Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  “Good to know.”

  I grimaced. “Anyway, Marcus can barely look at me right now. I hardly think he’s going to want to jump me any time soon.”

  “The handfast has that effect on the groom as well?” Devyn looked distinctly sour at this news.

  “Of course. No point if only half the couple wants it,” I returned sharply. He blinked in acknowledgement of the hit.

  “The date of the wedding, is that false too?”

  “No, my mother felt we would only get away with the false date once,” I clarified. My mother had been the one to insist the handfast be as private as possible; she too remembered her niece’s behaviour and, given what had supposedly happened between Marcus and me at the ball, Camilla was terrified we would embarrass her in front of the city a second time.

  “We can stick to the current plan then,” he stated.

  I waited for him to elaborate. Unsurprisingly, he added nothing further.

  “Well?” I prodded.

  An eyebrow rose.

  “What is the plan?” Even to my own ears, I sounded snarky.

  “Don’t worry about it. I have it figured out. I have a lead on some new tech. The firewalls have been amped up, but we should still be able to get out through the barrier on the river; it’s the least guarded option. There will be people waiting for us on the other side. With Marina it was relatively easy to slip away unnoticed. To get the city’s most celebrated sweethearts out, we’ll need to do something a little more diverting.”

  For Devyn, that was practically laying out the step-by-step of the plan; he must be feeling bad. Good.

  “How long do I have to pretend to be the excited soon-to-be-bride of the city’s darling son?” I asked, twisting the knife a little in the process. I wasn’t entirely without bitterness. That interesting little tic in his jaw flexed again.

  “I’ll let you know in due course.” My dig wasn’t to go without riposte then. Or rather, my intended strike was deflected, batted away by superior strength. He held all the cards, and I would do well to remember it the next time I wanted information.

  “Fine.” I’d had enough. Time to go back to my gilded cage. I grabbed my coat and headed for the door.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Devyn said to my retreating back.

  I wish, I thought as I closed the door behind me.

  I wanted to turn around so badly. He wanted me to turn around.

  I didn’t.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My knees threatened to give way as I bared my teeth in the expected smile and took Marcus’s hand on arrival at the Savoy. I had felt curiously light-headed all morning as I had been primped and preened into a concoction I barely recognised as myself.

  The girl on the arm of the boy that was reflected back at me from the glass in the door as we walked into the lobby was a complete stranger. The intricate hairstyle, perfectly applied makeup, the layers of silk from the distant Orient adorning me elicited gasps from the guests who gave a smattering of applause as they commented to each other how beautiful I looked, how handsome the boy was by my side. His clear green eyes looked down at mine, searching for something. I looked up at him blankly. What did he want? I didn’t care.

  “Cassandra,” Marcus said softly. “Are you all right?”

  My hand reached for the comfort of the triquetra charm necklace only to be met by the string of pearls temporarily replacing the plain necklace at my mother’s insistence.

  I blinked. The numbness that cocooned me was warm, comforting. His hand squeezed mine. I looked around – so many people, friends from school, important people I recognised as senators. Were they the ones who had arranged all this, manipulating Marcus and me for their own purposes? The hand holding mine tightened.

  “Cassandra,” his voice came, more urgent now. I smiled blankly up at him.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?” he repeated his eyes searching mine. “Are you ready for this?”

  Ready? The handfast. He meant the handfast. I cocked my head to one side. The handfast. I was here to be handfasted. To Marcus.

  I drew in a breath. My head spun. I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the air. I looked up at the tall man in front of me. I sucked in air again.

  “Hold on,” he reassured me, his eyes assessing me quickly, using his doctor voice. “I’ve got you. We’ll just go in here.”

  His hand nudged the small of my back, pushing me towards a small hallway. People moved to let us pass, smiling uncertainly at me. I smiled back, the automatic smile I had been using all morning, the one I had been training to use for weeks, months… ever since Devyn had come into my life and there had become two versions of me: the unchanged, public Cassandra and Devyn’s Cassandra.

  I couldn’t do this. Going through with this ceremony was a travesty. I couldn’t do it. I was leaning against the wall, concentrating on breathing. The green eyes looking into mine were grave. Concerned.

  “Just breathe, easy, in… and out,” he said gently. It was an anchor to hold on to. Marcus checked the door marked “private” beside us and, finding it opened freely, gently ushered me into the small office.

  “That’s it,” he comforted, as my breathing became more regular.

  As my grip on my body became steadier, so too did my grip on reality. I shook my head. How had I got here? I remembered leaving Devyn’s apartment the night before, walking back to my parents’ house.

  I had felt so alive. Pissed off. Resolute. But alive.

  So unlike how I felt now. I shook my head to clear the wooziness.

  “Cassandra, are you back with me?” Marcus asked.

  “I don’t feel right.”

  “I think you were having a small panic attack,” he informed me grimly. “Good to be clear on how you feel about today.”

  My mother had been waiting when I got home. Her lips tight, her expression stony when I walked through the front door. She had pulled me into Father’s study.

  “Where were you?” she hissed.

  I had never got around to buying Marcus’s gift. My cover was nonexistent. How could I have been so foolish? The events of the evening had scrambled my brain and I had left myself seriously exposed. I gave my mother my most innocent expression.

  “Shopping.”

  Camilla looked pointedly at my distinct lack of packages.

  “Not very successfully, it would seem. How unlike you.”

  To be fair, this was the first time in weeks I hadn’t come through the front door laden with things I didn’t need in my feeble attempt to punish my father for using me. If I was the reason for his mercantile empire, then I was going to reap the rewards.

  “I couldn’t find anything,” I excused myself

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, I was thinking about Marcus and I just really wanted to see him. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m so excited about tomorrow and being with him,” I elaborated wildly, trying to stick to the cardinal rule of lying under interrogation: keep it simple. Camilla had been so accepting of my plan to go out on my own on a Marcus-related expedition earlier that she had lapped it up. Why not use that to my advantage?

  “I wanted to see Marcus, straight away.” I bit my lip at the confession. “I’m sorry. I went over to the hospital. Just to say hi really quickly.”

  “Did you?” Again with the short question. How unlike my mother. She would usually have thrown a snide comment in there. I’d just handed her the perfect opportunity to have a dig at my duplicitous nature; after all, she’d caught me in a direct lie. She wasn’t to know I was actually trying to cover it with yet another.

  Camilla looked towards the side door. “Darling, you have such a big day tomorrow. It’s important you get your sleep.”

  She sat, waving for me to do likewise, and rang the little bell on the side table beside her armchair. Mother was just going to let it go?

  I shrugged mentally, taking a seat as indicated. The family was going to be in the full glare of a watching a
udience at the handfast; maybe she really was willing to shrug it off for once.

  Anna entered carrying a drink on a little tray and set it down on the low table in front of me without looking at me once. I looked up at my mother. Why was there only one drink?

  “Just a little something to help you sleep, dear.”

  Now I was nervous. This was the second time today that my mother had offered me something to drink that she was not going to partake of herself. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. She was also using an uncomfortable amount of endearments. I gnawed my lip.

  “I’m exhausted actually. I think I’ll just go straight to bed.” I started to rise.

  “Sit,” Camilla said sharply. I sat down abruptly.

  “I would like it if you drank your hot tea, sweetheart.” Sweetheart? Who was she kidding?

  “Unless you want to talk about where you were all evening?” Camilla leaned in and whispered the question softly.

  I swallowed uncomfortably. I lifted the cup and took a sip, smiling brightly at her over the rim. Her eyes narrowed as she watched me.

  “I was with Marcus.”

  “All of it.” Camilla nodded at the cup.

  I tipped it up, and drained it. I could already feel my lids growing heavy. My mother really was very keen that I should sleep. My hand felt heavy as I lowered the now empty cup and missed the table as my vision blurred.

  “Mama…” I mumbled. I felt odd.

  Camilla leaned down and elegantly picked up the fallen cup from the carpet. Catching my hand, she rubbed the finger missing the promise ring which had been absent since the night of the masquerade.

  “Marcus called here looking for you, Cassandra.”

  My lids closed and I rubbed my eyes, trying to shake off the lingering mugginess, careless of the immaculately applied makeup I had so carefully retouched on my way home.

  Now I looked up and took in my surroundings – the plush couch on which I was sitting, Marcus sitting opposite looking at me strangely. I started laughing. Not a regular laugh, a slightly hysterical laugh.

  “What’s going on with you?” Marcus asked sharply.

  I smiled up at him, the fake one at which I had become so expert.

  “It appears my mother put a little something in my drink last night,” I explained.

  “That’s crazy, why would she do that?”

  “Well, apparently she thought I might make a run for it. Seems Camilla’s not as convinced as the rest of the city that I’m blissfully running into your arms,” I sneered. Unfairly. After all, it was hardly Marcus’s fault we were here. In fact, the only person who wanted to be here less than me was Marcus.

  “What does she know?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Nothing really.” At least, not as far as I was aware. “Only that I wasn’t where I said I was last night.”

  He frowned.

  “Where did you say you were?” he asked.

  “With you.”

  “Oh.” He quickly put two and two together. “Where were you really?”

  The somewhat annoyed look in his eyes showed me that he had arrived at four all by himself. I lowered my eyelids and looked away.

  “Right.” His tone was grim as he stood up and moved away from me. “With him.”

  He exhaled deeply.

  “Sorry for blowing your cover.” He didn’t sound too sorry. “I don’t exactly want to be here myself, you know.”

  “I know,” I answered in a small voice.

  A knock came at the door. He moved to answer it and spoke briefly to whoever was in the hall.

  “We need to go back out there.”

  I shook my head jerkily. My breath started to come too quickly again.

  “I can’t do this.”

  Marcus crossed the room in two strides, his hands gripping me as he lifted me to my feet.

  “You are doing this,” he gritted.

  I felt physically sick. The final vestiges of whatever I had been slipped by my oh-so-loving mother finally burned out of my system. I was not going to do this. They couldn’t make me.

  “They bloody can make you,” Marcus glared at me.

  I must have spoken out loud. I frowned, my jaw setting mulishly.

  “You think you’re the only one playing games here, you stupid little girl. While you and your boyfriend were running around saving one urchin from the stews, I’ve been doing everything I can to save the city. They know everything. That device didn’t work; they let you get her out.”

  Marcus’s cheeks were flushed; he was practically spitting in his anger.

  “For one girl.” He shook his head. “I have hundreds of patients, hundreds of people who are dying. I marry you, and I get to continue to treat them. For every one of the elite I treat, I can treat twenty more of the poor, as long as I don’t burn myself out.”

  I was struggling to follow what he was saying. How did he know about Marina? I had never told him, I’d never had a chance. I had suspected his father held his career over him but this… they were bargaining with people’s lives. My head spun. He had made a deal. He had betrayed us. He saw the realisation dawning in my eyes.

  “You really didn’t know they were on to you? You ridiculous little fool. Everything you did fed right into their plans.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They arrested him months ago for some subversive behaviour. Hacking or something. Praetor Calchas persuaded the Governor to let him go after he was taken from the sands of the arena to see if they could catch more fish.”

  My blood ran cold. Devyn had been the hacker on the sands at my first Mete. The red flecks splaying out across the sand… But he had no injury afterwards, no memory… What was I thinking? Our advanced medicine would easily have resolved such things.

  They’d been watching the whole time. If they weren’t worried about me knowing now, their game was played out. They had what they wanted. They would be coming for Devyn.

  I opened up the connection between us. I couldn’t sense him so I threw myself at the wall where he had done the same. Let me in, Devyn. I battered at it frantically.

  “By the time the handfast is in place, they’ll have thrown him into a deep, dark hole. You’ll never see him again,” Marcus informed me, not entirely without compassion.

  RUN.

  I battered at the wall again. There had to be a way through. I concentrated harder, blocking everything else out. He was okay, I could feel he was okay. Bitter and dark though his mood felt, at least he wasn’t as indifferent to my impending nuptials as it had appeared last night.

  He was sitting in his room nursing his bandaged hand. I was outside the window, banging on the glass. See me. See me.

  His head raises, he sees me.

  RUN. RUN.

  His eyes widen. The connection opens. He senses me. My alarm. My despair. My fear.

  RUUUUUUUNNNNN.

  He’s up. Away.

  Gone.

  I smiled at Marcus. The genuineness of the smile clearly startled him. Standing, I offered him my hand. “Shall we?”

  I pulled myself together. I couldn’t let him see what I was thinking, what I was feeling. If the authorities had been a step ahead of us all this time, I wasn’t going to give away the slight advantage we held now.

  “Who did you make your deal with?” I asked idly. Knowing exactly who it was that was manipulating us was a question that had started to niggle at me. We were fighting someone who knew everything about us, while Devyn and I were fighting blind.

  “My father.”

  No surprise there.

  “But he’s not in charge,” Marcus added reluctantly, as if the words had been dragged from him. But he clearly needed to speak about it… and who else was there to talk to? “I don’t know who’s pulling his strings but when I asked for a greater number of patients he had to go back to someone. They refused, and their answer was final, so whoever it is clearly holds all the cards.”

  I nodded absently, most of
my focus on the connection with Devyn. He had left it open and I could feel the adrenaline charging through him.

  “Nobody ever holds all the cards.”

  “Well, it sure seems like they do. We’re both here, aren’t we, doing their bidding?”

  I grimaced. If only he knew it wasn’t entirely the mystery puppeteers’ bidding that had brought us here. I was here at the command of a boy who held my heart but gave me to another.

  As we exited the room, I found that I needed to know if everything had been a lie. I had thought for a while there that Marcus and I were becoming friends.

  “You knew all along?” I asked. “All this time you were playing me, this summer, the hospital…”

  Had Otho’s death been nothing but a gambit to draw me out? Bait that I had totally fallen for? After all, they couldn’t ask the Briton delegation for help with their golden boy, so I had helpfully provided it, not to mention handing them further evidence condemning myself and Devyn.

  “No.”

  “No?” I asked as he stilled.

  He looked down at me.

  “Cassandra, I may not agree with whatever it was you and your boyfriend were doing… I believe in the Code and the Empire; the council want the best for our city and the Britons would only tear it down and drag us all back to the dark age.” He paused. “But I didn’t know then. How could I? I didn’t even know what I was doing myself until the night of the ball.”

  I was confused. Marcus hadn’t known until after the ball?

  Guests had noticed our re-entry into the reception and I could feel eyes on us. I laughed up at Marcus.

  “You didn’t tell them about…?” I didn’t give Fidelma’s name, conscious that without my pendant we were having this conversation in the open.

  He shook his head.

  “Who do they think helped you?” I messed with his cravat, straightening a nonexistent crease.

  “Devyn.”

  “You told them Devyn has magic?” I asked through my teeth.

  Marcus looked uneasy. “I had to give them someone.”

  I hated him suddenly. The pampered city boy, always looking out for himself. Devyn hadn’t needed to help him. If I hadn’t persuaded him to help Marcus then perhaps we would already be a long way from here.