“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Alexei tells me, and in a strange way it makes sense. I can see it. “I did not kill John Spencer.”
I think it might be the first time I’ve heard him say it. And even ten feet away, with his arms crossed and his gaze down, I have to admit that I believe him.
“Did you see anyone when you were down in the Society?”
“No.”
“Did anyone see you?”
Alexei shakes his head. “I cannot be sure.”
“Was anyone on the street with you? Were you being followed?”
“No!” Alexei pushes away from the sink and bolts toward me. “I don’t know who killed him. I wish I did. I wish I had been there because then … It was late, but he was still on American time and wasn’t tired. He wanted to look around the city more, and I wanted to come home, so I left him. I did not see him again until the next morning. With you.”
I must sit in silence for longer than I realize because eventually Alexei says, “Say something.”
“Stay here.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re the most wanted man in Adria. This is the US embassy. Can you think of someplace they are less likely to look for you? Stay here. In this room. I’ll be back.”
I’m grabbing my sweater and walking toward the door when Alexei gently takes me by both arms and pulls me closer.
“It’s not safe out there,” he says, too close to my ear.
“Yeah, well …” I look up at him. “Maybe it’s not safe in here either.”
Once, when I was little, my mom took me on a tour of the city.
It wasn’t like the tours the real tourists do. No. It was My Mom’s Valancia, and we spent a whole day, just the two of us, eating gelato from her favorite stands and riding bikes down her favorite streets.
We browsed in the store where she bought her first fancy party dress.
We took charcoal and palettes and tried to sketch her favorite view of the city from high up in the hills.
As the sun set that evening, I held my mother’s hand and walked back down Embassy Row, knowing there was no place else in Adria that I ever really needed to visit — that I’d seen everything worth seeing.
I was wrong.
Because now I’m walking into a room that no tourist — no mere mortal — is supposed to ever see.
“Hello, Grace.” Princess Ann stretches her arms out as she greets me. “I was so glad to get your call.”
The man who escorted me up from the private entrance leaves us and closes the big double doors behind him. I’m filled with a kind of nervous energy that I can’t quite hold in.
“I can’t believe the phone number my mom had for you was your actual phone number.”
At this, the princess laughs, and that makes me remember that she really was my mother’s best friend, that once upon a time she was just a regular girl.
Before she married the crown prince of Adria.
Before she gave birth to a future king.
Before my mother died.
Long before I became a killer.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know how I got here exactly, I just … You’re part of it, aren’t you? You’re one of them.”
Princess Ann considers answering, I can tell. But instead she turns toward the staircase that curves along the edge of the great room, lush red carpet running down its center. It’s a staircase meant for a queen.
“Come, Grace, you must be thirsty. I’ve already rung for tea.”
I’m not the kind of girl who has tea parties. Not when I was little. And certainly not now. I was the kind of girl who might set her teacups up along a fence, use them for target practice with her slingshot. But I don’t say any of that to the princess of Adria.
She leads me to the massive staircase, then up and up to the fourth floor of the palace.
These are the family rooms, I can tell. The paintings on the walls are all less than three hundred years old. The cheap ones. And the ceilings are lower than in the grand staterooms and ballrooms below. But when she pushes open a wide set of double doors, the room she leads me into is still maybe the most beautiful that I have ever seen. It’s smaller than the ballroom, less stately than the entrance where just a few weeks ago I curtsied before the king. No, this room isn’t quite that formal, but everything inside it is equally majestic.
Two fireplaces flank it on either end, surrounded by deep chairs covered in soft brown leather. There are plush couches, and tables covered with beautiful pots of orchids and family photos in silver frames. But there is also a soft blanket, an overturned book. Beneath one of the sofas there is a pair of discarded tennis shoes. This isn’t where Princess Ann entertains, I realize. It’s where she lives, and I know it is some great honor just to be here.
But perhaps the most striking thing about this room is the four large windows that dominate the far wall. Black silk curtains run from floor to ceiling and, wordlessly, I’m drawn toward them. When I look outside I see that we are exactly in the palace’s center — the gates are right outside — and I remember standing right there, looking up at this very spot while Ms. Chancellor told me a story.