Broken Crowns

by Lauren DeStefano

  “I never thought I’d hear you say that Internment is frozen in time,” I say. “Whenever I would talk about the ground before all of this, you’d try to shut me up.”

  “I was frightened,” she confesses. “I love this city and I always will. It’s my home. But I thought that if I understood its laws and I believed hard enough, no matter what I endured in life, things would always settle right side up in the end. I see now how small this place is. I was treating it like a god, but it’s only a city.”

  “A magical floating city,” I say, and we both laugh.

  “I thought that being away from Internment would kill us. I thought it would make me question the god in the sky and everything we’ve been taught—and it has. I do question everything. But I want to have my questions. I want to have more thoughts than my mind can hold, so many that I have to write them in fragments like a madman.”

  “How much madder do you want to get?” I say.

  She only smiles.

  It takes nearly two weeks for the trains to resume running. The fence is repaired, and patrolmen are stationed all along it at every section to deter trespassers. Basil, Pen, Thomas, and I are free to roam the kingdom again, and though we’re frequently bombarded with questions about the ground, no one seems to wish us harm.

  Basil and Thomas are reunited with their families. I tell Basil that he should return home to them, but while he spends much of his days with his family, still he chooses to spend his nights with me in the clock tower. I want to look after Celeste, who is homebound and desperately lonely.

  Pen doesn’t return home at all, not even to see her mother, despite all her worrying. She doesn’t say as much, but I know that she’s afraid of being pulled back into that place again, and that this time she won’t be able to leave. Pen’s mother should have been the one protecting her, but it was always the other way around.

  When I’m not being asked about Havalais, people ask me about the princess. They want to know if the rumors that she’s dying are true. I smile and say that she’s on the mend.

  This is my only lie. Even Celeste’s spirits have begun to drop, and she looks worse than ever. She has not been allowed to so much as step outside, not even within the confines of the royal gardens, since the jet returned, because the king is so terrified that someone will spot her. Her own mother’s rapid decline and the months of isolation have begun to break her spirit, a spirit I once thought impenetrable.

  One afternoon, when she’s too exhausted to be up and about, I sit at her bedside and read to her. There must be a storm below us, because the clouds are especially thick and gray. Her still-bright eyes focus on the window and I know that she’s missing the rain; it’s one of her favorite wonders. She’s tethered to that world below us forever now.

  “Morgan.” She interrupts me, and the words I was reading fade away. “Nim is in trouble. Isn’t he?”

  “No,” I say. “I saw him just last night. Your father won’t allow him to see you, and he is quite angry you both went over his head, but that’s what you expected, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not that blind,” she says, and pushes herself upright, her hands smoothing over her stomach like it’s a globe filled with all the places she wishes to see. “My father has a cruel side. My brother and I have known since we were children. But we thought, ‘Papa loves us, so he must be a good man. We’ll understand one day.’ ”

  “Don’t you still believe that?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “I’m not a child anymore,” she says. “I don’t believe things simply because I want them to be so.”

  She winces at a stab of pain. They’ve been happening now for days. She should be in a hospital; even Prince Azure has told his father as much, but the king refuses. Whether it’s for fear of his daughter’s safety or fear of losing control of his own kingdom if anyone finds out about this child of two worlds, I don’t know. But I suspect the latter. I fear he would let her die in childbirth from lack of care if it meant keeping the child a secret.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” I say. “Have you had anything to drink today, at least?”

  She closes her eyes for a long moment, and I can see that she’s still in pain. “Find my brother,” she says. “Make sure he’s alone.” As I stand, she grips my arm. “Don’t let my father know.”

  “I won’t. I’ll be right back, I promise.” She tightens her grip before she releases it. “I promise,” I say again, to convince myself as well.

  She doesn’t ask me to find Nimble. She knows it would be no use. He would already be by her side if he were free.

  I hurry down the steps, through the lobby that is only sparsely populated by people collecting their wages, and make my way down the set of halls that leads to the basement. The prince has been busy these past two weeks, playing his father’s politics and overseeing the prisoners. He interviews the men from the ground every day, testing their potential loyalty. I can see all the while that his heart isn’t in it. He and his sister have lost whatever respect they held for their father, and have even come to fear him.

  While Celeste has begun evading her father, Prince Azure has grown disdainful of him. He doesn’t say as much, but I can see it in the way he speaks to the prisoners, as though he sympathized with their anger at being trapped here, as though he knew of a less barbaric way to handle this if only he were king.

  But I see it especially in the way he cares for Nimble Piper, spooning water into his mouth when his jaw is clamped shut, whispering that he must get better for the sake of his own kingdom.

  When I open the basement door, I find the prince sitting on the top step, pale, exasperated, staring down into the darkness. He barely offers me a glance.

  “They never tire of orders,” he says. “Our patrolmen. They can’t live without someone telling them what to do. It’s all so exhausting, having to think for them.”

  I would love to argue against this. My father, at least, was one who did not accept orders without question. But there’s no time. “You have to get to Celeste,” I say, trying to catch my breath. “She’s in pain again. I think—” I look around to be sure we’re alone, and then I whisper, “I think it’s time.”

  He’s on his feet in an instant, his self-pitying fatigue gone. He rushes past me, and I follow him up the stairs and into the apartment.

  Celeste has tumbled out of bed and she’s standing with her hands pressed against the window ledge, head down, struggling to draw even breaths. Her bedsheets are dampened through.

  “Leste.” The prince is gasping for air, but he’s gentle when he wraps his arm around her shoulders and brings her back to the bed. “I’m right here. What do you need?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know! I thought Nim would be here for this. I thought I would be prepared.” She shudders with pain.

  “Leste, listen to me. I’m going to send for our doctor. It’s going to be fine. The doctor will know exactly what to do.”

  “You can’t,” she sobs. “Papa will try to take the baby away. He’ll put it wherever he’s put Nim.”

  “I won’t let him. I won’t.” He’s speaking so calmly, like he’s reading a bedtime story to a child. “I’ll be right back.”

  “No!” She’s clinging to his arm as he stands. “Please!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he says. “I’ve gone along with this plan of yours—not that I’ve had any choice in the matter—but I won’t let you do this without a doctor.”

  Her fingers are digging into his skin, and he has to wrench himself free. “Az!” She doubles over with pain, and I see the anguish on his face as he rushes past me. I could swear there were tears in his eyes.

  I have never seen Celeste so hysterical. It’s the fear, not the pain, that’s doing it. I sit beside her at the edge of the bed, and I don’t speak in dulcet tones, I don’t try to console her. I know that she won’t believe me.

  It’s an eternity before the prince returns, a doctor in tow. He’s a small man with hair that’s sever
ely slicked back, and he’s much older than any doctor who would be allowed to practice. The prince surely pulled him out of dodder housing.

  “Strip the bed,” he tells me, and his tone is so icy and authoritative, I oblige quickly and with shaking hands. He opens his medical bag and produces a flame generator used for cooking in apartments without electricity. He sends me away to fill a pot with water.

  My mind is spinning. After I’ve brought the water, I’m not allowed back into the room. I sit on the floor in the hallway, staring at an oil coloring of the prince and princess as children, arm in arm in their finest white dress.

  “Doctor O. has been with our family for years,” Prince Azure says as he comes out of his sister’s room. Exiled as well, no doubt. “He’s the doctor who saw to our genders before we were in the womb. He’s the one who delivered us.”

  The prince is known for his poise, but now he drops to the floor across from me, his arm draped over his angled knee, and he looks as though he could melt into the floorboards. “A curious thing, isn’t it? Our genders being determined even before we’re born. The king and queen wanted an heir and a spare, and they knew just how we should be assembled. They ordered us as though we were items on a menu.”

  He nods to his sister’s closed door. “Sometimes I think we were born all wrong, my sister and I. Sure, we know how to dress the part, but we have our own wild ideas about what we would do if the kingdom were left to us.

  “I’m better at playing along. I pretend I’ll be the king my father wants me to be. I say yes and I go along, knowing I can rule my own way once it’s my turn. My sister has no patience for that. No sense of strategy. She’s always been stupidly impulsive. But I never thought she would take it this far.”

  I say nothing. He isn’t seeking words of comfort. There’s a pained cry from the other side of the door, and he bows his head.

  “This baby will merge two worlds, won’t it?” he says, with a humorless laugh. “But it has to get here the same grotesque way the rest of us did.”

  Celeste shouldn’t be alone on that soiled mattress. She should be in a hospital, surrounded by electricity and nurses. Nim should be beside her. She was so small and frightened when I left her.

  I strain my ears to listen, but I can hear nothing on the other side of the door now.

  “This is typical of her,” the prince says. I can hear the worry under his cool tone. “She doesn’t think things through. How am I supposed to pull her out of this one?”

  “I think the whole point is that you can’t,” I say. I pause to see if my boldness has offended him, but he’s listening. “She didn’t want you to save her. She’s never wanted to be saved. She had it in her mind that she was going to do this, and it can’t be undone.”

  “I think you’re right about that,” he says. I have seen the prince dozens of times in regal sketches, at festivities, and on broadcasts, and this is the first time I look at him and truly see an equal. A person as powerless as the rest of us.

  “My sister thought that our father would come around, that he would see what she was doing for the kingdoms and accept this child of two worlds. She’s always believed he loves us more than he does.”

  “Perhaps he will, with time,” I try.

  “No,” he says. “Papa was livid. The only reason he didn’t hold her down himself and force her to have a termination procedure is because it was too late by then. She’d have bled to death.” The words are horrible, but he’s so utterly drained that he can speak only frankly. “Once the child is born, he has asked me to drown it like a double birth. And then it will be as though this never happened. There’s to be no love story for my sister and that boy from the ground. She’ll be lucky if she sees daylight again before her eighteenth birthday, when she’s married off to her betrothed.”

  Though I suspected something like this, it nauseates me. My heart is pounding. “You can’t let that happen.”

  He looks at me, that trademark royal brightness in his eyes. “I have a plan I’ve been working out, but I’ll need you to prove to me that you’re competent,” he says, and I should be offended but I find his familiar cockiness to be a sign that things will be all right again. “I’ll need you to go to the prison and create a diversion. Get Nimble Piper out of there through the back entrance.”

  “The one that leads to the plum court?”

  “Yes, the very same. Here—” He hurries down the hall and returns with a scrap of paper and a pen. He sketches a crude map of the woods surrounding the clock tower. “There are several stone caverns off the trails. Hide him there. Stay with him and wait for me.”

  “How long?” I ask.

  “I don’t know how bloody long. However long it takes babies to be born.”

  “But Basil and Pen,” I say.

  “What about them?”

  “If you’re asking me to betray the king, and I’m certain you are, I need to know that they won’t be punished on my behalf.”

  “You do this for me, and I’ll make certain they’re someplace safe. You have my word.”

  A scream from beyond the closed door makes us both wince. “What about Celeste?” I say.

  “What about her? She can’t very well go sneaking away into the woods right now, can she?” His face has paled considerably. “I’ll look after her. But I can’t be everywhere. Morgan, I need you.”

  There’s a set of words I never expected to hear from him, but all I say is, “What kind of diversion?”

  “It will have to be something that requires the attention of every patrolman. Tell them—tell them my father has been wounded. Say that he’s been stabbed by a citizen who’s been maddened by the edge or some such. After weeks being cooped up down in the cellar, they’re all just itching to be heroes. Go on now, go.” He fumbles with the key ring and extracts the key to Nim’s cell. “Don’t get caught. I can’t afford to save you too.”

  I nod. I hurry through the apartment before I’m made to listen to another scream. I couldn’t bear it. The prince is left rooted to the hallway, his sister struggling behind one door, his mother dying behind another.

  His diversion works. The patrolmen are so lost and desperate for their leader that when I tell them the king has been harmed, they are eager to rush to the king’s side. They pay me no mind as they hurry past.

  My hands are shaking as I work the key into the lock. I drop it twice. When I finally get the door open, I find Nim sitting up against the wall. He was dozing in a fitful sleep, but his face registers alertness when he sees me.

  “Morgan?” His voice is hoarse, his lips cracked and bloody. But he does look better than he did the last time I was down here. “Is it really you? Is Celeste—”

  “Can you stand?” I work the key through the lock on his restraints, and they fall away. He clenches his fists. “Come on. There isn’t time.” I pull him to his feet and position him so that he can rest on my shoulder as we walk. He stumbles dizzily.

  “Wait,” he says. He’s delirious. I can feel the heat of his fever when he drops his face against my neck.

  “We can’t wait. We have only a few minutes before the patrolmen realize they’ve been tricked. They’ll be combing the entire city looking for us.”

  I don’t think he hears my explanation. He’s scarcely conscious.

  All I am thinking as I drag him from the clock tower and into the woods is that I won’t allow him to die on the day when his child is born.

  18

  I sit huddled in a cavern much like the one Pen and I claimed as our sanctuary. This place feels familiar even though it’s the royal family’s private property, where the prince and princess do their hunting for sport.

  Or they used to, at least.

  Nim weaves in and out of consciousness. In his brief lucid moments, I tell him that we’re someplace safe and that the others will be with us soon. I tell him over and over, reassuring myself as well.

  Before the ground was ever introduced to our city, these woods would have been lined by patr
olmen keeping trespassers away, but now there’s only the rustle of leaves and a chilly breeze that comes along with the short season.

  It was sometime past noon when I left Celeste at the hands of that doctor with the soulless eyes. Now the sun has melted below the city’s edge and stars have begun to show themselves.

  I wonder if her child has been born. I wonder if Prince Azure has managed to keep it alive.

  Nimble stirs. He reaches out and touches my arm. “Birdie?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s me. Morgan.”

  He struggles to sit upright and I help him. The prince was giving him sedatives to help with the pain, and now he’s starting to emerge for the first time in weeks. Awareness is starting to show in his eyes. “Do you know where you are?” I ask.

  He looks over my shoulder, at the darkening sky. “Internment,” he says. “I was in prison.”

  “Yes.” Hope fills me. “Yes, and you’re out now.”

  “Where’s Celeste?” he says. “I have to go to her. You have to take me.”

  “Soon,” I say, uncertain whether I’m lying. He’s already in so much pain, I don’t want to add to that the pain of uncertainty.

  But after weeks of a medicated haze, Nim isn’t having it. He’s awake now. “What’s happened to her?”

  He tries to climb out of the cavern, and I hold his shoulders down. “She’s having the baby now. Or maybe she already has—it’s been hours since I’ve seen her. Prince Azure is with her.”

  “I have to get to her.” His voice is desperate. For all his injuries, he’s found the strength to fight me off when I try to keep him down. He scrambles out of the cavern and starts pacing furiously through the trees.

  “Nim,” I whisper harshly. “You can’t. The king will have patrolmen looking for us. If we’re caught, it’s all over.”

  “She needs me!”

  I grab his arm, and he stumbles, still dizzy. “Yes, she needs you. She needs you outside of a prison cell, and more important, she needs you alive. I can’t promise either of those things if you go bursting into the clock tower demanding to see her.”