by Maggie Hall
Luc had left Rocco in charge of his security forces in Paris, and Nisha and the science team were still working on replicating the vaccine. Fitz, for his part, had made it very clear he didn’t think we should be doing this. When he realized we couldn’t be dissuaded, he’d reminded us to take the vaccine ourselves, just in case, and wished us well. Once this was over, maybe I’d actually have time to get to know my grandfather.
We’d meant to be at the Vatican half an hour ago, waiting to go into the meeting the second it started. But traffic was at a standstill, and every shortcut the driver tried was met with police in riot gear or crowds congregating in the streets, most of them in surgical masks or with bandanas tied over their faces.
I tapped my fingers nervously on the cab’s cracked leather seat as I strained to see out the back windows. We didn’t have time for this. Luc could stall for a few minutes, but if the treaty was signed before we arrived, it was all over.
“We have to get out,” I said.
“And do what, run? We’re still miles away.” Elodie craned her neck over a crowd burning something in the street.
A memory came to me. Istanbul, holding on to Jack like my life depended on it, the stolen motorcycle we were on flying through the city streets while people we thought were the Order chased us.
There was no shortage of motorbikes in Rome. I looked around and spotted a few parked in front of a gelato shop half a block away. “Can you guys hot-wire those?”
We jumped out of the cab. No one gave us a second look while Jack fiddled with some wires in one bike’s ignition and Stellan did the other. Both bikes roared to life, and I climbed on behind Stellan while Elodie held on to Jack. “See you there,” I yelled, and I clung to Stellan as we sped off down the street.
We maneuvered around crowds of people who paid no attention to us, and police officers who yelled in vain for us to slow down. When our lane slowed, Stellan swerved into oncoming traffic, nearly missing a wall of cars coming the other way. I dug my fingers into his chest and we flew up onto a sidewalk to a chorus of angry honking, and then made an abrupt turn onto a bridge flanked by stone lions. He hit the gas and we flew over the Tiber River, the gold dome of St. Peter’s Basilica approaching fast.
And then I looked around him at the road ahead.
“Stop!” I shrieked, but Stellan was already slamming on the brakes. I lurched forward, and Stellan braced us hard. Jack and Elodie ground to a halt next to us. The bridge was blocked by hundreds—no, thousands—of people.
“It’s St. Peter’s Square,” Stellan said. “It’s so crowded, it’s spilled all the way out to here.”
“Is the pope speaking?” Jack asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe this is just where people feel safe,” Stellan said.
I looked at my phone. “Twelve minutes until the meeting starts.”
We left the bikes on the sidewalk. Stellan took my hand, I took Jack’s, and he took Elodie’s, and we started weaving through the densely packed crowd.
The sun wasn’t down yet, but the pilgrims were holding candles already, a vigil for those who had died, and a prayer for those who still might. Some chanted, some cried. A group of stoic old men held signs in English proclaiming the end of the world, and every few feet someone silently lifted a cross to the sky, eyes closed, lips moving in prayer. Some eyes shifted to us as we pushed by, and there were a few shouts in languages I didn’t know, but most of the crowd ignored us, their eyes straight ahead to a glowing balcony, where the pope stood to give blessings.
I wondered for just a second whether we should try to evacuate all these people. If the Saxons were to release the virus on the Circle and it got down here . . . But we had no way to do it, and no time.
As we got closer, the crowds grew thick enough that we were getting nowhere. A wild-eyed man jumped in front of us and screamed something, waving a hand-painted sign, and I recoiled while Stellan waved him off. Jack let go of my hand and climbed up on the base of a light pole to look over the crowd, then jumped back down and led us in a different direction. “Excuse us!” Elodie shouted, and repeated it in Italian and French before we resorted to using our elbows. We skirted a group of nuns, not one of them taller than me.
And then, we were at the front of St. Peter’s Basilica. To get Alexander’s bone, we’d traipsed into their most sacred archives and taken anything we wanted—Circle privileges. Now we hopped the low fence only to be stopped immediately by a group of the Swiss Guard. Stellan said a few words to one of them, and he went to get a superior while the rest held weapons on us. When a priest appeared, Stellan murmured something to him, and he looked over the four of us, surprised—and opened the doors, gesturing for the guards to step aside.
The priest—the Circle’s main contact here at the Vatican, Stellan whispered to me—showed us inside St. Peter’s Basilica.
The same panic that had driven some people to riot outside had driven others in here, to seek comfort another way. The pews were packed with worshippers. Chanting, sonorous and trancelike, floated up like the wisps of smoke from the braziers. Saints and angels rendered in gold looked on from their perches high above the congregation, and the last rays of the evening light slanted in, blinding off the cathedral’s gilded accents, like the heavens had opened right above us. Our footsteps echoed hollowly.
We followed the priest up some stairs and into a room filled with Circle members. The second the door opened, every head swung our way. Everyone but Luc and Colette looked like they’d seen a ghost. Quite a few of them gestured to their Keepers, and in moments, half a dozen guns were trained on us. We’d known this would happen.
We’d considered blurting out everything the second we walked in the door. We’d decided against it. Without any preamble, no one would believe us. They might just kill us.
So we just put our hands up and walked calmly inside, like we were meant to be here.
The whole Circle was sitting around a long table, like they did at council meetings. In front of each of them was what looked like a contract and a pen. I immediately found Lydia, at the far end of the table, by my father. I let out a soft breath.
I hadn’t actually seen Lydia since Cole had died. In Russia, we’d just heard her voice. Her long dark hair was gone, in its place a severe, choppy pixie cut, messy enough that she’d probably done it herself, and not carefully. She was wearing an oversized coat, and she had no makeup on. This was the first time I’d ever seen her less than perfectly put together.
Next to her was my father. Alistair Saxon was at the head of the table, pretending, as he did, to be in charge. He half stood when we came into the room. And then he sat back down and sighed, and my last, small hope that he would stand up for what was right died.
I didn’t think my father was evil. My mom never would have fallen for him if he was, and Fitz’s story had confirmed it. But he’d broken a long time ago, and had never put himself back together. Maybe it should have made me feel sorry for him, but it just made me angry. He might not be evil, but he was allowing evil things to happen because of his weaknesses, and that was just as bad.
“Avery.” Lydia smiled, but there was no emotion behind it at all. It hit me who she reminded me of. She looked as vacant as I’d felt in the weeks after my mom died. I remembered exactly how little I cared about anything then, and how dangerous that was. “If we had known all it took was a council meeting to make you turn yourselves in, we would have done it long ago.”
“Take their weapons,” my father said.
We’d expected that, too. We let two men I recognized as a Saxon Keeper and one of Rocco’s old cronies search us and set our weapons at the far end of the room. The guns on us slowly lowered, but the atmosphere didn’t grow any more welcoming.
“We’re not here to turn ourselves in,” I said. Stellan and I ignored the murmurs of disapproval and made our way confidently around the room to the head of the table, where th
e Saxons sat. Jack and Elodie followed us at a distance. This was part of the plan, too. Tonight, we’d be what the Circle had wanted us to be all along.
Ryo Mikado stood. “You have no right.”
Most of the table nodded, angrily or warily. Even kind Arjun Rajesh looked disappointed in us—if disappointed was the right word when someone thought we’d been trying to bring down the whole world.
“You initiated us,” I said. We’d decided I’d do most of the talking. The Circle were intrigued by Stellan, but I was more familiar to them. I held up my wrist. “And we completed the tattoo ceremony with the Dauphin family as witnesses. We’re official. What’s more, when you initiated us, you did so knowing we’d technically be the Circle’s leaders. So yes, we do have the right to be here. But we’re not here to exercise our rule. We’ve come here tonight to tell you the truth.”
“The only thing you’ve done by coming here is allow us to punish you as we see fit,” Lydia interrupted. “The only question will be who to terminate first. The two of you, or the Keeper who murdered my brother.” Her eyes flashed at Jack.
My father held up his hands. “Once all the treaties are signed and witnessed, we can discuss the fate of the thirteenth family. Until then, please stay on task.”
No one else protested. Instead, they picked up their pens reluctantly. They were too afraid of the Saxons. I’d been wrong to believe they didn’t care about their people—they cared so much, they were going to ruin their own lives to save them. And they didn’t want to speak up and take any chances.
Instead, we were taking the chance for them. This was the moment we could be sentencing the world to die. Or maybe the Circle. Or maybe ourselves.
“Don’t sign the treaties,” I said.
A few people with pens in their hands paused, but most just frowned up at me warily.
“Releasing the virus won’t work.” I was impressed with how confident I sounded about the lie. “That’s what we’ve come here to tell you. We have a vaccine for the virus and we’ve distributed it in your territories. Your people won’t die. You don’t have to sign the treaty to save them.”
CHAPTER 29
There were murmurs around the table. My father turned in his chair to face me. A set of massive doors with curtains pulled partway across them opened to a balcony behind us. It looked out on St. Peter’s Square below, full of people as far as I could see. We must be in the room connected to the balcony where the pope always addressed the square.
“She’s lying.” Lydia got her phone out of her pocket. She must have had the trigger to release the virus programmed.
“We’re not.” Every head at the table swung from Lydia to me as though they were watching a tennis match. “We tried to tell you about the vaccine, but no one would listen. You should listen now, and not just because of the treaty—but because if you sign it, the Saxons plan to release the virus in this room.”
It took a second for that to sink in, and then the table erupted with protests.
“What do you mean by that?” Mr. Wang demanded.
“They’re having you sign over everything you have,” I said over the din. “And then they’ll kill you so your families will be too destroyed to fight back. But we have the vaccine, and you should all take it.” I nodded at Colette. She pulled a bag full of small vials out of her purse, and began to hand them out.
“Don’t be stupid.” Lydia’s bored indifference cracked just a tiny bit. “They’re obviously infecting you.”
My father squinted at the vial in front of him quizzically.
“Why should we believe any of this?” Ryo Mikado said, but I noticed he’d pushed his paper away.
Arjun Rajesh opened the vial and sniffed it.
Outside, the wailing and chanting was growing louder as the sun went down.
“Because I vouch that it’s true.” Luc stood up at the center of the table.
Lydia laughed. “They killed Hugo and Celine Dauphin and left Lucien alive because he’s in on their schemes. That means nothing.”
Colette set her bag down. She stepped up to the table. “Lucien is right.” Every head turned to her. “I’ve seen it all. There’s no way I’d be siding with people who killed Liam, or who killed my aunt and uncle. Those of you who have also lost someone, ask yourselves whether you think I’m telling the truth. And if you don’t believe that, believe this. I’ve taken the vaccine already.” She walked around the table to Stellan and me. She opened a small pocketknife. I held out my arm, and Stellan did, too. She cut me and wiped a bead of my blood on her hand, then cut Stellan and mixed our blood together.
“Colette!” Mr. Frederick cried out, slamming both hands on the table. Colette must have been like family to him. She’d dated his nephew Liam Blackstone for years.
“I’m doing this for Liam’s memory,” she said. “He would never have wanted to see you die over this. Any of you. Now you’ll have to believe us.” She put her hand to her mouth.
Mr. Frederick looked at her with wide eyes. Mr. Emir’s mouth fell open. Zara Koning, whom I’d talked to at the party in Jerusalem, gasped from her place behind her father.
As the entire Circle stared in shocked silence, Colette wiped a tiny bit of blood daintily off her lip.
“More lies, more manipulation,” Lydia said, but no one was listening to her. All eyes were on Colette, watching for any sign of the virus taking hold as she made her way back around the table to the seat behind Luc.
Elodie was right. “Alive” was a pretty low bar, but in this case, it was all we needed.
“Take the vaccine,” I said again.
“It’s a trick,” my father said, but even he sounded uncertain.
Stellan’s hand came over mine. “Mr. Saxon,” he said, cutting through the murmurs building in the room. “You brought Avery into this against her will. You tried to marry her off. You used her own blood to kill her mother and made her watch, and then you ruined the world with it and blamed that on her, too. And somehow she’s managed to stay good and kind and care that the Circle would fall.” He turned to the table. “She is the one who convinced us you were worth saving. Let her do it.”
I was still watching Lydia’s finger poised over her phone. While Stellan was speaking, she turned it off and put it back in her pocket, and I loosened my grip on the edge of the table. Maybe she believed us about the vaccine getting out. Or maybe she could see the tides turning against her.
And then she gestured to one of her minions. The guy trained a gun on Stellan. “Who votes to terminate the ex-Keeper now?” Lydia said.
“What? No,” I said. Arms came roughly around me from behind, dragging me back from the table. On my other side, two more men seized Jack and Elodie. Stellan backed slowly away from the table, his hands spread warily.
“He’s a Circle member,” I protested, clamping down the panic in my voice. “It’s forbidden to terminate a Circle member without a trial.”
Lydia ignored me. “He’s responsible for killing members of over half the Circle families. All in favor of termination?”
Around the table, David Melech’s hand went up, Mr. Hersch’s, and, of course, my father’s.
“You heard the recording,” I protested. “Lydia admitted they did all those things. Not us.”
The hands remained in the air. I remembered what Stellan said earlier—some of the Circle didn’t like him. They weren’t going to let an ex-Keeper be one of them no matter what. I struggled harder.
“You can’t do this.” Luc stalked toward Lydia until another of her guards pointed a gun at him. He stopped and turned to the table. “He’s technically your leader. It has to be a three-fourths majority for termination even of a distant family member.”
“I have to agree with Lucien,” said a worried-sounding Arjun Rajesh. “What if they’re telling the truth? Even if they’re not, this is against code.”
“He’s right,” George Frederick spoke up. “I’m not against a trial, but—”
“We’re not voting on Avery now,” Lydia coaxed, ignoring them. “This one was a Keeper who turned on us. It was a mutiny. Even if he does have the mystical powers it seems like he does, it’s in his entire bloodline. There are plenty more in the world who can fill that place.”
Two more hands went up hesitantly. Slowly, Mr. Koning put his hand in the air. Zara met Luc’s eyes across the table. “Father, no,” she said, low, but he ignored her.
“That’s a majority,” Lydia said.
“No!” I screamed.
I didn’t even stop to think. My elbow connected with the Keeper’s stomach and I wrenched out of his arms, throwing myself between Stellan and the gun. “Kuklachka, get out of the way,” he growled.
“Stop!” my father yelled, pushing back from the table. The guard with the gun paused. “Don’t shoot her! We don’t want her dead.”
Behind us, the chants and prayers of the crowd outside had turned into a frenzied wall of sound. A warm breeze swirled in from the balcony.
“Just let them both die,” Daniel Melech said. “Most of this is her fault, anyway, and we’ll take all the blood we can from her as she bleeds out. All in favor?”
“Now hold on one minute,” my father said, leaping from his chair, but some of the same hands went up as had voted to kill Stellan. Even with the incentive of the virus and the vaccine, the rest of the Circle had none of the vague attachment to me my own family seemed to have.
Daniel didn’t even stop to count. “Do it,” he snapped to his Keeper.
The Keeper raised his gun, aiming right at my head.
I hardly had time to suck in a quick breath and start to duck before the gun went off.
Then I was being tackled to the ground. Screams echoed in my ears.
I was on the floor, half on the balcony. My father was lying across me, a pool of blood spreading under him.
