by Anna Jarzab
“You what?”
“With some sort of poison,” I told him. “The General threatened me. He told me that if I didn’t do it …” I trailed off, hoping that Callum would fill in the blanks with his own terrifying conclusions. I couldn’t tell him the full story without explaining who I was or where I’d come from. If I did that, he might never trust a single thing I told him ever again, and I needed him to trust me if I was going to keep him alive.
“You were going to kill me?” Callum recoiled, as if I was a snake. And I was. I knew I was. “Why?”
“Not kill you,” I said. “I don’t know what it does, but the General said it was going to make you so sick that nobody from Farnham could come get you.”
“That’s not better!”
“I know, I know. Please listen to me. I couldn’t do it. Doesn’t that count for something? I don’t care what happens to me, I won’t hurt you. I panicked for a second and thought I could, but I can’t. Never.”
Callum was gripping his teacup so hard I thought he might break it. “So what do I do now? I can’t stay here.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “I just don’t know how you’re going to get out.”
“We,” Callum said firmly.
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“You’re coming with me,” Callum said.
“No, I can’t.” If I left with Callum, I could kiss any chance of going home goodbye, not to mention any chance of ever seeing Thomas again. On the other hand, it didn’t look like staying would increase the chances of either of those things happening, either. What was the right thing to do? Thomas would’ve known. Think like Thomas, I told myself. What would he do?
“Yes,” Callum insisted. “There’s no way I’m leaving you behind to be punished by that monster. Wherever I go, you’re coming, too. We’ll get out of here together.”
“How can you even say that, after what I did?”
“What you almost did,” Callum corrected me. “You couldn’t do it. I believe that. I might be nuts, but I still trust you, Juliana. I’m not leaving you, is that clear?”
I nodded. I wished he would stop calling me “Juli” and “Juliana.” It was a constant reminder of how many lies I’d allowed him to believe. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way out.”
“Yes, there is.” Callum slipped off his signet ring, the one he’d told me had once belonged to his father, and slammed it, with the stone facing down, onto the little table next to the sofa. Then he did something that filled me with such horror that to my dying day I will never, ever forget it.
Callum picked up his tea and drank it down.
I screamed at him to stop, but by the time the words came out of my mouth he was already setting the empty cup down on the table. He put his ring back on.
“Why did you do that?” I cried.
“Have a little faith,” he said. “Just promise to stick with me, whatever you do.”
It didn’t take long for the poison to take effect. Within a minute, Callum had gone limp and collapsed onto the sofa. I slapped his cheeks, nearly insane with panic.
“Callum! Callum, wake up!” But he didn’t stir.
Kline rushed in, roused from his post by the sound of my shouting. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“The prince is sick! Get help, now!” I commanded. He turned on his heel, muttering something into his lapel as he left. The rowan pin. Gloria had told me to use it if I ever needed Thomas. Frantic, I cast my eyes around the room for my dress; the pin was still fixed to the bodice. When I found it, I pressed the pin so hard that the needle dug into my thumb, drawing blood.
“Thomas,” I breathed, holding it close to my lips. “I need your help.”
THOMAS IN THE TOWER / 5
Thomas stared at the ceiling, twisting his KES ring around and around on his finger in agitation. He was lying on his bed feeling utterly useless. It had been over twenty-four hours since the General had banished him to his quarters, and no one had come to collect him. He still had his KES earpiece in, listening in vain for a summons, but when it came it was from the most unlikely source.
“Thomas, I need your help.” Thomas started at the sound of Sasha’s voice. She was distraught; he could tell just from the way she spoke those five words. Fear flooded through him. Something was wrong. She was in danger, or in pain. He had to get to her.
But how was he going to get out? The LCD screen on the inside of his door was red—no exit. Without thinking, he reared back and punched it so hard the screen broke, stained with blood from his knuckles. He hardly felt the pain. He reached inside the small hole he’d created and pulled out the wiry guts of the console. At least that would disable the lock. Now he had to get the door open.
The towel rack in his bathroom was a thick metal pole that tapered and turned at both ends. He pressed down on it with all his weight, easily dislocating it from the weak plaster, and lodged it into the small space between the door and the jamb that had been created when the vacuum seal released, managing to force it open about an inch. He inserted the fingers of both of his hands into the gap and yanked the door with all his might, opening it wider and wider with every attempt until there was just enough room for him to slip through.
He took off his KES ring and placed it on top of the dresser. After all, it belonged to the KES, not to him, and he didn’t want it anymore, though his finger felt naked without it. Then he disappeared through the gap in the door.
At first it looked like there was nobody around, but the General must have activated the motion sensors, because there was a shuffling at the end of the hallway and a young agent appeared, blocking Thomas’s only exit. Thomas didn’t know the agent very well, but he thought his name was York.
“Agent Mayhew, I must insist that you return to your quarters immediately,” York said.
“Get out of my way,” Thomas growled.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” York told him. Thomas was right on top of him now, and it was clear to both parties just how much bigger and more intimidating Thomas was than green, uncertain York. “You must remain in your room. General’s orders.”
Seeing that he had no other option, Thomas did something he never thought he would do—he reared back and punched York in the face. His KES brother fell to the ground, unconscious. Thomas shook out his hand; his knuckles had taken quite a beating tonight.
“Screw the General,” he said.
Thirty-Five
Everything happened so fast. One second, I watched Callum slump to the floor, and the next, medics rushed in wheeling a gurney as the flashing lights of an ambulance in the gardens illuminated the room with a pulsing red glow that made me sick to my stomach. I scrambled to my feet as the medics hoisted Callum onto the gurney. He landed with a dull thud, and I actually thought I might vomit.
The paramedics were removing Callum from my room. I rushed after them, pausing only for a moment to take my necklace, Twelfth Night, and the Angel Eyes map from the bedside drawer and shove them into my pockets. Whatever Angel Eyes was, the map had been important enough for the king to hide, and I wasn’t going to leave it or my own possessions behind for the General to find.
“I’m coming with you!” I cried, following the medics into the hallway. Just promise to stick with me, whatever you do, Callum had said. I didn’t think he’d said it because he thought he’d need my support. He’d said it because he’d worked something out, and if we were going to escape it was going to be together. I couldn’t let them take him away without me.
It was a huge risk, following Callum into an unseen future. I wasn’t going to be able to get home now, without the General’s help or Dr. Moss’s technological resources. Someday Callum was going to discover that I wasn’t Juliana, and he wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I would be more alone than ever, separated from my home by a quantum veil I couldn’t even hope to cross by myself, and from the boy I truly wanted, who I’d abandoned. But this was my choice. I couldn’t look back now, and I didn
’t want to. I couldn’t bear to think of it.
The ambulance was parked haphazardly on the circular driveway outside the Castle’s grand entrance. The medics loaded Callum through the back. “If you’re coming, then get in,” one of them said to me.
I climbed in after the gurney. Just as the medic was about to close the doors, I saw Thomas emerge from the ground floor of the Tower and start running toward the driveway, drawn by all the commotion. My heart leapt into my throat at the sight of him.
“Wait, wait!” I cried, but the medic slammed the doors shut.
“This is an emergency, Your Highness!” she snapped. “We can’t wait.”
Thomas reached us a second too late. He flattened his hand against the window and I did the same, imagining the feel of his skin against mine as the ambulance began to move. I watched him through the window as we drove away; he just stood there for a few seconds, frozen, then took off for the shadows of the gardens, disappearing into the night.
The hospital had to be close. There was no way there wasn’t one near the Citadel, with all of its important residents, royal and otherwise, and it was unlikely that the General would want Callum at a more distant hospital—he would want to keep an eye on him. But I had no idea what Callum’s big escape plan entailed. Was I supposed to be doing something? Surely he would have told me if I was.
My answer came swiftly. We’d only been outside the Castle for about a minute when something slammed into the ambulance, rocking me to the floor. I fell against Callum’s limp body as the IV bags dangled above my head.
“Hey!” one of the medics cried, pounding her fist against the wall of the cab. “What’s going on up there?”
“I think something just hit us!” the driver called back. A thrill rippled up my spine. Someone was coming. Someone was here.
I’d just righted myself when there was another crash, this time from the other side. The back of my head cracked against the metal wall, but I hardly felt it. I checked Callum’s wrist for a pulse. He was still alive, but unconscious, unaware of the commotion going on around him.
Two shots fired from somewhere outside and the driver shouted, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. The ambulance swerved wildly, pitching from side to side, before coming to a screeching halt. The medics were both in shock, completely baffled, but I knew what was happening. We were being rescued. I began ripping the IVs out of Callum’s arm. The female medic screamed, “What do you think you’re doing!” but I didn’t stop. I would’ve dragged Callum off the gurney, too, if I had the strength to manage it.
The back doors swung open and three men dressed in black climbed in. They each held a gun, and I flashed back to what had happened in the Tattered City with the Libertas commandos. What if I was wrong? What if this wasn’t Callum’s plan at all? What if it was someone else’s? A flare of panic shot straight up through my lungs and I found it hard to draw breath.
The medics were easily subdued; as soon as they saw the guns, they backed off. One of the men in black grabbed me and hauled me out of the ambulance. I glanced back to see another hefting Callum over his shoulder while the third kept his gun trained on the medics. There was a fourth, I now saw, dealing with the driver, and a fifth sitting at the wheel of a black unmarked van nearby. They had corralled the ambulance into a small dark alley. I could see almost nothing as the man who held me shoved me into the van. The one who had Callum laid him gently on the floor before climbing in and sliding the door shut behind him. I cringed as three more shots were fired, flinching at the sound of each one. Then the other two men jumped in through the black and the van sped off into the night.
It all happened in less than two minutes.
The men whipped off their masks and started tending to Callum.
“What did they give him?” someone demanded. I was speechless—I didn’t even know the answer. He grabbed my fist, wrenching the fingers open; I was still holding the vial. He took it from me and sniffed it, then tasted the rim with the tip of his tongue, before opening up a briefcase filled with medical supplies. He tossed a bag of saline at one of the others, who threaded the IV through the existing tap in Callum’s arm and hung the bag from a makeshift hook on the inside roof of the van. They rifled through the contents of the briefcase before finding an antidote to the poison he’d taken, jamming a hypodermic needle through the fleshy cap of the vial and drawing its contents into the needle. Then he stuck it in Callum’s arm.
“Will that cure him?” I asked. Please don’t die, Cal, I thought desperately. Please, please, please don’t die.
“We’ll know soon,” one of them said. He removed another vial from the briefcase and loaded the liquid into a second hypodermic needle.
“It’s best if you’re not awake for what comes next,” he said. Before I could shrink away, he injected something into my bloodstream.
“What are you doing?” I cried, or attempted to. The sedative overcame me so fast I wasn’t able to get all the words out before sinking into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
Thirty-Six
“She’s coming around. Juli! Juli, come on, open your eyes.” Callum! He was alive!
I tried to obey but I couldn’t. It was as if each of my eyelashes weighed a ton. I felt a hand on my cheek. I tried to sit up, but Callum pushed back against my shoulders, urging me to settle down.
“Don’t worry, you’re all right,” he said. “Lie back and relax. We’re here. We’re safe.”
“Where’s here?” I could open my eyes now, but all I could see was his face. He smiled.
“Home,” he said. “Or, at least, my home. Farnham. We’re almost to Adastra Palace.”
“How did we get here?” The last thing I remembered was being in that van, wondering if Callum would recover from whatever poison he’d ingested at the Castle, and now here we were, both awake, both alive, together. A wave of gratitude washed over me.
“We drove to Buffalo and crossed into Canada, then they loaded us on a plane and flew us straight to Adastra City,” Callum explained.
“Those men …” The memory of gunshots echoed through my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase the faces of the medics who might have been hurt or died so we could escape. So that Callum and I could live. Kata to chreon. My debts were piling up, and I was no closer to getting home.
“They work for the Farnham Intelligence Agency,” he said. “Basically our KES.”
“How did they …”
“The ring,” he said, flexing his hand. I ran my fingers over the engraved surface of the bloodred stone, thinking of the one Thomas wore, what it meant to him, and what secrets it might hide. “It’s a panic button. It called the FIA agents to me. They were undercover in Columbia City this whole time.”
“But why?”
“My mother had a feeling something like this was going to happen,” he said darkly. “They were there to extract me in case of emergency. I fought her on it, but I’m glad she insisted.”
“Me too,” I said. I sat up groggily with Callum’s support. We were alone in the back of a stretch limousine.
“She’s never going to let me hear the end of it now,” Callum said. “You should’ve heard her before I left. ‘Don’t trust them, they’ll kill you as soon as look at you.’ I didn’t believe her, and I hate, hate, hate that she was right. But at least I’m alive. And so are you.”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry, Callum.”
“Don’t be,” Callum said. “You’re just as much a victim of all this as I am. And look at me. All better.” He grinned. “Not a scratch. Well, a few puncture marks, but those’ll heal in no time. Girls like scars, right?”
“Sure,” I said with a weak smile. “The tinier, the better.”
“Well, that’s good news, because you can barely even see mine,” he joked. He handed me a glass of water. “Drink this. They tell me you’re likely to be dehydrated.”
I gulped it down. Dehydrated was an understatement. “Why did they knock me out?”
“They’re tr
ained to treat anybody from the UCC as an immediate threat,” Callum explained. “They had to incapacitate you. It’s protocol. Sorry about that.”
“Forget sorry. After what you went through, I think I can handle it.”
He smoothed my hair. “We’re going to be okay.”
“I wish you didn’t have to come back here,” I said. “I know you hate this place.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m just glad we’re both living—right now, I don’t give a damn where.”
Callum put his arms around me. I sank into him, taking comfort in the sturdiness of his body. But now that the sedatives were wearing off, I couldn’t get Thomas out of my mind. I could feel his absence like a yawning chasm in my gut. He’d try to find me, I knew he would, but he didn’t know where I’d gone. Could he guess? Could he find out? Thomas could do a lot of things, but not if he was suspended from the KES and cut off from all their resources. And did I really want him sacrificing the only career he had left going AWOL to find me? My dad had betrayed his assignment to be with my mom, and look what had happened to them. If Thomas died because of me, I would never forgive myself.
I knew one thing for sure—I couldn’t keep leading Callum on. It wasn’t that I didn’t have tender feelings for him, because I did, especially after what we’d just gone through—what he had put himself through partly on my behalf. But there was still Thomas, taking up so much space in my heart, and though in the end I couldn’t be with either of them I couldn’t allow Callum to continue to fall in love with the Juliana I was pretending to be.
But that conversation was for later. At the moment, everything was far too uncertain. I had yet to meet the queen of Farnham, and I was worried. Juliana’s stepmother sounded easy compared to Queen Marian, and I needed to hold my own against her.
The limo pulled over and the door opened. A man who could’ve been a KES agent if it weren’t for the fact that we weren’t in the Commonwealth anymore opened it for us and we climbed out.
