by Anna Jarzab
Gloria, who didn’t seem to enjoy having less information that anybody else in the room, said testily, “While I’m sure this has been illuminating for Sasha, I think it might be time for you to leave, Thomas. The team will be here soon, and since you’re not in the habit of attending the princess’s toilette, I don’t suggest you start loitering around now.”
“Actually,” I interrupted. “Can you both leave? Just for a couple of minutes,” I added, when Gloria shot me an irritated look, although I don’t know why I was expected to make apologies. After all, I was the one being held in a foreign universe against my will. Still, I was growing to like Gloria’s no-nonsense, domineering way of handling this strange situation—it was comforting to know that someone had some part of this circus under control, insofar as that was even possible—and her bossiness didn’t bother me. Much. But I need a little time alone.
“I suppose,” Gloria said. “We’ll be right outside. Just a few minutes, okay? We’ve got to stick to the schedule.”
I nodded. It wasn’t until the door had slid shut behind them that I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out in a slow stream. Then I lowered my face into my hands and massaged my temples with my fingers, which were shaking. I forced my mind to go blank and kept breathing in the steady, rhythmic way Gina had taught me when she was going through her yoga phase. Gina, I thought suddenly, but I beat it back before thoughts of home could provoke me to panic. If I was going to step into Juliana’s life and convince a whole bunch of people who actually knew her that I was her, I had to stop torturing myself with memories of my own past. Otherwise, despair would paralyze me, and I wasn’t about to let that happen, not while there was still a chance of returning to my real life.
Suddenly restless, I got to my feet, picking up my backpack and dropping it on the bed. I’d asked for a few minutes of alone time to wrap my head around what was happening, but I’d also wanted a chance to salvage whatever possessions of mine I could before Thomas and Gloria had them destroyed. If Thomas hadn’t allowed me to keep my prom dress back in the Tattered City, there was no way they were just going to throw my dirty Earth clothes into the royal laundry. I opened the main section of the bag and dug around inside. Deodorant, hairbrush, Gina’s pashmina … those could all go. I made a mental note to replace the pashmina when I got home. Then there was my necklace. I doubted they’d let me wear it, since it belonged to me and not Juliana; I couldn’t let them get rid of it with everything else, but I needed a place to hide it.
I finished my inventory of the bag with the front pocket, which, to my surprise, contained a book.
“Oh,” I said. It was my copy of Twelfth Night.
I sat down on the bed with the book in my lap. Thomas had packed this bag; he was the only person who could’ve put it in there. But why would he do such a thing? Was it a joke? A mean, nasty joke, to remind me how foolish I’d been? Maybe it was naïve of me, but I didn’t think Thomas was capable of petty cruelty. The more time I spent with him, the more I was realizing that Thomas considered himself a person of upstanding moral character. I believed him when he said he’d done the right thing by bringing me into this universe; I didn’t agree with him, but I didn’t get the sense that he was lying about how he felt. So whatever Thomas’s reason for sending Twelfth Night with me through the tandem, I didn’t think it had anything to do with hurting me.
At least, not on purpose. But it did hurt, the memory of how easily I’d fallen for his ruse, and how painful the sense of betrayal had been when I discovered it was all false. The book reminded me of that. I flipped the pages, not looking for anything in particular, but it fell open to my favorite part, Viola’s monologue in act 2, scene 2. Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness.
No kidding, I thought.
Well, I wasn’t going to just let them dispose of my favorite book, either. My eyes rested on the bedside table. It had a little drawer at the top, the perfect size to hide a few of my possessions, and close enough at hand if I needed to retrieve them quickly. I was just about to slide the book and necklace inside when a little object in the far back corner caught my eye. I reached in and pulled out a blue origami star. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. I put it back where I found it, along with my own things, just as Gloria walked back through the door.
“I’m sorry, Sasha, but I can’t wait any longer,” she said. “The team will be here any minute, and honestly, you look like you just came in off the street. Juliana would never be caught dead in any of that. You’ve got to wash and change immediately.”
“What are you going to do with my stuff?” I asked. “My clothes and my bag.”
Gloria heaved a sigh. “We’re going to have to burn them, dear. I’m sorry.”
“I figured.” I was glad to have rescued the items I could. Gloria gave me a sympathetic smile. She pointed at the bathroom door with her stylus.
“Shower,” she commanded.
I scrubbed every inch of my body until all traces of the last two days had been washed down the drain. Afterward, I stood in front of Juliana’s enormous antique dresser and looked in the mirror; with my hair wet, and my pink, clean skin, wearing only a luxurious white cotton bathrobe, I looked like a blank slate. Now that the adrenaline had worn off and weariness was setting in, I was starting to feel like a blank slate, too. Maybe that was for the best; maybe that would make all this easier. But it felt wrong.
“Wait here,” Gloria said, disappearing into Juliana’s enormous walk-in closet. Minutes later, she emerged carrying an armful of dresses, each of which she laid carefully on the bed. I glanced down at the dresser, which was empty but for a few framed photographs, a large mahogany jewelry box, and a collection of perfumes in cut glass bottles that rested on a silver plate. I scanned the photographs with interest. It was easy to pick out Juliana in them; all I had to do was look for my own face. But it was the other faces that fascinated me. One picture showed Juliana around age seven with a man and a woman that I gathered were her parents. They didn’t resemble mine in the slightest. The woman, a young and beautiful brunette with delicate features, had her arms wrapped around Juliana, who was beaming at the camera; the man, much older than the woman, wore a smile on his handsome, aristocratic face, but stood at a slight remove from his wife and daughter and didn’t touch them.
“I’m thinking this one for now,” Gloria said, indicating a one-shouldered blood orange chiffon dress with a wide black buckle and a pleated skirt. “This one for the interview.” She placed a black leather pencil skirt and a sleeveless white silk blouse beside the orange dress. I squinted at them dubiously. “On those rare occasions when Juliana does give interviews, she tends to dress a little more …”
“Rocker chick?” I suggested.
Gloria pursed her lips. “ ‘Mature’ is the word I was looking for. And I think this one would be more than adequate for tonight’s banquet. What do you think?”
The third outfit was also sleeveless, a red taffeta minidress with a huge ruffle on one side from shoulder to hem. “For a banquet?” I asked. I didn’t know what that entailed, but if I had to guess I would say that it should’ve involved a gown of some sort.
“It’s not really a banquet in the strictest sense of the word,” Gloria said. “The queen has arranged a welcome home dinner for Juliana. There will be some important political figures and high-ranking Citadel personnel there, but it won’t be a huge party, and it’ll be served in the formal dining room, not the banquet hall. This will be fine.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re the expert. I like the color.”
Gloria held it up against me. “It suits you.” She turned me so that I stood before the mirror. Juliana’s face stared back at me. I shivered.
“Oh dear,” Gloria fretted. “You’re cold.” The door chimed. “That’ll be the ladies. They’ll do your hair and makeup. Go into the closet and get dressed while they set up. I’ll let them in.”
Juliana’s aestheticians were waiting when I emerged from the closet. They all gre
eted me with a stiff, “Good morning, Your Highness,” to which I took care not to respond with anything more than a head nod, as Gloria had instructed. Apparently, no staff or domestics were allowed to speak to the royal family unless they were first spoken to except in salutation. They did their work fast. The hairdresser, Louisa, blow-dried my hair until it was stick-straight and then styled it into a waterfall of big, soft curls. Then Rochelle, the makeup artist, applied layers of foundation, powder, blush, mascara, and eye shadow to my bare skin.
“The princess is going on the box this morning, so make sure she’s camera ready,” Gloria instructed Rochelle. When they were finished, they left as silently as they came. Gloria gave me a bunch of shoes to choose from; they were stilettos, about three inches high. Apparently, that was all Juliana owned.
“Perfect,” Gloria said. I gripped a nearby bedpost to make sure I didn’t fall flat on my face. Gloria gave me a quick once-over.
“One last thing.” She went to the dresser and grabbed a small, gold pin. She fastened it to the dress right above my heart, careful not to damage the delicate fabric. “This is a rowan branch,” she explained. “It’s the symbol of the House of Rowan, to which Juliana belongs. We all wear one in the Citadel.” Sure enough, there was an identical pin fastened to her shirt. Thomas had been wearing one, too—as had the General. “But this one is special. It’s linked to Thomas’s KES earpiece. If you press it, you’ll be able to communicate with him.”
“I better not lose it, then, huh?” I said, fingering it absently.
“If you do, there are more in that crystal bowl on the dresser,” Gloria told me. Her mouth quirked at the ends. “Juli can be careless sometimes.”
“Is that what you call her? Juli?” I liked the sound of it. My birth certificate read ALEXANDRA EMILIE LAWSON, but I’d gone by Sasha for so long that I sometimes forgot it wasn’t my real name.
Gloria nodded. “Those of us who know her well.” I wondered if Thomas called her Juli.
“Gloria,” I said. “This interview …”
She pursed her lips, which, I was learning, meant she was trying very hard to think of the exact right way to put something. “It ought to be fine. We have a deal with the CBN. We approve all the questions in advance. But Eloise Dash … she’s a more ruthless reporter than she appears to be. You’ll have to be on your guard with her. Juliana doesn’t like her, but then again she doesn’t like any reporters.”
I took one last look in the mirror. The girl I saw reflected in it looked much more like the girl in the photographs than she did me. Gloria, Louisa, and Rochelle had done their jobs well; I was starting to understand, for the first time, how anyone might mistake me for a princess.
Gloria went to fetch her tablet, and as she passed through a ray of sunlight, I saw something sparkling on her left ring finger.
“Are you married?” I asked, pointing to her hand.
Gloria glanced at the ring as if it was so much a part of her that she had forgotten it was even there. “Engaged.”
“Like me,” I joked weakly. Ugh.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Gloria rushed to a nearby bureau and started rifling through a carved jewelry box. When she found what she was looking for, she came over and dropped something in my hand—an engagement ring. It had a thin, delicate band of what looked like platinum and a pear-shaped diamond the size of a geode sitting in the center.
“It came from Farnham a week after the engagement contract was signed,” Gloria explained. “Juliana never wore it out of protest, but I think you should. It would look bad if Prince Callum showed up and you didn’t have it on. And God knows what Eloise Dash would say if she noticed your ring finger was bare.”
I held the ring in between the pads of my fingers, shifting it back and forth out of the light. It was the most expensive thing I’d ever held; most of my jewelry came from the sale rack at Target.
“Go ahead,” Gloria prompted. “It’s not going to bite you.”
I slid the ring on; it was heavy but beautiful. Even I couldn’t deny that.
“Is it time to go see the king?” This was the part I was least nervous about. Thomas and Gloria had told me that the king lapsed in and out of consciousness, but that even in his more lucid moments it was unclear how much he was capable of understanding. He would probably be asleep the whole time, which meant that this was the perfect first encounter with someone who didn’t know I wasn’t Juliana.
Gloria consulted her tablet. “It is. Thomas will take you there.”
“Hurray,” I muttered under my breath, though secretly, I was relieved at not having to go alone.
FOURTEEN
“So,” I said, taking a deep breath and turning to face Thomas, who was standing in the doorway. “Am I convincing?”
“Very.” He nodded in approval, carefully avoiding my eyes. “We should go.” He lifted his gaze to Gloria, and I followed it. She was busy scribbling away with her stylus on the glass tablet. “We must keep to the schedule.”
“Yes, you must,” she said, without looking up. “Get out of here.”
Thomas led the way through the Castle’s labyrinthine halls, but as we passed through them it occurred to me that I could’ve done just as good of a job. For whatever reason, Juliana’s surroundings were the parts of the visions that stuck with me the most. I knew what was behind nearly every door we passed, and made a mental note to check out the library, if I ever found myself alone again.
Everything was brighter and sharper outside of my dreams. The walls were covered with paintings depicting a variety of scenes, both wartime and pastoral, portraits of long-dead kings and queens peppered throughout. French windows looked out over the lush garden, magnificent mirrors in gilded frames held our reflections as we walked, and massive crystal chandeliers hung overhead, throwing light over every surface like confetti. Our footsteps echoed as we made our way across the beautiful stone floor. None of the doors had knobs, just LCD panels to the right of each doorframe. Most of the panels were blue, but one or two were green. Thomas had mentioned what the colors meant; green for open, blue for locked. We passed several armed guards in military dress, but they didn’t speak to either of us, nor did Thomas acknowledge their presence. They appeared to be part of normal life in the Castle, but they put me on edge.
“Relax,” Thomas said.
“I’m relaxed,” I insisted.
“You look like you’re being led to your execution,” he told me. “And like your spine is a steel rod—who taught you to walk?”
“These heels are three inches high. You try wearing them.” He chuckled. “What? Now you’re making fun of me?”
He held up hands in a gesture of surrender. “Never, princess. Never.”
I glared at him, but didn’t say aloud what I was thinking, which was: Don’t call me that. Thomas paused at one of the doors, so abruptly that I almost walked right on past it.
Thomas pointed at the panel. I pressed my hand to it and it flashed, bringing up the now-familiar keypad. “Two, five, four, two, four, four,” Thomas whispered. I input the code, committing it to memory. The door looked like it was made of wood, but as it slid open so that we could pass through I saw that the ornate carvings were merely a façade, and that the real door underneath was made of metal, just like the one to Juliana’s bedroom. It was a strange place, the Castle. The old and the new mingled so closely it was as if they were part of a single organism, and I couldn’t deny that the result was beautiful.
I peered into the room. It was large and brightly illuminated by several fluorescent lamps, which gave it the stark feeling of belonging in a hospital, even though it had all the trappings of luxury—intricate moldings painted white against the mint green of the rest of the room, expensive-looking paintings and tapestries hanging from the walls, antique furniture and heavy velvet drapery. The king’s bed, an elegant mahogany four-poster with a rich red canopy, was in the center of the room, surrounded by machines and IV poles.
The queen was sitting next to
the bed in a tall chair. I recognized her from a picture Thomas and Gloria had shown me back at the Tower, during my interminable yet somehow insubstantial briefing. The queen was tall and thin, beautiful despite the worry lines that scored her porcelain skin. I wondered if they were new, the result of her husband’s illness and her country’s political problems, or if she’d earned them over the course of many years. Her thick blond hair was gathered in a chignon at the nape of her neck, and she wore a simple, elegant dove-gray shift dress with almost no makeup; her only jewelry was a pair of drop pearl earrings that swung as she turned to see who was entering the room. When she caught sight of Thomas and me, she let go of the king’s hand and rose from her seat.
“You’re back,” she said in a flat tone. She folded her hands at the base of her stomach in a ladylike manner; they were the only things about the queen that were not lovely. In fact, they were knobby and red, like she’d just gotten done washing a sink full of dishes, which I doubted.
“I am,” I said. Just knowing that the queen and Juliana hated each other made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to her.
“It’s about time.” The queen glanced back at the king. “He’s been asking for you day and night. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him you weren’t here.”
“Is he lucid?” Thomas asked.
The queen shook her head. “But he is talking. He’s been saying the same thing over and over since you left.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Your name,” she said, with a hint of nastiness. “I’ll leave you alone—he doesn’t seem to notice whether or not I’m here.”
“I’m sure that’s not …” But the queen held her hand up.
“Don’t patronize me, Juliana, I’m not in the mood.” She looked tired and drawn; I couldn’t help feeling a measure of compassion for the queen, despite her incivility. “I have business to attend to in my study. Call me if something changes.” She said this to Thomas, looking me over once more before sweeping out of the room and disappearing down the hallway.
