The Ends of the World

by Maggie Hall

  Fitz cleared his throat. I reminded myself that one good thing had happened recently. I was a girl with a grandfather. With so much else to concentrate on, that one hadn’t quite sunken in yet. Fitz drew a book from his jacket pocket. “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” he said, handing it to me.

  For a second I didn’t understand, but then I remembered the date. It was my seventeenth birthday today.

  I opened the blank cover of the book and read the title page. It was a hard copy of Napoleon’s Book of Fate.

  “This was your mother’s when she was your age,” Fitz said. “For her it was just fun, but she left it behind when she ran with you, and it helped set me down the research path that led us here.” He tapped the book with one finger. “Maybe there’s something to this fate nonsense after all.”

  I flipped the yellowed pages. The book smelled like dust and vanilla perfume. I wondered if my mom had consulted it when she’d decided to leave my father and the Circle.

  Fitz adjusted his glasses. “You’re very much like her. Just as brave and smart. Just as idealistic. I don’t think she’d like what your life has become.”

  I stiffened.

  “But she’d be proud of you. I’m proud of you, Avery.” He glanced down the path. “I heard about your dilemma. I don’t think it will come as a surprise that I strongly encourage you—all of you—to get out while you can. The Circle has already taken too much from me, and from you. I hope you’ll realize that your mother was right all along, and that you deserve more than this. I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”

  He kissed me on the temple and strolled down the path to join the others, leaving me alone with the chirping of birds and the distant hum of a lawn mower.

  He was right. My mom would hate that I was part of this. I’d come to understand her. She’d run from it not because she was weak, but because she was strong. She’d left her whole life behind—everyone and everything she knew—for me. She’d made the choice she’d thought was best, and because she had, I now had a choice, too. Just like hers, nothing about it was black and white. Not good or evil. Not right or wrong.

  I opened the Book of Fate to a page with questions, and my eye lit on one immediately. Is my intended path the correct one?

  When an Internet algorithm wasn’t doing it for you, you were supposed to make a complicated series of marks on a paper, count them, and find the answer. I chose one at random, and turned to that page. Fight it as you will, destiny will always win.

  I closed the book. Maybe it was true. My mom had run from this, and I’d ended up right back here anyway, like fate was determined to have its way.

  I picked up a sprig of freesia and rolled it between my fingers, releasing the scent into the air. I glanced at my friends, and Elodie, watching me, gave a tiny nod and herded everyone down the hill. Stellan was leaning on a crypt, one hand in his pocket and his suit jacket draped over the other arm, and it made my chest hurt. We still hadn’t talked. He stood, ready to leave me alone, too, but I let myself catch his gaze and hold it. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say with the look, but it felt too bold, too open, too risky. Too much like everything I’d been denying for too long.

  Stellan glanced down the hill, then made his way up the path to me instead. He tossed his jacket over a low-hanging branch, taking something out of the pocket before he did.

  I accepted the small paper envelope. Holding the sprig of freesia between two fingers, I opened it. Inside was a picture of my mom and me.

  “I’d sent it in to get printed last time we were in Paris,” he said gruffly. “It’s for your necklace, since the last one burned.”

  I stared at the photo. It had been taken sometime between Cannes and Fashion Week. My mom and I were laughing, her face bright red like it always got when she laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  I hadn’t remembered this. In my mind, we’d spent that whole time fighting, or worrying. But I was wrong. At least some moments in my mom’s last days had been . . . nice. Despite everything.

  I clicked open my empty locket and slipped the picture inside. It fit perfectly.

  I looked up at Stellan, tried to say something. Thank you. Why. The words wouldn’t come out.

  He nodded, like he understood anyway. I squeezed the locket in my fist.

  I hated that my mom would never know the version of me I’d become since I came to the Circle, and that I’d never understand the version of her that had existed before them. But I loved that we’d had the time we had. I loved that even though I had sad, sullen memories of our moves, I also had memories of her drawing me out with Broadway sing-alongs. I loved that copying her when I was younger was why every morning, I drank at least two cups of coffee that were at least half sugar. I loved that, even though I looked so much like the Saxons, it would always be my mom’s smile staring back at me from the mirror. Maybe that would make me try to smile more.

  I had to look up at the rustling leaves of the tree overhead to stave off tears.

  When I looked back down, Stellan was watching me. I held his gaze, and then he wrapped his arms around me from behind without a word. We looked down at the mound of flowers.

  I loved him. And not just him—I loved us. Our whole little family. Things were hard, but it wasn’t terrible and sad all the time. Just like there had been in the hard moments with my mom, there was a lot of happiness. This was a life. This was some form of what my mom had always wanted for me. What I’d always wanted for me.

  Love and hate. Good and bad. Salvation and destruction. They weren’t opposites, either. We were both. I was both. Maybe everyone was. Maybe that was okay. Maybe we did what we could with whatever we were given.

  I let my head rest back against Stellan’s chest, the freesia caught in both our hands and the ground in front of us littered with sunshine. Even though this was a funeral, every beat of his heart against my back said alive alive alive.

  CHAPTER 22

  Back at the Dauphins’, we gathered awkwardly in the front hall. Even Luc seemed reluctant to enter the quiet, empty apartments after the funerals. But then we heard a bang from up the stairs, and a kid’s shriek of laughter.

  Luc elbowed Stellan and grinned, and then he ran a hand through his hair, pulling his careful coif back into his usual bedhead. “Alors, my first act as head of the Dauphin family will be to invite in the people half the Circle still thinks are their enemy and the other half are afraid of. Sounds right. Everyone come in, make yourselves at home, and I will open some ridiculously expensive wine.”

  It broke the awkwardness, and I twisted my newly filled locket around my fingers as I followed everyone into what had become our favorite sitting room.

  Before we were even settled in, Jack perched on the arm of the couch, his hands in his pockets. “I hate to bring us back to duties so quickly, but I was speaking with Fitz at the ceremony, and he told me something we need to think about right away. We’d mentioned earlier that it was possible the Circle could come back from a Saxon takeover.”

  Elodie had been lounging on a couch and now she sat up, interested.

  Jack shook his head. “Unfortunately it’s not a positive. Fitz believes, due to conversations he overheard while he was in captivity, that the Saxons may be planning to assassinate the heads of all the families, when the time is right. And it sounds like once this treaty is signed may be that time.”

  There was a loud pop as Luc uncorked the wine bottle. “Excuse me?” he said.

  “What about their plans being ‘best for the Circle’?” I said. “I think that somewhere deep down, Lydia actually believes that.”

  Jack spread his hands. “I agree, but I think she could easily fit this plan into that framework. If every family was trying to introduce new leadership, no one would have time or energy to mutiny.”

  “She’d probably call it giving the Circle a fresh start,” Stellan muttered.

 
; “I think we’ve got to assume it’s true and try to do something about it, but it doesn’t necessarily change—” Jack turned to me. “There’s plenty of your blood to vaccinate the families.”

  “If they’ll take it.” Luc got down wine glasses from the well-stocked bar while Colette poured. “I’ve already tried to tell them we have a vaccine, but they won’t listen. No one knows what—or who—to believe anymore.”

  I stood, crossing the room to look outside through the split in the heavy velvet curtains. The streets on the back side of the Louvre were almost empty. This city that had come to mean so much to me was terrified and cowering, avoiding the virus, or the riots because of the virus. Down the block, a group of people in black masks appeared. They smashed the window of a parked car with a pipe and laughed, and I winced. Was that what the world was coming to? Something had to be done. Something had to be done to save the Circle, too.

  I heard a knock. I knew even before I’d turned around that it would be Nisha standing in the doorway.

  “We have good news,” she said, but she didn’t say it with a “good news” kind of smile. “A mouse has lived. We have many more tests to do, but to have any chance of getting a vaccine out before the treaty meeting, we would have to do the procedure . . . Miss West’s injection, that is . . . tomorrow in the morning.” Her eyes softened. “You don’t have to decide now.”

  I felt strangely calm as she left the room. I slipped off my shoes and curled back in the armchair, trying to ignore everyone staring at me.

  At first, all I’d wanted was to keep people I loved safe. I understood Lydia in that way. But I’d come to feel responsible for so much more.

  I may have been wrong assuming all the Circle families were only out for themselves, but they would need as many people on the good side as they could get. The more I thought about leaving, the more I realized I didn’t want to. And it wasn’t just to avoid going back to a life of hiding. I’d said I didn’t care about power, but maybe I was wrong. If someone like Lydia Saxon could change the course of the Circle, why couldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? The more I realized what was there for the taking, the more I wanted it, even if I had to fight for it. Maybe I did have a little of the Circle, of the Saxons, in me after all.

  “I don’t think we should leave.” I ran a thumb along the chair’s stitching. “We’ve all pledged ourselves to the Circle in various ways, but more than that, I think we have a responsibility. My mom, the Circle families we respect, Fitz, the Order—they all just wanted the Circle to be what it’s supposed to be. I don’t think I can abandon that now. I know it’s dangerous. But my mom ran from this to try to keep me safe, and it just made everything worse. Running has consequences, too.”

  I wasn’t my father, letting terrible things happen. But I wasn’t my mom either. I don’t know if I really believed it was fate that brought me back to the Circle, but I felt like I was standing at the edge of the world, holding it in hands that were no longer trembling. I remembered something my mom had said, way back in Lakehaven, Minnesota. I know you’re afraid of falling, but sometimes you’ve got to let go.

  “Each of you has to decide for yourself,” I said. “But I’m going to stay.”

  I said it to the group, but I was looking at Stellan. He nodded, like it was what he’d been expecting all along.

  “And I’m going to do the vaccine experiment. Tomorrow, I guess.” The decision felt right, like I’d come full circle. My existence had caused this. It could be my blood that ended it.

  Jack closed his eyes. Stellan watched me stoically.

  “If it continues to work on the mice, Nisha said the chances are pretty good it will work on me,” I said. “Pretty good is way better than anything else we have. You’re right that we could save the Circle with what we have now if they’ll take it, but for the rest of the world—even if every single family signs the treaty, Lydia is volatile. We need to either stop the Saxons for good, or we need a scalable vaccine. Since the former looks unlikely . . .”

  “She’s right,” Elodie said quietly. “I don’t want to admit it either, but she’s right.”

  No one argued this time.

  “No matter what ends up happening,” Jack said, looking at his phone, “Paris is shutting down. There are protests going on in the square in front of Notre-Dame that are starting to turn violent, and police are advising that people stay inside. Should we go somewhere that’s not here?”

  “A hotel?” I said, thinking of the mob I’d seen forming down the block. “What part of town is least likely to be hit by riots?”

  Stellan and Elodie tossed out suggestions, but Luc stood. I just now noticed that he’d been doing things on his phone, too, ignoring his glass of wine. “We stay here,” he said.

  We all raised a collective eyebrow. The Louvre, when the town was descending into chaos?

  “I’ve been watching what’s going on all day. We’re safe here. No one will question a strong security force around the Louvre during a threat to the city,” he said. “And if you all don’t want to stay, I have to anyway. This is my city now. I have to prepare for the worst.”

  Luc looked older than he had yesterday, a little of his sweet, carefree nature replaced with something more serious. To my surprise, it fit him.

  “I think I should stay with him,” Rocco said, breaking the silence. He turned to Stellan and me. “I’d like your permission to do so.”

  I glanced up at Stellan, and he nodded. “We’ll all stay,” I said. “It seems like the best thing we could do at this point is stick together.”

  Slowly, everyone agreed.

  We all went in various directions, to change out of their funeral attire, or to get food, to assess the situation outside, or, in the case of Stellan and Luc, to check on their little siblings. I was sitting on a couch flipping between news stations reporting rioting all over the world when Stellan came back into the room. He sat beside me.

  “How’s Anya?” I said.

  “Overwhelmed. Tired. But fine.”

  “When I said I don’t think we should leave,” I said, “I didn’t mean you. You’re a different circumstance.”

  Stellan had taken off his suit coat, and his tie hung loosely around his neck. He worked it the rest of the way off and tossed it onto the back of the sofa. “Do you want me to leave?”

  I watched the footage of protesters in masks, shouting angrily and holding up signs in a language I couldn’t understand. People worried that their government wasn’t doing more, it appeared from the English headline. The virus had only actually killed a few dozen people at this point. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if it got spread more widely. “I want you to do whatever’s best for you and Anya,” I said.

  Stellan rolled something small between his palms and waited so long to answer, I didn’t think he was going to. “What do you want for you?”

  I wondered, just for a second, whether I should rethink not telling him how I felt.

  Obviously I want you to stay here, I’d say. I wanted that even before I realized how I felt about you, and now I can’t stop thinking about how there is something between us, and it’s been growing fast. I wish there was time for more than a few illicit kisses and a lot of hard decisions. I don’t want to do this alone.

  I’d decided to fight for the Circle. I wished I could convince myself it would be right to fight for him, too.

  “If it was entirely up to me, I’d want you to stay, of course,” I said evenly. “But there’s a lot more to it than that. Whatever you choose, I understand.”

  He rested his elbows on his knees. I finally saw what was in his hand: a small red block. It must have been what Anya had been playing with upstairs. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think you know how much I appreciate you letting me make that choice.”

  “Yeah,” I said as a girl whose choices had been made for her her whole life. “I do.”
r />   The expression on Stellan’s face was one I could only call tortured. From my side, he was leaving me, but from his side, it was more than that. He was leaving nearly everyone he cared about to keep one person safe. I’d been comparing my own decision to stay or go to my mom’s, but really, his was exactly like the one she’d made seventeen years ago. He sat up and shifted, and his knee touched mine.

  “There are so many toys here,” he said, holding out the block. “Every time I go upstairs, Anya has a new favorite thing. And I’ve known Dahlia, the nanny, for years. Anya trusts her already. Which is especially fortunate since I have no clue how to take care of a seven-year-old girl.”

  That was not something he should worry about. He’d learn fast. I shifted closer so my hip touched his. As we watched Japan declare a state of emergency on TV, and the United States close its borders, “just until things are cleared up,” he settled his hand on my thigh.

  Stellan’s forearms, like the rest of him, were slim but hard, powerful and graceful. I put a hand over his and traced the map of veins and scars and scrapes there. His long fingers tightened on my leg.

  I was just about to decide that there were worse ways to spend what could be my last evening on this planet when he said, “Why did you come to Russia? You didn’t have to.”

  My fingers tightened over his. “I—”

  The doors to the library burst open. Stellan smoothly moved his hand, and Luc, Colette, and Elodie burst inside, carrying a pyramid of multicolored macarons, topped off with sparklers.

  “Bon anniversaire!” they shouted.

  CHAPTER 23

  What is this?” I scrambled to my feet.

  “I heard there’s a very important birthday today.” Elodie batted a spark away from Colette’s hair. “I guess the birthday girl forgot to tell us.”

  “You guys, no,” I protested as they brought the macaron cake to the coffee table in front of me and the sparklers sizzled and flashed. “We can’t have a party with all this going on.”