“Okay,” I say. “Get comfortable, and I’ll explain.”
It’s chilly in the basement, and we’re all still wet, but we settle on the hard tiled floor. We wrap towels around our shoulders and huddle around like there’s an old-fashioned campfire. Then it’s time for me to tell the story.
“A thousand years ago, the knights of the Crusades settled Adria.”
“Feel free to skip ahead a millennium,” Noah tells me, but I shake my head.
“No. I can’t. Because a thousand years ago men founded this country, but their wives and their daughters and their granddaughters formed a sort of … society. Or so they tell me. And that society still exists today.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Megan says.
“It’s a secret,” I say, not realizing how foolish it sounds until the words are out of my mouth.
Noah doesn’t look impressed. “What do they do?”
“I don’t know,” I say. My towel is fraying and I pick at the edges. If I pick long enough and hard enough, eventually I might find the thread that makes it all unravel. “Ms. Chancellor said that my grandmother was a part of it, and my mother, and that that might be why someone wanted to kill her.”
Noah glares at his sister. “You knew about this?”
Lila shrugs. “Mom told me a few —”
“Mom is a part of this?” Noah stands up and starts to pace.
“Yes!” Lila says. “It’s why she wanted to be posted in Adria. She wanted me raised as her grandmother was raised. She wanted me to know my birthright.”
“Your birthright?” Noah asks, indignant.
“It’s a girls-only kind of thing,” I explain, but I’m not helping.
“I don’t get it.” Rosie leans back, totally unimpressed. “So there’s a really-old-lady society. That doesn’t seem like such a big thing.”
“To be fair,” Megan corrects, “I don’t think it’s a club of old ladies, merely —”
“The Society is a thousand years old,” I blurt. “A thousand years. The Society is as old as Adria itself. It’s older than the wall.” I let that fact sink in. “In fact, they’re the ones who decided to build the wall. This thing is ancient and powerful. We don’t even know how powerful.”
“So there’s a club,” Megan says. “That’s nice. I’m sure it’s —”
“It’s not a club,” I say. “It’s bigger than that.”
“Okay. Of course. I’m sure it’s very prestigious and —”
“Ms. Chancellor shot the prime minister!”
The only sound is the steady plop, plop, plop of the rainwater that leaks through the ceiling and drops into the pool. I can’t tell if they don’t believe me or if they’re just too shocked to argue. I no longer care. I just start talking.
I tell them about Spence and his grandmother, about the rebellion and the treasure. I tell them everything from the moment the former prime minister cornered me in the shadows and Ms. Chancellor picked up a gun. Never before have I felt so many secrets tumble out of me. I can’t stop. I might as well try to hold back the tide.
But as fast as I spill the Society’s secrets, I still can’t bear to tell my own. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite. But I’m a hypocrite who doesn’t want her friends to know she shot and killed her own mother. And, honestly, I’m okay with that.
“And that’s it,” I say when I’m finished. I sit back and wait for them to laugh, to tell me I must be joking. Or — worse — that I must be hearing things, misremembering things. Crazy.
But before anyone can argue, Alexei says, “It’s true. We saw Ms. Chancellor. She was with the new prime minister. They spoke of the cadet and of Grace.” Alexei cuts his gaze toward me, as if asking permission. “And of Grace’s mother.”
I shiver beneath the towel I have thrown over my shoulders. But none of my friends move to comfort me. It’s like they already know me too well.
“Wait. No. This is Ms. Chancellor we’re talking about?” Even Megan sounds confused. “Eleanor Chancellor?”
“Yes,” I say.
“She shot the prime minister and this society or whatever covered it up?” Megan says.
“Yes! I know how it sounds, okay? And I know how it looks, but it’s true. This time, I swear that I’m not wrong.” I’d give anything to be wrong. “It’s true, and …”
My voice cracks. My vision blurs.
“Say it,” Noah demands. “Come on, Grace — say whatever it is you’re afraid to say.”
“I think Spence got stuck in that tunnel on the island and then came out the other side. I think he ended up inside the Society — someplace he was never meant to be.”
“And what else?” Noah prompts.
There are truths you think and truths you feel and truths that, deep down, you know but pray you’ll never have to bring to the surface. So I dig deep and look Noah in the eye and whisper the words I’ve been too afraid to voice for days.
“And I think they killed him.”