Eden Conquered

by Joelle Charbonneau

  16

  Carys was alive.

  Andreus still had no idea where his sister had come from. One minute he was addressing the people, the next she was standing there with the snow swirling at her feet. The note she had left him under the step had given him hope that his mistakes were not irreversible. But it wasn’t until seeing her that he allowed himself to believe it was real.

  She was real.

  Elder Jacobs had accused her of being an imposter, but Andreus didn’t need to see the scars she bore from her North Tower punishments or hear her tell of how she had escaped death while leaving another body in her place to know it was his sister. He had just to look at the defiance in her face to recognize who she was.

  The last time he had seen her she had been sweating and pale with barely strength to stand. Her body withering and in pain from the lack of the Tears of Midnight. Now . . . he couldn’t remember seeing his twin look so strong. Her head had been high. Her shoulders were back, and her distinctive white-blond hair spiked from her head, making it look like she was wearing a crown—as if she were already Queen. It was the hair that had caused him to believe the disfigured body he had viewed after the Trials was that of his sister. Even weak and in pain from the lack of the Tears of Midnight her body had craved, Carys had found a way to use her most identifiable trait to feign her own death.

  Now she was back and his sister thought she had convinced the Council to allow the Trials to resume. But Carys didn’t know what he did. That Elder Ulrich had other motives for whispering in the Chief Elder’s ear. He had other reasons for pushing Elder Cestrum to restart the Trials tomorrow night, and if he didn’t warn his sister, she could walk right into a trap.

  Andreus had caught a glimpse of her going up the steps through the gusting snow. Then the lights flashed and he looked toward the walls to make sure they weren’t malfunctioning. When he looked back, Elder Jacobs was hurrying in his direction, and his twin had vanished through the gates. Andreus had avoided the Elder and spent the last hour moving through the palace in an attempt to locate his sister. She was not in her room or in the Hall of Virtues. When he went to his mother’s chambers, he found the sitting room in disarray—as if a wind tunnel had swept through, upending the furniture and dashing mirrors and flower urns to the ground.

  “The Queen will be glad to know you stopped by,” Oben informed him as he picked up an overturned chair. The heavy ring the chamberlain wore glinted in the firelight. “She took some of her tea and is finally sleeping. News of Princess Carys’s return has left her . . . unsettled.”

  “Carys has not seen Mother since her return?”

  “If she had come here, your mother’s concerns would have been addressed.”

  Which meant Andreus still had no idea where his sister had gone. The palace was vast. It would take until well past dawn for Andreus to search every room, alcove, and corridor by himself. With Elder Ulrich and his men working to take the throne, he didn’t have that kind of time to waste.

  Frowning, Andreus said, “Thank you for taking care of Mother, Oben. I’m sure Carys will pay her a visit soon.”

  “I very much hope she does,” Oben answered as Andreus headed out the door.

  He had to assume Carys was deliberately avoiding him. She had to be warned about Elder Ulrich and convinced to join forces to see that the Bastians did not take their throne. And since he was failing to find her on his own, he’d have to enlist help.

  Andreus checked his sister’s rooms one more time—they were still empty, although an industrious servant had stoked a fire in preparation for her return. But there was no sign his sister had stepped foot in the chambers down the hall from his since her dramatic appearance on the palace steps.

  Where in all the virtues was she?

  Frustrated, Andreus threw open the door to his room and jumped as Max barreled toward him.

  “Is it true?” Max demanded. “Is Princess Carys really come back from the dead like Graylem said?”

  Graylem stood near the fireplace, censure etched in every line of the guard’s typically earnest face.

  “My sister never died. She just outsmarted the Council and me, something for which I will forever be grateful.” He looked at Graylem. “I thought Carys had betrayed me by killing Imogen. I didn’t realize then that Imogen was using me as part of Elder Ulrich’s plot.” Or maybe it was Imogen who had enlisted Ulrich into the treacherous plan. Everyone always had an excuse for why they were convinced to turn against what was right. Andreus certainly had. “I made mistakes,” he admitted. “But now Carys is back and if you are still willing to help, there is the chance to set things to right.”

  The fire crackled as Graylem looked down at Max and then back at Andreus. Finally, he said, “I followed one of Elder Ulrich’s men from the battlements to the southeasternmost gate. He met with two other guards. I heard them tell him not to worry. They would assign men they trusted to man the three gates after dark.”

  If Elder Ulrich’s men controlled the gates on the south side of the city, they could open those barriers when the Bastian army appeared. The enemy could be inside the walls and moving toward the palace before any alarm was sounded. A signal was all that was needed to let the Bastian army know the way was clear for them to proceed.

  “I would recognize the men again if I saw them,” Graylem said. “There are several who entered the guard at the same time I did. Give me the word and we could eliminate them.”

  Tempting. But while drawing blood would be satisfying, it would be akin to cutting off the tail of the snake. They had to remove the serpent’s head. They had to remove everyone involved with the plot at once. There had to be a way to accomplish that, but Andreus couldn’t see the moves he needed to make. He bet Carys would.

  He had to find her.

  He turned toward Graylem. “You said you followed my sister after the night the lights went dark. How often did you trail her?”

  “Whenever I was not assigned to duty at the palace entrance or at one of the gates,” Graylem said.

  “She’s not in her rooms or anywhere in the palace that I have looked. Do you have any idea of where else she might be? A place you followed her to that seemed unusual to you?” Andreus asked.

  Graylem frowned and looked into the fire. Finally, he said, “I don’t know if it’s unusual, but there is a room on the next floor she visited several times. I hid in the staircase nearby, and the first time she went there I saw you . . .”

  “The nursery!” He should have thought of the hidden room behind the tapestry that led to tunnels beneath the palace. If Carys wanted to stay out of sight, she would go where no one else in the palace would think to look for her—somewhere none of them knew existed, save him.

  “We will draw notice if all of us go to the nursery together. Graylem, I think the two of you should leave here first. Make it look like you are heading to another part of the palace then use the servants’ stairs to reach the nursery. I’ll meet you there.”

  As Graylem and Max headed out the door, Andreus heard Max yell something about going to the kitchens for a snack. When the door closed behind them, Andreus paced the room, trying not to think about the hate he saw in his sister’s eyes. When enough time had passed for Max and Graylem to have gotten downstairs and then doubled back, Andreus strode toward the door and headed to the third floor.

  He passed the doors to Micah’s rooms and continued down the hall toward the nursery where he and his sister had spent so much of their childhood. Their nurse had always marveled at how inseparable he and Carys had been. She said twins were like two sides of the same mirror—reflections of the same heart and soul. He had shown Carys the worst of their hearts during the Trials of Virtuous Succession. Now, their very lives depended on him showing her the best.

  “No one’s here,” Max said as Andreus stepped inside.

  Graylem stood next to Max, holding a flickering candle. “Perhaps I was wrong about where she went during the Trials.”

  “No, Cary
s has most certainly been here.” Andreus walked toward the two-hundred-year-old wall hanging that stretched from the ceiling to the floor and covered almost three quarters of the wall on the far side of the room. He pulled aside the tapestry to reveal the door he had discovered years ago. As a child, he had pried one of the iron masonry nails that fixed the corners of the mountain scene out of the wall in order to hide from his sister. That moment had changed their life.

  “A secret door!” Max danced next to him.

  Andreus pressed his ear against the door and held his breath. Not a sound. “There’s a small room beyond this door and a ladder that leads to a series of tunnels.”

  He took the candle from Graylem, pulled open the door, and shone the light inside the small room. There was a rickety table sitting just inside the entrance. The oil lamp that had sat on it only weeks before—the last time he and Carys came to this place—was gone, and the rug had been rolled up and the trapdoor raised revealing the ladder that led several stories down to the tunnels beneath the Palace of Winds.

  As he put his feet on the iron rungs and started the downward climb, he thought of the times he had brought his sister here to try and shake her dependence on the Tears of Midnight. She had wept and sweated and screamed and shaken until he was scared she would die from the withdrawal and would give in to her craving for just one taste of their mother’s drug.

  Those memories had made him certain that emptying the red bottles and forcing his sister to go through the pain of unfulfilled need would tip the balance of the Trials of Virtuous Succession in his favor.

  His leg was stiff, but he had climbed the rungs hundreds of times before and quickly made his way down as Max scurried along, surefooted, like one of the stable chipmunks, with Graylem bringing up the rear. The tunnels must have been carved into the base of the plateau when the palace was built. His father hadn’t ever shown an awareness of them. No one in the palace had, which had made it the perfect place for him and his sister to practice archery and throwing knives when they were children. It was the perfect location for Carys to ensure her safety now.

  “Do the tunnels go somewhere outside of the Palace of Winds?” Max asked as he jumped off the ladder onto the dirt-packed floor.

  Andreus placed a finger to his lips and whispered, “My sister and I searched for an exit for years, but we never found one.”

  Holding the candle high in front of him, Andreus walked to the end of the tunnel. He turned the corner and saw the glow of firelight coming from the next passage.

  A breeze ruffled his hair and the candle in his hands went dark.

  “It’s okay,” Andreus whispered as Max whimpered behind him.

  The edge of steel dug into his side as his sister’s voice floated on the dark. “Hello, Andreus. I had a feeling you would find me here. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t follow your lead and claim my crown right now.”

  “No!” Max yelled, and bumped against Andreus’s side. “You can’t hurt Prince Andreus. He wants to help you.”

  “I see you’ve found other shields in my absence,” Carys said quietly. Andreus was careful not to move. He knew how sharp his sister’s blades were.

  “Who is the other one?” his sister asked.

  “Guardsman Graylem, Princess Carys,” the guardsman said in a tremulous voice. “You . . . you took my knife.”

  “Graylem helped save Max when someone threw him over the battlement walls.”

  “Someone threw the boy over the wall?” Carys gasped.

  “It’s true!” Max shouted. “It was the doom.”

  Andreus took a deep breath. “I know I did things . . .” There was so much he had to say. “You have no reason to trust me. But there are dangers here inside the palace. Enemies are ready to strike, and I need your help to stop them. Please, Carys. You have always been able to tell when I’m hiding something. You could always hear it in my voice. You know me. I am not lying now. You have no reason to put your faith in me, but if you want to help everyone in Eden, we need to talk.”

  He held his breath. The point of the blade dug into his side.

  Then the pressure of the stiletto eased.

  Andreus let out a relieved breath. It was a start.

  “Walk toward the light,” Carys instructed. “I’ll follow behind the three of you. You thought you killed me once. I’m not going to give you the chance to try again.”

  Fair enough.

  The light was coming from the part of the tunnels where he and his sister used to practice his guard drills. He turned the corner and stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted a fire crackling in the middle of the open space and the two people standing behind it with their bows drawn and pointed at him.

  He recognized them both. The Trade Master who had stood on Carys’s platform and danced with her at the ball held one bow. Larkin, the daughter of the tailor who they had played with when they were children, clutched the other.

  Carys stepped around all of them and slowly walked to the fire to stand beside her friends. “You said there was a danger you wanted to warn me about. This would be the time.”

  While pacing his rooms and climbing down the ladder to the tunnels, Andreus had considered what to say. Now the explanations about his mother’s plot to assassinate their father and the trap sprung by Elder Ulrich faded from his mind. Only two precious words remained. “I’m sorry.”

  His sister didn’t move. Her eyes were hidden in shadows. If he could see them, he might know what she needed to hear. But maybe it was better this way.

  Shame washed over him. He swallowed the knot tightening his throat as he thought of what he had done and what he had thrown away. “Words will never be able to fix what I broke between us. You helped me keep my secret even though doing so often meant pain for you. You stayed by my side through everything. Even when no one thought you were nearby, I always knew you were there.”

  In an alcove on the battlements when he was working on the windmills.

  Appearing to be lounging under a tree near the practice fields, eyes alert.

  In the North Tower, face-first against the wall as the whip cracked against her flesh.

  Two sides of the same mirror. Only Carys never had a chance to see what her reflection looked like. She had been too busy watching his.

  He wasn’t sure if he would have done the same for her. She had never had the chance to make that kind of request. His secret had tied her to him, and he had taken that for granted. Maybe the only way forward now was to cut that cord and set her free.

  Andreus dropped to a knee beside Max and turned the boy to face him. “Max, your family didn’t want you to live with them when they realized you sometimes struggled to breathe.”

  “Mum said I was cursed by the devils.” Max’s voice was tight. His chin lifted as if daring anyone to think he might cry. “They said they’d all be cursed if I stayed with them. Even my sister.”

  “My sister, Carys, never said that. She told me she would love me no matter what.” He looked up at Carys. His chest tightened—this time from a curse of his own making. “You see, I’m cursed, too. I have an illness that attacks my heart and makes it impossible to breathe.”

  Max’s eyes widened. From the other side of the fire, Andreus heard Larkin gasp.

  “You didn’t tell them.”

  Carys shook her head, and Andreus closed his eyes. Even after all he had done, she had kept her promise to guard his secret.

  “Carys helped me keep my secret. The old seer predicted that when the two of us were born one would be cursed and that child would need to be destroyed or the kingdom would suffer.”

  “There is no curse, Andreus,” Carys said. “Seer Kheldin was a fraud, as was Imogen. The Bastians arranged for her to come to the Palace of Winds and help her family retake the throne they believe is rightfully theirs. She was never in love with you!” Carys hurled the words at him. “She only wanted power.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I wanted to believe everything she said b
ecause then I wouldn’t need you. Everything she said was a lie.” Andreus swallowed. His words hung in the air. “I’ve needed you my whole life, and I didn’t want to need you anymore. I was tired of being tied to you—of having no success that was just my own. And after you killed her, I didn’t want to see the truth because then I would have to admit that nothing about me had changed. That no matter what I did, I would always need you.” He looked up at the ceiling of the tunnel and clenched his jaw to ward off the tears as he admitted, “I still do. More now than ever.”

  He pushed aside the regret and forced himself to focus on now. “There is an attack coming by the Bastian army. I don’t know how many or . . .”

  “There will be thousands,” Carys said. “We found a camp where the Xhelozi had attacked. One soldier had yet to die. He said they would be coming and they have help from inside the palace. Elder Jacobs . . .”

  “No. It’s Elder Ulrich.”

  “I traveled to the Village of Night. You did not,” Carys shot back. “I spoke to a seer who told me that Elder Jacobs paid them a visit that none here in the Palace of Winds was informed of. He was the one that requested Imogen be selected as the new Seer of Eden. He is the reason she was here. She had to be working with him.”

  Andreus shook his head. “I don’t know why Elder Jacobs went to the Village of Night to pick a new seer.” He thought about the way the dark-braided Elder had been speaking to Oben outside the palace gates before Carys arrived and the way the emaciated woman in the North Tower described the man who poisoned the King’s Guardsmen, and realized he might know. “He might have been helping Mother with her plot to make Micah King. You know how Mother believes in the power of the seers. Mother would want to make certain whoever was assigned to the Palace of Winds would not have the skill to foresee her plan to kill our father and put Micah on the throne.”