Thin Hope

by Holly Hook

  Kiki let out the breath she was holding. Her father hadn’t told her about this before. All she’d known was that five of her ancestors had turned a long time ago and were still out there somewhere, except Jesse, her mother’s three-times great-grandfather, who had stayed human. She had no idea her parents had actually met one of them. “Is he the only one who’s ever visited?” The thought of ever meeting Ariel or Marcus sent waves of disgust through her. The rumors that the two were romantically involved with each other reminded her too much of Patrick.

  Her mother straightened out her hair. “Yes. You’ll like him.” She spoke to Ryan as well, who had stiffened up by the table. “I like to think of him as the voice of reason sometimes. It’s partly because of him we’re working to have Emoshis more accepted in our society.”

  Kiki stared at the Keilaran National Bank logo for a second. “As long as they’re not trying to stalk people.”

  “Kiki!” Her mother glared at her, and she felt the heat rising to her cheeks. “You know that most of them are not out to manipulate people.”

  “I know that, mother.” She stared down at the blue carpet as the hum of the elevator grew louder. Why had she said such a thing? The whole stalking ordeal with Patrick was turning her paranoid, afraid. Of course she didn’t hate Emoshis, but if Patrick did manage to become one—

  The elevator doors opened with a ding, framing a tall man with messy brown hair, deep purple eyes, and a warm smile that she hadn’t expected. Dressed in black slacks and a simple white shirt, he didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Kiki had to blink a few times. This man had been born well over a hundred years ago, grown up with her four-times great-grandfather, and survived the entire Emoshi Genocide, but he looked like he had just wandered out of the Frelladon City University.

  He took a few comfortable steps into the meeting room, as if he were stepping into his own home, wherever that was. To Kiki’s shock, her mother met him with a hug.

  “Dawn. Nice to meet you again,” Alexander said. “And you, Morris.” He turned to hug her father as well.

  Kiki allowed herself to relax in time to receive her own hug. “Nice to meet you, Kiki,” he said. Alexander smelled like cheap aftershave, hotel rooms, and travel. He’d come some distance to get here.

  “And you,” she said, returning the hug. Her sense of guilt returned as her own stalking comment shot back into her head. Alexander didn’t seem anything like Patrick or a monster who would control another’s emotions. He just seemed like any other young guy she’d met at the Academy, only far wiser and more mature. Maybe they’d get along well. They needed all the help they could get right now.

  Alexander turned to hug Ryan, and then Amber and Ashley, who stood near the doorway of the lounge. At last, he turned in a full circle and surveyed the room, his eyes narrowing in worry. “Dawn, where is your other daughter? Riley? You emailed me some pictures a few years ago. Is she okay?”

  He didn’t know about the Emperor yet. Her mother turned away as her eyes started to redden again, flattening her palms on the table. Kiki rushed forward to put her hand on her back, anything, to help her calm down. She barely heard her father tell Alexander that they would explain the whole situation in a few minutes before she reached the table and the phone rang for a second time.

  Kiki’s heart leapt into her throat as the green light blinked, insistent. “I’ll take this call,” she told her mother. The Queen didn’t need to handle any more stress right now. If this was the Emperor, Kiki was going to rip him apart.

  Click. “This is Princess Kiki Endicott speaking. State your business.”

  Static cut through from the other end.

  “Hello there, Princess.” The voice wasn’t very clear, as if there was some interference going on, but it was obvious who it was. “Screen me.”

  “Oh, now you choose to call us?” It was about time they spoke with Darren Storm.

  “Hurry. My crews have the power running, but it’s not stable yet. Now, Princess.”

  Kiki sighed, biting in another sarcastic comment. Her father appeared next to her, mouthing who is it? She pressed the Screen button on the phone. That would answer his question.

  At first, no picture came in. Fuzz danced across the screen. Then the image snapped into place. Darren Storm stood in an upper office of the Center of Industry, surrounded by round tables, curtains, and plaques honoring some of the city’s businesspeople. His smile was big and menacing, showing all his teeth, as his eyes darted back and forth to take in everyone in the room. The irises were blackened from his exposure to CDV.

  “What do you want?” Kiki asked in what she hoped was her most menacing voice. They didn’t need any more trouble right now.

  “What does it look like I want?” Darren asked, somehow expanding his smile. “The question should be, why am I calling?”

  Kiki rolled her eyes at him. “Okay. Why are you calling? Isn’t it enough that you took the whole Industrial District?”

  “I assure you that this is nothing personal, Princess. As you may have figured out, times are changing, and Delainia has its own interests to protect. I need your land to expand my country.”

  Kiki’s father cleared his throat, but she didn’t let him get any words in. She was too worked up. “A little more specific, please.”

  Darren leaned back in his chair. He started to say something, but another figure, this one dressed in black and red and decked out in silver badges, stepped onto the screen.

  All the words died in Kiki’s throat.

  Patrick, dressed in a black-and-red Delainian soldier’s uniform. Apparently, the new Commander of the Delainian army. He leaned close to where the camera must be on his end, close enough for everyone to get an up-close view of his eyes. They were no longer the forest green they once were. They were now a deep violet, just like in Kiki’s vision that she’d had in the shower.

  Her uncle had turned.

  “How...?” Kiki could barely get the word out.

  “The Maxwell siblings turned me,” Patrick said, backing away from the camera. “They were more than happy to. Soon, you will join me. I’ll be certain of it.”

  She couldn’t help but back away from his purple-eyed stare, as if he could manipulate the way she felt about him from here. He can’t, she told herself, sucking in a breath. He can’t. An Emoshi had to be somewhere nearby to do that.

  “No. Patrick, listen to me.” Alexander took a step in front of Kiki, facing him down. “Do you remember me? I saw you when you were much younger, right before your sister married.”

  Onscreen, Patrick studied him, narrowing his eyes. “Oh, Alexander. Yes, before my sister married that grandson of that genocidal maniac. You know, the one who ordered a bunch of our kind executed seventy years ago?” Hate filled his words. Kiki half-expected him to spit on the camera. “Yes, I remember you. Where were you when I was imprisoned?”

  Alexander let out a breath, keeping his composure. “Patrick, my siblings are not...stable. Ariel and Marcus haven’t been for decades. They’ve murdered people, and people who have had nothing to do with the genocide. Most of our kind aren’t out to harm people, and I don’t want to see you go down that path. It will not endear us to other races at all.”

  “Well, maybe the other races should be a little more accepting. Look, Alexander. They’re always at war with each other. That’s why you should all surrender to Delainia. It’s for your own good.” Patrick switched his gaze from Alexander to Kiki, smiling. “It will unite us.”

  Kiki felt as if bugs were crawling right under her skin. Alexander placed his hand on her back, and instantly the crawly feeling disappeared, replaced by a clear-headed determination. Alexander was emotion manipulating her, but she didn’t care, not at that moment. “You sound like Emperor Ivan. I'm not afraid to fight you, Patrick.” Kiki said, staring into his purple eyes. “And I will, if you ever come near me again.” She felt for her desert eagles and gripped them in their holsters.

  “I don't want to fight you,” Patric
k said. “I simply want your love. I only want us to be together.”

  “You're not getting it.” Damon’s voice exploded through the room as he walked into view of the camera. “She doesn't love you, and she never will. Did you forget? The two of us are engaged. Now would you do yourself a favor and just kill yourself so we don't have to do it for you?”

  Patrick balled his fists as blood rose into his cheeks.

  “Damon Stanza,” Darren interrupted, leaning closer. “You are the new Keilaran Royal General? So young, too. So inexperienced. I imagine you are having a rather eventful first week on the job, are you not?”

  "Don't even begin with me—” Damon said.

  “If we don't strike you soon, the Lateinians will,” Kiki said. She wasn’t sure why she felt a need to tell him that, but it was time to make sure they were all on the same page. “They’re expanding their territory as well. I'd hightail it out of here while you still can, or you'll regret ever trying to take this country over.”

  Silence. Darren’s jaw fell open a bit and he muttered something, probably a curse. Even with the CDV virus flowing through his veins and veins of all his people, he still feared Emperor Ivan, and for good reason. Towns disappeared overnight in his country, and no one knew how. People could be watched every minute of the day.

  A third figure appeared on screen, a woman with long, blond hair and the same black irises. Gracie Storm, the scientist wife of Darren. “Is this true? The Emperor has started his march over the continent?”

  “Yes.” There was no point in lying anymore. Maybe, if Delainia understood what was going on, they’d retreat back to their own borders and tighten their defenses at home. The city didn’t have much more to lose. “We don’t know when they’ll advance again, but I have no doubt they will try to take the entire city soon.”

  “Then we will have to devise a way to stop them,” Gracie said, shooting her husband a glance. “We have a last resort plan to push back Lateine, Your Highness. I suggest you think about surrendering to us, and we will treat you humanely. It may be possible to defeat Ivan.”

  "I am terribly sorry," Darren said. "I will keep in touch."

  Static came over his voice towards the end, and the screen cut out to black.

  Chapter Eleven

  August 26, 2017

  “You draw beautifully.”

  Riley started and turned away from the easel she’d requested yesterday afternoon, on which she’d been drawing what she could remember of her grandmother’s estate: the sprawling garden and the tree under which her grandmother had read her and Ryan pirate stories back before all these wars started. She narrowly avoided making a huge pencil line right across it.

  Jacob stood in the doorway, cape settling around him. He shot her a little wave. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She breathed a sigh of relief that it was him, and not Emperor Ivan. She hadn’t even seen Ivan in the past twenty-four hours. That in itself made her a lot happier, though she knew it was only a matter of time before he wanted to visit again.

  Jacob knocked on the rim of the guest room door. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  He stepped in and gestured to the closet, grimacing. “I’m under orders to inform you that you have to attend dinner with the Emperor tonight. He says he wants to get to know you better and make you happy. He’s declared that he wants to marry in two weeks’ time.”

  The bubble growing inside her snapped. Something about hearing the date made it all real to her again. “I’m...I’m not going. He only wants me to be happy so my parents will surrender to him.”

  Jacob drew closer and lowered his voice. “You must. I’m sorry, but we can’t have the Emperor be suspicious about the escape we’re going to be making later on tonight, after he’s asleep. In order to do that, you’ll need to pretend that you are warming up to him.”

  “Say that again?” Riley gazed into his eyes, the bubble returning in an instant.

  “You heard me, Riley. We’re both leaving tonight. I can’t stay here and work for the Emperor. My children are going to be born free.”

  She stared hard at him. The look on his face gave away his seriousness, his determination. Where had this come from all of a sudden? Why would he want to leave a life in the palace? “But you have it better than the rest of Lateine. Why do you hate the Emperor so much?” Of course, she didn’t blame him in the slightest, but she had to know.

  Jacob backed away a bit and stared at the floor for a moment, biting his lip. “I...I’m almost certain my sister is dead because of him.”

  The words hung in the air, suspended in time. “What?”

  Jacob sucked in a breath and closed the bedroom door. “Do you remember how I told you that my family has worked for Ivan for generations?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father was his last Commander of the army until he died three years ago. My sister and I grew up here in the palace, raised by the servants that the Emperor hired to keep an eye on us. My sister Irene was two years older than me, so she was next in line to take over after our father.”

  Riley sat on the bed and waved Jacob over to sit next to her. He did, and his presence made a soft wave of tingles run across her skin. “What about your mother? What happened to her?”

  Jacob sighed. “I’ve never seen her. She’s the reason Irene tried to leave.”

  “You’ve never seen your own mother?”

  “No. She’s a commoner, so the Emperor would never allow her inside the palace gates. He won’t allow anyone in whose family hasn’t worked here through his entire rule. Even the lowest servants in the palace are from families who’ve been here for hundreds of years. All of us who work here live in the basement apartments, and it’s only on rare occasions he lets us out. My father was only allowed out into Constance to visit my mother once per month.”

  “Because he doesn’t want anyone to know how he really lives.” Riley hated the Emperor more with every word Jacob said. He had to live in the basement, after serving the Emperor and putting up with him for so long? “Then how did your parents ever meet in the first place?”

  “Lottery. All of the young single women in Constance were fair game. The woman whose ID was drawn on Lottery Day was wed to my father. Fortunately, they eventually got along well enough to have children.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Was this how things were run in Lateine? Back home, there were laws against this kind of thing. Obviously, Ivan didn’t care about forced marriages.

  “No. I’m not,” Jacob said. “Every year in the carnival, there’s a Lottery Day to find spouses for the Emperor’s single employees. The ‘winners’ are married on the spot, and if they refuse, they are subject to the death penalty. Next year, the Emperor says he will hold a lottery to find me a wife. When she’s chosen, it’ll be my job to produce an heir, whether I love her or not. I’ll never have a real relationship with her, because we could never live together.”

  Jacob sounded way older than his young twenties as he spoke. “That’s terrible,” Riley said. She wanted to hug him. No wonder Jacob wanted to leave. He was truly no better off than she was, but she’d never imagined that he faced a forced marriage as well. “What was it about your sister?”

  The Commander was silent for a long time, a painful time. “Irene was just curious. She’d never been outside the palace gates and wanted to meet our mother. She knew our dad left once a month to go see her, but we were never allowed to go. Emperor’s orders.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “There’s a very old passageway that leads out from the basement into the carnival. Normally, it’s locked so the servants can’t get out, and it only gets unlocked when the Emperor himself goes out there to make a sermon. That’s tonight.”

  “He does sermons? Like a priest?” She couldn’t believe this. Wasn’t it enough that he had statues of himself everywhere and this grandiose palace?

  “Yes. Every month, on the full moon. He is the religion of Lateine, Riley. The entire city is required to atten
d. That’ll be enough distraction for us to slip out.”

  Riley’s heart fluttered at the thought of leaving out the same door the Emperor used to go out into the carnival. “So that whole amusement park—”

  “—is to make himself look good and make the people think he’s doing something nice for them. Yes. And to take the people’s hard-earned money. He reaps almost all of the profits from it. The employees there make hardly enough to feed themselves.”

  “That’s disgusting.” The thought made Riley’s stomach turn over, which reminded her of the impending dinner.

  “Irene tried to take one of the sermons as an opportunity to slip out one night. She didn’t succeed.”

  The words made something flatten inside Riley. “What...what happened to her?”

  “I was too nervous to go. I didn’t think it was a good idea, so Irene slipped out without me. She was always the bravest of us two. When the Emperor’s sermon was over, I overheard him saying something into his radio.” His voice cracked. “I think he wanted me to hear it, because he was standing not far from the basement entrance at the time. He said, ‘throw the body in the river.’”

  Riley choked up and couldn’t speak, joining Jacob in the horrible silence. “He could have been talking about someone else,” she said at last. “You’d never know. He’s that bad.”

  “At first I didn’t know for sure. Not until my father died a month later. He got sick after that night and refused to get out of bed. He was gone soon after that. The grief killed him.”

  She couldn’t help but wrap her arms around Jacob this time. He relaxed into her grip, breathing into her hair. He was so warm, so fragile at that moment. “Jacob, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  He sat up after a minute, brushing the hair from his eyes. “Thanks,” he said, obviously struggling to keep the emotion out of his voice. “This is why I’ve been sending your military messages about the Emperor for the past few years. It hasn’t been easy, with the Emperor so controlling of everyone. I’m going to see him get taken down, if it takes all my life to do it.”