The king and queen and their son are turning slowly, solemnly away from the crowd and starting the walk back toward the palace.
Only the trim, beautiful woman remains.
For just a second, Princess Ann stands silently, looking right at me.
I don’t know how I lose Megan and Noah but they’re gone.
All I know for certain is that the air is filled with smoke and the sky is the color of fire, and my mother’s best friend was just looking at me as if maybe she might see what I see, know what I know.
“Grace!” I hear a woman yell, but I don’t turn. I don’t want to see my mother’s shadow in the crowd.
“Grace, honey, no!”
Then Princess Ann turns and starts back toward the palace, away from the commoners. Away from me. And I start pushing away from the gates and whatever little safety I’d clung to on the edges of the crowd. I have to find Noah and Megan. I have to go home. I have to keep moving, pushing against the current of people that keeps pushing back, too hard.
It’s growing late and the crowd is too close. I hear a popping sound, like gunshots. I imagine the glass breaking in the window of my mother’s shop, the burst of fresh fire as soon as the oxygen rushes inside.
“Grace!”
And now I don’t care about Noah and Megan. They’re together. They’ll be safe. They are probably holding hands and kissing somewhere. I would just be in the way, I tell myself. But the truth is I just need to be anywhere but here.
“Grace!” I hear my name again, but it’s too much. I close my eyes tightly against the memory. Like the flames of the bonfire, I expect it to explode inside of me, to leave me shaking with terror and guilt and grief.
If I can just make it to the tunnels, I might be able to climb inside and slip away, escape into darkness and silence. I might be able to have my attack in peace.
So I push against the crowd that seems to be growing thicker, wilder, by the second. People chant and cheer. Even as I get farther and farther from the bonfire, the pressure of the people around me doesn’t lessen. It just grows darker.
“Grace!” I hear my name again, my mother’s voice.
I stop.
I want to scream.
But then there is a hand on my arm, turning me.
“Grace, are you okay?”
And it’s not my mother. I look up into the same blue eyes that just a short time ago watched me from a Russian window. And, suddenly, I am completely unconcerned about myself.
“What are you doing here?”
Alexei shrugs. “I was getting ready to ask you the same question.” He looks around. “Where are Noah and Megan?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure. We must have gotten separated and I … I was going home.”
“Yes,” Alexei says. “We must get you home.”
“And you,” I say. “You shouldn’t have come, Alexei.”
It’s a mistake. I know it as soon as I say his name.
There are too many people. The Festival of the Fortnight isn’t just an Adrian tradition. It’s famous. Visitors come from all over the world. Like people collecting beads at Mardi Gras or running with the bulls in Pamplona; the city fills with tourists. In the past ten minutes I’ve heard five different languages.
And just this morning another crowd gathered on another street. The setting and the cause are different, but all mobs are the same.
I don’t recognize the man who turns toward us, but I know him. I know the way he stumbles and the cadence of his words as they slur. “Hey, I know you.”
He is drunk on smoke and fire and the darkness of the streets, the heady mixture of whatever primitive drug seems to come with night and torchlight.
Valancian police are on patrol, but the crowd is too big. It always is. It’s why our mother locked us in the embassy, forbade us to leave. This place, this night — these people.
Are dangerous.
I see it in Alexei’s eyes as he reaches for my hand.
I speak to him in Adrian. “Let’s get out of here.”
Alexei nods and we start to push our way down the hill and back toward Embassy Row. But before we’ve even taken a step, the big man blocks our way. His friends see and circle us. Two of them carry torches. They are staring at Alexei and me as if we are their next meal.
“Well, what do we have here?” the leader asks. He’s not much older than Jamie. Maybe they’re American college guys. Maybe they are backpacking through Europe. Tourists.
But these guys aren’t content with the fire and the crowds and the music that is coming from somewhere deep within the city.
I know in my gut that they were outside the embassy today. I know that they have been looking for a fight for maybe their entire lives. A sick feeling fills me as I realize that they’ve found one.
“You’re him,” the leader says. It isn’t a question.
I speak in Adrian again, pull harder on Alexei’s hand, but it’s no use.
“It’s the Russian!” one of the men with the torches yells. The world is full of Russians. He doesn’t bother to specify which one.
Someone shoves Alexei, and he stumbles back, crashing into me.