Rise An Eve Novel

twelve



THE NEXT MORNING I LAY IN BED FOR A LONG WHILE, MY EYES closed, studying the silence. My body felt heavy, my limbs weighed down by exhaustion. I sucked in air, trying to steady my breathing, as I’d done so many times in the past weeks. It took me a moment to register what I was responding to. The nausea had returned. The dense, heady feeling spread out behind my nose. My hand dropped to the soft flesh of my stomach, the gentle roundness hidden beneath my nightgown.

I smiled, allowing myself that simple, momentary happiness. Everything was all right. She was still here, with me, now. I wasn’t alone.

Down the hall, I could hear the faint clanking of pots as the cook prepared our breakfast. The room was otherwise quiet. The gunfire had stopped. There were no more explosions in the Outlands, only the sound of the government Jeeps, a horn blasting every now and then as one flew past the Palace. I lay there with my eyes closed, curled in on myself, trying to fend off the nausea.

“Are you sleeping?” Charles whispered from somewhere beyond me. He did that at times—it was one of the most normal things about him. Are you sleeping? he’d ask, after the lights had been turned off and we were suspended in the dark. If I were, how could I possibly answer?

I rolled onto my side, watching him at the window. The light was dulled by clouds. He held the curtain, working at the fabric with his thumb. “What is it?” I asked. He was already dressed, his tie hanging around his neck.

“Something’s going on outside.” He didn’t look at me as he said it. He leaned forward, his face an inch from the glass.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” I asked. “The gunfire stopped sometime this morning.”

He shook his head. He looked strange, his brows knitted together, as though trying to puzzle something out. “I think it’s just beginning.”

His voice caught in the back of his throat. I went to the window, looking down at the City below. The crowd had spread out on the main road, a dense mass squeezed between buildings, just as they had been for the parades. But there was no waving of flags, no cheers or yells joining together, heard like a static hum from above. Instead they were clustered around the front of the Palace, right beyond the fountains, barely moving as the sun warmed the sky.

“What are they doing here?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“They’re waiting,” he said. “I don’t know for what.” He pointed to the northern edge of the road, where a Jeep worked its way through the crowd, the mass of people parting, then swallowing it whole. A platform had been set up at the front of the Palace. The short, square block was visible from above.

“You haven’t heard anything about this?” I asked.

Charles raised his hand to his temple, as though his head hurt. “I’ve been here all night,” he said. “Why would I know anything more than you do?”

“Because you work for my father,” I said quickly, pulling a sweater and pants from the closet.

Charles followed me as I crossed the room to my dresser. He looped his tie around his neck, throwing one end over the other, moving his hands quickly until he slid the knot to his throat. “I’m running the construction sites. I’m not fighting a war against the rebels. I’m like everyone else inside this City, doing the best I can with what I’ve been given.”

“That’s not good enough,” I shot back. This wasn’t his fault, I knew that, and yet he was here. He was the only person within range.

Charles stepped away from me, his eyes small and narrow. He hated it when I did this, placed him on the side of the King, held him accountable for what my father had done. But he had been there, hadn’t he? If he’d argued for improved conditions at the camps, as he said he had, then why had things continued as they were? Why didn’t he, of all people, put a stop to it?

I changed quickly, hiding from him in the cold, still bathroom. The quiet outside frightened me. It was no more than eight o’clock. If my father or the Lieutenant were giving speeches, they’d timed it before breakfast, when most of us were just waking up.

I started out of the room and into the hall, moving past the row of suites. It wasn’t long before I heard the door swing open and the sound of Charles’s footsteps as he started after me. I didn’t bother to turn around. “What are you doing?” I said.

“I’d ask you the same thing.”

“I’m going downstairs to see what’s happening.”

I kept walking, our steps in synch, until he darted up beside me. He was still straightening his tie. “I’ll come with you,” he said. The hallway was cool, the air raising goose bumps on my skin. At the far end of the corridor, near my father’s suite, I heard whispers of something, faint voices drifting out of the parlor. The soldiers who were normally stationed outside the elevator and stairwells were gone.

We turned in to the room. A group was huddled around the window—some soldiers, some of the workers from the Palace kitchen. One of the cooks who’d been stuck inside the tower for days, awaiting the end of the siege, had her hand pressed against the glass, her eyes red.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

The soldiers hardly looked away from the window. I came up behind them, trying to see what was happening. Far below, the Jeep had made its way through the crowd, the soldiers swarming it as its back door swung open. It was impossible to tell who had gotten out, but as soon as the figure came into the crowd people started shifting, the shouts and yells blending together as one. A section of people came together then dispersed, like a great swarm of flies. “The rebel leaders,” one of the soldiers said, not turning to look at me. “They found them.”

I felt the panic rising, my pulse throbbing in my hands. “Who are they?” I asked. “Where were they found?”

I turned, looking at a few of the Palace workers. The cook, an older woman with a long white braid, cupped her chin in her hand. “Somewhere in the Outlands, I imagine.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke.

Marcus, one of the servers from the dining room, had his lips pressed together in a straight line. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks slack. “Poor bastards.”

“They’re not exactly innocent, are they?” one of the soldiers shot back. “Do you know how many people died protecting the City in just the past few days?”

“Where are they taking them?” I cut in.

A few people turned, studying me, but no one said anything. I went back into the hall, Charles following in my wake. I kept pressing the button on the elevator, listening to it ascend the tower. It wasn’t until we were inside, the doors closing behind us, that I spoke.

“They brought them here, outside the Palace, to do what? Give the public a lesson? Show everyone what happens to people who disobey my father?” My stomach felt light as the floors flew past, one gone, then ten.

Charles pushed his hair out of his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think we’d revert to that. There should be trials, at least. Innocent until proven guilty, wasn’t it?”

“Wasn’t it,” I repeated. “Past tense. I don’t think my father cares much for trials now.”

We watched the numbers light up one by one, clocking our descent. When the doors opened to the main lobby, it sounded as if the crowd was inside. On the road just beyond the Palace fountains, people were shouting. I couldn’t make out a word; it all blended together and echoed through the marble hall, coming at us like a rumbling train. Hannah and Lyle, two of the Palace workers, had abandoned their posts at the main desk and were standing in front of the glass doors, watching. All the color had gone from their faces.

“This is hell,” Hannah said. “I don’t believe they’re actually going through with it. They can’t.” Lyle, who often arranged for the cars that came and went from the Palace, had his arm wrapped around her, his hand clutching her side to hold her up. I ran toward them, pushing through the front doors. There, just beyond the fountains, the back of the platform was visible. It was nearly five feet high, the bottom of it closed off, out of view. Two poles rose up from it, forming a massive T. One prisoner stood on either side of the middle, their hands tied behind their backs, the rope knotted around their necks.

I took off down the path, climbing the low stone planters that separated the Palace from the road. It was impossible to come up behind them—the back of the platform was blocked by a Jeep, the soldiers watching from the backseat as if it were one of the street performances sometimes held on the main road. Two others held the prisoners’ hands. “Genevieve! Wait!” Charles called over my shoulder. But I was already moving toward the sidewalk, where a row of people pressed against a metal fence, watching.

“Traitors!” a man in front of the platform yelled. He was from the Outlands; I could tell by his ripped jacket, the elbows muddy. He cocked his head back, then spit, aiming at their feet.

Through the trees I could just make out glimpses of the two rebels. The man was tall and thin, his ribs visible through his bloodied shirt. He had fair skin, but I didn’t immediately recognize him. It wasn’t until I pushed past the fence and into the crowd that I could make out the thick black hair, hard and dark around the forehead, where it was crusted with blood. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and his glasses were gone, but Curtis was still Curtis. He held his shoulders back, his chin raised as the men in the front of the crowd screamed.

Jo stood right beside him, her hands tied. Her blond dreadlocks had been cut, her hair now cropped short around her ears. Her shirt was ripped in the front, exposing the top of her chest, where her skin was rubbed raw. “Let me pass,” I yelled, pushing deeper into the crowd, toward the platform. “I need to get through.”

Hardly anyone recognized me in casual clothes, with my hair falling loose past my shoulders. The dense crowd pressed in, an elbow knocking me hard in the side. I kept fighting through the great swarm of people. A massive oaf of a man leaned on me, and I leaned back, maneuvering in front of him. “What is the matter with all of you?” I screamed. “Why won’t someone stop this?”

I stepped closer, trying to close the gap, when my eyes locked with Jo’s. In an instant, the floor fell out from under the rebels. I stood there, the tears blurring my vision, as some of the crowd cheered. Others were quiet. She went first, her body only half visible above the platform, her head cocked at a horrible angle. I watched the way Curtis bucked for a few seconds, fighting it, then went still, his toes just inches from the pavement.