by Maggie Hall
“Thank you, Mariam,” I said. I felt like I had to talk quietly or whatever spell had gotten us all out alive would be broken. “I’m sorry about all the blood. I’m sure Elodie told you already, but we’ll give you money to replace your car.”
The smile she gave me wasn’t even hesitant. She grabbed her phone from the middle console and turned it to me. “This is you?”
It was a paparazzi photo of me and Stellan at some airport somewhere. “Oh,” I said, startled. “Um—”
“Don’t worry, she’s known the whole time,” Elodie piped up. “She kept it quiet even before I asked her to. We’re fine.”
“Thank you,” I said to her again. I’d thought we could trust her, but it was nice to have it confirmed that we didn’t have to worry about talking in here. Mariam glanced from me to Stellan with a broad grin before she turned back to the road. Stellan widened his eyes with a shrug.
Jack and Elodie sprawled in the far-back bench seat, with Stellan and me in the middle. Elodie was still coughing, but it hadn’t gotten worse, and Jack had never shown any signs of illness.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack watching Stellan and Elodie, as many emotions flitting across his face as there had been in that room with me. Over the past few days, the three of them had learned a lot about one another.
Jack turned to stare out the front window. Elodie was working dirt out from under her fingernails with a knife. We were on a smaller road now. Mariam’s van had no air-conditioning, and the wind whipped through the open windows.
“I remember the first time I met you two,” Stellan said. There was a subtle shift in the car as Jack and Elodie’s attention turned to him. “Bishop had to save me.”
I glanced back at Jack. The kids from the Saxon and Dauphin households used to train and do their schooling together, back when the families got along. That was how they all knew Fitz, and each other.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure Jack was going to respond, but then he said, “I just made some people back off. He didn’t exactly need saving.” It was like they were telling the story to me. “He was at least a foot taller than me—”
“And I was crying like a toddler,” Stellan said. “I’d just been tossed into this child boot camp. I couldn’t speak a word of English.”
And his family had just died. He’d been ripped away from his baby sister. He was in incredible pain. I remembered all that from when he’d told me his version of this story. He didn’t mention it now, though.
“Not like being friends with me helped him much,” Jack quipped from behind me. “I was Fitz’s pet. They all hated me.”
“They hated him because he was better than they were. He was picked early as one who could become Keeper.” There was a surprising warmth in Stellan’s voice.
“And he was the miracle child,” Jack agreed. “We were—”
“Feared. Admired. Revered,” Elodie cut in. “Resented.” The boys didn’t protest.
“I practiced my English,” Stellan said. “I taught them Russian—taught him, I mean. I always wondered how you picked it up so quickly.” He frowned at Elodie, but there was no malice behind it.
She shrugged. “And I made them accept me as part of their little in-crowd by beating them both in fights. Of course no one knew Fitz had been training me.”
“We thought she was some magical warrior creature,” Jack said.
“I was,” Elodie retorted, and beside me, Stellan smiled for the first time since we’d learned she was Order. Something passed between the three of them. An acknowledgment of things they maybe hadn’t admitted. A forgiveness.
I knew where the story went as they got older. They’d all stayed close—including and despite their various romantic entanglements—until Oliver Saxon’s death, and then it had fallen apart. Until I’d shown up and thrown everything up in the air again.
Elodie curled on her side and tucked her head against the van’s musty seat. She yawned so widely, I could see her back teeth. Jack was blinking, too.
We were all quiet, the sounds of the road and the music Mariam had low on the radio a blanket of noise muffling any more thoughts. Soon I glanced back to see Jack breathing deeply, asleep with his arms crossed over his chest. Elodie snorted in her sleep.
“She always insists she doesn’t snore,” Stellan whispered. “Now you can back me up.”
I smiled, then pulled out my phone. It was hard not to be obsessed with the news, even though nothing major had happened the last couple times I’d checked. That wasn’t the case this time. Since we’d been at the doctor’s office, another attack had been reported. I inclined the phone toward Stellan. “China,” I whispered. A government building. Only two people had died, but that didn’t matter. The Chinese media was blaming it on Japan, and saying there was more to come. Their military was taking to the streets to stop the terrified looting in Beijing and Shanghai and dozens of smaller cities. “That doesn’t fit with religious extremism,” I said.
“The conflict between China and Japan is old, too. They seem to be stirring all the pots they can.”
“Does that mean the Wang family is collaborating with the Saxons, too?”
“It’s possible,” Stellan whispered. “They could have told the Wangs and the Melechs and anyone else that for the price of a few deaths and some chaos in their territories, they’ll have a position of power in the new Saxon regime. And if they’re blaming it on Japan out in the world, they’re probably blaming it on the Mikados in the Circle. Probably saying they’re in league with us.”
I flipped through more. Riots in Jerusalem. Half the EU considering following the UK and closing borders. People in surgical masks picketing outside a government building. And this was just over these small attacks.
What would happen if the Saxons had more of the virus? What would happen if they had both that and the cure? I glanced down at the bandage on my shoulder.
Life and death, all in my blood.
When Olympias had said on the clue that a woman holds all the power now, she hadn’t just been referring to how she herself physically held the secrets in her tomb. She’d been referring to me. The girl of the bloodline, with the power to destroy them, and to save them.
It was far more power than I wanted.
“The scientists are getting closer to finding a way to deactivate it in our blood,” Stellan whispered. “Elodie has already told Nisha what we found out about the cure, and she’s working on it.” Nisha was our main contact with the crew of scientists. “And they’ve learned more about my blood, so maybe that’ll help.”
I looked up to see headlights from an oncoming car slant across his face. “Yeah?” We’d changed into clean clothes before we left the city, but we hadn’t had a chance to shower, and we were all grimy. Stellan had pulled part of his hair back with a rubber band from the clinic. If I’d thought he looked stereotypically Euro-hipster normally, this was a whole new level. To my surprise, I didn’t dislike it on him.
“I got a report about it earlier. They found some of Olympias’s writings. She used to say she created Alexander’s blood, that she made him what he was. They still don’t know exactly how she did it, whether scientifically or . . .” He trailed off.
Not that I believed anything about our situation was supernatural, but I could see how people back in Alexander’s day might have believed the rumors that his mother was a witch.
“But however it happened,” he went on, “she said she gave Alexander’s blood incredible regenerative properties. She implied that it was resistant to disease, and that wherever on the body there’s enough blood near the surface, it could be impervious to surface wounds.”
Goose bumps rose on my legs. “Walk through fire.”
“Blood, near the surface of the body.” The wind ruffled the part of his hair that was still down.
“Your heel,” I remembered. His heel was the on
ly part of his body that looked burned in the way a normal burn would look, and he said it had taken much longer to recover. “The Achilles’ heel. There’s so little tissue there. Less blood at the surface, probably?”
“So more opportunity to be injured and not heal. That’s what I thought, too.” He leaned back, fingers to his mouth like he wished he had a cigarette.
“The Great,” I said. He inclined his head. Invincible. Indestructible. To some extent, at least. “Does that mean some kind of ancient genetic engineering? Is that possible?”
“These days there is biotechnology, and a science called epigenetics that has to do with how genes express themselves, but we don’t have anything like this . . . We’re not necessarily at the peak of all knowledge now, though, like people tend to think we are. Who knows what was possible then.”
We looked out the front window again.
“What if they can’t deactivate it?” I said, unable to hold it back anymore. “Now, if they capture us, they have everything they need. And the only way to destroy the cure . . .”
“No,” he said. I’m sure we’d all thought it, even if no one would admit it. How much was one girl’s life really worth, when the alternative was this terrible?
My own grubby hair clung damply to my neck. I pulled it back. “I’m not saying it should be Plan A, but if it’s me or half the world? Do the math.”
“We’re going to figure something out,” he said firmly. I almost believed him.
For a while we stared out the window, watching the miles go by and the headlights approach and zoom past. Driving in a musty van toward the unknown felt like half my childhood. Funny that that was comforting now, when I started off every one of those drives in tears over yet another last-second move. By a couple hours in, though, my mom would always make it better. She’d stop at a gas station, we’d buy whatever weird regional snack we could find, and we’d sit in the parking lot and speculate about our new home.
I wasn’t used to these intrusive memories being nice ones. I felt Stellan looking at me. I told him what I’d just been thinking. “And she’d do what she always did when I was upset. She would . . . pet me. Just rub my back, or my hair, like I was a scared puppy. I always calmed down. Is that weird? I don’t know why I just told you that.”
He shrugged and stretched his legs into the space between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. “I don’t know why I tell you a lot of things.”
“I could have saved her,” I whispered. “The cure is my blood. I was right there.”
“You didn’t know,” he said.
“I loved her so much.”
He pulled his feet back in. Headlights from an oncoming car slanted across his face. “I know.”
“You don’t.” Outside was flat as far as I could see, dotted with shadows I knew were scrubby bushes, and lights in the distance. It was like voicing one of the concerns I’d had since the tomb, and then letting myself talk about my mom, had opened a floodgate. Or maybe it was Stellan. I had a definite tendency to overshare with him in a way I never did with anyone else. Maybe Jack was right and the two of us understood things no one else really could. “I had no other family. We weren’t anywhere long enough for me to find people I cared about, and if I did, we left them. She was all I had, and even though I loved her, I spent a lot of time resenting her for that.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stellan turn in his seat to watch me.
“I’m sorry. I know that sounds whiny and that all you guys had childhoods so much worse; this doesn’t even compare.” I had barely let myself think these things, but now I couldn’t stop. You could say things in the dark that weren’t okay in the daylight, I guess. Studying the broken headrest of the passenger’s seat in front of me, I went on. “When she got kidnapped, I felt so horribly guilty, and at the same time, I almost blamed her. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if she’d told me the truth so I wouldn’t have stumbled into it blind like I did.”
I squeezed my locket so hard, my fingers hurt. “When we got her back, I didn’t even take advantage of the time I had with her. I think I was still a little angry. And now she’s dead. My mom is dead. I should be able to just be sad like a normal person, but I can’t.” Jack saying it on the bus had made me realize it. If I was just sad, everything would be so much easier. “I feel guilty because it was my fault. And angry because it was partly hers. And then so guilty again, about being angry.”
Stellan started to say something, but I wasn’t done. “And on top of it all, I feel so disgusted with myself over everything. Over how I feel about my mom. Over how I don’t even feel bad that Cole is dead. He’s my half brother, and he’s dead, and I’m glad, and that’s disgusting. I can’t believe I feel those things. I don’t even recognize myself.”
Before I even realized I was shaking again, Stellan’s hand was gently cupping the back of my neck, his thumb running over my hair. “Like this?” he said quietly.
I tensed. I should want him to stop. I didn’t. “Yeah.”
“Is this weird?” he said after a second.
“Yeah.”
“Good weird?”
I nodded.
“You don’t have to keep making up ridiculous excuses like panic attacks to get me to touch you, you know.” One side of his mouth tugged up. “All you have to do is ask.”
“Shut up,” I whispered, but he didn’t stop petting my head, and I didn’t tell him to. The shaking calmed. For some reason, I remembered that night on the train from Paris to Cannes. He’d had a head injury, I’d helped him take care of it. The next morning, we’d woken up accidentally wrapped together in my bed, with Jack sleeping next to us.
I glanced to the back seat at Jack and Elodie’s slumbering forms. “So have you talked to your sister again?” I said, changing the subject abruptly.
His fingers paused. “Before we went into the tunnels. They’re at the safe house. They’re fine.” He gave a wry smile. “The nanny told me to stop calling so much. I was making Anya nervous.”
I pulled my knees up to my chest. “I’m glad she’s okay.”
He nodded. His hand trailed off my back and he turned to stare out the window. I realized he’d never answered the question of how he knew what a panic attack looked like, and exactly what to do. I realized I’d been doing a whole lot of talking about myself.
“Hey, are you doing okay?” I said.
He didn’t turn around. “Never better.”
“I was serious when I said you could leave. Not that you need my permission.” I remembered the very first time I’d learned he even had a seven-year-old sister. The tattered photo he kept in his wallet of the tiny, scarred blond girl. The reason why he became part of the Circle in the first place, and the only reason he cared about the power that being the thirteenth line could bring. It wasn’t fair to him that now he was so caught up in it that he hadn’t run when he had the chance. It wasn’t fair that he had to be here now rather than ensuring that she was where she should be. He should leave. “Once it’s safe again, you can take Anya and go.”
I thought he might answer. But just like when I’d mentioned it in the tunnels earlier, he didn’t say a thing.
CHAPTER 16
Everyone disappeared into separate rooms off the same hallway with nothing but a wave and quick plans for the morning. Tomorrow, we were going to get out of Egypt and rescue Fitz. I stayed watching all their doors for a few seconds before I shut mine.
My room was sparsely furnished, with a heavy wooden armoire, a stiff-looking sofa, a bed, and a thin rug over the brick floor. A stick of incense had been lit and sent up thick, sweet smoke.
I took a shower—cold, because I couldn’t figure out how to get the water to warm, or maybe there wasn’t a way, since this was not a fancy hotel—and flopped onto the bed, pulling the thin quilt over me.
Every part of my body ached. It wasn�
�t just the bullet wound—it was the stiffness from sitting on the bus so long, the blows from the explosion, the knot on my elbow from falling out of my chair deceiving the guard at the hospital. It all caught up at once, and I thanked Elodie a million times over for the painkillers she’d grabbed.
I stared up at the ceiling fan, which was turning lazily. We were just off the lobby, and outside my door, footsteps clomped back and forth on the brick floor. Someone made a comment in Arabic, and someone else laughed. When we’d walked through the lobby, it had smelled like mint tea, and I realized it did in here, too, over the incense.
I lifted my head. A silver pot of tea with a slim metal cup and a small dish of some kind of pastries—fried dough balls soaked in a syrup—sat on the nightstand next to the single lamp. The proprietor must have delivered it as we were checking in. My worn-out heart thumped at the kindness of the gesture, the way it made this insignificant place feel more like home than anywhere had lately.
Home. What would that mean for me now? Earlier, it had sounded like Jack planned to stay with the Circle once this was all over—but now that he was a Keeper who had killed a family member, everything was a lot more complicated. Elodie, I assumed, might go back to the Order. Stellan would almost certainly leave the Circle as soon as he could, though he hadn’t confirmed it. He hadn’t said much the rest of the drive, actually.
I let my eyes drift closed, playing over everything we’d said in the car. It had been so long since I’d really talked to anyone. I’d isolated myself from all of them lately, but being without Stellan had been especially hard, I realized. Instead of making me more stressed, talking to him made me feel stronger. The last time we’d talked like that was probably at that bar in Cannes, right before we—
My eyes flew open.
I stared up at the wooden beams of the ceiling, but the picture wouldn’t fade.
