“You’ve seen her. You’ve spoken with her. Does she seem stable to you?”
“There was never anything wrong with her. You did that. Being in that place did that. Spending ten years in a place like that would make anyone crazy!”
The calm smile that Ann gives me is enough to make me scream. “And you would know, wouldn’t you, Grace?” She cocks an eyebrow but doesn’t really wait for an answer. “Besides, what I’ve done I’ve done for Adria. I’ve done for peace.”
“Yeah. When I hear peace I always think hunt my friends down like rabid dogs.”
Ann’s anger is rising. It’s like she’s tired of having to explain this to me time and time again. “The Society agrees with me, you know. Adria needs peace and stability. Our plan—our bargain—assures that. Amelia’s kingdom was taken from her. Righting that wrong has been my life’s work. It was your mother’s work! Having the heir marry the prince was her idea. But you still fight it.”
“And the king …”
“The king’s death is a tragedy.” Ann sounds sincere. “My husband and son and I will mourn him fiercely.”
“But he had to die,” I fill in.
Ann just shrugs.
I want to slap her. I want to claw her eyes out. I want to hang her from that window and let the whole world see how ugly she really is.
But I can’t do any of that. Because even without Ann, the Society would still want me here, and the Society is too powerful to fight. Like it or not, I’m the solution to a two-hundred-year-old problem, and no amount of rage on my part is going to change that any time soon.
“Good night, Grace,” Ann tells me, heading for the door. “Do get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a trying day. We will need to prepare to bury our king, after all.”
It’s not an observation. It’s a threat. And I stay, shaking, long after she’s gone.
I should find my room, my bed. I should do something to make this right, but I just look out the big windows, wishing I could go back in time.
To save the king.
And my mother.
And the people who cut those bodies down and dragged them who-knows-where.
But that’s not true, I realize. My mother knew where the bodies were buried, and she came here—into the belly of the beast—and told the one person she thought she could trust. Someone she thought would help.
My mom trusted Princess Ann, I remember. It makes me want to cry, the realization that bad decisions must run in my family.
My breath fogs against the thick glass windows, blocking out the city and the walls. They could be anywhere out there, beyond those gates, and …
Karina’s voice comes back to me. I can almost hear my mother sing.
“‘The truth is locked behind the gates …’”
And I know.
My mother didn’t come to the palace to tell Ann about the bodies.
My mother came to the palace to find them.
When morning comes, the king’s still dead, but it takes Thomas a moment to remember. I can actually see the grief pass over him, watch as reality seeps in. And I know the moment he realizes that it wasn’t all a dream.
“Get up,” I tell him, and he bolts a little, afraid. In spite of everything, I manage to smile. This must be what Noah felt like on my first night here when he dragged me from the safety of the embassy to Lila’s party on the cliffs. That was a lifetime ago, I think as I plop down on the edge of Thomas’s bed. I’ve changed out of my pretty blue ball gown, and I no doubt look like what I am—a worried, guilt-ridden girl who might never sleep again.
“What are you doing here?” Thomas rubs his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Get dressed.” I throw him a T-shirt. “It’s two hundred years ago, and I need your help.”
Thomas doesn’t call me crazy. He doesn’t even tell me that we’re wasting our time. But that doesn’t mean he understands.
“Tell me again,” he says when we reach the sitting room where Ann served me tea last summer and explained that these were the windows where, two hundred years ago, everything started.
“My mom found the lost tomb,” I tell him. “Which was bad because tomb means bodies. And bodies mean DNA. And DNA means proof. And so that’s why your mom wanted her dead,” I say so matter-of-factly that I have to stop and make myself remember who I’m talking to. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” the prince tells me. “I always knew, you know? Not that she’d done … this. But that she could. I think a part of me always knew.”
“I never knew,” I tell him.
“About what?”
“About any of it,” I have to admit. “I thought my mom was an antiques dealer, a collector who had been raised in Adria. I had no idea that this”—I gesture at the ornate room before us—“was even possible. People don’t live like this.”
The prince eyes me. “I live like this.”