by s. Behr
Suppressing a laugh, for a moment I let myself believe this was just like any other morning. But the look on Ameli’s face proved everything was different now and my smile faded as it all came flooding back to me.
Watching my governess with curiosity as she moved around the room, her agenda became clear; she was only here to do what she needed to. Apparently, that did not include speaking to me.
The silence made me want to join Jane under the covers, but instead of cowering, I sat up and aimed my attention toward her. “What did that chair do to you?” I asked as she dragged it from my bedside to the table by my window. I hoped against hope that she would say something, anything. “It’s not the chair’s fault it’s in the wrong place.”
The long, awkward silence that followed spoke volumes. Cringing inside, I never imagined I would miss the sarcastic and blunt way Ameli had of putting me in my place, but I did. In a flurry, she sped around the room, concentrating on pulling it into order. She refused to look at me and used more force than necessary to shut panels and arrange my room the way she liked it. It was not a good sign.
When I made the decision to return home, I knew there would be people who now hated me. In truth, I assumed everyone would. Every day since I made that choice, I prepared myself. I thought I could handle the anger, the hateful glances. I was wrong. My cheeks flamed, and I shrank back into the bed. A cold resolve formed in my gut.
I squeezed my right fist open and closed, unsure of what to say. A dull ache of lingering stiffness stretched from my hand to the rest of my body like I had been in bed for a week.
“How long have I been out?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.
Ameli stilled with the blanket she had pulled from another chair across the room, half stuffed into the cleaning unit, the rest spilling onto the floor. She stepped back, her face appearing from behind the open panel with a look mixed with grief and anger.
“Which time?” she bit out. “The two days you were in a coma, nearly dying of internal bleeding from trees only know how? Or the nineteen days you disappeared without a trace, not letting anyone who loves you know if you were alive or dead? Especially when…” She hesitated, staring at me with the same ferocious expression that usually got me to finish my homework and house duties quickly and without complaint.
“I—I am sorry,” I stammered, shame washing through me.
“You should be.” She slammed the door to the wash. Without another glance, she stormed out of my room.
My head dropped back against the pillow while my body went limp with defeat. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I should have been grateful she spoke to me at all, but it still hurt. Badly. Ameli had always treated me like I was her own daughter. When my parents had obligations, it had always been Ameli filling their shoes. Now, she could barely stand being in the same room with me. Grief burned my eyes, seeping into every pore of my skin.
Eventually, Jane nosed my chin, forcing me to look into her big brown eyes, and somehow, I realized she had become the reminder, a symbol of what was important. “Thanks, girl,” I whispered. I wanted to feel sorry for myself, but I knew what needed to be done, and I had wasted too much time already. I threw the covers off to find I was still dressed in the suit I had been wearing when I escaped the Ark.
Pulling the headpiece to my ear, I whispered, “Hailey? Are you there?”
“Yes, Princess, where else would I be?” she snapped.
Despite the virtual thorny twig Hailey seemed to have sat on, I was relieved to hear a friendly voice. “Why am I still in this suit? How did the pod heal me with this on? It usually doesn’t work that way.”
“That was discussed. I informed your mother that the nano tech within the suit was the only thing keeping you alive,” Hailey answered in the way she always did; just the facts. She made it sound as if it was obvious common sense, which usually left me feeling more confused than I was before I asked the question.
“You told them the suit was healing me?” I asked. “If it could do that, why didn’t the suit start to heal me sooner?”
“I didn’t say it could heal you. I said it was preventing you from dying. The time it would have taken to remove the suit and transfer you to the healing pod was insufficient. You would have suffered fatal exsanguination. Your mother was the only one who understood and ordered the appropriate course of action. Her abilities are extraordinary,” Hailey said with admiration.
“I know. I have always known how extraordinary she is, but thank you for saving my life and keeping us together.”
Gratefully, I pulled the tablet out of the hidden pocket behind my back. It was only when Hailey’s face illuminated on the screen that I understood the amount of damage the tablet had taken.
“Hailey, your face is glitching.”
“Some A.I.s might consider that rude.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I said, narrowing one eye.
“There was some damage when the tablet was ripped from the connection at the hatch. Of course, sliding across the rocks didn’t help either. But I am lucky that when Lance Yzer threw that rock, the ricochet hit you,” she said with what sounded like relief.
“Yeah, real lucky,” I said, rubbing my back with a sideways glance.
“You suffered a broken rib and lacerated kidney. A direct hit would have damaged the tablet beyond repair, and that would have been the end of this consciousness,” she said with a stony look.
A dozen scenarios marched through my mind of what that could mean. No proof of the humans, no real proof of the Ark, but it was the simple thought of her not existing that made my heart pause. “You’re right. It’s better that it was me and not you. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I assume you would keep breathing and keep living,” Hailey said. “Making many more mistakes than you would if I wasn’t there to keep you from making them, of course.”
I snorted. “Of course.” A sharp tug from my side made me cough, but before I could give Hailey a witty retort, the door to my room opened, and my mother swept in, along with Rall and several other members of the royal guard.
“Good morning, Mother.” I eyed the stance the guards had taken. Even Rall refused to look at me directly. I slid the tablet into a slit in the side of the suit, hoping no one noticed.
“Good morning, Petal.” She walked over to the bed and sat beside me. Placing her hand on my cheek, my mother closed her eyes and concentrated, using the abilities that allowed her to see into my body. After a minute, she rubbed my cheek. Then, with a peculiar coolness in her tone, she said, “You are much better. I hope you have slept well.”
“I did, thank you. I feel much better.” As I watched the ensemble of guards, a nervous pang formed in my chest, unsure why they were here.
With care and a gentle touch, my mother pulled my face and attention back to her. “Violet, remember that I love you,” she said fiercely.
“I–I love you, too,” I replied as her expression changed.
Her soft features hardened into a resolve I didn’t understand. She straightened her shoulders. “There is much we need to discuss, although right now I need you to get dressed. Please remove the suit.”
I hesitated, worried about what would happen to it, but by the number of guards, I realized that was the least of my troubles.
“This cannot wait any longer. I need you to come with me as soon as you have showered and dressed,” my mother said. Turning to the guards, she ordered, “Please wait at the door.”
Half of them stepped out into the hall while the others stayed within the threshold, their backs to me. The door to my room remained open with Rall standing in the center of the frame.
“What’s going on?” I asked my mother as I crossed the room.
“Get cleaned up, and we will explain everything.” She handed me a dress she had chosen from my closet.
I inhaled sharply as I recognized the outfit; it was something worn for only the most official realm occasions, and there were on
ly a handful of things that would require me to wear this. It was not a good sign.
However brave I thought I was, my courage evaporated. I didn’t even try to hang on to a sliver of hope. I had known this was coming. I should have been prepared for it. I should not have allowed myself to want more. But I did want more. The cowardice in me reared its ugly head, only this time I didn’t run. I couldn’t have even if I had wanted to.
The sound of the guard’s feet clicked against the polished wooden floors as we made our way through the eerily empty halls of the palace.
The whole of our group moved with purpose to a destination that was known to everyone but me. I slipped my hands into the deep pockets sewn into the folds of this dress, but even feeling Hailey’s tablet did nothing to squash the dread this dress had always symbolized.
The dark green fabric always loomed in the back of my closet. It had been replaced several times unworn as I grew up—a sign that Neyr was at peace and all was well. I had always imagined if the need to put it on ever came, I would be next to my parents. But that was not possible now, and I didn’t know where I would stand.
When we reached the lobby of the private elevator banks, Rall entered the lift first, followed by one of his lieutenants. My mother stood at the threshold and held her arm out, signaling that I was to enter. As I stepped in and to the center of the lift, Mother followed along with two more guards.
“Stateroom three,” my mother instructed the intercom of the elevator.
The car normally fit twenty adults with room to spare, but it felt uncomfortably small with only the seven of us, as it zoomed upward. We reached our level too fast, and the doors opened. Rall nudged me gently to exit as I searched his face for any sign of what to expect, but he stared ahead, the stoic façade of a guardian.
Stepping out of the lift, the smell of polished oak walls filled my nose. I was really home. The King’s palace took up a dozen levels of the Chrysler Tower, but it was only a fraction of the floors housing hundreds of families, many who worked with the Neyr Council of Advisors or their families. Of the seventy-seven levels in this tower, I had been to less than half of them. These floors, however, I knew perfectly.
In the Archives, there were thousands of pictures of the ancient spire that had been a shining symbol gleaming proudly for centuries, standing out against the hundreds of other buildings in the sprawling skyline that once upon a time was the ancient City of New York.
Today, the metal spire was encased almost entirely by the genetically modified oak tree’s bark that had fused with the building during the thousands of years of the ice age. The only sign that this was once the great Chrysler Building was visible from the inside. When the interior structure was reclaimed, the spire remained intact, enough of the wood polished away to show the intricate metal lace remaining from the original spire.
The highest point of the tower was the official throne room, a half level floor overlooking the level below that was the grand ballroom with terraces spanning one hundred feet in each direction. The ballroom served politically as a formal meeting room when any visiting court was in Hattan and socially for any royal celebrations. Below that was the level comprised of smaller rooms that held the Neyr council meetings and less formal functions.
But this section at the base of the spire where only sparse glints of metal could be seen in the wooden walls was not on any blueprints or schematics of the tower. There were no windows, no way to escape for anyone, no matter their abilities. Even a transporter from Ico couldn’t open a breach out of this floor. These walls were connected to my home through the living fibers of the oak tower, and I suddenly realized it was a prison.
The guards standing sentry on either side of the inner chamber opened the doors, and my mother strode in the guards alongside her. Rall stayed by my side as I took slow, hesitant steps, and by the time I crossed the threshold, my mother had taken her seat at a long wooden table.
When I scanned the faces of the people seated upon the dais next to her, I stopped dead in my tracks. It wasn’t seeing the High King and Queen of Amera sitting directly in front of me that had me frozen with shock. It was seeing the man at the center of the table that caused everyone else in the room to fade away.
Dressed in a hunter green suit, the Neyr crown upon his brown curls, my father’s violet eyes watched me as I fainted in the center of the room.
As I came to, I saw several worried faces surrounding me. Only one had eyes the same shade as mine.
A lock of brown curls hung between us. Reaching out I grasped for a wisp of hair the color of a chestnut tree, and my hand didn’t float through it as if it were a figment of my imagination, a projection like Hailey, or a ghost. The curl of hair rested against my skin as real as the person it belonged to.
“Papa?” I choked.
My parents exchanged a glance between them. My mother rose and commanded, “Clear the room.”
A shuffle of feet filed away until it was just me and my father. Waiting for the room to clear, my gaze never left him. His hair was loose and hanging around his face, making him look younger and more vulnerable than I remembered.
Sitting back on his heels, he asked, “Can you sit up?” His voice sounded wrong, coarse like a broken whisper. It was completely foreign to me, and it broke my heart. His hand stretched out in front of me, I placed mine in his, and a tear escaped me.
He was real.
“Petal, you don’t remember?” he asked, pulling me gently to my feet.
I shook my head, unable to speak. He let out a long, slow breath, glancing upward and scrubbing his face with his hand.
A pang of despair flared in my chest. “I did that,” I cried, seeing the jagged scars on his cheek that ran along his jaw, down his throat, and into the collar of his shirt.
“Violet,” he whispered.
Squeezing my eyes shut, my head fell into my hands. “I am so sorry.” I trembled.
“Petal, look at me,” he urged gently.
In the space of that moment, I felt every emotion: joy, happiness, love, shame, terror. The thought that my father was here, alive, and sitting next to me seemed impossible. But his hand on my shoulder was solid and real, and it gave me the courage to lift my head and meet his gaze. In his violet eyes, there was an ocean of unspoken grief lingering between us.
His forehead wrinkled with worry. “Petal.”
“I thought you were dead, that I…” I couldn’t say it, torn between disbelief and euphoria to see him here in front of me.
“You don’t remember anything since you’ve been home?” he asked, but it felt more like a statement.
I tried to think through the web of memories, but it was fragmented, broken like a shattered mirror. “No, not really,” I whispered.
His sigh was heavy. “I am sorry, Petal, I would have come again and spoken with you this morning. Last night I just thought…” His brows furrowed as if he had just lost something.
“Did we speak?” I asked, confused.
For a long moment, he searched my face. “Yes, we did.” His lips pressed together as if there was more to say.
“Henry, we are out of time; they will be here soon. We must continue,” my mother said, popping the bubble of time and space belonging just to my father and me.
He looked at her, then to me, “Your mother is right.” He held out his hand as he turned to me. “I am sorry that you have to learn this way. I didn’t know.”
Why he was apologizing to me? At that moment, I didn’t care as the reality of his breathing sunk in. He was here, and that was what mattered.
Whatever we would have said, whatever we did say, would have to wait. My judgment and my fate were upon me. But with my father alive, I knew I could face it. I took his hand and followed.
At the end of the aisle, my father gestured to a seat. My legs were as solid as jelly as I sat down, squeezing his hand. Although I didn’t want him to let go, he untangled our fingers and stepped away.
As he took his seat next to my mo
ther, the doors opened. The High King Lindstrom Asher and the High Queen Leda Asher entered, followed by both my mother’s and father’s parents. The grim look on their faces told me this was more than a friendly reunion, and no one seemed happy to be here. Without a glance my way, they took their seats.
Other than the collection of current and former kings and queens sitting at the table, there was no one else in the room except the expected number of guards at each door and Rall who stood next to me. When I caught his eye, he winked. With that, I knew he was there not as my guard, but as my mentor, as my father’s best friend, and the man who made it his mission to make me strong. Knowing I was not alone, I sat a little straighter. Rall faced forward, and his captain’s façade returned. I followed his gaze and saw my mother stand. Heat bloomed in my chest as my heart pounded.
“Princess Violet Amplifien. You have been called here to this tribunal to discuss the events on the morning of May twenty-seven.” My mother said as she turned to the panel and asked each of the members to state their names and titles. My grandfather Illtyd was the last, and when he was done, my mother sat down, with a weary sigh.
My neck felt like it was on fire as I looked across the table. If this had not been a tribunal for me, I would have been awestruck by the sheer enormity of the powers and abilities these eight people possessed. Next to my grandfather Liam, instead of seeing a two-term queen of Exa, I saw only my grandmother, Annika, who told me countless stories of my mother when she was my age.
After my parents married, my grandmother joined the Elder Council as a representative of Exa and split her time between Elderden, the home of the Elder Council, and Exa. I didn’t see them as often as I would have liked, but I knew that despite her busy schedule, she always found reasons to come to Neyr. Today, however, her visit appeared to be strictly royal business.
Across the table, my father’s parents were like a twisted mirror of my mother’s. My grandfather Illtyd, had always been serious, stern, and formidable. He had been a firm but fair king; his wife Freya ruled the queen’s court for all three of their terms. They were no strangers to tough decisions, and the people of Neyr loved them both.