When I wake up, I can’t be sure that I’m not dreaming.
At first, I think I’m back in the little cabin on the island. That the thumps and thuds I keep hearing are the sounds of Alexei and my brother fighting and training in the cool ocean air.
But the floor beneath me is too cold and too hard. In spite of the mind-numbing pain that is reverberating through my head, I desperately want to sneeze. But as I try to push myself upright it’s all I can do not to vomit, not to sway and sink back to the floor again. I’ve known pain like this only once in my life, and that was when I was twelve and jumped off the wall.
There’s not a doubt in my mind that, this time, my foolishness really should kill me.
But worse than the pain and the nausea and the confusion is the fact that I’m almost certain I smell smoke.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
Ann sounds so calm and so at ease as she walks around the room. There’s a gun in her hand, though, and she’s lit all of the old-fashioned torches. Storm clouds must have covered the sun, because flickering fire is the only light and the room smells like smoke and death.
“You found them, Grace.” She stops and looks down into the shallow grave where my ancestors lay, waiting. “I’ve lived here for eighteen years, and I never found them. Can you believe it? I feel like a fool. I feel like … it is a shame, really.”
“What’s a shame?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to do.
“It’s a shame that now they have to disappear again. Forever.”
I push myself upright, ignoring the white-hot pain that still shoots inside my head.
“Funny, I didn’t even know this room was here,” the princess says as she walks around the room’s perimeter. “But I guess no one did, did they? After a century or two I suppose it’s easy for things to get forgotten. Even a room that seems to be used mainly for the storage of lamp fuel.”
That’s the smell, I realize. Something more powerful and pungent than gasoline, and a new terror shoots through me. One of the big barrels has tipped over. A hole has been punched in the side and liquid is seeping out, running across the floor and then pooling in the shallow grave.
“What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to burn the bodies,” Ann says, and then she laughs. “And I’m afraid you’ll have to die as well.”
Maybe it’s that she looks like Karina.
Maybe it’s that she sounds like me.
But it’s more clear than ever that Ann’s not well. That this isn’t about bloodlines and legacies and history anymore. It might have started that way, but now it is about power and some misguided belief that two hundred years later we can make it right.
She is a woman obsessed, and I wonder about the weight of carrying this kind of secret—this responsibility. As a child, Ann decided to right a two-hundred-year-old wrong, and for most of her adult life she thought she’d succeeded. She’d thought her son was the answer. And then she learned that she was wrong. That—if anything—her son was at risk.
I know how the human mind can be—how it’s both wonderfully strong and terribly frail, and how, if necessary, a person can rewrite history, even if only for themselves.
Ann has done that. She’s given her life to this cause and now …
She’s ready to give mine.
“You’ve won,” I say. “You’re the princess and I’m here. I took your deal. In a few years, Amelia’s heirs will sit on the throne.”
“No!” Ann shouts. “If you had taken my deal, you wouldn’t be here, trying to find your mother’s precious proof! And now … well, Amelia’s heirs will sit on the throne someday. But not yours.”
“I don’t think Jamie’d be good at bearing children,” I say, even though it’s not funny. “He doesn’t have the hips for it.”
“Oh, Gracie. Did you think you’re the only female descendant? I’ll find the next one in line. And then … You did this to yourself, Grace. I wanted it to work! But no. You had to dig and dig. You’re just like your mother. Neither one of you could ever leave well enough alone.”
“It’s not going to be easy to find another girl desperate enough to go along with your scheme, you know. Or do you already have someone in mind?”
I don’t really care about the answer. I just have to keep her talking.
Dominic will be here soon.
Dominic will find me.
Dominic will save me because he couldn’t save my mother and the Scarred Man isn’t the type to fail twice.
But then sparks fly from the torch in her hand, igniting a trickle of lamp fuel that trails across the floor. Flames flare to life and smoke fills the room, and I’m no longer in a palace. I’m on a deserted street.
I’m listening to my mother yell, “Grace, no!”
The fire pops and cracks as the old, dry wood of the shelves catches and flares to life. And a part of me knows that this is what I want, isn’t it? For the proof to disappear? For there to never be anything that ties any member of my family to this place ever again?
It would save Jamie.