Rise An Eve Novel

thirteen



THEY WERE BRINGING IN ANOTHER JEEP. THE CROWD WAS shifting to let it through, its cab packed with three more prisoners I didn’t recognize. As the minutes passed and the soldiers pulled down Curtis’s and Jo’s bodies, loading them into a flatbed truck, some of the crowd dispersed back down the main road. A woman beside me pressed her face into her hands, her cheeks flushed. “What’s happening to us?” she mumbled to the man she was with, before they pushed forward, quickly engulfed by the crowd.

But others stayed, some silent, waiting to watch the next executions. I pushed toward the front of the platform, until I was pressed against the metal fence. I grabbed on to it, kicking off the bottom rail to heave myself over. Charles called out somewhere behind me, but I didn’t listen, instead running up to the back of the platform, where two of the soldiers stood. Their faces were hidden by green bandanas, the edges pulled up to their eyes. They were turned slightly, facing the Jeeps in back, and didn’t see me coming. Before I could think I reached for one, yanking the cloth down so he was exposed. “You’re all cowards,” I yelled. “I want to know who did this. Show me who you are.” The boy, no older than seventeen, quickly covered himself back up, glancing at the stunned crowd behind me, wondering who had seen.

Two soldiers drew their guns, aiming at me, before Charles came forward, jumping the barricade. “It’s the Princess,” he yelled. “She didn’t mean it; she’s in shock.”

“I did mean it,” I said. “You can’t do this, you—”

“Get her out of here,” one of the older soldiers yelled. He was still watching me from down the end of his rifle. “Now.”

Charles’s hands came down on my arm, and he yanked me toward the Palace. “Have you completely lost your mind?” he said, when we were finally away from them. “You’re lucky they didn’t shoot you. What the hell were you thinking?”

We started up the long driveway, Charles’s fingers wrapped tightly around my biceps. He didn’t let go of my arm as we pushed through the glass doors and started across the lobby, the swell of the crowd trailing in behind us. “You have to speak to your father about this,” he said.

“Who do you think ordered it?” I wiped at my eyes, trying not to think about Jo’s face swelling, her skin turning the color of bruises. Her eyes were still open, the whites covered with blood. How had they found them? And if Moss wasn’t with them, then where was he?

Charles pressed the elevator button. I could feel his uncertainty as he held my arm, his hand shaking slightly. I could think only of the knife and the radio nestled in the bookshelf. I had to go now, today, with or without Moss’s word.

“Oh my god,” Charles said, as we stepped into the elevator. The door closed, shutting us in the cold steel cell. “You knew them, didn’t you?”

He leaned down, trying to look into my face, but I couldn’t speak. I kept picturing Curtis that night in the motel, his relaxed expression, his lips curling into an almost-smile as he studied the blueprints for the flood tunnels. It was the happiest I’d ever known him.

“I can’t talk about this,” I said finally, studying my reflection in the small, curved mirror in the upper corner of the elevator. “I just can’t.” I pushed my hands down into my pockets, trying to steady them.

“You’re not alone in this. I can help you.” He leaned down to meet my gaze. He put his hand out and I rested mine in his, letting him press it flat, the heat slowly returning to my fingers. “Whatever you need, Genevieve.”

I wanted to believe him, I wanted to trust him, but there was that name again. Genevieve. The reason I was alone, one of many reasons he couldn’t understand. He still called me that sometimes, slipping into the same phrasing my father used, the same formal, stilted attempts at intimacy. Now that the siege had failed, now that the City was again under my father’s control, he couldn’t help me. He didn’t even know who I was.

For a second I wanted to tell him, to see his face as I revealed that I had tried to kill my father. That the missing blueprints that he’d wondered about one afternoon, as he went through his file drawers, were actually stolen and given to the rebels. That Reginald, the King’s Head of Press, had been my only true confidant inside the Palace walls, that there were codes in the paper daily, one of which he’d read out loud to me the other morning, without even realizing. What would he really say, what would he really do, if I told him I was leaving now, alone, possibly forever?

As the doors opened, I started down the hall, pulling my hand free. “If you want to help me,” I said, “let me be. Just for the morning. Just for now.” He stood there, holding the door open, watching me go.


I PUSHED INTO THE SUITE, GRABBING ONE OF CHARLES’S leather bags and emptying his papers into a bottom desk drawer. I moved quickly, pulling a few sweaters and socks from the chest, opting for the thick wool ones he wore with his loafers. I tucked the radio into the bag and the knife into the side of my belt, where it would be easier to reach. I took the bundle of letters from the nightstand, fumbling one last time through each drawer, trying to locate the picture of my mother. It had disappeared after those first weeks in the Palace, but I never stopped hoping I’d find it, hidden beneath some papers or in the recess behind the drawers. It was too late now. I moved quickly into the bathroom and stepped onto the edge of the tub. Caleb’s shirt was still there, just inside the grate. I zipped everything into the bag and left.

On my way out I stopped at the Palace kitchen. It was empty, the workers still crowded by the parlor windows. The shelves were only half full, the supplies depleted from so many days without deliveries. I went through each cabinet and drawer, packing a few bags of dried figs and apples, along with the thin, salted boar’s meat that was pressed in paper. I hadn’t been able to stomach it in the past weeks, but I brought it anyway, knowing it would be good to have. I ran water from the tap, filling up three bottles’ worth before tucking them away. When I turned back into the hall, there were two soldiers standing beside the elevator, their eyes moving from me to the bag.

I walked toward them, meeting their gaze. “I’ll be right back,” I said, pushing the button beside the elevator. “I promised Charles I’d leave this in his office. He’d asked for some papers from the suite.” I pointed at the metal doors, waiting for them to step aside, permitting me through. But they didn’t move. Instead the older of the two, a man with a chipped front tooth, adjusted his stance, filling the doorframe.

“Your father needs to speak with you,” the other said, clamping down on my wrist. I’d seen him before, stationed at the end of the hall. He had a permanent five o’clock shadow, his skin so pale you could always see the dark hair just below the surface.

“I need to go downstairs first,” I said, pulling free. “He can speak to me when I’m finished.” But the other soldier grabbed my arm. I studied his hand as it clutched my biceps, waiting for him to let go, but instead he pulled me back, toward my father’s suite.

“It can’t wait,” he said. He didn’t meet my eyes.

I felt the knife pressed inside my belt, tucked tightly against my hip. He held my right arm, the other soldier flanking me on my left, with no room for me to maneuver. They led me down the hallway to my father’s suite. As we approached the door I could hear Charles’s voice from the other side, his words hurried.

“I can’t say,” he finished, as we walked in. “I don’t think that’s true.”

The soldier he was speaking to turned to face me. The Lieutenant. My father was up, looking stronger than I’d seen him in days. There was one other man, his back toward me, his hands tied together with plastic restraints. I could tell by the short, graying hair and tarnished gold ring that it was Moss.

“Genevieve,” the Lieutenant said, “we were just trying to put this all together. Were you the one who put the oleander extract in your father’s medication, or did Reginald do it himself?” Moss turned to me, his dark eyes meeting mine. There was nothing decipherable in his expression—no fear, no confusion, nothing.

“I told them I don’t know what they’re talking about,” Charles said. His blue eyes narrowed, as though he didn’t quite recognize me.

I rearranged my features, trying to catch my composure, to turn my face into something that would inspire trust. “Why would Reginald do that?”

My father glanced sideways at the Lieutenant before speaking. “There’s no point in lying. One of the rebels gave him up. The only question is how the poison found its way into the medicine, considering Moss hasn’t been in this suite in months. That day you came here, the day we found out you were pregnant. I want to know—did you do it then?”

“I could barely stand up that day. I’ve never been so sick.”

At this, my father exploded. His neck strained as he spoke. “You cannot lie to me anymore. I won’t have it. And if you think that you are somehow immune because of your pregnancy, you are mistaken.”

“Immune from what?” I asked. “Immune from being killed, like all the other rebels? Like anyone who doesn’t agree with you?”

My father didn’t look at me. Instead he nodded to the Lieutenant, then to Moss. The Lieutenant grabbed Moss by the arm and turned him around. The soldiers twisted my left wrist behind my back. “This doesn’t have to happen,” Charles said as he stepped forward, trying to block the door. “I’m sure this is a misunderstanding—why would Genevieve be involved in this? Where are you taking them?”

The King didn’t respond. Instead he turned away, toward the window, looking down at the crowd assembled on the road. Moss glanced sideways at me, and I wondered if he’d felt it somehow, in all those meetings we’d had, sitting in the stillness of the parlor, if he’d sensed us speeding toward this moment. Could he have known we’d be here, together, his future so entangled with mine?

Before they could grab my other wrist, I went for the knife in my belt. It took them a moment to process what was happening. Moss didn’t hesitate. He pushed all his weight backward, knocking the Lieutenant into the closet doors behind him. I heard the hollow sound the Lieutenant made, then his short intake of breath, as he struggled to get air.

Moss ran toward me, his hands still bound together by the plastic tie, knocking one of the soldiers off balance. I pulled back, swiping at the other with the knife. As the soldier hunched over, the blood pooling inside his palm, we started through the door.

Outside, the hall was empty. I clipped Moss’s restraints with the blade, and he shook out his hands to get the blood back into them. We started toward the end of the hall, to the stairwell just around the corner. “There are two soldiers stationed there,” I said. “Possibly more.”

I could see his slight hesitation as we ran instead toward the elevators. The door to the suite opened, the Lieutenant appearing at the other end of the hall. I saw his gun before Moss did. Moss dove for the elevator button, looking straight ahead, not bothering to turn. The shot hit him in the back, tearing through the tender spot between his shoulder blades. He staggered forward, then folded in on himself. He pressed his side into the wall, trying to stay standing.

The Lieutenant raised his arm again just as the elevator doors opened. I grabbed Moss beneath his arms and dragged him inside, struggling against his weight. When I looked up Charles was there, his fist closing around the Lieutenant’s shirt, pulling his wrist back and away. When the gun went off it hit the wall beside us, tunneling into the metal. The last thing I saw was Charles’s face, his features twisted and strange, as he fought the Lieutenant for his weapon.