A Secret As Dark As Ours Stays With Us - part 1

Curtis

Last night had been one of the most terrifying nights of his life, if not the most terrifying. Not only had they killed a high profile individual, they had also covered it up to make it look more like the guy committed suicide by going into the forbidden forest after a very humiliating fight with the Prince. He had hardly slept last night, only getting maybe three to four hours of sleep before getting out of his bed to pace around the room full of roommate, about seven others. He had done that for a couple of hours before he had later returned to his bed for a quick nap.

By morning he was exhausted as fuck and only the Wake Up The Dead drug had been able to get him alert and awake for the day that went from bad to worse. If he had thought that what they had done last night would take at least a couple of days before it got looked into, well the arrival of the Chief Inquisitor had thrown that plan out the window.

The Lady Amanda was as ruthless as the rumors had it, and that kind of ruthlessness had been shown towards the Prince, the guy that had tried to save them from hanging to their deaths. With the Chief Inquisitor in the Tower, shit was about to hit the ceiling. Knowing her from the grapevine, there was a very high likelihood that she would find Edward, question was, would she find the boy just before any evidence of their involvement in his death was discovered? That thought scared the living shit out of him. They had to do something, and they had to do it now.

Curtis looked up as the door opened to bring in his lover and her brother who looked quite nervous as they came into the empty classroom where the deed had been done. They had all been tense all morning, from seeing the effortless brutality that the Lady Amanda could dole out to her very presence only a day after Edward's death; and just like him, he was sure they knew that something had to be done to protect themselves.

"I called you both here so that we could decide what to do about the new development." Curtis began as they closed the door behind them. "Lady Amanda is here and it is only a matter of time before she finds the body of Edward."

Elswyth rolled her eyes at his words before taking a sit. "Look, the Princess and her brother are handling this, we do not need to have a conversation about this apart from them; could we at least trust in their ability to get us out of this?" Elswyth asked.

"I am not distrusting their ability to get us out of this, I am simply looking at this from another point of view, what if the Princess decided to expose us as the killers when the heat of Lady Amanda became too much; we are putting our entire lives in her hands and that is risky in itself." Curtis said as he lit every candle in the room with a wave and a silently uttered spell.

"Her brother would do everything within his power to make sure the heat doesn't get too much, I am certain in fact that they are working on a way out of this. We just need to trust in her brother's love for her and the Princess' decision to protect us when she needs not to." Elswyth said.

"No Curtis is right, should push come to shove she could cut us loose, no use ruining herself for a bunch of people she never spoke a word to until last night." Derek said as he sat on a table.

"We could frame them?" Curtis asked suddenly as he looked at the both of them, waiting for their response. "We could make it look like it was the Prince and then alert the Chief Inquisitor."

"Yes, if we were able to retrieve the knife, we could hide it in the Prince's room through his roommates who would then gladly alert the Lady Amanda for us. We would never even have to be too involved in this." Derek said with a sad sigh, as if he didn't want something like that to happen to the Prince who was already living a terrible life.

"The Princess would not even suspect us because we could tel her that we were attacked by those boys who then put it in the Prince's room. By then no one would be able to think that it was not the Prince, the entire kingdom already hates him no use trying to change that; we could instead use that to protect ourselves." Curtis finished as he took in a nervous breath and released it. What they were thinking was wrong, no doubt about that, but they had to do this; they had to protect themselves. They could not trust in the Prince and Princess to protect a bunch of people they had never seen, before last night, they would not even blame them if the Royal Twins decided to turn them in; but Curtis would be damned before he let the three of them suffer for the killing of a dick like Edward.

"Can you guys hear yourselves? The Prince is out there trying to cover his sister and by extension, us; and we are here trying to get him killed?" Elswyth asked in outrage.

"Dude can't even protect himself, is it us that he would then be able to keep safe?" Derek asked.

"We should give him a chance, we should not try to destroy him for something he didn't do?"

"He has spent his nineteen years on this earth suffering for a perceived crime, I say we doing this is more like a mercy than a punishment. This way we would finally end his suffering." Curtis said, trying to expunge the guilt he felt within.

Elswyth glared at the both of them with so much hatred in her eyes before she pointed her finger at the both of them with utter contempt. "I am ashamed of the both of you. You two are here thinking of doing this to someone who has lived a life devoid of happiness just because you are afraid and of little faith?" She asked as she walked to them. "You seem to have forgotten who really killed Edward between the three of us. You guys are here planning this and it did not even cross your minds that I could tell the truth the moment you did this and that if it were too late, I would tell the Princess and would make sure she punished the three of us to her heart's delight."

The silence that followed her proclamation lasted for a good five minutes before Curtis took a deep breath in and let it out as he closed his eyes before he looked back at her. "What do you suggest we do then? Tell me how to protect us?" He asked.

"We help the Royal Twins to cover our tracks so well that even an army of Inquisitors would never pin this on us, we also have to convince them that we are loyal to them and would not do exactly what you two just thought of doing. If we do everything we can to make sure the story of Edward's disappearance or death is self inflicted, no one gets to hang for this." She said.

Derek who had been silent for a while then spoke up. "So the five of us have to come together to keep a secret as dark as ours a secret?"

Curtis looked at the Twin Nobles before he released a sigh of doubt. Sure what she had said sounded wise and smart and was probably the right thing to do, but he still held his doubt about the whole thing. How could the Princess decide to take the blame of the crime in font of her brother? Was it because even she knew that should the Prince realize that it was them and not her that had killed Edward. That he would gladly turn them in? That was a scary thought that he decided not to air out. His girlfriend already had a plan in place, trust the Royal Twins, but Curtis had his own plan; he needed leverage, something that would be used to ensure the Prince never turned on them when he found out who actually killed Edward.