by Anna Jarzab
I cleared my throat and kept going. Something shook inside of me, as if someone was jangling a set of keys against my rib cage. “ ‘On one side beetling cliffs shoot up, and against them pound the huge roaring breakers of blue-eyed Amphitrite—’ ”
The king made another inscrutable noise. This time I was sure I’d heard it, and started to wish Thomas would come back in. The king spooked me; I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t like it, not one bit.
I paused in my reading and watched him. His eyes flew open, staring straight ahead, and he raised his hand; his fingers resumed their hypnotic dance. “Mirror, mirror.”
I tried to ignore it, but after a few moments I could sense him looking at me. I put the book down. He’s in a hospital bed, I told myself. He can’t do anything to you.
“What is it?” I didn’t expect him to answer, but was it possible that he was attempting to communicate? The doctors were certain the king’s mumblings were random and meaningless, but what if that wasn’t true? What if he was actually trying to say something?
“Angel eyes,” he said. I wondered if that was his pet name for Juliana. I smiled at the thought. It was sort of sweet. My dad had called me “Little One.”
“Angel eyes,” he said again, more insistent this time. “Mirror, mirror.”
“On the wall,” I said, playing along. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
“One, one, two, three, five, eight,” he said.
“That’s not how the story goes,” I informed him. Not that he was listening.
“Touch and go,” the king said. “Touch and go.” I sighed.
The door slid open and Thomas came in. “Is everything all right?”
“He’s talking again. And doing, you know, the hand thing.” But the king’s odd behavior didn’t seem to bother Thomas.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess that’s normal. Relatively speaking, anyway. Are you ready to go?” All traces of awkwardness from our previous conversation had disappeared, at least on his end. He was acting as if the past half hour had never even occurred. Maybe I should’ve been grateful; I wanted to ignore it, too. But the fact that he wanted to ignore it made me want to talk about it more, which I knew was a bad idea, so I bit my tongue and said nothing.
Thomas glanced at his watch. “Sasha?”
I liked it when he said my name. It felt good to be reminded, by someone other than myself, who I was. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
I put The Odyssey back in its place on the bedside table. The king didn’t seem to notice us leaving. It was as if he had no idea we were even in the room. He looked so sad and desolate lying there alone, in an impenetrable bubble where nothing mattered except for what was going on in his head. He was older than my own father would have been if he had lived, much closer to Granddad’s age. Someday, I realized with a jolt, it would be Granddad lying in that bed, or one very much like it. The thought made my heart ache. I felt the sudden urge to stay with the king, just so he wouldn’t have to be alone. But I couldn’t. I had a schedule to keep. And a life to live.
Twenty
“Are you nervous?” Thomas whispered.
Of course I was nervous, and having him at my side right now wasn’t helping. My thoughts were like a flock of birds being chased into flight, wheeling around inside my head, looping and gliding so fast that I couldn’t sort them out, but they all came circling back to Thomas in the end. In spite of all my doubts and fears, I felt connected to him. He was my only link in this world to my past, the reality of my true life. The only one, as he had said back in the king’s bedroom, who knew who I was. I wanted him close, but I wanted him far away, too.
And now, to complicate things even further, Prince Callum was coming. I hadn’t had to be really intimate with anyone in my short time as Juliana, other than Gloria and Thomas. My analog was the sort of person who kept most people at a distance. But Callum was Juliana’s betrothed. Would he expect to kiss me? To hold me? To … sleep with me? I had no idea what he would want, or what questions he would ask, and no one could tell me that, not even Thomas.
“You’ll be fine,” Thomas assured me. “He’s got no reason to suspect anything. He’s never met Juliana. He’s never even been outside Farnham. To him, Juliana is whoever you allow her to be.”
Yeah, I thought. But who is that?
We’d nearly reached the head of the grand staircase, where I was supposed to meet the queen to await the arrival of the Farnham prince. I was almost as unnerved by the prospect of spending more time with the queen as I was by meeting Callum. I’d spent the last few hours in the queen’s study as she discussed last-minute details for Juliana’s wedding with her staff, but no one asked my opinion, or even glanced my way. The wedding was a monsoon, and all I could do was sit there while it raged all around me. It didn’t bother me so much, because I wouldn’t even be there to see it, but I couldn’t imagine Juliana being able to stand it.
“Hey.” I tugged at the sleeve of Thomas’s jacket. “I was just wondering if you’d heard anything about Juliana—or Grant.” It was driving me crazy that even though I was still dreaming about her, I didn’t know anything about where Juliana was or what was happening to her. I wished I could force a vision, see through her eyes while I was awake. I was sick of this passive power; it wasn’t helping anyone. And as for Grant—I felt responsible for him. Whatever he was going through, it never would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for me. I had as little control over that as he did, but I couldn’t get him out of my head.
Thomas hesitated. “The KES raided a Libertas hideout downtown last night on a tip, but they didn’t find anything. I’ll tell you as soon as I know anything more.”
“You don’t think—you’re sure you’ll find them?”
“We’ll find them,” Thomas assured me. “Libertas is going to hide Juliana as well as possible for as long as possible, but we’re better trained and better funded and smarter than they are, and eventually they’ll slip up. When they do, we’ll be there. And Grant …” Thomas shook his head. “To be honest, I’m worried. We should’ve heard from Libertas already. They might not know he’s not me, but he can’t tell them anything. They’ll have figured that out by now. If we don’t hear from them soon …” He trailed off, but I knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing I was thinking: If we don’t hear from them soon, it means he might be dead.
I didn’t want to hear him say it. I wasn’t going to give up hope that Grant was alive. I just couldn’t accept that an innocent boy was dead because of me; I wouldn’t accept it, until I knew one way or the other.
“I’ll be standing off to the side,” Thomas said. He reached out a hand as if he was going to touch my shoulder, but then he stopped, obviously thinking the better of it. He cleared his throat and continued, “This should all go according to protocol. Just follow the queen’s lead.”
At the grand staircase, Thomas peeled off and left me standing at the top all by myself. There was another row of KES agents already stationed at the foot of the staircase; these men would protect Callum for the length of his stay in the UCC—which at the moment was indefinite. By custom he wasn’t allowed to retain his own Farnham guard.
The queen swept in from the other side of the staircase with a pair of KES agents trailing behind. Though her exterior was unruffled, the queen had to be agitated; the situation was so politically sensitive, there was no way she could be as calm as she seemed. The mere mention of Farnham and its royal family made everyone in the Castle uneasy; even Gloria had been jumpy as she helped me prepare for the meeting. What would it be like when there was a foreign element in their midst? A perverse part of me was looking forward to finding out.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” The queen smoothed the gold-trimmed satin sash she wore over her pale blue dress and reached up to give the rather impressive diamond crown on her head a minuscule adjustment. Gloria had given me the choice of many blingy headpieces, but I’d gone the other way, opting for a simple circlet of gold rowa
n leaves to wear with the beige peplum top and matching skirt she’d dressed me in. “I take no pleasure in marrying you off like this, you know, Juliana. I think it’s a barbaric tradition. I thought we’d done away with it a long time ago.”
I nodded. “I understand.” I wondered if perhaps the queen was against it because her own marriage to the king had been so unconventional. If the king hadn’t been allowed to choose his bride, the queen would still be Evelyn Eaves, a lawyer with the Royal Counsel and not much else.
“I know this is hard for you,” the queen continued. “But you have to believe that it’s for the best. The past is the past, but the future is still worth preserving.”
Before I could respond, the doors of the front entrance to the Castle swung open, and in stepped the most beautiful young man I’d ever seen. To my surprise, this wasn’t the first time I was seeing him; his analog was Will Base, an actor on one of Gina’s favorite television shows. I struggled against an overwhelming starstruck feeling. This was no time to lose my composure.
Callum was shorter than I would’ve imagined, only an inch or two taller than my five-seven. He had a mess of curly brown hair tamed with some kind of gel, big blue eyes and soft, handsome features. He wore a gray three-piece suit with a red pocket square and carried a large black leather notebook in his left hand. The Farnham Royal Guard gathered behind him, their expressions as sober as the ones the KES agents wore.
The queen descended the staircase with me at her heels, alighting in the main foyer with the practiced aloofness of a true royal, while I tried not to stumble in my four-inch suede cobalt heels. “Welcome to the Commonwealth, Your Highness,” she said, extending her hand. Callum bowed his head to kiss it.
“Thank you for having me here, Your Majesty,” he said with a polite smile. He released her hand and she stepped away so that I could greet him. I’d forgotten that this was expected of me; for a moment it was as though I’d slipped out of time and was watching all this play out from a safe distance.
“Hello, Prince Callum,” I said. Gloria had coached me to address him that way, but it still felt strange, calling someone “prince.”
Callum reached out and took my gloved hand, kissing it in the exact same manner he’d kissed the queen’s—polite, but removed. He was wearing a signet ring on the pinky finger of his right hand, a black bird fixed on a red stone. The symbol was familiar to me, but I wasn’t sure where I’d seen it, though the ring itself reminded me a little of the one Thomas wore to signify his active duty in the KES. I resisted an urge to turn back and look at him, focusing instead on the boy in front of me. I had to say something, so I went with, “I like your ring.”
“Oh,” he said, after a strange pause. “It was my father’s. Rick gets the kingdom, I got this.” He meant his brother, Richard, who was heir to the throne and would become king when their mother, Queen Marian, died or stepped aside. Callum was the second of three brothers; the other, Samuel, who went by Sonny, was eleven. I’d learned all this from Gloria.
“I think you got the better part.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back.
“I think I did, too,” he said.
“Do you know what the symbol means?” I asked, struggling to make casual conversation.
His brow furrowed in confusion. “It’s the Farnham phoenix … the one from our flag?”
I should’ve been panicked, but I didn’t have the mental energy to worry about my mistake, because I remembered why I recognized the phoenix. The flag. It came to me in a flash, a red flag with a black bird on it, its wings outstretched, its mouth open in a battle cry, and midnight-colored flames licking its feet. Oh my God, I thought, stunned by the realization.
I knew where Juliana was.
“Well,” I blurted out. “I’m glad you’re here.” Okay, Sasha, calm down, I commanded myself. But it was hard to relax, because what I wanted to do was run off to process what it was I had seen. The dreams weren’t worthless after all. If I could remember seeing the flag, I could remember other things, things that could lead the KES to Juliana. I didn’t know what the General had in mind for when my six days were up, but I was sure that it was something I wouldn’t want to do; this was the leverage I needed to escape it. This was my ticket home.
“Thank you,” Callum said. I could tell my behavior bewildered him, but he was trying hard not to show it. “I—I brought you something. A present.” He glanced behind him, and one of his guards rushed forth with a gift bag, its handles tied together with a silver bow. I accepted it with as much grace and gratitude as I could muster. Because Callum seemed to expect me to open the present immediately, I reached my hand into the bag and pulled out the gift.
“A potato?” That’s what it was, just a regular old potato, like the ones you could buy in the supermarket. Why would Callum give a potato to his fiancé? It was literally the most unromantic thing I’d ever heard of, and Gina’s ex-boyfriend, Noah, had once given her a bottle of hand sanitizer for her birthday.
“It’s from one of our state farms in the Mountain region,” Callum said by way of explanation, although it didn’t illuminate the situation much for me. “I assumed you’d never had one before.”
I laughed. “Of course I’ve eaten a potato!” It wasn’t as if they were some sort of delicacy, at least … not on Earth. It dawned on me then that I’d committed a strange, incredible faux pas. I went rigid. After everything I’d been through in Aurora, was a potato going to be the thing to unmask me?
The queen looked at me in shock. “When have you ever eaten a potato, Juliana?”
“I—I’m sure I have.” I couldn’t remember Thomas or Gloria ever mentioning anything about potatoes. I was so stunned, I couldn’t come up with an excuse that sounded halfway believable.
Callum cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve never had one quite like this. You should have your kitchen bake it for you with butter and salt.”
“Okay. I’ll, um, do that,” I mumbled. “Thank you so much. What a thoughtful gift.”
Nobody seemed to know what to do after that. Eventually, the queen took charge, for which I was grateful.
“I’m sure it’s been a long journey for you, Prince Callum,” she said. “This is Agent Bedford.” A tall red-haired man in a suit stepped forward and approached Callum. “He’s with the King’s Elite Service and will be supervising your protection. You can dismiss your men. You won’t be needing their services anymore.”
Callum hesitated. “I was hoping I’d be able to keep my own bodyguard.”
“Unfortunately, it’s against our diplomatic policy,” the queen told him. “But I assure you, the KES is second to none. You can trust them.”
I couldn’t blame Callum for being uncomfortable with this proposition. He’d probably been taught from an early age never to trust anyone from the UCC, just as Thomas and everyone else in the Commonwealth had been raised never to trust anyone from Farnham. Though Callum appeared nice enough, the animosity between the two countries—and between the two royal families—ran deep, deeper than I could possibly ever understand.
But Callum, overpowered by the queen’s insistence, relented. He spoke with the head of his bodyguard in a hushed voice, and they left as silently as they’d entered.
“Wonderful.” The queen was smiling, but I could tell she was ready to be done with this farcical show of international goodwill. “Agent Bedford will accompany you to your rooms and give you your security briefing. Afterward you will have some time to yourself before dinner.”
Callum must’ve found the queen as intimidating as everybody else did, but he found the courage to ask a question. “I’m sorry if this is forward, but when will Juliana and I be able to talk in private?”
“We have some time scheduled for the two of you to get properly acquainted after dinner,” the queen told him, with a calculated, frigid imperiousness that set my teeth on edge. Against all odds, Callum seemed pleased by this, as if the queen had wrapped her arms around him and welcomed him to the family, which meant tha
t he was either very stupid, or had resolved to be a ray of sunshine no matter what the cost—and he didn’t look stupid.
Agent Bedford gestured for Callum to follow him up the grand staircase. He paused first and glanced over at me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Juliana,” Callum said. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Likewise.” I nodded at him as he passed.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” Callum said, taking the stairs backward in order to keep looking at me. I gave him a little wave, and he returned it with a grin.
Well, at least one person was happy about the impending wedding. It surprised me. Shouldn’t Callum hate the idea as much as Juliana did? Wasn’t he infuriated at having to live his life the way other people wanted him to? I would’ve been. I guessed I would find out, because Callum clearly had a lot he wanted to say to Juliana—alone.
“What was that with the potato?” the queen hissed at me as soon as Callum was out of earshot. “You’ve never eaten a potato!”
“I’m sorry, I—I thought I had,” I stammered.
“Where? On some holiday to Farnham? You were just trying to show off. I won’t stand for it, Juliana, do you hear me? You promised me that you were going to behave yourself and I expect you to do that. This marriage is the key to peace, and if you endanger that …” She let the threat dangle in the air, but it seemed to me that it was the queen who was really frightened. “You should go back to your room. I’m going to sit with your father for a while.”
The queen shook her head at me and left with her bodyguard. I was alone in the foyer. I sank down on the bottom step of the grand staircase and buried my face in my hands. Waves of powerlessness washed over me. I couldn’t seem to do anything right, even when I tried.
Thomas took a seat beside me on the step and reached into the bag, pulling out the potato and cradling it in his palm. “Potatoes,” he said softly. “They don’t grow here.”
