I stop. I grin. “Watch me.” The words are like a dare.
“Your brother doesn’t look well. Is he receiving medical care?”
It’s my soft spot, and she knows it, so I snap back defensively, “Jamie is fine.”
She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say a thing.
“Do they …” I start but falter. “Does the royal family know where we are?”
“I am not certain.” Her words are clipped, measured. There’s something she’s being very careful not to say.
“It is the royal family, isn’t it?” I ask. “I mean, my brother is supposed to be king. He is Adria’s rightful king. Why else would someone want to kill him? So it has to be them. Is it them?”
The words are desperate, but I can’t help it. I need a face for the threat in the dark. I need her to tell me that I’m right. Because I don’t know how many more times I can survive being wrong.
“There is much we do not know. Yet.”
“Yes or no?” I snap. “Is the royal family of Adria trying to kill me?”
The PM carefully considers her answer. “Probably.”
It’s all the verification I need. The truth hurts, when I let myself remember. Better to keep it like a thorn pressing against my skin, never quite piercing through.
“I met the king once,” I tell her. “He was nice. But that was before he needed my brother dead.”
Sometimes I hate my mother for what she found, what she learned. She was about my age when she first started this hunt, and now she’s gone. I think about my mom’s best friends. One now lives in the palace with the people who want me dead. One hasn’t been seen in a decade.
“Where’s Karina Volkov?”
The PM studies me. “Where is who?”
“Alexei’s mother. Where is she? What happened to her?”
I expect a lecture on understanding my place or respecting my elders. I’m not at all prepared for the look in the PM’s eye as she turns back to the gray waters of the sea and says, “Why should I know?”
“Because she was part of the Society. And the Society knows everything.”
“Karina went away several years ago, but that was no surprise to anyone. She was always … flighty.”
“Why does everyone think she could just run off and leave Alexei?”
“Are you saying you could never leave Mr. Volkov, Ms. Blakely?”
I don’t know if it’s her smirk or her question that knocks me back a step, but I move anyway, carefully across the slick rocks.
“I’m saying moms don’t do that.”
“Your mother didn’t do that.”
“No. She didn’t. She just kept picking at a wound that was two hundred years old until some powerful people needed her dead. And now they want to kill me. They’ve already gotten way too close to killing my brother.”
I take a step closer. She might be powerful in Adria, but I know every inch of this rocky shore. This is my turf. I’m not going to be intimidated by anyone here. Even her.
“Why are you here?” I demand, but the PM only smirks again.
“You’ve been a very bad girl, Ms. Blakely.”
I ease closer. “You’re under the impression that I care, Ms. Petrovic.”
The wind blows her white hair around her face, and it’s almost like she’s risen from the sea, an omen or a curse.
“The Society has operated in secret for a thousand years. Four times longer than this”—she gestures to the land and water that surround us—“has been a country. Regimes rise. Dictators fall. Wars rage the world over and still we stand. Do you know why, Ms. Blakely?”
“Because I wasn’t around to ruin everything?”
She raises an eyebrow as if to indicate I have a point, but she doesn’t say so.
“We survive because we take care of our own. I’m here because you need a friend. I’m here because you need us.”
“Am I supposed to believe that you care about me? Or do you just care about the lost princess of Adria?”
That I can even ask that with a straight face shows how surreal my life has become. But, then again, maybe it’s not real?
Maybe I’m still in a psych ward, strapped to a bed. Maybe that would be better than this, because then, at least, Jamie would still be at West Point—Jamie would still be safe.
“The Society needs you, Grace. And you need the Society.”
“The Society needs me for what?”
Sometimes the scariest answer is silence. I stand in the wind, listening to the waves crash and the birds cry. It sounds almost like Adria. Perhaps I could close my eyes and pretend that I am back on the beach, looking up at the wall. But I don’t want to. I’m on the other side of the world for a reason.
“You are significant. And for that reason you’ve been summoned.”
“I’m doing just fine on my own, thank you.”
I’m starting to turn. I’m desperate to leave. I’m going to run, swim … fly. But then the PM calls, “If I found you, then others will, too!”
And that’s the point, isn’t it? That I wasn’t safe in Adria. And, in time, I won’t be safe here.