I expect her to lash back, to lock me in some kind of dungeon until I learn not to sass my elders. But the woman only laughs. “You have spirit, Ms. Blakely. I will give you that. You would have made a magnificent queen.”
“I will settle for being safe,” I say as I study the assembly of women—the compilation of power. And the truth seeps into my bones. “But you all don’t really care about that, do you?”
No one answers. But that’s okay because at least it means that no one lies.
“Where is it?” A woman in the corner is now looking at me. Tension radiates off her. She is tired of this little dance and thinks it’s time to get down to business.
“Where is what?” I ask, and look to the prime minister.
“Presumably, your mother had some kind of proof—something that would link your family to Amelia. Where is it?”
But I’m shaking my head. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
The tension in the room is growing. I can feel it pulsing around me. “I don’t know!” I say again.
“We will not help you overthrow the king of Adria,” says the woman in the corner.
I spin and study her. Can she not see me? My wrinkled clothes and messed-up hair? Do I look like someone who is trying to overthrow a king?
“I’m not going to do that,” I mutter.
“Adria is a pivotal cog in the wheel of the world, and we cannot have it destabilized.”
“I don’t want it destabilized! I don’t care about your … cogs,” I blurt.
I feel Ms. Chancellor’s hand on my elbow, a soft and gentle touch. A reminder. I’m not entirely alone.
But I’m here, in this unknown room in an unknown city, and the faces staring back at me are not smiling.
“I don’t want to overthrow the king! I want to … graduate high school!”
“You understand our concern,” the woman with the British accent asks.
“No,” I snap, sarcastic and afraid. “I really don’t.”
“A stable Adria is a stable Europe, and …”
Now Ms. Chancellor eases into the fray. “No one is trying to make it otherwise.”
“Her very existence threatens that stability,” the British lady says with a disgusted point in my direction. “The War of the Fortnight brought Adria a new king, a parliament, and a prime minister. Revealing Amelia’s existence a few months or years after the coup could have destroyed that new government. What damage do you think Amelia’s heirs might do today? Centuries later?” She seems to consider it anew. “No. No. The risk is too great. It cannot happen.”
I’m not Adrian.
I’m not ambitious.
I’m not political.
I’m not interested in attention. I’ve already had enough of that for a lifetime.
But the Society doesn’t care about what I’m not.
They only care about what I am. And I am a threat. My very existence—my brother’s existence—is something they can’t control. And it scares them.
So, suddenly, they terrify me.
These are the women who covered up the shooting of Adria’s last prime minister. They all but staged a coup in one of the most pivotal countries in the world. And now here I am—the sister to the rightful king of that country. What would they do to me?
Worse.
What could they have done already?
The PM lied to get me here. Lied and kidnapped and …
I can’t help myself, I stumble back. Ms. Chancellor’s hand falls away, and I’m alone again in my too-cold skin.
“Is it you?” I’m still backing away, shaking my head. “Did you kill her?”
The British woman rises. “This sisterhood is stronger than its sisters, Ms. Blakely. We do not exist to serve the best interest of ourselves. We exist to serve the greater good.”
If she thinks her words are going to calm me, she is incredibly mistaken, because her words catapult me forward.
“Did you kill her?”
Ms. Chancellor lunges in front of me, holds me back. I look over her shoulder to where the British woman has retaken her seat.
“Of course not.”
Ms. Chancellor must feel the rage slip out of me because she loosens her hold.
I pull away, study them all. “Okay,” I say, even though I don’t believe them. But I’ve recently learned not to believe myself, either.
“Maybe you just want to kill me,” I say, and I know in my gut it might be true.
“Grace.” The prime minister is moving closer. The British woman is staring. Even Ms. Chancellor is looking at me oddly, as if maybe I’ve started speaking in tongues, spontaneously combusted, turned green.
I don’t stop to analyze their faces, to make sense of all the things they do and do not say.
There’s a table nearby. On it rests what looks to be an antique candlestick. It’s made of cast iron and heavy and looks more like a weapon than a way through the darkness, and I don’t even think. I never think. I just pick up the candlestick and throw it over my head as hard as I can. I hear the crash, feel the rush of fresh air and falling glass, but I don’t stay to watch them bleed.