continue to stare at him.

"Ahhh," he repeats. "You don't know who that is."

I kick at the earth, dirt hitting the flames with a hiss. I'm so fed up with everyone knowing more than I do.

"No, I don't. Who the hell was the black prince?"

Renzo picks up my knife from the ground, brushing dirt from the blade.

"Do you see pictures in your head, little rabbit?"

I sigh. I want answers but straight answers from a man like Renzo Barone are impossible. I've seen how his mind wanders, flicking from one thing to another like an erratic fly. If I want my answers, I'll have to be patient.

"Like dreams you mean?" I ask him.

"Yeah." He digs the point of the knife into the ground and spins it on its point, the crimson from the fire flashing over us as it does. "I was never any good at reading or writing. But pictures, they've always been so clear to me. There are the pictures I can see with my eyes – the ones that are really there – and then there are the other pictures. When I was a kid, I used to try and capture them." He snatches the knife, halting its spin, and scratches a line into the earth. Then another and another. "But it made my mom mad. She didn't like paint on her walls and all that shit. But I still see the pictures – like when you're away from me, I can see your face – clear as day in my mind."

"I used to have these dreams," I tell him, "when I was young – they were so real, so vivid."

He nods like he understands, continuing to scratch at the ground.

"Look," he tells me and I gaze down at the marks he's made on the ground. Only they aren't marks. It's a picture. Of a man's face. My dad's face.

Renzo waves his hand above the picture and it lifts into the air, filling with color and depth and movement, like a cartoon.

"How are you doing that?" I say in awe.

"Magic," he answers like I'm dumb. "Like I said, I'm no reader. But the old man who lived next door to me when I was a kid used to tell me stories and they painted pictures in my head. Ones I've never forgotten." The man in his picture wears armor black as night, his hair is dark too like mine and he's striding towards an army of men. "So, little rabbit, do you want me to tell you the story of the black prince?"

I drag my eyes from the moving picture and back to Renzo's face. His miscolored eyes sparkle in the firelight.

"Yes," I tell him, "I want to know."

The picture hovering in front of our eyes dissolves and a new one forms.

"Then let's start from the beginning," Renzo says.

The picture moves and it's like watching a movie, an animated one, one come to life in front of me, and the voice narrating the story isn't the assassin's, it's an old man's, the old man that told him the story, and now tells me the story too.

The story of the Black Prince.