by Maggie Hall
Lydia screamed.
She dropped to the ground by Alistair’s head. Stellan was there immediately, pulling me from under my father’s body. I stared at Alistair’s blank face. He’d saved me. After everything, my father had given his life for mine.
Lydia was sobbing, huddled over him, digging through his pockets. She came out with his phone, her bloody fingers sliding clumsily across the screen. It could be a city she was about to infect, but I was willing to bet her focus had narrowed. Stellan and I started toward her, but with the hand not holding the phone, she pulled a gun out of her coat. “Stay back!”
We froze. She turned back to the screen.
“Take the vaccine!” I shouted. “Drink the vial! Now! Everybody—Keepers, too. You’re going to die if you don’t.”
Arjun Rajesh took his, then handed a second one to his Keeper. So did the Mikados and the Vasilyevs, and surprisingly, the Emirs. A few more families held their vials nervously, watching those who had taken the vaccine for any sign of imminent death.
“Take it!” I yelled again. I looked to Stellan, desperate. His shirt fell open at the collar, and I saw our tattoo, dark and strong and sure on his chest.
Our tattoo. The thirteenth family’s.
I touched Stellan’s chest and took a breath. “I order you to take the vaccine.”
“Yes,” Stellan murmured, but only a few people heard me above the commotion. Stellan squeezed my hand and nodded to Lydia.
I let go of him and turned to my sister. Stellan’s voice boomed across the room behind me, “We are the thirteenth family of the Circle of Twelve. We’re your leaders. And we order you to take the vaccine we’ve given you. We order you by blood.”
Without looking to see whether they were responding, I inched toward Lydia.
She was huddled against the balcony railing, gulping back sobs, wiping the phone’s screen on her shirt. Behind her, the worshippers in the square had heard the gunshots and seen the activity, and the square had gone quiet. A sea of faces turned up to us, tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands—of people expecting their pope to give his blessing, but instead getting this.
“Don’t, Lydia. You don’t have to infect the Circle.”
She looked up at me, shaking and wild eyed, and pointed the gun at me again. “I do. I have to. I promised. It’s the only way. He was right.”
“What?” I held my hands up. “Who was right?”
“He said we’d never have to worry about our family being hurt again.” She dragged her sleeve across her tearstained face. “He helped me before, but then he was gone. I had to do it alone. Until yesterday. He said this would be the only way to make sure everything I set in motion could happen. That if all the family heads were gone, things would be easier. And he was right. They’re turning on us. I should have done it earlier.”
“Who are you talking about?” I was right—someone had been behind Lydia’s schemes all along, and it wasn’t Alistair. I had a sudden disturbing thought. Had something sent her a lot further over the edge than I’d realized? Was this all in her head?
“I didn’t want Oliver to die, Avery.” I startled at the sudden change in topic, but she went on, “How could I possibly want that? He was my brother. But he did die. I was part of it, and I didn’t even realize it. It wasn’t Cole’s fault, either. It was—it was all this. It’s taken everything from us. And he said—”
I fell to the ground beside my sister. Beside our dead father. “Who are you talking about?” I said again.
“I don’t know!” she shrieked. “I never met him. He was Oliver’s friend. He said he’d help make sure it never happened again. That our family was safe. That the Circle would be better off in the long run. He was the only one who would help me.”
“It’s okay—” I tried to make my voice soothing, and inched closer to her, but she pulled the gun again. I put my hands back up. “All of your family is gone, Lydia. Whoever was telling you to do this was wrong. Stop before more people die. It’s over.”
She shook her head again, frantically, glancing at the phone’s screen. “He said no one would understand. He said I was the only one strong enough to do it. It would have worked if it hadn’t been for you.”
I surreptitiously tried to reach for the phone, but she held it out of my reach, her thumb over the screen.
“If you release the virus in here, you’ll die, too,” I said softly, changing tactics. “You think you have a cure, but you don’t. Don’t do it.”
Lydia looked down at Alistair again—at our father, who looked so much like both of us—and burst into tears. She lowered her hand and I took the phone out of it.
I rubbed my face. “Now tell your side to put the guns down, and we’ll talk like civilized—”
The doors opened. It seemed like everyone with guns couldn’t decide whether to point them at the door or at each other. Someone walked in. A priest.
The priest was holding an ornate metal ball on a chain, the kind they swung during Mass to spread incense. Smoke came from inside the ball, wafting up toward the ceiling.
The priest pushed back his hood, and my heart stuttered.
It was Fitz.
No. He couldn’t be here. He was going to try to do something heroic to save us, but I couldn’t watch him get killed. Again.
“Jack!” I screamed.
He was already pushing past people to the door. “Get out of here,” he yelled to Fitz. “It’s not safe—”
Fitz held up a hand and looked around the room. Everyone was paralyzed. Those who knew him had thought he was dead. Those who didn’t had no idea who this “priest” was. Smoke still poured from the holes in the contraption.
The vaccine. It had to be. Nisha hadn’t thought they could aerosolize it and get the concentration high enough to work, but they must have.
Fitz’s gaze finally landed on me, and he made a beeline for the balcony.
“I’m okay,” I called.
“You’re stronger than that,” he said.
I jumped up.
But Fitz looked past me. “You’re stronger than that, Lydia,” he said.
Now I froze. “What?”
“What?” Lydia echoed, and behind Fitz, I saw the same sentiment on Jack’s face, and Elodie’s.
Fitz walked right past me and swung the smoke near Lydia and the guards on the balcony.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“You were doing the right thing for your family all along,” Fitz said to Lydia. “I wish you’d been able to finish it. I wanted that for you. At least you can know your family is at peace.”
Across the room, someone coughed. Fitz pushed past me back into the room and tossed the ball in the middle of the conference table. The smoke was coming out more quickly now.
I took a step back, staring warily at him. “What’s going on?” Stellan said at my elbow.
“I don’t know—”
“Oh God,” Lydia said. She was staring at Fitz, wide-eyed. And then a drop of blood fell from her left eye.
I heard a cough and wheeled around. At the far end of the room, David Melech was leaned over, hands on his knees, racked with coughing. So was Daniel next to him.
That smoke. It was not the vaccine. It was killing them. That meant—
I turned back to Lydia just as she downed the contents of a small vial from her pocket—not the one we’d brought, but one she already had. The “cure,” I was certain. She looked up at Fitz accusingly. “It was you?” she choked.
The understanding that had been trying to break through finally hit me like a punch.
Fitz had come in here spreading the virus. Fitz had talked to Lydia like he knew her. Like he’d given her orders she hadn’t followed through on. Lydia had been under the command of some mystery person, directing her in her efforts to take down the whole Circle for the “good
” of her family.
It was Fitz. All this time, it was Fitz.
He’d conned the Saxons into doing all of this, throwing the Circle into the kind of chaos it hadn’t seen for two thousand years.
Now he stood, calmly, right in the middle of the chaos. “Take the vaccine,” I said, and I could barely hear myself, like I was underwater. “Take the vaccine!” I yelled to the room. “The smoke is the virus! Take it now!”
But it was too late. Mr. Koning opened the vial and tossed the contents down his throat, but it came right back up in a cough and a spout of blood.
I turned back to Fitz. “How?” I sputtered. “Why?”
“So for the first time since the Circle came into existence, the world could go back to peace.” He took me by the arm, trying to steer me out of the room, but Elodie smacked his hand away.
“What the hell?” she said.
Jack was still standing next to us, speechless.
“You’ve been guiding Lydia since the very first assassinations to stir the Circle into turning on each other?” I said. “Did you get kidnapped on purpose to get closer to her?”
“That was not originally part of the plan, no. I’ll tell you everything, Avery. And you too, Charlie, Elodie. But we have to leave now. All of us do. It also wasn’t part of the plan for some of them to survive this.”
There was more coughing around the room, more screams. At the end of the table closest to us, Jakob Hersch collapsed, blood streaming down his face. Colette ran from person to person, trying to help, but it was no use.
“We were your pawns all along?” I said. “I was your pawn?”
“This was for you,” Fitz pleaded. “For the future. For the world, but mostly for you, Avery. The Circle has taken so much from us. My research was always about giving you back what you should have had. So was this.”
“The cure’s not working!” the Melech Keeper yelled. Daniel Melech was holding a vial like Lydia had, laboring for breath, and his father, David, was choking, spraying blood across the table.
I heard a whimper, and turned to find Lydia trying to stand, blood running down her face.
Fitz tried to pull me toward the door again, but Jack grabbed him. I dropped beside my sister. Even though there was enough blood in Lydia’s eyes that I couldn’t see the expression in them, I could tell by the way her head darted around that she was terrified.
“Lydia,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Sit. Come here.”
Her head whipped around, her blind eyes trying to find me. “Avery,” she choked. I was the only family she had left. She grabbed for my hand. “Avery. It was a lie. It’s only in a few cities. Paris. Tokyo. Moscow. Mumbai. We didn’t have enough of your blood. I didn’t want to do it.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I knew some people would have to die. I didn’t want to kill kids, whole families. I didn’t want—”
She coughed. Blood painted her teeth red. “He said everything would be better if we— I believed him—”
She started coughing and she couldn’t stop. I knew what would come next. She’d keep bleeding. Her lungs would collapse, and she’d die choking on her own blood. I saw my mom, her blond hair matted with red, her eyes going from frantic to dull and dead, but not before a lot of blood and pain.
I should let the same happen to Lydia. There couldn’t be a more fitting revenge.
I reached into my top and found the new knife Elodie had given me.
Lydia whimpered and tried to pull herself to standing, not giving up even now. Behind her, over the top of the stone balcony, I could see the crowd losing its composure. There were screams, pointing up at us, some parts of the crowd moving, running, making it look like one huge living thing. At the back of the square, something was on fire.
“Lydia, try to relax. You’ll be fine,” I lied as soothingly as I could. I gathered her to me, her blood soaking my shirt.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I lost Oliver. I lost you. Then I lost Cole. I thought if I did this—”
I felt unexpected tears fill my own eyes. I opened the knife.
Lydia coughed again, choking, her whole body tensed with panic.
“Shh,” I said. “You didn’t lose me. I’m here.”
She rested her head on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure whether it was on purpose or she couldn’t hold it up anymore. I wiped my wet face with the back of my hand and positioned the tip of my knife between her ribs, where I was pretty sure Stellan had taught me the heart was. Could I really bring myself to do it? What if I didn’t hit the right place—
Stellan knelt in front of me. He readjusted my hand. Inside the room, someone wailed.
“I’m sorry,” Lydia whispered again, and I nodded at Stellan.
I had been waiting for so long to get revenge on my siblings. Now Stellan and I together slipped my knife between my sister’s ribs.
Lydia shuddered, and I held her tight, and then she sagged.
Stellan ran his hand over his face. I laid Lydia gently on the concrete balcony, and then let him help me up. He swiped his thumbs across my cheeks and we pushed through the curtain to a bloodbath. Too many people to count were on the floor, their bodies racked with coughs, or already dead. Some were just starting to show symptoms, panicking anew.
Jack and Elodie had Fitz restrained.
I glanced over my shoulder. The riot was getting worse. “Where’s the pope?” I said. “The actual pope. Someone go find him.”
A couple of people darted out of the room.
“The Order did this!” someone I didn’t know shouted. He must have been a Keeper.
Stellan stepped forward. “The Saxons orchestrated it, on the command of one rogue Order member. We’ll have justice—”
The man raised a gun at Fitz. “We’re not waiting for justice anymore.”
Jack stepped in front of him, still the noble knight, after all this time. “Jack—” I said.
But he didn’t move. “The way to solve violence is not with more violence.”
From behind him, Fitz met my eyes. We were all doing the same thing, I realized. Us. Lydia. Even him, behind it all. Each of us trying to do the best we could for the people we cared about.
Maybe everything depended on how you framed it. Family. Power. Love.
“Put down the gun,” Stellan yelled, but it was too late.
The Keeper was pulling the trigger.
I lunged for Jack, but as I did, I saw Fitz shove him out of the way. Then I was on the floor, Elodie on top of me. Jack and Stellan were in a heap next to us. All four of us had jumped in to keep one another from being hit.
Jack sat, dazed, and looked up at Fitz.
Fitz dropped to his knees, his eyes wide behind his round glasses. And then he fell, a pool of blood beneath him.
Elodie clapped her hand to her mouth. A sob escaped from mine. The only sounds in the room were the hacking coughs and wet, rattling breaths of the dying.
The doors to the room opened, and a man in all-white robes came inside.
The pope surveyed the carnage. He murmured under his breath and crossed himself, then calmly stepped over the bloodied bodies littering the floor. Two priests in red followed, and they flipped some switches and adjusted what must have been a microphone at the pope’s collar. He stood at the doors to the balcony composing himself for just a moment before he stepped outside, over Lydia’s body. His voice boomed out of the speakers surrounding St. Peter’s Square.
The crowds outside fell immediately silent. The pope started to pray, and his assistants pulled heavy velvet curtains shut behind him, closing us off from outside.
Luc stepped to the head of the table, breaking the eerie silence that had finally fallen over the room. “Everyone, guns down,” he said quietly. “Put your weapons on the table. All of you.” People looked at each other, then guns and knives were tossed down
next to the unsigned treaties and the no-longer-smoking weapon of destruction Fitz had brought.
Luc turned to me, Jack, Stellan, and Elodie. “You too,” he said. “Thirteenth family.”
Jack and Elodie reluctantly relinquished their guns. My knife was still in Lydia’s chest.
“Now,” Luc said. “Back away from the table. There will be a lot to discuss. This atrocity. The Order and what to do going forward. But there will be no more death today.” He looked at us. “It’s over. It’s all over.”
EPILOGUE
All in favor?”
Hand after hand went up. Stellan and I looked at each other, and I raised my hand, too. Ten to three. Passed. It wasn’t a major issue—we’d voted not to touch any of those for a while—but any kind of agreement was a positive.
“Korolev family?” Zara Koning said. “Your floor.”
“For the third item on the agenda, I outlined the pros and cons yesterday,” I said, “and now we’d like to put it up for a vote.” The Mikados asked a question, and I explained.
Stellan was watching me, little frown lines between his brows that said he was taking something seriously. I wasn’t sure why. We knew exactly where we stood on this issue.
“Excuse us for one moment while we discuss.” He closed the laptop.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
He framed my face with his hands and kissed me hard. “You really have to stop looking like that while discussing trade agreements. I can’t concentrate. I’m going to accidentally put in a motion for Luxembourg to invade Belgium, and it’ll be entirely your fault.”
I hid my grin as he opened the computer back up. “Thanks for your patience,” he said seriously, turning the floor back over to me.
“If there are no more questions, we’ll take a vote,” Zara said. She and her brother were both at the meeting. Zara was older, but in the past, her brother would have been next in line, as the male heir. That was one of the items on the docket for future vote, but for now, families were allowed to have anyone they wanted present at council meetings, and all thirteen families took turns leading them. When we’d voted and the issue passed, Zara said, “And with that, the meeting is adjourned. Reconvene tomorrow, at the same time.”