by Ally Carter
I’m just opening my mouth to speak when I hear the voices. The corridor twists and curves. Brighter lights shine beyond the bend. It’s not the flickering gaslight of Adria. No. This light is yellow and blue and red. The girl eases forward, stands in what looks to be the end of a rainbow, but I’m not looking for a pot of gold.
“It is not our place to interfere!” a woman shouts. “It has never been our place. It will never be our place.”
I might stay in the last shadows, out of the conversation and out of the fight if not for the next voice I hear.
“People are dying.”
Eleanor Chancellor is my grandfather’s chief of staff, but she’s more than that. She is a member of the Society. She is one of the underground leaders of Adria—of the world. She is a woman with secrets. And she is on my side. Or so I’ve started to think.
Slowly, I inch into the brightly colored light and take in the room before me.
Stained glass. That’s the first thing I notice, and I realize that we aren’t underground. No. The room before me curves like the corridor outside. Round, with benches and railings atop risers made of heavy wood circling the perimeter. I stand in a narrow gap in the circular bleachers and study what appears to be the room equivalent of Arthur’s Round Table. No head. No foot. All the women here are equals, I can tell. Or at least they’re supposed to be. And the ceiling above us? It is made of stained glass. I can’t help but crane my head up to take in the intricate pictures. I’m reminded of the mural in the secret underground headquarters in Valancia. But this window doesn’t tell the story of the king who founded Adria and his knights and their wives and the Society’s origin. No. I see pictures of castles and churches and the great landmarks of the world. A thorny rosebush wraps around them all, circling the window. Covering the globe.
“The situation changed as soon as innocent people started paying the price,” Ms. Chancellor says. She stands in the center of the great, round room, her back to me, and I know she has no idea I’m here. The women in the risers study her with calm indifference. It’s like she’s giving a book report and not talking about matters of life and death.
One woman actually shrugs. “People have always died,” she says in a British accent.
“You are too attached to the child, Eleanor,” another woman adds. She has an East Indian accent and wears a beautiful sari. She sounds almost sympathetic as she says, “You can no longer be objective.”
“The child has a name!” I’ve never heard Ms. Chancellor yell before. Not like this. She’s always been so cool that I used to wonder if ice would melt in her hands. Now she is practically radiating fury and heat. “And she did not ask for this. None of us asked for this, but our ancestors made a decision two hundred years ago, and now the responsibility falls to us.”
The room sits in silence. It seems to take forever for the British lady to lean closer to where Ms. Chancellor stands. “Are you saying the Society should not have saved the baby Amelia?”
“I’m saying our ancestors knew what they were doing when they hid the princess. They knew the danger she would face. Otherwise, why didn’t they reveal the princess was alive once the coup was over? Why didn’t they put her on the throne when she was grown?” Ms. Chancellor sounds tired. Desperate.
“Exactly!” the British lady cries. She’s leaning over the railing now, practically standing. “Following the coup, Adria was safe! King Alexander’s brother was on the throne, and Europe was stable. To bring Amelia back from the grave would have disrupted the peace then. It would shatter it now.”
“No.” Ms. Chancellor is shaking her head. She looks like a child refusing to eat her vegetables. “I’m not saying that we need to put the Blakely children on the throne. I’m saying we need to keep them alive!”
The words are desperate, and they echo around the room.
Hushed silence descends until the woman in the sari says, “For many, there is no difference.”
Nods of agreement and murmurs of ascent follow.
I can see Ms. Chancellor’s hands shaking, her body radiating with rage.
“They won’t stop until she’s dead. Until they’re both dead.”
“The boy is not one of us,” says a woman in the back—I can’t tell which one.
“The boy will die if we don’t help,” Ms. Chancellor shoots back.
“Everyone dies eventually,” says the British lady with a shrug. “The boy is not our concern.”
They’re talking about my brother—about me—as if we are characters in a play, pieces in a chess set. Should we live or die? Should they order in Chinese food or pizza? There’s really not much difference.
Now I’m shaking. I’m stepping forward. I’m about to do something stupid—which is, of course, what I do best—when the British woman looks Ms. Chancellor up and down again and asks, “The question, Eleanor, is what do we do with the girl? And with you?”
For some reason this stops me. I realize what I’m seeing now. Ms. Chancellor doesn’t look like a lawyer addressing a jury. Ms. Chancellor looks like the accused.
“You don’t deny that you were the one who brought Grace Olivia Blakely into the Society?” the British woman says.
Ms. Chancellor pulls her shoulders back. “I do not.”
“And you told her our secrets?”
“I did.”
The British woman shakes her head, as if the truth should be so simple, but Ms. Chancellor is just too stupid or too stubborn to see it. “And yet you did not properly explain to her the essence of a secret sisterhood?”
The women in the risers sneer. Some actually snicker. It’s like the British woman has made an excellent joke, but it’s not really funny, and that part is obvious.
“Eleanor?” she says, prompting.
“Circumstances mitigated,” Ms. Chancellor says.
At last, the woman grows angry. “There is no excuse for—”
“For murder!” I finish for the British woman. “For arson?” I try again. I can’t help it. I’ve been too silent for too long. It’s practically encoded in my DNA. My mother couldn’t leave well enough alone either, so I push through the small break in the risers and go on.
“For hunting innocent people across continents? Really, ma’am, please finish. I’m dying to know what you are going to say.” I stop, then look at the women who fill that lovely, round room. If it weren’t so ironic, I would cry. “Or maybe I’m just dying …”
Dust dances in the streams of multicolored light. It’s like I’ve wandered into a kaleidoscope, a fun house. But this isn’t fun at all.
That’s when I see the prime minister rise. She was seated just out of my sight before, but now it’s impossible to miss her. This time, she’s dressed all in red. Her suit is stark against her snow-white hair.
“Esteemed elders,” the PM says, “it seems our guest is awake. Allow me to introduce Grace Olivia Blakely.”
For a moment, they just study me. In the back, someone whispers, “Just like her mother …”
I want to think she’s talking about my light hair and brown eyes. But more likely she means that I am trouble.
The British lady is no longer scowling at Ms. Chancellor. Her gaze has shifted onto me. “Welcome, Ms. Blakely.”
“Yeah …” I say, not even trying to hide the cynicism in my voice. “I don’t really think you mean that.”
Ms. Chancellor cuts me a warning glance.
“Where am I?” I ask.
The British woman looks around, as if gauging the temperature of the room.
“You are before the Council of Elders.”
“The what?” I ask, but now that I’m used to the room, I’m able to focus on the faces. Many of them I’ve seen on the news. There’s the prime minister of France in the front row—she dined with my grandfather and Ms. Chancellor not long ago. I recognize the Canadian ambassador to Adria, and another woman who was on the cover of a magazine that was on Ms. Chancellor’s desk last month. I think she’s some sort of CEO. There’
s a former candidate for president of the US. A movie star. A talk show host. I’m suddenly all too aware of my jeans and T-shirt—the old cardigan that wasn’t exactly pristine before I was knocked unconscious and transported who knows where. I don’t even want to think about my hair.
But even though the women in this room all carry the same gorgeous, effervescent grace, it’s not a beauty contest. And I’m not a crowd favorite.
“Do you know why you’re here?” the British woman asks me.
“No. But evidently it’s not because of all the assassins who keep trying to kill me. I gather this group is more or less indifferent to assassins.”
No one thinks I’m funny. Not even me.
The British woman is anything but deterred. “You are here, Ms. Blakely, because you violated the sanctity of our sisterhood. You betrayed your heritage and our trust. In short, you told. And that was not very well done of you.”
I find the PM in the crowd. I don’t even try to hide my sarcasm when I turn to her. “So I’ve been summoned because I’m important, huh? You take care of your own, do you?”
“Grace,” Ms. Chancellor whispers. A warning.
I’m not surprised the PM lied to me. I’m mad only at myself for believing her.
“Ms. Blakely?” the British woman prompts, and I spin on her.
“I’m sorry I had to tell my friends about the Society. It wasn’t Ms. Chancellor’s fault. People were hunting me. People were dying. Everyone I knew was in danger—they are still in danger. I didn’t know why then, but I knew I had to try to stop it. If the people close to me were at risk, they deserved to know why. I didn’t have a choice.” I need this group of powerful women to understand, to try to remember what it felt like to be young and afraid and powerless.
“And to tell you the truth,” I say, looking down, “I’d do it again because they were my only chance.”
This, at last, seems to make some kind of impression. I shrug. “At least they cared whether I lived or died. Or maybe I should say that they wanted me to not die, since it seems like maybe you ladies aren’t indifferent at all.”
“Grace, please,” Ms. Chancellor tries. “The elders just need to discuss what happened.”
“It’s not her fault!” I say, ignoring Ms. Chancellor, speaking directly to the British woman and the others who seem least sympathetic to my cause. “Ms. Chancellor told me the situation. She warned me not to tell a soul. She did everything but tie me up and duct-tape my mouth shut.” I give a sad, involuntary laugh. “Even that probably wouldn’t have stopped me. I’m kind of hard to protect—even from myself, if you haven’t already figured that out.”
The woman in the sari leans toward me. “What do you know, Grace?”
I know I’m tired. I know I’m hungry. I know it feels like I’ve eaten roadkill and still have the taste in my mouth.
But, most of all, I know this started centuries ago.
I know it will never, ever be over, so long as my brother and I are alive. No wonder these women aren’t overly concerned about the people who want to kill me. They’re smart enough to know that’s probably the only way this nightmare ends.
That doesn’t change the fact that it’s my nightmare.
“I know there was a coup in Adria two hundred years ago, and a baby named Amelia was the only member of the royal family to survive. I know the Society hid her among their members and she grew up. And I know that my mom and her friends spent years trying to figure out who Amelia’s descendants might be. And when Mom figured out she was Amelia’s descendant—her heir—then someone ordered her murder.”
But I’m the one who pulled the trigger, I think and the memory comes in a wave, crashing over me. I bear myself up against it. Let it pass, and go on.
“I know whoever wanted my mother dead three years ago is hunting down her children now.”
“So you are aware, then, that your brother, James, is the rightful king of Adria,” the woman in the sari asks.
“He doesn’t want to be king!” I yell, the truth flying out of me. “And I don’t want to be a princess. I mean … I can hardly even say that with a straight face. Can you imagine?” I look down at my wrinkled clothes. I’d laugh if it weren’t so painfully sad.
“What do you want?” the woman in the sari asks, her voice soft and kind.
“I want my mother back,” I say without thinking. I shouldn’t let the elders see so far underneath my protective shell. But it’s too late. They’re all smart enough to know that I am broken. “Since that’s not possible, though, I guess I’d settle for not losing my brother, too.”
“But that’s not all, is it, Grace?”
I turn to the prime minister, who looks so sleek in her red suit. She knows me well.
“No.” I shake my head. “I want to make them pay.”
The PM smiles and leans back, her point made.
The woman in the sari looks at me. “The Society is not in the business of revenge, Ms. Blakely.”
“That’s okay,” I tell them. “I am.”
“The past was in the past!” The British woman seems to be on the brink of shouting or crying—I can’t tell which. “It would have been safely behind us all if your mother had simply let it be. If you had let it be.”
Now the hypocrisy is just too much.
“I thought you people wanted to chronicle history—to register the truth because it always repeats itself and it’s almost always written by men. I thought you were founded so that you could guide the world and keep it from doing things that are stupid.” I stop, take a breath. “I thought you were the good guys.”
“This Society has not endured for a thousand years by taking on the pet projects of every one of its members. We work toward the common good,” says a woman in the back. Murmurs fill the room. And then something hits me.
“Who knew what my mother found?”
My question silences them.
The PM is the one who answers. “We were unaware of the extent of her search. We—”
“Who knew what she found?” I shout.
“We don’t know,” the PM says.
The Society always seemed invincible, omniscient. I don’t believe for a second that there’s something they don’t know. I have an even harder time believing they’d admit it.
“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe you’re just not willing to tell me.”
The PM straightens, bristles. “I do not appreciate being called a liar.”
“And I don’t appreciate being constantly lied to. I suppose we are both destined for disappointment.”
I expect her to lash back, to lock me in some kind of dungeon until I learn not to sass my elders. But the woman only laughs. “You have spirit, Ms. Blakely. I will give you that. You would have made a magnificent queen.”
“I will settle for being safe,” I say as I study the assembly of women—the compilation of power. And the truth seeps into my bones. “But you all don’t really care about that, do you?”
No one answers. But that’s okay because at least it means that no one lies.
“Where is it?” A woman in the corner is now looking at me. Tension radiates off her. She is tired of this little dance and thinks it’s time to get down to business.
“Where is what?” I ask, and look to the prime minister.
“Presumably, your mother had some kind of proof—something that would link your family to Amelia. Where is it?”
But I’m shaking my head. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
The tension in the room is growing. I can feel it pulsing around me. “I don’t know!” I say again.
“We will not help you overthrow the king of Adria,” says the woman in the corner.
I spin and study her. Can she not see me? My wrinkled clothes and messed-up hair? Do I look like someone who is trying to overthrow a king?
“I’m not going to do that,” I mutter.
“Adria is a pivotal cog in the wheel of the world, and
we cannot have it destabilized.”
“I don’t want it destabilized! I don’t care about your … cogs,” I blurt.
I feel Ms. Chancellor’s hand on my elbow, a soft and gentle touch. A reminder. I’m not entirely alone.
But I’m here, in this unknown room in an unknown city, and the faces staring back at me are not smiling.
“I don’t want to overthrow the king! I want to … graduate high school!”
“You understand our concern,” the woman with the British accent asks.
“No,” I snap, sarcastic and afraid. “I really don’t.”
“A stable Adria is a stable Europe, and …”
Now Ms. Chancellor eases into the fray. “No one is trying to make it otherwise.”
“Her very existence threatens that stability,” the British lady says with a disgusted point in my direction. “The War of the Fortnight brought Adria a new king, a parliament, and a prime minister. Revealing Amelia’s existence a few months or years after the coup could have destroyed that new government. What damage do you think Amelia’s heirs might do today? Centuries later?” She seems to consider it anew. “No. No. The risk is too great. It cannot happen.”
I’m not Adrian.
I’m not ambitious.
I’m not political.
I’m not interested in attention. I’ve already had enough of that for a lifetime.
But the Society doesn’t care about what I’m not.
They only care about what I am. And I am a threat. My very existence—my brother’s existence—is something they can’t control. And it scares them.
So, suddenly, they terrify me.
These are the women who covered up the shooting of Adria’s last prime minister. They all but staged a coup in one of the most pivotal countries in the world. And now here I am—the sister to the rightful king of that country. What would they do to me?
Worse.
What could they have done already?
The PM lied to get me here. Lied and kidnapped and …
I can’t help myself, I stumble back. Ms. Chancellor’s hand falls away, and I’m alone again in my too-cold skin.
