I shove the questions out of my mind. Because, so far, every answered question only erects ten more. Maybe it’s better I leave these questions unanswered. So I try to forget them. I lay my head on Rain’s shoulder and stare at the dying fire. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer.
“What’s going through your head, apple-picker?” he asks.
“Only a million and a half questions.”
He laughs softly. “Don’t worry. As soon as all this blows over, we’ll hold Titus captive, and I’m sure we can interrogate him to answer any questions you might have for him.”
“Ugh. No thanks. I don’t think I ever want to see him again if I don’t have to.”
“Well, you will be chieftess. And all your subjects will undoubtedly love you for freeing them from compulsion.” He pulls away, searches my eyes. “You’ll have the power and authority, to burn Titus on the Rebels Circle if you want.”
And I have no doubt the rest of Ky will beg me to do it. But…he’s my mother’s son. And though I hold absolutely no fondness for him, what would Mom think of me killing him? Besides, I’m not really a killer.
“I’ll be happy,” I say, “if I can bestow upon Titus the same graciousness he showed Aurora.”
Rain snorts. “You’re going to lock him up the rest of his life?”
“It’ll give him time to think about his mistakes. Which is kind of worse than a quick death. And if no one’s under compulsion, I won’t have to worry about him escaping and re-compelling people.”
“And what about Aurora?” he asks. “Please don’t tell me you actually feel a single grain of sympathy for her.”
“Rain, I—I think she’s…changing.”
He looks sharply at me. “Seriously?”
“She helped us escape. She wants to take Titus down as much as we do.”
“But she had the perfect chance, and she didn’t. It’s a trick. She’s a pompous, entitled princess who’s been living like a queen her entire life. She had her own personal servant and lived off expensive foods while her own twin was starving in the Community Garden. What part of that is okay?”
“I think…I think Titus had her brainwashed.”
“Oh, please. She has Titus’s blood. He couldn’t brainwash her any more than he could brainwash you.”
“I don’t mean compelled. I mean, he actually made her believe he was keeping her safe. What else did he tell her? And how many lies did he spin to make her believe him?” I stare at the fire and chew my lip. “She did try help us, after all. I really think she’s on our side.”
“Help us? Help us? If she really wants to help, she would have shot Titus in the head when she had the chance. But she didn’t, did she? She waited for Defenders to raid the room and then she fled.”
Voices echo down the cavern, stopping our conversation, and then a small light appears, and I can just barely make out the forms of Aurora and Forest.
“Well,” Rain says. “Speak of the devil. Literally.”
Forest’s Politician coat is draped around her shoulders, and usually I would feel a prick of jealousy or anger right about now, but all I feel is a strange warmth. Because I don’t know what Aurora has been through, but, despite what Rain thinks, she’s probably more brainwashed than everyone in Ky put together. And she’s just now realizing what a monster her brother is. She could really use a comforter right now.
They approach, sit down on a log across the fire. Forest will be an everlasting spring of comfort and love and listening ears and wiping away tears. He will always be there for her. And because they both shared a similar devotion to Titus, he will understand her in a way no one else could.
Aurora…she’s so different looking now. Not defiant. Not proud. Even in the dim light, I can tell her eyes are red-rimmed from crying. And I think—I hope—she really is changing.
But Rain stiffens beside me. He thinks it’s all an act. He hasn’t really had a chance to speak to Aurora like I have yet. Not really. Perhaps in time he will.
“You okay?” I find myself asking Aurora.
She looks at me. And the look in her eyes is enough to make my heart crack. And suddenly she’s on her feet and I’m on my feet and we’re stumbling into each other’s arms, and we’re holding each other so tight and we’re crying, and I don’t really know what’s happening, but I do know things have changed drastically between us.
“Sister,” she whispers against my ear. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls away, searches my eyes. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I know.”
Her smile holds a measure of relief and a handful of hope. “I’ve been thinking. About everything. Titus had me completely messed up in the head, I realize.”
“You’re just now realizing that?” Rain mutters.
“Because I was in a room,” she continues, ignoring Rain. “One room. With four walls and a bed. I talked to only five people my entire life. Five. My father. Titus. The brainless Defender who never talked back. My servant who also never talked back. And my tutor, Krin.”
“Krin?” Rain asks. “Krin was your mentor?”
“Did you know her?” I ask.
Aurora stares at Rain and bites her lip, a look of pure regret crossing her features.
“Krin Turner is my mother,” Rain snaps.
Forest utters a curse. “We were going to tell you, Rain, but—”
“Tell me what?” Rain cuts off. “That our mother abandoned us to raise this…this brat?”
“Mother was the only real companion Aurora had, apart from Titus.”
Rain stands and drags his hand through his hair. “This is ridiculous.” He glares at Aurora with cold, steel eyes. “You’re just one catastrophe after another, aren’t you? You steal people’s mothers. You steal their boyfriends. Now you’re hoping to steal Ember’s place on that throne. What, you’re not happy with your own life so you have to take over the most important parts of everyone else’s lives?”
“Maybe we should leave them to talk alone,” Forest says, staring at Rain.
“So Aurora can take Ember away, too? Um, no thank you. I’ll stay right here, if that’s alright with you.”
I look at Aurora. I get it now. Why Mrs. Turner—Krin—wanted me to take Aurora. She knew. Krin knew the whole time that Aurora needed to be broken away from her manipulative brother. Krin knew the Resurgence would help Aurora turn her mindset around. Create the necessary loophole, Krin said. The loophole was getting Aurora on our side. And I think the mission has been accomplished. Because Aurora is different now. And she’s aching to tell me something that she clearly doesn’t want to say in front of Rain, for obvious reasons.
“I’ll be okay, Rain,” I say.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he mutters. “Did you just hear where my mother has been all this time? She abandoned me and Forest to be with her!” He gestures dramatically toward Aurora. “And please don’t forget what she did to you last time you were left alone with her.”
“If you don’t trust me,” Aurora says. “Then send Jonah. I need to speak to him, too.”
“You little—”
“Come on, Rain.” Forest’s voice is firm now.
Rain looks at him. He glares at Aurora. Finally his eyes meet mine, and I offer a pleading look, and that seems to get to him.
He breathes out through his nose. “Fine. I’ll send Uncle Jonah right away.” He shoots Aurora a glare. “And I’ll be less than thirty feet away, so don’t even think about pulling any shenanigans like you did before.”
He and Forest walk away, leaving me and Aurora alone. The tension immediately lifts. I really hope Rain is wrong about Aurora. And I hope that if he is, he loses some of his anger toward her.
Once Rain is out of earshot, I turn back to Aurora. “You should…probably know that I spoke to Krin when I was in Frankfort.”
Her brows shoot up. “You did?”
“I-I mean, I didn’t know she was your tutor. I met her as Rain’s mother, and she told me to…bring y
ou here.” I wonder if I should be telling her this. If this information will make her hate Krin and cling to Titus. But just when I begin regretting my words, Aurora laughs. A light seems to shine in her eyes that I’ve never seen before, and she grins.
“Huh,” is all she says.
“Huh…what?” I ask.
“It just…it all makes sense now. Krin never did like Titus. She told me I had to break away from needing to please him and seeking his approval. She taught me how to be independent, but around Titus, I just…couldn’t…be…independent. He would show up, and I immediately felt like I had to do what he said. But when I saw him that last time, I felt stronger. I felt like my own person. I felt like I could take him down. If he hadn’t mentioned Gideon, I would have.”
She sinks down on the log and stares at the fire, inhales deeply, then slowly exhales. “Titus had me so brainwashed. He told me locking me up was for my own protection. People want to kill us, he said. I need you to stay safe so if anything happens to me, you’ll be able to be my successor, he said. But Krin taught me everything about being a leader and kept me up to speed on everything going on in the government, including the Resurgence, the antitoxins…everything. Titus thought she was just a teacher. But she was so much more than that. She was more like a therapist. More like the mother I didn’t have.”
“She was our godmother. She must have felt it her duty.”
Aurora nods. “Mother would be pleased.”
“Did Krin tell you about me?” I ask.
“She didn’t. But Titus did. He believed you were with the Resurgence this whole time. And then you showed up at the prison and looked exactly like me. Titus was so excited we had you caught. He pointed you out on my surveillance cameras. And then I was watching you every day. I watched you race around the prison arena. I watched you at the Dance of St. Nick. I watched you pace in your hotel room, I watched you paint. I watched your every move. That is, until Uncle Jonah shot your cameras out.”
We both laugh. And it feels so strange having this heart-to-heart with my long lost twin that I never knew existed.
“I wanted so badly to know you. To see you and talk to you,” she says. “But at the same time, I hated you. You were Mother’s favored child. The only one she chose to rescue, while leaving me behind to live in solitude with only the company of Father.”
Guilt pricks me. “Do you know—do you know what happened to her?”
She stares at me, guarded, but shakes her head. “All I know about Mother is that she abandoned me and Titus and took you away from Frankfort.”
“Why,” I wonder aloud. “Why did she take me and not you?”
“Because Aurora was a sick baby.” Jonah’s voice startles me. He steps into the circle, pokes the fire with a stick until a few new flames spark to life, then sits beside me. “Your mother ran away when you girls were a month old. Aurora had to be hooked up to a machine for her health, so your mother couldn’t take her without putting her life in danger.”
“No,” Aurora says. “Ember was the sick baby. Mother took her so Father wouldn’t kill her.”
“You really believe that?” Jonah asks. “After all the lies your father told you, that’s the one you cling to as truth?”
“It’s—it was the only one that made sense.”
“You were the sick baby, Aurora,” Jonah says. “They didn’t think you would live. They had the best doctors brought in and had you hooked up to machines.”
“Then why didn’t Mom wait for me? Why didn’t she wait until she could take me, too?”
The sadness in her voice makes my heart ache.
“It was a once in a lifetime thing,” Jonah explains. “Chief Aden was beating her. And he knew she was unhappy there so he kept a close watch on her so she wouldn’t run off. He left the country for one day with his personal bodyguards. I came into Frankfort and helped your mother escape. If she’d waited a day longer, she wouldn’t have been able to escape. She would have been stuck in Frankfort the rest of her life. She thought that if she left, she could find some way to get back to rescue you.”
“But she didn’t.” Aurora’s voice is filled with bitterness.
“She couldn’t,” Jonah says. “There was no way. Aden wanted to kill her. Her picture was ingrained in the Defenders’ brains. How she managed to stay unnoticed in the Community Garden for eight years is beyond me.” He gives a hollow laugh. “I tried to convince her so many times to come to Louisville where her safety was certain, but she refused. She fell in love with Andrew and didn’t want to raise Ember in these caverns. We—the Resurgence—went back several times to get you and Titus, per your mother’s request. But Chief Aden kept a pretty good watch on Titus. Titus didn’t go anywhere without at least twenty Defenders surrounding him. As for you, Aurora—” His voice chokes off and he tries again. “News spread that you had died.” He studies her, his eyes glassy. “Everyone, including your mother, thought you were dead. They had a burial and an elaborate ceremony and everything. I took flowers to your grave every year.”
She blinks. And a tear rolls down her cheek. “I—I didn’t know they had a funeral for me. Or a grave.”
“Your tombstone is still standing in the royal cemetery. You can go see it yourself.”
“That’s…so weird.” She stares at the ground. “Father must have ingrained in Titus’s head to keep me hidden, because after Father died, Titus didn’t let up. He was a bit more lenient, though. I’ll give him that. He ate lunch with me a few times a week. Father only visited on my birthday.”
Her words shock me. What a terribly lonely existence Aurora must have lived.
“Titus visited,” she says. “And he told me everything that was going on in the government. He told me every secret, kept me updated on the Resurgence. Gave me advice on how to lead, because if something happened to him, he wanted me to be ready to take the helm. That’s why he had Krin mentor me. It was so important to him to keep our bloodline in control of this country. So important, in fact, that he…he…” her voice chokes off and she swallows hard, covers her mouth. “He convinced me to…have a…baby.”
“What?” Jonah says.
“With who?” I ask. “I thought you were pretty much alone.”
Her green eyes flash with uncertainty. “With…him.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Her words are like a slap to the face. I feel repulsed. Surprised that Titus could do something to make me hate him more than I already do.
Aurora’s nose contorts and she shakes her head. “I was appalled, but he had such a good argument, he was so convincing, about how this was what Father would have wanted, and how it was the only way to assure our bloodline would stay in the leadership role and between me and him, with our dominant Whitcomb blood, our children would be more powerful than us. He talked about how this was the best thing for the government as a whole, that a Whitcomb stay in control, because otherwise the whole country would explode in chaos and the other tribes would take over. And, honestly, I thought having a baby would make life so much less lonely.”
She stops for a moment and stares at the fire, her eyes glistening in the fading light, while Jonah and I wait.
“So I agreed,” she whispers. “And I…got pregnant. And those nine months of pregnancy held more hope than I’d ever experienced in my entire life. And when he—my son— was born, everything was well in the world for the first time. With my infant in my arms, I almost believed that I could be happy. That I would never be alone anymore. That I could stay in that room forever and not mind, because I had someone who loved me, who looked at me like I was the sun and moon and stars. For six months, my life was utter bliss.”
“Six—six months?” Jonah asks.
She looks at him, then at me, her eyes shining with a brokenness I don’t think I could ever comprehend. “Just enough time to really bond and decide life wouldn’t be worthwhile without my child. Because at six months old, a raid of rebels broke in and kidnapped Gideon.”
Gideon
. Gideon was her son.
“At least, that’s what Titus told me.” She looks down at her hands. “I hoped Gideon was here, with you guys this whole time. That maybe you were raising him to fight with you. But when I couldn’t find him here, I thought…maybe…he died.” She releases a shuddering sigh. “But…Titus told me today he was responsible for Gideon’s disappearance. He did it. He orchestrated the whole thing—” Her voice cuts off, and she covers her mouth. Her body shudders, but somehow she keeps herself together.
I, on the other hand, am a puddle with tears streaming down my face and my heart splattered on the hard, cavern floor.
“I mean,” she continues, taking a handkerchief from Jonah and wiping her eyes. “He really had me convinced. He told me the Resurgence took Gideon so they could make him a leader when he came of age. He assured me he had people looking all over the country for him, when he knew where he was the whole time.”
Son of a jackal. Just when I think I couldn’t hate Titus more…
“I fell into depression,” Aurora says, staring at her hands. “Thinking of the life I was missing out on. Of the child who was stolen from me. Then I wanted to leave my room and go looking for Gideon myself, but Titus wouldn’t allow it. I got angry with him, and, as payback, he took Krin away, and hardly visited. I’d never experienced so much loneliness as I did that year. I would have…ended my life, if Titus didn’t keep giving me hope that when the time was just right we’d get Gideon back. He promised that the day was coming that I’d be able to show the world my face, and when I did, it’d be for a large purpose. It’d be for the good of Ky. He said I’d be a hero.” She looks at me. “And then you showed up, and everything changed.”
Chills flesh out across my skin. To think, if I had never gotten arrested, passed the Black Tiger Test, gotten locked up in that hotel room, Aurora, my twin, would still be locked away. And we would have never known each other. Strange how all this happened. How so much can depend on one simple decision. Leaf’s decision to stand up against the government. My decision to protect Leaf.
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