by Ally Carter
As the king speaks, I can’t help but remember the ceremonial opening of the gates that kicked off the Festival of the Fortnight. The king must read my mind. “We just don’t tell that to the tourists,” he says with a wink. “It’s not the gates that matter, after all. The whole thing is symbolic. Now.”
He turns from me to run a hand along the ornate ironwork. “Not then, though. Two hundred years ago, these gates mattered very much. And this”—he holds the relic up to the light—“was their key.”
I look at the old-fashioned key that still lies in the palm of the king’s large hand. It doesn’t look like it should hold any power at all. But once upon a time it changed the world.
“What most people don’t understand,” the king goes on, “what most people fail to realize is that no mob forms overnight. The royal family knew the people were angry. So the king ordered the gates closed and locked. And what no one ever says—what very few people even realize—is that the guards—the men who threw the gates open and let the mob run in—didn’t have the key.”
I look at the gates and the walls as if the truth were out there somewhere. But it isn’t. I’m just not entirely certain it’s in here, either.
“I don’t understand,” I tell him.
“This is the literal key to the kingdom, Ms. Blakely. And two hundred years ago there were only two in the world. One was held by the king and one was held by his brother. This is the king’s key.”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Of course. You’re the king.”
He nods. “I am. The king’s key was given to me at my coronation. Just as it was given to my father before me and his father before him—all the way back to the War of the Fortnight. But this key did not belong to my great-great-great-grandfather. He wasn’t the king, you see. He was the king’s brother. And so a part of me has always wondered what became of his key. I told myself that it was lost to the war and to time, but now I highly suspect it lies locked inside that box.”
He points behind me, and I turn to see the prince holding a second box.
“I lied,” Thomas admits with a shrug. “I did go into your room.”
But I’m no longer angry. There are no words for what I feel as the prince holds the box out to me, but for some reason I pass it to the king, who runs his hands along the smooth wood, almost reverently. Within a few seconds the puzzle Megan and I have been trying to master for days snaps open with a click. A second key comes tumbling out onto the king’s palm.
“So that’s where that is.” His voice is soft, and it takes a moment for him to meet my gaze. When he does, he’s almost crying. “I don’t know where your mother got that box, Ms. Blakely. But it has been missing for two hundred years. Ever since the night this key was used to open those gates and let in the mob that killed the royal family.”
There are minutes—seconds—when the whole world can change and your life will forevermore be marked before and after. No one knows that more than I, and as I study the king of Adria, I know he’s having one of them now. I just can’t quite wrap my head around why.
“So a guard or someone stole the box,” I say. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I don’t see …”
“You have a good heart, don’t you, Grace?” the king asks me.
“That’s probably up for debate,” I say, and the king laughs. He doesn’t know that I’m not joking.
“Have you learned to open the box?”
“No,” I say, almost defensive.
“Very few ever do,” the king says. “When you’re raised in this house, then history is all around you. My ancestors hang on the walls; my family tree is memorized in schools. My world should have no secrets, Ms. Blakely. No mysteries. And so since I was a boy, I have clung to one of the few unknowns that my family has left. A single question: What became of the second key?”
The king takes a breath and the prince eases closer.
“Oh, I told myself that the historians were right,” the king says. “I assumed the box had been stolen—that it had been smashed or destroyed and the key removed. I was certain that explained it. But …”
“But if the box wasn’t destroyed …” I fill in.
“Then it was opened, wasn’t it?” he says. “By one of the two men in the kingdom who knew how.”
The king draws a deep breath, as if telling this story means also tempting fate.
“Do you think Alexander the Second gave the guards this key, Ms. Blakely? Do you think he threw open the gates and let in the mob that would massacre his family?” The king shakes his head. For the first time, he looks old. “No. Of course he didn’t. And so I have to think it was Alexander’s brother who opened this box and turned over the key that stood between him and the throne.”
“But that would mean …” I start, but I’m too afraid of the answer.
“It means my great-great-great-grandfather was a killer, Ms. Blakely. It means I am descended from a traitor, a usurper. It means I sit upon a stolen throne. But what I don’t know is …” The king hardens now. His gaze is so hot it almost burns. “Why are you here, Ms. Blakely?”
“Thomas,” I say. I’m backing away and running on instinct. “I was looking for Thomas.”
“No.” The king shakes his head. “Why are you here?”
“I …”
Lies swirl inside my head, options spiral. I need Dominic or Ms. Chancellor—an embassy full of marines and every trick my big brother ever taught me to keep the bullies at bay. I need to run or fight, and I might do both if the king’s gaze doesn’t soften.
“Amelia lived, didn’t she?” He’s smiling now, and almost eerily calm. I look at Thomas, and I don’t know what to say. The king doesn’t seem like a villain in this moment—not the mastermind of my terrible fate. Is it possible he’s as innocent as he seems? Is anyone? Ever?
“Amelia lived and her descendants live, and … and now I sit upon your throne, don’t I, Ms. Blakely?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer.
Instead, he does the strangest thing. He bows. To me.
“Get up! What are you doing?” I look up and down the hall, panic filling me. “You’re the king of Adria.”
“Am I?” he asks.
“Yes! I don’t want to be a princess. My brother doesn’t want to be king. We just want …”
Justice.
Revenge.
But I can’t say any of that, so I just shake my head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I want anymore.”
There’s a window seat nearby, and the king eases me toward it. “Sit, Grace. Breathe.”
I don’t cry and I don’t scream, but I don’t run, either. I’m just so tired of running. Sometimes, Dr. Rainier says, your only job is to breathe, and so that is what I do. In and out. Until the king of Adria takes the seat beside me and says, “Now, Grace, I believe it’s time you tell me a story.”
So I do.
I tell him everything. About my mom and the Scarred Man and the fire. I tell him about the comatose PM and the night Jamie lay on the embassy’s dining room table, his blood covering the floor.
I look up at the man I’ve been hating for weeks and say, “You didn’t know any of this, did you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t try to kill me?”
“No. Though I would understand if you choose not to believe me.”
I can’t help myself. I look at Thomas, then back to his grandfather. “I believe you,” I say, and the crazy thing is that it might even be true.
When the king stands, he pats my back. “Now why don’t you go get some rest? You must be tired.”
I stand, suddenly shaking. “But … what happens now?”
The king smiles and pats me on the back again. “Now you leave everything to me.”
I bristle involuntarily and pull back. He already knows me too well and can read me too easily because he says, “Trust is hard, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea.”
“You can trust me,” the king says. And as he does, Do
minic appears over his shoulder.
“Yes, Grace Olivia,” the Scarred Man tells me. “You can.”
The king pushes me back toward my rooms. “Go, rest. I’ll take care of everything. This fight isn’t yours anymore.”
He hands me my mother’s box and his great-great-great-grandfather’s key, and the prince and I start silently down the halls.
I can’t read his tone when Thomas asks, “So does this mean you’re not going to marry me anymore?”
“I don’t know. Does it?”
He gives me a cocky smile, but neither of us says another word.
Hope is a delicate thing.
A dangerous thing.
I had it once, back when I thought we were going to live in that little army town and I was going to graduate high school, maybe travel around Europe with my mom before I left for college. I thought I’d grow up, maybe meet a nice guy.
I thought I’d get a happy ending.
Those are the only endings anyone ever talks about, after all. What the world doesn’t tell you—what you don’t see in the movies and in books and on TV—is that not everybody gets one. And no one ever thinks they’re going to be the very unlucky exception to the rule.
It’s been over a day since the king took my burdens into his own hands, and now as I stand in the window of my room in the palace, I can feel something inside of me. It bubbles and percolates. It grows and swells. And it scares me more than any of Dominic’s warnings. There’s a tiny voice in the back of my head whispering that we are in the endgame of a two-hundred-year-old chess match.
I might still get a happy ending, the little voice says, but I’d give anything to quiet it, because I learned a long time ago that as soon as I want something—as soon as I dare to believe—that’s when I get hurt.
“Well, isn’t that a pretty sight?”
The maid is at my door, closing it behind her. The long blue gown is draped across her outstretched arms. I want to tell her it’s too pretty, too perfect and stately and royal. I want to tell her to take it back and leave me up here in my tower, where nothing can possibly hurt me, much less my own foolish expectations.
But it’s too late for that.
Because that’s the thing about hope—you can never kill it yourself.
“Are you excited for the party, Your Highness?”
“I’m not—” I start to correct her, then stop myself. She doesn’t want to hear me explain yet again that I’m not really a princess, that I don’t really belong here. So I save my breath.
“Yes,” I say instead, terrified to realize that it’s true. “I think I am.”
I expect the young woman to smile back, to be happy at this. But it’s like a cloud is passing across her face.
“I know you saw the king yesterday.”
It sounds like an accusation, like I’ve done something wrong. I can just imagine the Society briefing their spies and setting their traps, wondering if it’s time to maybe get rid of me once and for all.
“Yeah,” I shoot back. “I did. And you can tell your … sisters … that I’ll speak with whomever I please. I took their bargain. I’m here. And that’s the last order I’m going to take.”
The maid’s smile is completely gone now. Her last words are a warning. “It would be a mistake to trust the wrong people.”
She doesn’t speak again as she helps me dress and does my hair. Carefully, she paints my face with makeup, covers my lips with something sticky and super pink.
I must look like a girl—I might even look like a princess, because an hour later there’s a knock on the door, and I open it to find the prince standing in the hallway. He looks at me for a long time, staring, before he actually says, “Wow.”
“Wow what?” I ask.
“You look nice.”
He sounds so surprised that I suppose I could be insulted, but I’m not. That’s the thing about hope. It affects you in the most unexpected ways. I’m too optimistic to be hurt by insults. Even by compliments. Even by future kings.
Thomas rocks back on his heels and runs a hand through his hair. “I came to see if you wanted to go down together. My mom said I should ask.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to read Thomas’s eyes. Is he afraid of his mother? Mad at her? Does he understand that someone wanted me dead, and apparently it isn’t the king? If he knows his mother is a killer, I can’t decide, and I don’t want to be the one to tell him.
“I would have asked anyway, you know,” Thomas says. “I’m not here because of her. But she did ask.”
I can imagine Ann’s train of thought. It would make for great optics, the sight of me walking in on the future king’s arm. It would plant the seed, start the talk.
But that’s not why Thomas is holding his arm out for me. It certainly isn’t why I take it.
We’re quiet as the prince leads me through the halls. When I try to start down the main corridor in the center of the palace, he tugs me in another direction.
He cocks an eyebrow. “Shortcut.”
The hall is narrower here, less busy. “I was just thinking that I might make it all day without getting lost in this place.”
He laughs. “I promise not to get us too lost.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I trust you.”
I’m not just talking about the mazelike halls, and I know the prince can tell. I’m shocked to realize that it’s even true. I do trust him. And I trust the king. I only wish I could trust the future.
“I met your mom once.”
Thomas’s words come out of the blue, and I can’t help myself: They stop me.
“What?”
“I met her,” he says again. “It was a few years ago. She came to see my mom. I remember it because … well … not many people come to see my mom.”
I know what he means. The palace is huge and crowded. And lonely. My friends haven’t been to see me once since I moved in. Not even Rosie has stormed the gates. They have their reasons—good ones, I’m sure. But it’s easy to imagine that after a few years inside these walls I might not have many friends left outside of them. I tremble to think that, someday, I might end up just like Ann.
“Anyway, that afternoon I found your mom wandering around the corridors but laughing about it. She’d been wandering for almost an hour,” Thomas tells me with a smile. “She’d gotten turned around, too.”
It’s one more thing my mother and I have in common, I guess. We both came here and lost our way. I don’t let myself think about the rest of it: about how easily that can be a person’s downfall.
“I showed her to the doors and waited while one of the embassy cars pulled up to get her. I kept thinking about that last night. About how now maybe you’ll get to leave,” Thomas tells me, but he sounds a little sad. Like maybe he’d give anything to leave, too, but knows he never will. “My grandfather will take care of it, Grace. You will be free of these responsibilities soon.”
“Maybe,” I say, and I can’t help myself. I feel a little sorry for Adria’s future king.
We must be getting closer to the party because faint traces of music come floating down the hall toward us. There’s the low rumble that comes from a crowd of people in a massive room with excellent acoustics. And with every step my hands tingle more, my heart pounds.
I’m just about to tell Thomas that I have to go back—that there’s been some kind of mistake—when, up ahead of us, a door opens.
It’s too late to move when a woman bursts into the hall, bumping into me. I teeter a little, and without my grip on Thomas’s arm, I might stumble.
I might fall.
But I don’t. Instead, I find myself frozen, staring into the eyes of the woman before me.
“Excuse me, Madame Prime Minister,” I say.
But the PM just glares at me. If looks could kill, I’m pretty sure I’d be dead by now.
“You kids have fun tonight!” a big voice booms, and I catch a glimpse of the king just past the prime minister’s shoulder.
“Y
es, Grandfather,” Thomas says, then pulls me forward. I know there’s no use in looking back. It’s started now. And looking back won’t do anything but make me turn to salt.
I blame my new designer shoes for the fact that my footsteps are unsteady.
I blame the fact that I can’t breathe on the blue dress’s tiny waist.
“It’s okay, Grace.” Thomas places his hand over mine and squeezes. “I told you my grandfather would see to it. And he has. Very soon you will be free of me.”
I’m supposed to laugh. I suppose I really should smile. Telling the king sounded good in theory—it made sense at the time. But now that it’s real and there’s no going back, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m about to make everything worse.
But Thomas doesn’t understand my silence.
“It is okay, you know.” He looks a little sheepish. “I wouldn’t want to marry me, either.”
We’re nearing the end of the hall, and the music is louder. I can hear the dull hum of laughing, gossiping guests. We’re so close to the party, but I have to stop.
“You’re kidding, right?” I ask him.
“I know you have no reason to trust any member of my family, but I assure you my grandfather does not lie. If he said he will fix your situation, then it will be fixed.”
“No. Not that.” I shake my head. “You really don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?” He honestly looks confused.
“That basically every girl in the world is going to want to marry you.”
He blushes a little. In his tux and white tie, he really is quite charming. He looks down. I half expect him to drag his toe across the carpet. “But not you.”
Now I want to laugh. “I’m not princess material.” I take his arm again, steer him toward the big open area at the end of the hall. The ballroom is down below. From up here, we are eye level with the massive chandeliers and the arching ceiling inlayed with gold, painted by an old master.
“Okay. So who do you want to marry?” the prince asks as we reach the railing of the balcony and look down on the dance floor below.
