Queen

by Aimee Carter

  I’d never imagined where he’d lived when he wasn’t at Somerset. He was there so often that I’d nearly forgotten he was a guest, rather than a permanent resident, and I racked my brain trying to think of any period of time where he’d been gone for longer than a day. He probably hadn’t come back here, anyway, I reasoned, at least not for the night. Given the way Knox had spoken about his family, I couldn’t imagine this had been a happy, welcoming place for him. It was hard to picture Somerset as a safe haven for anyone, but maybe that was exactly what it had been to Knox.

  “Your pillow smells like you.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and my face grew warm, but there was no one around and no reason to be embarrassed, not really. Back at the Stronghold, during the few moments Greyson had left me alone, I’d caught myself talking to Knox every now and then, in the hope that he could hear me. Here, surrounded by his things, it felt as natural as breathing.

  “It wouldn’t have been that bad, would it?” I looked around the bedroom. A mahogany dresser stretched across one wall, along with a matching armoire, and a door led into what I assumed was a bathroom. Or a closet. “I know that wasn’t the plan—that you probably never intended for us to ever actually get married, fake as it would’ve been anyway. But once we stopped trying to kill each other in our sleep, it wouldn’t have been that bad.”

  I buried my nose in the pillow again and closed my eyes. With his scent came a rush of memories, and I let myself wallow in them for far longer than I should have. After losing the people I loved the most—Tabs, Nina, Benjy—I didn’t understand why Knox’s death had hit me so hard. But over the past several months, despite our differences, we had become inseparable. He had been there for me, guided me, protected me in his own way, stopped me from blowing everything on more than one occasion—he had become my compass, and I didn’t know where to go without him.

  Losing Knox wasn’t just about him, though; it was also about losing the war. If Knox was alive, we would still stand a chance. But the more time that passed without word from him, the less I could convince myself to believe it. Whether he was alive or not, he wasn’t here. He was gone. We were adrift—I was adrift—and the revolution was over. I mourned that as much as I mourned him. Or so I told myself, because nothing else made sense. We’d barely tolerated each other the past few weeks we’d been together. I had no right to mourn him like this.

  But I remembered those last few moments in Somerset, before I’d been captured—the way he’d looked at me. The way he’d touched me. Everything we hadn’t said, and everything we hadn’t needed to say. I didn’t know where we would have been if everything had continued—if Knox and I hadn’t gone there that day. If I hadn’t been captured. If I had returned to Elsewhere that evening and talked things out with Benjy.

  Maybe things would have been different. Maybe they wouldn’t have been. But in the lonely quiet, I gave myself permission to wonder.

  Kitty Doe would always be Benjy’s. But Kitty Hart... I didn’t know. And now it was looking more and more like I would never find out.

  XII

  One Chance

  I didn’t know how long I sat there, hugging Knox’s pillow and trying not to drive myself crazy with uncertainty. The shadows in his room grew longer, and the light from the sun dimmed. Eventually, once I was stiff from sitting in the same position for too long, I considered getting up. But before I could talk myself into it, the bedroom door opened.

  I flew to my feet, ready to defend my reasons for being in there to Daxton or any of the guards he might have sent to check on me. But to my shock, it was Benjy who slipped inside. As soon as he caught sight of me, he stilled, and the shirts he carried fell to the floor.

  “I’m sorry, I—” Lila would have never apologized, but I shook the thought from my mind and hurried to help him pick up the laundry. I had barely dared to think about him since his execution had been stayed, not sure how many more times my heart could break and still remain a whole. But here he was, kneeling down next to me, and I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly everything I’d been thinking about Knox felt like a betrayal, and I swallowed hard as my face grew warm. He’d caught me in Knox’s bedroom, clearly upset. I didn’t know if he had the right to be angry or not, not anymore, but I wouldn’t blame him if he was.

  But he didn’t look angry. Benjy stared at me, his blue eyes wide and bright, and for the first time in what felt like my entire life, I couldn’t read the look on his face. He wasn’t angry, though. That was something. “I was hoping you’d be in here,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Is that why you’re bringing clean clothes to...” To a dead man’s room. But I couldn’t say that, so instead I tried to refold a shirt. My efforts were uneven and laughable at best. Benjy gently took it from me and refolded it with perfect precision, and I bit my lip, not wanting to know why he’d been trained to do something so ordinary when he had a VI on the back of his neck.

  Had a VI on the back of his neck, I remembered. Because just like me, he’d been sent to Elsewhere, too, which meant the VI he’d worked so long and hard for was now scarred over with an X. All because of me.

  How much guilt could one person take? How many burdens could I live with until my mind and body simply gave up? Whatever that limit was, I was sure I would soon reach mine. It simply couldn’t be possible to live with more than I already was, to hurt the people I cared about—to watch them murdered because of something I had done—and not crumble into dust.

  Once the shirts were stacked neatly again, I stood and took a step back, not sure what to say. He opened and shut his mouth, no doubt struggling with the same problem.

  “I know it’s you,” he finally said, even though I’d already known from what he’d said at the execution. “I just—I need to—”

  “I’ll wait,” I said softly, and with a grateful look, Benjy disappeared beyond the door I’d wondered about only minutes earlier. It turned out to be a massive walk-in closet, even bigger than the one Lila had had at Somerset, and as I waited, I vowed that if Knox were somehow alive, I would never let him live that down.

  A minute later, Benjy ducked back into the room, closing the closet door behind him. We stood there with only a few feet between us, but it might as well have been infinite. I didn’t know what to say or what to do, which only disturbed me more. This was Benjy. He was my best friend. There should have never been any distance between us at all, even if we were half a world away from each other.

  Apparently he was thinking along the same lines, because at long last, his eyes crinkled with a smile. “You know, just a few weeks ago, I would have gotten a hug by now. And been forced to make you a promise never to get myself almost executed again.”

  He hadn’t meant it as a command, but I gladly took it that way, relieved not to have to make the decision for myself. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him, inhaling his scent. It was different from Knox’s—less woodsy and musky, but tied to the best moments of my life. I hadn’t realized at the time that my memories of the group home and Christmases with one cheap present and meals with forty other people would be the ones I’d miss so much. I’d spent my whole life up until the test looking forward to the future and the endless possibilities it held. I had been so sure Benjy and I would get our happily-ever-after, and now—this was it. Standing in Knox’s bedroom, hugging Benjy and missing both of them. The Benjy I’d thought my future would hold no longer existed. Maybe he never had. He was still the kind, gentle, loving boy who had helped me with my homework and read to me and stuck up for me when no one else would. He was still all those things and more. But sometime in the past five months, ever since I’d been Masked, something had shifted, and we’d been too busy trying to hold on to the past to try to make sure we’d both be happy in the future.

  “I love you so much,” I whispered hoarsely. “If I’d lost you...”

  “You�
�ll never lose me,” he said, and his strong arms tightened around me. “You’re my family, Kitty, no matter who you have to pretend to be. And I will always be here for you.”

  He ran his fingers through my hair, and I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling like the worst person in the world. Benjy had nearly died. I’d been so sure I would never see him again. And here I was, sitting in Knox’s room, missing him more.

  “Look at me,” he said gently, and he pulled away enough to touch my chin. “I meant what I said. It will be okay. You will be okay. And so will I.”

  I nodded, struggling to find a way around the lump in my throat. “We’ll be okay together.”

  A sad smile flickered across his face. “Not that kind of together. Not anymore.”

  It took me a moment to fully realize what he was saying, and I stared at him, my eyes filling with tears all over again. It was one thing to think it to myself; it was another to hear him say it. It made my traitorous thoughts all too real. “But—”

  “You will always be the most important part of my life,” he said. “You’re my constant, and I’ll be yours for as long as you want me to be. I will never love you any less, and I will never not be here for you. And maybe, if things shift that way again between us...” He hesitated. “I don’t think they will, though. I think we’ve both been holding on because we’re familiar. Because it’s all we’ve ever known, and change is scary as hell.”

  “That doesn’t mean—that doesn’t mean it was bad,” I whispered, and his expression softened.

  “It’s never been bad, and it never will be.” He pulled me into another hug, gentler this time. “But it’s a different kind of love. My favorite moments with you have always been just—being together. Reading. Talking. Spending time together. The rest... I don’t need it to love you. And after we...after being with you...that only confirmed it. That isn’t our kind of love. What we have is stronger. More important. And I think...” He paused, and I could feel his head turning as he looked around Knox’s room. “I think you feel the same, even if you don’t realize it yet.”

  “Don’t tell me how I feel,” I said, my voice breaking. “You have no idea.”

  “Then tell me.”

  I searched for the words I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find them. He wasn’t wrong. I had loved and would continue to love Benjy unwaveringly for the rest of my life and beyond, but we would never have the future we’d dreamed of. We would never have our cottage in the woods, away from the rest of the world. I’d wanted that so badly—still wanted that, to break away from this poisonous society and just be, with no expectations and no one judging me. But while Benjy had always been a piece of that, he had never been the most important piece. Not really.

  Besides, I would be Lila until the day I died now. And even if we’d wanted to stay together, with Daxton breathing down our necks, it would be impossible.

  As soon as that excuse popped into my head—and it was an excuse—relief spilled through me, and I hated myself even more. I shouldn’t have needed an excuse to feel comfortable with the honesty between us, but I did. And that only made it worse.

  “You’re always going to be my best friend,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “And if—if anyone else feels threatened by that, then they won’t be worth it, no matter how much I care about them. You’re my family.”

  I felt the tension in his body melt away, and he pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Damn right I am.”

  We stood there together for what felt like an eternity, and eventually my gaze settled on Knox’s pillow. Even if I’d wanted to fight Benjy on it, he was right, and for more reasons than either of us would say aloud.

  At last Benjy let me go, and he studied me for a long moment, his eyes moving from mine to my hair to my mouth, and I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to memorize this moment. Or maybe he was trying to reconcile the person I was now with the person we’d both thought I would always be. At last he offered me a small smile. “Come on—Daxton’s expecting me downstairs in a few minutes, but I’ll show you to your room.”

  I hesitated. “I thought I’d stay with Greyson. Who’s my brother,” I added, more out of reflex to avoid hurting Benjy’s feelings than anything else.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I’d put that one together, don’t worry. You can sleep wherever you’d like, but they sent some of your things—Lila’s things—here, and I thought you might like to know where they are. Clothes, jewelry, all of that.”

  I didn’t care about clothes or jewelry, but I nodded anyway, because it was an excuse to spend a few more minutes with him, and I needed confirmation that we really were okay. That he’d meant the things he’d said as much as I did.

  He led me down the hall to the next suite over, exactly the way it had been at Somerset, too. “Here,” he said, opening the door for me. “I need to go, but I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Be careful,” I said. The thought of him alone in a room with Daxton and those guards made my blood boil, but if Daxton had wanted to kill him, he would have let the executioner do it. For now, Benjy was as safe as any of us could be, and I had to take comfort in that.

  He waved goodbye and disappeared around a corner, leaving me to explore the room. It was decorated in shades of purple and silver, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that stood out. Nothing that looked like it had belonged to Lila.

  As soon as I wandered into the bedroom, however, I froze. Sitting on the nightstand, angled toward the bed, was a golden picture frame with a maze design. It was the frame Greyson had given me the night I’d been arrested. I hadn’t seen it since the Battle of Elsewhere.

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I picked it up and stared at the picture displayed. Greyson and I sat together in the library of Somerset, and we looked relaxed—happy, almost, despite the turmoil at the time. I found the button on the back of the frame easily, and I pressed it long enough for a second, hidden picture to show up—the one of me and Benjy, before I’d been Masked.

  Seeing us together, happier than we’d likely ever be again—it made me ache with regret and loneliness. We’d made the right decision today. Clinging to the past wasn’t going to help us get through the future, and while we would need each other now more than ever, it wasn’t in the same way. But it still hurt like hell, and I wasn’t sure it would ever be completely okay.

  As I stared at my old face, however, suddenly it shifted again—this time into a photograph I’d never seen before. It was a picture of Hannah and I together in Mercer Manor, talking during a moment I’d long forgotten. Knox must have taken the picture—Jonathan Mercer sure as hell hadn’t—but however it had gotten there, I was glad it existed.

  I examined the picture closely. Hannah hadn’t fully realized I’d been her daughter until after it had been taken, but Knox had managed to capture a moment when we’d looked comfortable together. Not quite mother and daughter, but likely the closest he’d been able to get.

  Hannah was still out there somewhere, hidden where Daxton would never be able to get his disgusting hands on her. And suddenly, more than anything in the world, I wanted to find her. I’d lost enough. I wasn’t going to lose my mother, too—not when I’d only just met her.

  “She wanted you to have that,” said Benjy from the doorway, and I jumped, nearly dropping it. “I’m sorry—Daxton’s in a meeting with Minister Bradley. Told me to come back later.”

  And instead of doing anything else, he’d come back to see me. If I’d had any doubts that we would be okay, they were gone now. “You saw her?”

  He nodded. “That’s where Knox sent me. He thought I’d be safer there.”

  “But—they caught you.” A bubble of panic formed inside me. “Is Hannah—”

  “She’s fine,” he said. “I was caught when I left with a handful of other Blackcoats to go on a mission. It was stupid—we should have stayed p
ut, but Elsewhere had just been destroyed, and our lines of communication were scrambled.” He nodded toward the frame. “She talked about you all the time. Asked me a million questions. I repeated the stories so many times that even I got sick of them, but she never did.” He grinned, but it faded quickly. “This isn’t over, Kitty. There must still be Blackcoats out there.”

  “Even if there are, there’s nothing we can do now,” I said. “Daxton is constantly guarded. I would kill him—I will kill him—but it’s going to be a long time before he trusts me enough to be in a room alone with me. If he ever does again.”

  “There are other ways to kill someone than stabbing them through the heart.”

  I frowned. “Poison?”

  “That could work, but he has food tasters,” said Benjy with a shrug. “Besides, that’s not what I’m talking about. He’s crazy, and all he wants is power. If we expose that—”

  “We’ve already tried,” I said. “If anyone says a word about what’s really going on, he’ll have them killed in an instant. And no one wants to take that risk.”

  “It’s easy now, though. Don’t you see? Winning this war. Once he’s gone, the position will pass to Greyson, and then it’ll be over.”

  “It’s already over,” I said, that familiar ache filling my chest. “If I could kill him, I would. In a heartbeat. But it’s impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible. You’re proof of that.” Benjy paused, drumming his fingers on his elbow. “What if I can get a gun?”

  I stared at him. “No. Whatever you’d planning—absolutely not.”