Remy Whiskerbrook's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Remy Whiskerbrook meant to be a prince one day, but he could not even finish a question. He stood in the doorway of the old dirt cubby and asked his aunt what happened to the Millstone Run. She was sorting dried beans. Her hands stopped. "That's not for children," she said, and she carried the bowl outside without looking back. Remy stayed in the empty room. The nobles at court already called him too timid to sit his father's throne. He could not argue when he could not even learn his own family's story. Every adult did the same. The baker shut his mouth. The road-keeper changed the subject to the weather. Last autumn Remy had walked the Run alone and counted four collapsed warehouses, their roofs caved in like broken ribs. His family had guarded that grain road. Now the road was dead, and the silence around it felt like a locked door with no key. So Remy tried a different plan. He would not ask an adult. He would ask someone who listened for a living. He found Luna Hopwell near the woods, ears up, crouched over the dirt. She was the rabbit-girl who tracked everything by sound and trail. Twelve years she had spent chasing the Jade Moon Gate to reach a grandmother she had never heard speak. If anyone could follow a cold path, it was her. "The grown-ups won't tell me about the Millstone Run," Remy said. His voice shook. "I thought maybe you could hear what they won't say." Luna did not look up. "You don't need their mouths." She pressed two fingers to the ground. "The Run talks. I've walked past it. The dirt there is burnt under the top layer. Nobody plants there." Remy's heart knocked. "Burnt?" "Fire," she said. "Old fire. Somebody set it." She stood and brushed her paws clean. "Your warehouses didn't fall down. They were pushed." Remy felt the room tilt, though they stood outside. "Who told you that?" "The ground did." She tipped her head toward the cubby. "And your aunt. She buried something behind that house. The dirt's newer there. Loose." They dug with their hands. A foot down, Remy's fingers struck wood. He pulled out a flat box, its lid swollen with damp. Inside lay a stack of letters, tied with string, water-stained but readable. The top one was addressed to his father. The first line read: *If the court learns we lit the Run ourselves, the boy pays for it.* Remy sat back in the dirt. His family had not failed to guard the road. They had burned it. And the nobles who mocked him knew. "That's why they go quiet," Luna said. "It's not shame about you. It's shame about them." Remy held the letters to his chest. He finally had the truth. But now the truth was dangerous, and the men who wanted him off the throne had the most to hide. He could no longer ask quietly. He would have to accuse.