all out for him. My marriage plans, my dead brother. All of it.
I’m so tired of hiding. So tired of serving as defender of my family’s interests. I know that’s awful, but it’s true.
Bree glances at me as we stride together down the hallway toward the treatment rooms. “Iz?”
I stop walking, bracing a hand on the edge of a river rock fountain. “It’s my fault.” I gulp, stunned I’ve managed to blurt this out. “All of it.”
She turns with concern creasing her brow, bracing a hand on the wall. “What’s your fault, Izzy?”
This is it. My moment to come clean to the Bracelyn family, or at least my sister. “The split with Bradley,” I say slowly. “The fact that my family’s kingdom is in trouble.” I take a breath so I can force out the rest of the words. “It’s my fault my baby brother died.”
Her mouth falls open, and I instantly regret saying this to a mother. “I’m sor—”
“Izzy, wh—why would you say that?” She steps closer and lifts a hand to my shoulder. “Start with what you just said—your baby brother?”
I don’t know if I’m relieved or horrified that’s the question she asked first. But I owe her an answer. I owe so much to everyone.
“It’s true.” I close my eyes and drift back to that horrible day. “I was twelve, my first time in charge of watching him. It was only for an hour, and my mother said he shouldn’t need a nap.”
But he looked sleepy, so sleepy.
“I put him in his bassinet,” I continue, breath coming faster now. “He’d been crying, and I thought he might like to lie down. To rest just a bit before Mother returned. But when she came home—” I choke on the last words.
I’ve gotten this far, but I can’t say the rest. Can’t capture the anguish of my mother falling to her knees, sobbing as she held his lifeless little body. I can’t describe the emptiness in the Duke’s eyes as he walked through the palace doors to find his home teeming with doctors and nurses, each one fighting to bring Oliver back.
But they couldn’t do that. They couldn’t, because I ruined everything. Me, I did that to my family.
I open my eyes and meet Bree’s gaze head-on. “He died in his crib,” I whisper. “I never should have laid him down. They said he didn’t need a nap, and I didn’t listen, and it’s all my fault.”
“Oh, God.” Bree’s green eyes fill with tears as her fingers tighten around my shoulder. “It was SIDS, wasn’t it?”
“SIDS?” I comb my brain for the translation and come up empty. “I don’t—”
“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.” Her brow furrows. “Izzy, that’s no one’s fault. It’s just a thing that sometimes happens. A horrible, awful thing, but no one’s to blame.”
“Of course it was my fault.” I shake my head. She’s wrong about this, obviously. I’ve had eighteen years of my family telling me unequivocally that I’m to blame. “I laid him on his side so he could cuddle his toy elephant.”
The side-sleeping, the toy in the crib—all things you’re not supposed to do with a baby. Doctors say this all the time, in every advanced country in the world. I’ve read up on it since then. I know.
Bree shakes her head slowly. “You were twelve? Izzy, you were a kid.” Her fingers slip down my arm to grip my hand. “Even if you weren’t, it happens all the time. To grownups—experienced parents.”
I shake my head. I know better. I’ve heard my parents say it time and time again. “They trusted me, and I screwed up. It’s my fault.”
She shakes her head, then frowns. “Wait, so you can’t be with Bradley because you’re afraid of becoming a mother?”
I swallow hard, wishing it were that simple. “I can’t be with Bradley because I’m my parents’ only surviving child. I’m duty-bound to commit to a strategic union.” It sounds so clinical when I put it that way. “Marriage. It’s my job to connect our family to the royal court of Saxenheim. I’m promised to the crown prince.”
Her face goes pale as realization dawns. “Oh, God—Izzy, I—I don’t know what to say to that.”
I look down at my feet, aware that this tradition sounds absurd outside my own culture. “It’s just the way it is,” I say. “The way it’s always been.”
“I had no idea that was even a thing,” she says. “I mean, obviously, I’m aware of arranged marriage. I just—I didn’t realize you were wrapped