by Audrey Grey
“Delphine,” Caspian says carefully, his fingers pressing into her arm, “you should take care not to seem rude, as I would hate for anyone to think ill of my betrothed.”
Pushing off the tips of her boots, she nuzzles his ear. “And you should take care, my beloved, to remember they are little worms to be stomped beneath my boots if it so pleases me.” Her eyes cut to me. “And right now it pleases me.”
Before I know what I’m doing, my hand has hold of the foxtail Aigrette and is sliding it from my hair. Between the fifth and the sixth intercostal . . .
But for once in his life, Pit Boy isn’t in a murdering mood, and his fingers lightly brush the nape of my neck, jolting me from my wild revenge fantasy. Patience, they seem to say. We will have our day.
Caspian narrows his eyes and looks at Riser’s hand, lips tucked into a frown. “But then, my dear, you would remind Baroness Graystone why she banned you from the council . . . twice now, is it?” Turning his head, he presses his lips lightly onto Delphine’s cheek. “I might find your impetuousness charming, but not everyone shares my taste.”
There’s a tense pause as we wait to see what will happen. “Whatever,” Delphine finally says. “It’s hot and I’m thirsty.” She gestures to the Centurions waiting in the background. “Take this decaying worm and dump it over the wall with the other worms before it starts to reek.”
That’s twice now, I think, Caspian has somehow reined her in with clever words. But what happens when the day comes he can no longer control her? What sort of madness will she wreak?
Caspian holds up his hand and the Centurions halt, confusion in their eyes. “Give the finalists five minutes to mourn their dead, then you may take her.”
“Thank you, my Liege.” I keep my words impersonal lest they stir up another demon inside Delphine, but thankfully she prances off without a look back.
Before Caspian leaves, he kneels down and lays the wreath of flowers on Merida’s chest. His gaze finds me. “I’m sorry she died, Everly. Truly.”
Riser is the first to say goodbye. Staring down at Merida with his typical enigmatic gaze, he nods to her, somehow speaking in his silence more than I ever seem to say with my voice.
Rhydian is next. Hesitant, he kneels over her for a moment, seemingly lost, and then his lips form the words, “I forgive you,” his forehead resting against hers for a brief second.
There’s a murmur, and I turn in surprise to see the other finalists walking toward us. Some burned, others bloody and bruised, their faces haunted by the horrors my mother constructed. One by one, each finalist gets down on their knees and places a kiss on Merida’s forehead. It’s done without ceremony or speech, a seemingly impulsive and harmless act.
But we all know otherwise.
I am the last. Hard as I try, I cannot think of what to say. This isn’t Merida; I know that. The real one, my friend, died in the labyrinth, seconds from safety. And it’s not fair. She didn’t get the chance I got, being made into someone stronger, smarter, braver. She was terrified from the beginning, and yet she still found a way to overcome it. All I did was cheat. Maybe Delphine’s right. Someone like me, even with all my enhancements, could never win without rigging the game. I couldn’t even save my friend, so how in the world am I supposed to make it to the end of this hell and find the Mercurian? I failed Merida, I failed Max, and I’m going to fail my father.
“I should have saved you,” I say. I lean down and kiss the unburned side of her forehead, my lips dancing over cool, mottled flesh. “But I promise I’ll make it right somehow.”
As I glance over and see the Emperor watching me, a jeweled chalice in his hand and gloating smile on his face, I know this time I’ll keep that promise—or die trying.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
We make it to our apartments just before sunset. Flame, who watched the first trial with the other attendants and servants on a rift screen in the great hall, helps me wrestle out of my muddy, charred clothes. Too tired for a bath, I sit Indian-style on the bed, cradling Bramble, head bobbing, not asleep but not really awake as Flame wipes the grime and gore of the last four hours from my achy body.
I smell like fire. I smell like death. I want to die. Or sleep. I want to peel out of my skin, wipe the dirtiness from my soul, and stop seeing Merida pinned and broken.
I shiver, cold emanating from some deep, unreachable part of me, and let my mind go . . .
Flame is nudging me. It takes a few times for her sentence to get through. “Nicolai has something for you.”
She is holding out her hand.
The Interceptor fits neatly in my palm. Shaped like a button, this tiny device is the portable version, easier to hide. I push it and watch the bluish hologram solidify into a four-dimensional shape above it. The adolescent boy blinks at me, gives an awkward grin, his large blue eyes crinkling. His shoulder-length strawberry-blond hair is pulled neatly back in the traditional Royalist style.
“Um . . . ?” He laughs nervously and looks at someone I cannot see. “Should I just, say anything?” He nods to the unseen person and looks back at me, his voice cracking with pubescence. “Okay, uh, here goes.” And I know, I just know. “They say you’re my sister, Maia?”
The only sound I can hear, as his lips form what has to be more words, is my choking breath. Blood rushes inside my skull. Like water. Like angry, raging water.
Like drowning.
How can I talk to Max when the girl he thinks I am is dead? When I just killed my friend, and soon I’m going to have to murder the Emperor? If my brother knows what I am now, he’ll hate me, and I can’t lose him again.
Through my constricting vision, I see my hand reach out. See the hologram disrupt into a thousand tiny pixels as the Interceptor smashes against the wall.
Blackness. I’m in the hallway on my hands and knees. I’m no longer in the labyrinth, no longer in the tunnels in the pit, but the walls are crushing me just the same. If I could cry, scream out, if I could see the walls and bloody my fists against them, maybe I could get rid of this trapped, dying feeling. A different kind of Doom. The kind you can’t reconstruct away. The kind you can’t hide from.
I curl on my side and stare at the black roses on the carpet runner. My eyes ache to shed tears, but Lady March refuses. It comes to me I don’t know who I am anymore. That I’m some faceless, shifting creature, a tangled cluster of programmed emotions and thoughts and actions, cobbled together by manipulators like my mother and Nicolai to serve their purposes.
If anything, Max needs to be protected from me, this creature of theirs.
Nervous beeping, as Bramble tentatively approaches. He’s shivering. He doesn’t recognize me anymore.
“Get away!” I scream, kicking at him. “Go, stupid machine! She’s gone!” Covering my mouth with my arm, I wail, watching through blurry, unshed tears as Bramble scurries away. It’s only when I stop I taste the blood and realize I have bitten through my flesh.
After a bit, I notice Flame watching me from the doorway. “Come inside, Princess.”
I return to the apartment and sit back on the bed.
She holds up the Interceptor. “Want to try again?”
I shake my head.
“Good.” Flame says this as if I’ve passed some test. She opens the wardrobe. “Let’s get you dressed.”
“For what?”
“The mandatory celebration.”
My chin juts out. “I’m not going.”
“Yes you are, Princess.” She sits on the edge of the bed and pins me with her stern gaze. “You are going to get up, get dressed, and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
I snort. “And why in Fienian hell would I do that?”
“Because the Emperor has decided to join the court for the celebration tonight, and we’re going to kill him.”
The stars are out, the moon a big, beautiful ivory disc that carves the midnight sky. A light wind funnels through the portico I lean against. I wrap the cloak Caspian gave me tighter around my body, shi
vering against the heavy, aching cold gripping me. The gown I wear—to fit in with the revelers—offers little protection from the chill. Its glorious sunset-red color looks almost black under the stars, Brinley’s brooch bright against it. According to Rhydian, it was the dress Merida planned to wear at the Final Feast, if she made it to the end.
Red, the color of uprising. It was her own gentle form of rebellion.
I tell myself she would’ve agreed with what we’re doing now. But somewhere deep down, I know that’s just another lie like all the others.
My gaze picks through the shadows. Riser is out there somewhere scouting the terrain while Cage gathers finalists he assures me are sympathetic to the cause. And Flame, well Flame and her two bulging black backpacks are out doing something rather Fienian-ish.
The bombs she’s going to place in the fountain, to go off during the celebration, will be small, meant to distract the crowd just long enough for one of us to get to the Emperor. She assured me no one else would get hurt. Somehow I don’t believe her, but I don’t have much of a choice.
I should be focusing on how I’m going to be the one to kill the Emperor, but my mind keeps unhelpfully retrieving images of the nano-shredders. Surely Flame wouldn’t use those tonight? Not when there are innocent people who can be hurt?
Focus on the plan. The Emperor will be surrounded by the Royal Guard. How will you get to him? And, more importantly, once you do kill him, how will you use the diversion to find the Mercurian?
Noises break my thoughts. I bend my head to listen, but it’s only the sound of finalists talking loudly in one of the apartment windows above us as they prepare for the midnight celebration.
I shift impatiently and then force myself to sit on the steps. Where are the others? And Brogue, is he even up to this? The pungent, sweet almond smell from the Centurions’ barracks where he stays still clings to my clothing. After I got dressed, I was sent to fetch him. I found him prostrate on the floor in a puddle of tarry vomit and worse, and even after I slapped his cheek, the bristle of his beard soggy with puke, his eyes were hardly more than slits.
I don’t remember feeling any emotion, but all at once I had his limp head cradled in my lap, wiping his face. Moaning, his all-pupil eyes blinked open at me. My kneejerk reaction was to pummel his chest, yelling, “Stupid twitcher!” over and over until he rolled over, made a string of unintelligible rants, and hacked up bloody clots of sour-smelling bile.
I knew he was going to be okay when he began speaking real words.
“Forgith me,” he muttered, gummy strings of saliva dancing from his lips.
“It’s up for debate,” I said, moving to help him up.
But I knew he was somewhere else when he said: “I didn’t want to. By the gods, I looked . . . looked for another way.”
“Okay, Merc,” I said, struggling to pull him to a stand. My efforts were thwarted as he flopped to his knees and leaned over, dry heaving, his straining neck bright tomato red.
Done, he stretched, belched, and smashed his thumbs into his eyes. “It was Lil . . . Lillian,” he said, swaying. “She said . . . only way . . .”
I froze, thinking I had misheard him say my mother’s name, until he said, “Oh God, Lillian, what did we do?”
Filing that away for later, I busied myself with the plan. It took thirty more minutes for him to sober up enough so I could go over it with him. His task was to break into the armory and procure weapons. Flame had a long list on a scrap of paper he took.
For a man just learning of such an audacious plan mere minutes after being peeled off the floor, he seemed relatively calm. He cleaned up as best he could, slapped on his boots, and threw a sloppy wink in my direction. “I’ll get you your weapons, girl, but I suspect all the weapons in the world won’t help us now.”
All in all, not very convincing.
Now, I’m still worrying over our plan and thinking about Brogue when Riser shows up. Resolving from the shadows, his eyes rest on me, drinking me in for a moment.
I can’t help but do the same. Flame has him dressed for the ceremony, and starlight swims along his inky-blue hair pulled back by a midnight-blue ribbon to match the ribbons on his pale leather doublet. He wears a long sword and a piercing grin.
Something inside me stirs, an ache that fills my bones.
Inhaling deeply, he settles down next to me. “Centurions patrol the fountain every forty minutes.”
Awkward silence. I know if I look at him now, with his breath tickling my face, his thigh warming mine, I won’t be able to control my feelings, and the thought paralyzes me.
Two fingers hook my jaw, guiding my eyes to his.
“What?” I whisper, tactful as always.
He smiles again, softly, revealing the chipped tooth I noticed what seems like years ago. “Why won’t you look at me?”
I blink under his unflinching gaze. How can I explain how I feel? How the deeper I fall for him, the more vulnerable I become? “Tell me this is real, Riser, because I can’t stand one more lie.”
He pauses for a moment, as if struggling to put his thoughts into words. “I’m not good at this, either. In the pit, you might be . . . attracted to someone, but you didn’t care about them, and you didn’t worry if they cared about you too; you simply took what you wanted.”
I snort. “That’s romantic.”
“What I’m trying to say is”—he clears his throat—“it’s not rational, but I care about you.” The pad of his thumb carves the hollow of my collarbone. “And if you feel the same way, then it’s real.”
“But—”
His lips part mine. The kiss is quick, hungry. The way you kiss someone when you think you’ll never see them again. Hot fingertips push into the base of my neck, press me deep into him, his hands slowly exploring a path down the exposed skin of my back.
“You can’t say this isn’t real,” Riser murmurs, his breath hot on my lips.
I pull away, breathless, my lower lip tender and tingling. From my reconstructed memories, I remember the way the other boys kissed Lady March. Soft, sweet, hesitant kisses.
Riser’s affections are nothing at all like that.
Looking at Riser’s face, the emotions smoldering inside his eyes, there’s still a part of me that’s scared of him, the murderous boy from the pit. “I need to know if you’re the one who tied me up in the pit.”
He hesitates. “Yes.”
“And you were going to . . . to let me die?”
Hurt flashes in his eyes. “Remember how you escaped?”
“Yes, of course. I slipped out of my bonds.”
“Everly, do you really think I don’t know how to tie a secure knot?”
The realization makes me gasp. “You helped me escape? But what about Ripper? Surely she would have known.” I pause as he absentmindedly runs his finger over the brow bone above his new green eye. “Ripper took your eye . . . because of me?”
He grins. “And it was worth it.”
“Why? Why help me?”
For the first time since we sat down, he looks away from me. “I was seven when they threw us in the pit. My mother didn’t belong there; she was too bright, too good.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “They attacked while we slept, and I”—his voice catches—“I fled while she fought them. I think by helping you, I thought I could somehow make up for abandoning her to die.”
“Oh, Riser, I’m—”
“No.” Two fingers press against my lips, halting my apology. “You were right to be wary of me. In the pit, something dark happened to me that a thousand Reconstructors couldn’t erase.” The backs of his fingers graze my cheek. “But I meant it when I said I would never hurt you. You’re the only thing that makes me want to be better.”
I shiver as his eyes anchor to mine: one light, one dark, a mirror of his conflicted soul.
“Which is why you must be careful tonight, because I cannot, I will not lose you like I did her.”
“Okay.” Dazed, I nod, lips still burning f
rom our kiss, head swimming with questions Lady March won’t dare let me ignore. What could the Fienians be up to? Who will get to the Emperor first? How will I find the Mercurian? And the most heartbreaking question of all: Could Riser be doing all of this just to catch me off guard so he can be the one to kill the Emperor? Would Riser go that far? Or are his emotions real?
Is this real?
I stand and gaze out at the shadows, working to pick through my emotions so I can understand what I’m feeling. “Brogue hasn’t showed up.”
Riser gets to his feet. “He will.”
I swallow and force Riser, his words, and our kiss from my mind. I need to focus. I need . . . no, I have to find where the Mercurian’s located and somehow manage to operate it. I wish I didn’t have to find it alone, but Everly March refuses to trust anyone, even Riser.
Especially Riser.
The others arrive, and a quick head count checks off Rhydian, Laurel, Blaise, Cage, and Flame. Only Teagan and Brogue are missing. I frown, worried, but things are moving too fast to dwell on their absence.
We cut through the grass, skirting a wide path around the gardens to the backside of the lake. The sound of crickets and frogs echo off the shadowy forest behind us. Dirt escapes our feet and tumbles down the embankment, plopping into the water. The stars reflected in the water quiver, angry fairies disturbed from their rest.
My heart is racing. It feels good, as if every frantic beat of my heart is flushing out the poison from the last couple of days. We halt. The palace rises on the other side of the fountain. Warm light pours through the windows, and music and voices drift across the water. The balconies throng with Chosen couples dancing and laughing, their voices drunk and free.
Soon the celebration will move outside to the fountain as they await the winners’ display. The bombs should be in place by then, and we can disappear into the crowd. My mouth goes dry as I imagine what will happen. How I will have to find a way to get close to the Emperor. And then . . . and then . . . My fingers slip around the cold handle of the knife sheathed inside my bodice. No second thoughts, Everly. This is your only chance to get Max to safety.