The Ends of the World

by Maggie Hall

He took another flower from my hair, and I knew we were both thinking about how he’d taken out my bobby pins that first day on the plane, when we had just met and the intimacy of it was completely inappropriate. “I’m relatively certain,” he said, “that I’ll be able to find other ways to distract you.”

  This time, I was the one who took his hand and pulled him out of the room, and for the rest of the night, I didn’t think about the future or the past. The present was enough.

  He guided us past the wing that had been closed off after the Dauphin family had been infected. Past the hall where Luc’s bedroom was. He plucked another flower from my hair, and another, tossing them on the floor like a trail of bread crumbs up narrow stairs, to a hallway that was never meant to be for the public. To a bedroom. Small, all white.

  “Your room,” I asked around the edge of a kiss.

  “Is this okay?” he said.

  “Yes.” It was warm and still and soft inside, homey and cozy like the Dauphins hadn’t touched it since he’d left. Stellan pulled the small round window open a crack. Outside, a firework exploded in the distance with a pop and a sizzle.

  “Kuklachka. My little doll.” The single candle on a tall bureau threw a pool of light against the wall, enough to illuminate the small room softly. I could tell he wanted to say more, but he wasn’t sure how. I understood anyway, and instead I kissed him again. And again. And again.

  I was so afraid that we’d been playing at being kings and queens, and under it all, I was nothing but a girl, after all. Terrified that nothing I did mattered. Terrified that it did. But I wasn’t scared of this. Is this what being in love was? I wasn’t worried about doing or saying too much, or the wrong thing. I wasn’t worried about feeling too much or the wrong thing.

  My head swam with heat and the scent of the candle and the taste of his skin. Being so close to him was overwhelming, and all I wanted was to be closer. We made our way across the room slowly, until the backs of my legs hit the end of the bed.

  The flutter and snap of the curtains, candlelight golden and glowing on his skin and on mine, flickers of life painting a canvas. The world was exploding around us, and we were a glow at its soft, warm center.

  My skin took every careful touch and multiplied it by the electricity in my blood, and my heart beat in time with my thoughts, with every kiss, with every time I whispered I love you, I love you, I love you.

  He checked in with me every step of the way, and I knew that if I wanted to stop, we would. But I didn’t. So we didn’t. And I was his and he was mine, and for tonight, that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 25

  As was often the case, Stellan and I were awake hours before anyone else the next morning.

  Last night, we’d managed to let ourselves forget about what was going to happen today. Though we didn’t so much as mention the scientists or the mice or the virus this morning, I could tell he was trying very hard to distract me enough that neither of us would think about it. It didn’t work, of course, but it managed to keep the knot of nerves in my throat at bay until we couldn’t deny reality any longer.

  We’d told Nisha I’d be ready by nine. When we made our way downstairs, I was tousling my freshly showered hair with one hand, holding Stellan’s hand with the other. Luc looked up from his croissant. “Good morning,” he said, and grinned at me and Stellan, then cut his eyes pointedly at the next chair over, where Stellan’s jacket and shirt were folded neatly. “How did everyone sleep? You two certainly look . . .”

  Colette, sitting next to him, smacked the back of his head.

  “Ow,” Luc pouted. “I was just going to say well rested. And . . . clean.” She tried to smack him again, and he ducked with a grin. And then his face dropped.

  We all turned to see Nisha standing in the doorway. “All the mice are still alive.” Her voice was bright and confident, but she was twisting her hands nervously.

  I wasn’t a mouse. None of us said it. Stellan’s hand clenched in mine.

  For a brief moment, I wanted to take it all back. I couldn’t do this after all. This wasn’t how I wanted everything to end. Maybe there was another way.

  There wasn’t.

  I took a single, shuddering breath. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  All the way to the lab, Jack and Stellan and Elodie grilled Nisha about specifics, even though they knew nothing would change my mind now.

  I sat in a chair. Nisha rolled over a jangling cart of medical supplies and wrapped a piece of elastic tight around my arm. She felt for a vein on the inside of my elbow.

  A tear slipped down my cheek, then another and another.

  Colette tried to wipe them away until she realized it was futile. Luc kissed me on both cheeks. Elodie pressed her lips together and squeezed my knee hard. Jack hugged me so tightly, my ribs almost cracked. Stellan sat beside me, holding my hand and stroking my hair.

  I don’t want to die, said the voice in my head. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. The tears flowed more freely.

  As I held out my arm and Nisha swabbed the inside of my elbow, Stellan leaned close to my ear and whispered about random distracting things like dogs in strollers in Japan. I was shaking now, hard enough that he had to steady my arm for Nisha, but he just kept talking, smoothly, about how once he’d seen someone walking three cats on leashes in a Tokyo park, and I laughed through the tears.

  Nisha pressed the needle into my arm and pushed down. There was a second when I felt only the cool of the liquid going into my veins. Then, the cool turned to fire, and I screamed.

  CHAPTER 26

  I woke up to Nisha on the computer, her back to me. I silently assessed my body. Everything felt like it was where it should be. “What happened?” I croaked, and Nisha startled.

  A chair scraped and Stellan was standing over me, the relief in his posture palpable. “How are you feeling?”

  I hauled myself to sitting, and found everyone else crowded around the couch I’d been lying on. “Fine, actually. Just dizzy. Did it work?”

  “The good news is that you’re alive,” Elodie said.

  At that word—alive—my brain woke up. It was like I’d stopped breathing for too long and suddenly air rushed through me.

  “Being alive is too much cause for celebration lately. We’ve really lowered the bar.” Elodie glared from me to Luc, but I could hear the relief in her voice.

  I felt giddy, euphoric, dizzy with it. Hot tears pricked at my eyes. I realized then just how sure I’d been that I’d never hear one of Elodie’s sarcastic comments again.

  Stellan sat down next to me. “How does it feel being a lab rat?” he murmured, his voice husky with suppressed emotion. He hadn’t thought I was going to make it, either.

  I clung to his hand, marveling at the feeling of it, at the air going into my lungs with each shaky breath, at the sunlight through the window. I’d never known quite how amazing being alive was until I thought I’d given it up.

  “The bad news,” Nisha said slowly, “is that it didn’t work. We have no vaccine.”

  “Wait, what?” I was still light-headed. I hadn’t heard right.

  She got out of her chair. “We’ve looked at your blood already. If the modification was going to take, it would happen quickly, and it hasn’t. It appears the Great modification does nothing to you. Maybe Olympias designed a safeguard that you two wouldn’t kill each other. We may never understand how, just like we don’t understand how she created the virus in the first place. But it also means we can’t make the vaccine replicate like we wished to.”

  “Then why did I pass out?”

  “The pain? The fear? Perhaps some of the other agents we put in the serum? You should be fine.”

  Another wave of dizziness hit me, and I curled back into the couch cushions. “So what do we do? We have no vaccine and no plan, and the meeting is set to happen sometime in the next
twelve hours.”

  “That is the million-dollar question,” Rocco said, his hands on the back of Luc’s chair.

  Stellan got a text and went upstairs to retrieve Anya, and soon she was sitting on the floor at our feet coloring while everyone tossed out ideas. If we could get ahold of the Saxons’ virus supply, we could destroy it. But without someone on the inside, that seemed unlikely. Maybe we could somehow force the Circle to take the cure. And Colette could post a video warning people in the cities not to drink tap water in case the Saxons released it anyway.

  “That would cause a whole new level of mass panic,” Jack said. “And if the virus were released in aerosol form, it’d be no use at all.”

  He startled when Anya tapped on his knee and handed him a crayon and a page out of her coloring book, saying something bossy-sounding in Russian. Jack looked taken aback but obeyed, sitting cross-legged on the floor and shading in a bright orange sun.

  “What if . . . ” Luc started hesitantly. “What is the word in English? When you are playing cards and you lie about what you have.”

  “Bluff?” I said, sitting up.

  “Yes. We bluff. If we thought distributing this vaccine could work, the Circle will think so, too. For all they know, we could have sent out the vaccine the second Lydia made the threat.”

  For once, no one shot down the idea immediately.

  I held a velvet cushion in my lap. “So we’d go to the meeting. We tell the Circle we’ve mass-released the vaccine and their territories are safe from the virus. We tell them the Saxons’ plan to kill them, and we give them the vaccine in small doses, just in case. Then we get them to . . . physically overpower the Saxons, all before Lydia can pull the trigger?” I said doubtfully.

  “Or hope enough of them side against the Saxons that it’s no longer in her best interests to pull the trigger at all.” Elodie had moved to lie on one of the couches, her feet in Colette’s lap. She chewed her thumbnail thoughtfully. “Even if the Saxons themselves don’t take our bluff, actually releasing the virus on a grand scale has got to be their last resort, right? Dealing with the fallout from that would be messy and difficult and not what they want at all.”

  I looked outside. It was late morning. We had a few hours until we’d know where the meeting was. A few hours more until it was all over. “Let’s say we decide to do this. What are the problems?”

  “It’ll be incredibly dangerous,” Jack said. “Fitz tried to make me promise that we wouldn’t do anything like this.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t think we should do it,” Jack said quietly, tapping a crayon on his hand. “I think it might be our only hope.”

  “Okay, next,” I said. “How would we convince them we’re telling the truth? You heard what Luc said yesterday. The Circle doesn’t know what to believe, but I bet anything we say comes in last on that list.”

  Anya handed Stellan a finished picture of a purple-and-green castle, and he grinned at her. “Everything is our word against theirs besides the actual science of the virus and the vaccine,” he said. “How can we use that?”

  “Yes,” I said excitedly. “We show them. We bring a mouse, vaccinate it, then expose it to the virus.”

  “A mouse won’t prove anything,” Nisha said, “and they’ll know it.” She was sitting on the arm of the sofa nearest me. Anya thrust a new coloring page at Jack, with a picture of a princess on it, and Jack looked up helplessly. Nisha rolled her eyes and joined them on the floor, taking the page out of his hands and attacking it with a red crayon. He pulled out yellow and pink and handed them to her, too. I did a double take at the familiarity that had sprung up between them, thinking suddenly of the times I’d seen them together last night. Jack caught me watching, frowned at what he read on my face, and gave me a warning look.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t be a mouse.” Colette hadn’t said anything the whole time we’d been plotting, but now she sat up straight, her hand wrapped around Elodie’s ankle. “I’ve taken the vaccine. Infect me.”

  We all looked at her, her strawberry-blond curls forming a halo around her heart-shaped face in the midday light. “Colette, you don’t have to—” Stellan started.

  “Just because I’m not good with a gun like the rest of you doesn’t mean I’m useless. All I’ve wanted since Liam died was to make sure it didn’t happen again. And then I’m the one who took you all to that show where Cole—” Her big green eyes flicked to me, and away. “We know the vaccine works. I’ll be okay. Let me do this.”

  Elodie pressed her lips together, but nodded. “Okay. And if we can prove we’re telling the truth about the vaccine, they’ll be more likely to believe the rest. Just one tiny problem: despite the fact that they heard Lydia saying those things on tape, some of them still don’t believe it. And the ones who do are afraid of us anyway. They might not even let us into the room.”

  Luc was pacing to and fro, coffee cup in hand. “They might be afraid of you, but you’re still part of the Circle. We initiated you. You have a right to be at any Circle activity as much as I do.”

  The back of my neck prickled. All this time, I hadn’t been thinking of it that way. We didn’t have to hope they’d let us be one of them. We already were.

  But Elodie waved a dismissive hand. “They’ll say the initiation wasn’t finished. We don’t even have the tattoos.”

  There were murmurs of agreement around the room.

  I glanced at Stellan. He smoothed the edges of Anya’s picture over his knees. “So we get them,” I said. All the murmurs stopped. “We finish the initiation, and we get the tattoos. Then we’re official.”

  Next to me, Stellan opened his mouth, closed it again. His silence made me pause. I should have asked him first. I might have survived this experiment, but my future with him was still uncertain. And if he was leaving tomorrow, committing to the Circle might not be what he’d want.

  But I did want it. This wasn’t a marriage ceremony I’d just committed us to. We’d figure out us whenever he was ready. This was me, pledging myself.

  “I guess I should say I’ll get the tattoo,” I said. “Nobody else has to.”

  “Yesterday was her seventeenth birthday,” Elodie said. “That’s when Circle members usually get their tattoos. And technically, only one witness from another family has to be present.”

  Luc raised his hand.

  I glanced at Stellan, and his eyes were boring into me. I gave him as good a smile as I could muster, and he gave a small one back. I love you, I thought. You love me. It sucks that that’s not automatically enough.

  “It’s settled, then,” Colette said. I tore my eyes from my fake husband’s. “Let’s make you official.”

  • • •

  We’d designated the Dauphins’ grand library as our ritual space. We’d pulled the shutters closed, and it was dark enough inside that it might as well have been night.

  We stood around a table in the center of the cleared room. The only illumination was the pool of light from a single lamp.

  “Each family has a book,” Elodie explained. “It’s their history, their motto, everything that matters to them, and you swear your loyalty on it, to the Circle and to your family. Your family doesn’t have one, so you’ll need to swear on something else.”

  I looked around the room. “You all. You’re what I want to swear on. I know it’s cheesy,” I said when Elodie cocked an eyebrow, “but there’s nothing else that makes more sense.”

  Jack cleared his throat, then put his hand on the table and looked up at me. I smiled. Elodie shrugged and placed her hand over his, then Colette, then Luc. I motioned to Rocco, and he came from where he’d been standing a few paces back and put his hand on the pile, too, and finally, Stellan put his on top. I placed my hand over all of theirs.

  Elodie read some passages from a book in Greek, her face lit from below by the lamplight
. I pressed my palm down, feeling the slight movements of all these people I loved holding me up. “Do you pledge your loyalty as long as you remain a member of the”—she looked up—“the Korolev family?”

  I met Stellan’s eyes. “I do pledge my loyalty,” I said, then repeating the Circle motto, “By blood. And—”

  Before the Circle ceremony where we were to become the official thirteenth family, we hadn’t only discussed what name our family would take, and what symbol. We’d talked about the family motto. These had been Alexander the Great’s words first, declaring how much of the earth would be his. But they meant more now.

  Stellan nodded, and I finished the pledge. “I pledge my loyalty. By blood,” I said, “and to the ends of the world.”

  CHAPTER 27

  An hour later, I was sitting in an armchair, wincing as a tattoo artist Elodie had paid to come here during a citywide lockdown and paid more to keep quiet about it inked the symbol from my necklace onto the inside of my left wrist.

  I hissed through clenched teeth, loud enough that Elodie laughed. “That hurts,” I said.

  “You were shot in that arm,” Elodie reminded me. I made a face at her.

  As the needle buzzed, Stellan stepped up beside me. He’d been quiet since I sat down. Now he stared at my wrist and chewed his lip. “It looks good.”

  It did. It was almost finished: the thirteen-loop symbol from the necklace I’d worn practically my whole life, now inked into my skin, part of me forever.

  “I suppose we won’t be quite official if I don’t get one, too,” Stellan said after a pause. I’d been trying to not think about it, trying to let him bring it up when he was ready. I glanced back at everyone else. Nisha had just come in to give an update on the new experiments they were doing on the vaccine, and Jack and Elodie were asking questions.

  “You don’t have to,” I said.

  “I know I don’t.”

  The knots in my stomach drew tighter. I’d just declared my intention to take my place as part of the most powerful group in the world, but I was afraid to ask what exactly he meant. It didn’t have to mean he was staying. He’d told me he loved me yesterday—but he’d also said it might be his only chance to say it. This could be the last thing he did with us before he left for good.