I studied the prince sitting in front of me. What was his story? Ivan’s conversation came back to me—about the king’s and queen’s deaths, Rosa’s disappearance, and Morven’s illness. How were they connected? Would the prince flip if I asked what had caused him to be in the chair? I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“Morven, may I ask you a question?”
“That depends.” He looked up at me. “What kind of question?”
“I’m curious. What happened to your legs?”
His brows knit with confusion, and he pursed his lips.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“No. It’s not that. No one’s ever asked me.” He tapped his fingers on his knee. “Most people think it’s taboo to question me.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“I suppose not,” he answered.
I tilted my head. “Then will you tell me?”
The elevator moved with echoing clicks as I waited for his answer. “It was the yellow sickness,” he said. “It took my parents when I was ten, then I contracted it. I survived, but it left me like this.”
“Yellow sickness?” I asked.
He nodded. “From the yellow cerecite during the outbreak. Surely you remember the outbreak?”
“Yes. The outbreak,” I fudged. “Hard to forget.” A line of text jumped out at me from one of the books I’d read in Ivan’s hut. “I thought the royals had been quarantined when the sickness broke out.”
“Yes. They were,” he explained. “But my parents and I managed to catch the sickness anyway. Not many people knew about it.”
“That’s odd.” I tapped my fingers on the wheelchair’s handle. “Did anyone else in the castle contract it?”
He shook his head. “Only us.” He locked his gaze on me. “You ask a lot of questions, Miss Harper.”
“Oh.” I answered too quickly. “Well, as I said. I’m curious.” I glanced away and straightened the dragon pendant on my plaid sash. “I’m sorry about your parents,” I added. “And about your illness.”
“Don’t be.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me so much anymore. Besides, I’m alive, and I’m better off than others who’ve been paralyzed. I can walk when I’m feeling up to it.”
“Really?” I questioned him.
“Sure. It’s never easy, but I can do it when I have the strength.”
Hmm. If there were any link between the royals and Agent Rodriguez’s disappearance, I couldn’t be sure. Not yet, anyway. Morven had been young at the time. Maybe he’d never known the last agent. But his aunt... that was another story.
The elevator stopped with a jolt. Beyond us stretched a hallway with a wooden door at its end. I opened the gate, the clanking metal echoing, then wheeled Morven down the hall to the door.
As I opened it, I revealed a room that reminded me of a domed cathedral. A telescope made of gleaming copper sat at the center, taking up half the floor space, its metal tube extending through a gap in the ceiling, past the glass tiles, pointing at the sky.
“A telescope?” My voice echoed as I wheeled Morven toward it. “You’re studying astronomy?”
He laughed. “I thought that was obvious when I asked you to take me to an observatory.” He drew out the last word.
I ground my teeth to keep from smarting off. “There’s no need to be rude,” I said as politely as possible.
“Why not?” he challenged. “It’s not like anyone’s ever polite around this place. Especially to me.”
“Just because people treat you badly doesn’t give you permission to do the same.”
His eyes narrowed once again. I was beginning to hate that look. “I don’t believe anyone has ever spoken to me so candidly.”
“Really?” I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. “No wonder you have such trouble with manners.”
He kept his gaze pinned on me. “Where did you say you were from?”
“Fablemarch Vale,” I answered, speaking clearly. “The fishing village.”
“Really?” His eyes didn’t flinch.
I nodded.
He pursed his lips. “Interesting,” he mumbled to himself.
I sniffed, looking away from him, pretending to act nonchalantly. The last thing I needed were his suspicions. I decided to direct our conversation in a different direction. “So, tell me about the telescope. Why are you so interested in astronomy?”
His gaze turned wistful as he stared up at the gleaming copper contraption. “Because no one else is. Because no one else cares. There’s so much up there, but we only ever focus on the mundane things that surround us when there are planets and galaxies, life possibly, out there waiting to be discovered.”
I wanted so much to tell him about the world outside the dome—everything he was missing—the beaches, and deserts, and all the cultures he’d only read about. But all I could do was play along and pretend I knew nothing. “Hmm. Fascinating.”
He gave me a stern glare. “If you’re not interested you can leave.”
He must’ve mistaken my tone for boredom.
“No, I’ll stay.” Around the room, tables and shelves lined the walls. Clutter sat on every surface—an ideal place to store the cerecite. I picked up a vase. “Do you mind if I look around?”
“Go ahead.” He waved me away. “Just be sure to stay out of my way.” Gripping the wheels, he rolled his chair to the eyepiece.
Ignoring him, I circled the room and focused on every sight and sound, cataloguing each one as I went:
The telescope, the stacks of scrolls, the musty smell coming from the animal pelts—orange and white—from foxes, perhaps? The layer of dust covering the inkwell, brown with a golden rim, the compass—the spindle pointing north, and the broken gears. More vases, a horseshoe, a seashell—purple and white, the sound of Morven’s wheelchair moving across the room, the chilly temperature raising goose bumps on my arms. A wooden chair with a missing spindle, the sextant, the star charts—so many star charts. They were all written in the same script. Had Morven created them all?
On and on I walked, running my fingers over some of the objects, until I was able to make a complete mental picture of everything in the room. I would be able to recall each piece with exact clarity for years to come. Not that such a talent had ever done me much good except for finding random objects—Mom’s lost phone or Dad’s truck keys that he’d dropped at the state fair. I’d found them near the Tilt-a-Whirl. He’d rewarded me with fried Oreos, and I’d been certain they’d tasted better than anything I’d eaten in my life, but maybe that was because Dad had smiled—really smiled—as he’d given them to me.
I must be the luckiest dad on the planet to have you.
Shaking my head, I pushed my memories aside.
I stood at the room’s center near the telescope. Morven had moved away from it and sat at a table, scribbling away at another star chart.
Nothing had shifted appearance so far, but I needed to remember the clues.
Sound, time, world, matter...
I paced the room again, looking for anything that might have shifted shape or changed color. As I passed the compass, I noticed the needle pointed south. Picking it up, I looked at it more closely. It was definitely pointing south now. Plus, it fit the clue for world. Still, I couldn’t scan it here, and what if it were merely broken?
I went to where Morven sat scribbling on his star charts. “Is this compass broken?”
He looked up. “What?”
“Is it broken?” I repeated.
He blinked. “It’s not broken, but it doesn’t work, either. Compasses are unreliable this far north.”
“Oh.” My shoulders sagged. I suspected as much.
He gave me a second glance, and his narrow-eyed gaze was far too discerning for comfort. Did he suspect I was here for the cerecite?
He placed his pen atop the scroll, sitting up straight and pinning me with that dark glare. I stiffened under his gaze, a tingle of anxiety racing down my spine.
“What’s
your game?” he asked, motioning to the compass.
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“What are you doing here?” he clarified. “You don’t want the money. You’re searching for antiques and concerned about compasses. Why are you really here?”
I scrambled for an answer. It had to be something believable. “Isn’t it obvious? I needed a job and I had to escape my village. I was stuck fishing at the docks all day. I hated it there.” I did my best to speak with confidence. “None of this is any of your business, by the way.”
“It is if I make it. I’m the crown prince, after all. I’m in the habit of getting what I want.” He had the audacity to wink.
I clenched my fists and turned away from him, a retort on the tip of my tongue. My cheeks burned, and my heart was beating too fast. This new fire in me was something I didn’t expect, part anger, part attraction, which completely baffled me.
Placing the compass aside, I continued searching.
“I will figure you out, Miss Harper,” he said.
I ignored him, reminding myself that I had to keep this job, and mouthing off wouldn’t do any good except to get me fired.
A blur of white and pink caught my attention. I stopped, focusing on the seashell. Hadn’t it been purple earlier? And now it looked lighter—more pink lining the outer edges, no purple at all.
I grabbed the shell and cradled it in my hands. Memories came to me, a vacation to Myrtle Beach with my mom and dad, building crumbling sandcastles that fell apart to be reclaimed by the surging tides. As I held the seashell to my ear, the nostalgic sound of the ocean overwhelmed me. The beach. It was one of my only memories of Mom bright and happy, her bronze skin warmed by the sun, unaware of the first flare that would hit us a week later. She’d been one of the first to die of the cancer caused by radiation.
I couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat, so I closed my eyes, forcing the memories away, and snuck the seashell in my vest’s inner pocket. I would scan it as soon as I got back to my room, and I would pray that I’d found the first piece of white cerecite.
When I wandered back to Morven, he drew a razor straight line across the parchment. The tendons in his hands moved in a mesmerizing way. The powerful strength of his fingers gripped the ink pen, creating a tapestry of stars and galaxies on the scroll.
He looked up, and our gazes locked. His eyes held such depth and intelligence. A spark connected between us, stuttering my breathing.
“Is something the matter?” he asked.
“No,” I said, attempting a casual tone while my pulse thrummed. “Just wondering when you’ll be done.”
He placed the pen on the table. “Don’t you have anything better to do than interrupt me?”
I crossed my arms. “Yes, actually. Sorry for the interruption. If it’s fine with you, I’ll leave you to work in peace.” I spun on my heel and headed for the door.
“Sabine... wait,” he called, his tone unusually subdued.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Yes?”
“Please don’t leave yet. I... I need your help getting back to my room. The lifts don’t go to my floor from here, and I can’t navigate stairs in this chair.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re telling the truth?”
“Yes, the liftline from this tower to my room is broken, and my aunt doesn’t want me up here, so she hasn’t seen fit to fix it. Please...” he begged. “Don’t go yet.”
I bit my lip, tempted to tell him to find his own way back. Then again, he had said please, which must’ve taken an extreme amount of effort. Plus, if he called for help, his aunt would learn where I’d taken him.
“It’ll only take a minute,” he said. “I can explain what I’m doing if you’d like.”
I frowned. “I thought you didn’t want me to interrupt you. But... if you’d like me to stay, I will.”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile, and I crossed the room and stood next to him, looking at his star chart. Lines and dots filled the parchment, with names written in tiny letters above each of the small circles.
“So...” I asked. “What is all this?”
“A partial map of our galaxy,” he explained. “This star is Proxima Centauri, the nearest to us, although that’s a relative term. Even if we could travel at speeds of more than a thousand kilometers per hour, it would take over a hundred thousand years to get there.”
“A hundred thousand years?” I asked, surprised.
He nodded. “Incredible, isn’t it? Did you know there are actually three stars in the Alpha Centauri system?” He pulled out another chart, with three circles inked in the center, labeled as Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. “These are the stars in the system. If my calculations of their gravitational fields are correct, there should be planets orbiting them. Could you imagine?” He motioned to the dome, his eyes glinting with excitement. “What would it be like to look into the sky and see three suns?”
“Pretty bright?” I suggested. “Like blindingly bright?”
“No.” He laughed. “These suns are dimmer than ours. And one is tinted blue. Can you imagine what the sky would look like? Beautiful.”
I scooted a chair close to him and sat. “It seems like this really interests you?”
He hesitated before answering, as if he’d never told anyone about this—anyone except me. “Yes, but not only this. All of it. The planets, moons, galaxies, and the edge of space, as far as my telescope can see. Everything.”
“Why does it fascinate you so much?” I asked, my voice soft.
He shrugged. “I guess I’d like to imagine there’s more out there than just this.” He tapped his wheelchair. “It’s not always easy tracking their movements. The shield is hard to see through, but some nights are better than others. Plus, I’ve created something to help. He moved the papers aside and picked up a telescope. The long bronze tube had a set of gears attached to the eyepiece. “I’ve modified this to see through the shield, but it only works on clear nights, and it works best from someplace higher in altitude than here, like the mountains.
“Anyway.” He placed the telescope back on the table. “Now you know.” He arranged the papers back on top, hiding the metallic instrument.
It was good to see him so interested in something. He’d obviously put a lot of work into creating the charts, and I had to admire him for his dedication. Most losers I’d known back home only cared about their next high or who’d sleep with them. But Morven was different, and part of me was curious to know more about him.
“You like to know things, don’t you?” My quiet voice carried through the dome.
He gave me a pointed stare, one that made heat rise to my cheeks. “I think everyone should be educated. We haven’t had a proper university in more than a century. It’s our complacency that’s leading us to our downfall.” He shrugged, as if trying to downplay the perceptiveness of his words, but I’d seen the intensity in his eyes. He cared more about his people than he let on, something I doubted his aunt realized.
Morven pulled a pocket watch from his vest. “Dinner is in a few hours, and I’d like to rest before then. Take me back to my room, then I’ll expect you to join me for the evening meal.”
“Join you?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended. He was back to his usual demanding self. His moment of humanity had ended. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Why?”
“Aunt Tremayne expects all the upper staff members to be present during dinner.”
“Really?” I questioned. “To serve you, you mean?”
“No, the lower caste staff members do that. Upper staff members are expected to sit at the table. We used to invite other noble families, but my aunt offended them all, so now she demands the staff join us.” He gave me his stern glare. “And you’d better not treat her the way you do me, or else she’ll put you out of more than just a job. You should be glad I’m so forgiving.”
“Forgiving, huh?” I couldn’t help but laugh, though it was a cheerless sou
nd.
“Yes,” he answered sternly.
I had to bite my lip to keep from smarting off as I pulled his chair away from the table, then wheeled him out of the observatory, the shell tucked inside my pocket.
When we arrived back at his room, I stopped the wheelchair beside his bed. A stripe of evening sunlight entered through the half-closed curtains. Dust motes drifted, and a ray of light fell over him, highlighting the exhaustion in his eyes. I reached to help him from the chair, but he held up his hand, stopping me.
“You don’t want my help?” I asked.
He only shook his head, gripping the armrests as he stood, then sat on the bed. He hunched his shoulders, his breathing heavy.
A pang of sympathy gripped me. “Do you need anything before I go?”
“No, but... thank you.”
I gave him a questioning glance. “For what?”
“For listening to me.”
“Oh.” I fidgeted as I straightened my pendant. “You’re welcome.”
He nodded, rubbing his eyes as he looked with a vacant expression to the window. I turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind me. As I made my way down the hall, the fluttering in my stomach confused me. Morven confused me. I had to admit, something drew me to him.
I entered my room and flicked on the lamp beside the table, filling the space in hues of soft blue. With no windows and wood paneling surrounding me, I had to inhale and exhale deeply to suppress the claustrophobia.
After sitting on my bed, I removed the scanner from my bag and slid the tube apart to reveal the screen. I placed the shell on the bedcover, the purple deepened a shade along the edges.
My hands shook as I held the scanner.
Please work.
I pushed the button. A laser beam moved horizontally over the shell, and a 3-D image of it appeared on the screen. A light on the scanner turned green, and then the actual shell morphed. The ridges and bumps melted into an iridescent sphere.
I placed the scanner aside, then picked up the baseball-sized orb, the colors like opal, the smooth surface warming my skin.
My heart leapt.
I’d done it. I’d found the first lie.
I pressed the metal disc on my bracelet.
The 7th Lie Page 8