by Esme Devlin
His masked face trailed up and down my body. He paused for a long minute and then shrugged his shoulders. “Not to worry. We’ll keep trying.”
Did he believe me?
Who knows.
28
Sapphire
Surprisingly little blood comes out of a foot, and I only have two of them at my disposal. Any other body part would be noticeable.
Maybe with some luck the foot I used last night will have healed enough by tomorrow night that I can use it again.
I’m sitting on the chair, stone in my hand, leg crossed over my knee with my foot upturned, when a sound comes from the other side of the door.
He’s early.
I drop the stone.
Dive into my little nest with a burst of energy I’ve not felt in a long time.
The door swings open, and the next sound I hear is a tapping of wood against the hard stone floor.
Only one person here is old enough to require the assistance of a cane when walking.
I crawl out from my nest on the floor and move toward the chair, resting my back against it as two figures enter the room. One of them is a man I don’t recognize, and just like I suspected, the other is a tired-looking Celeste.
I do nothing but blink for a few long moments, feeling like I’m slowly waking up from a dream. I haven’t seen eyes on me in such a long time. It’s jarring.
“You can leave us,” Celeste says with the same curt tone I remember her using on Andrei.
The man shifts uncomfortably. “It’s better I stay. If he comes back—if he catches you—”
“He’ll do nothing to me, but I’m not sure I can say the same for you. When has Baron ever returned early from a hunt?”
The man looks unhappy but nods, regardless, and leaves the room just as Celeste settles herself into the chair opposite.
She says nothing for a long while, merely looks at me. There’s a pity in her eyes that makes me feel uncomfortable, and before long I struggle to meet her gaze. When she clears her throat, I swallow. “You look a fright,” she says.
I look down at myself, though I already know she’s right. I didn’t bother with the lukewarm bathtub this morning, and I can feel the remnants of him between my legs. My hair has started to clump together. My fingernails are black with dirt.
“Come with me. Meathead should be gone by now, doing whatever it is the meatheads do.”
I shake my head. Baron would never allow it. The consequences for betraying him like this would never be worth it. “H-He—” My throat is filled with stones, too raspy and dry to get the words out.
Celeste shushes me while she grips the sides of the chair and pulls herself up. “None of that. You need a bath, a real one —or three—and a hot cup of tea. He’ll see, in hindsight, the error of his ways. He always does.”
I look up at her from my spot on the cold, hard floor. The last conversation—proper conversation—I had with Baron has me doubting her words. He seemed to know his own mind well enough.
“I can’t. It’s not worth it.”
Celeste puts her free hand to her mouth. Shakes her head slowly, her thoughts written plainly in her eyes. What has he done to you?
When she drops her hand, she takes a deep breath and asks me, “Do you want to be good, or do you want to be great?”
I let out a laugh and look down at the floor. A trick question if ever I heard one. I’ll never be either. I’m broken. He made sure of it. “Does it matter what I want? There is only what he wants now.”
Celeste snorts. “You’re starting to sound like my daughter.”
I glance back up at her, expecting some semblance of emotion, but all the pity she had when she entered the room is gone now. “Baron told me that story. I’m sorry for what happened to her.”
“But not sorry enough to stop history repeating itself,” she replies.
“Isn’t that the real curse?” I ask her. My fingers trail along the thin layer of dirt that covers the stone floor. “History always repeats itself. I spent every free moment I had up there reading. The Roman Empire is dust, and so is the world you belonged to.”
“No,” she says. “The real curse is that humans aren’t capable of learning from it. He didn’t tell you my story, did he?”
I shake my head.
“Then come with me, have your bath and your tea. I will tell you my story. And if you still want to lie in this hovel, I won’t try to stop you. I told Baron you can’t make a baby while a woman has her blood. He won’t be back this evening.”
I hesitate.
Even if I could know for sure we’d never be caught, it feels like there’s an invisible collar around my neck. I don’t want to leave this little cell. I don’t want to face reality.
Then again, she said I can come back if I want to.
And I can’t remember the last time I had a real bath.
I shift onto my knees and use the chair to pull myself up.
My body feels stiff. I’ve not been moving enough. I know that, but I lost the motivation to move a long time ago.
“There,” she says, holding out her free arm for me to take. “Come.”
We make slow progress through the corridors and up the stairs. The light from the upper levels pricks my eyes, and my irises practically ache from contracting for the first time in weeks.
The whole time Celeste doesn’t say a word, and my stomach rolls with nerves from the thought of being caught. Not only am I out of my cell, but I’m out of my cell with my face uncovered. I have no idea if that would even bother Baron anymore, but old habits die hard, and I feel exposed, as if I’m walking around naked.
We reach a door on the ground floor, which Celeste opens with a key before gesturing me inside.
The first thing I notice is an overpowering smell of roses. I’ve never much liked that smell, but at least it’s better than the smell of musky air and damp stone.
I take a few steps inside. The lighting in here is mostly electrical, soft glass lamps adorning tables of various heights, each of them stacked with more things than I have time to process. Where the rest of the hotel is like walking through a living nightmare, Celeste’s room is like walking into the past. So many electronics—many of which I’ve only ever seen in magazines.
“You’ll find a bath just through that door,” she says, locking the door behind her. “I’ll sort you some clean clothes. Don’t dally, we haven’t much time.”
A bath.
My throat contracts. My eyes well up. It’s ridiculous. I know that. But it’s the kindest thing that’s happened to me in a long time.
As much as I’d like to explore this place and ask her questions about each and every item, I don’t know how long we have so I nod and make quickly for the door on the far side of the spacious room.
The bath is real—attached to the plumbing and not just a tin that has to be filled with countless hot pails like the one at the carnival—and I waste no time putting in the plug and turning the taps on full. I grab a bottle from the side, which I realize is where the smell of roses comes from when I pour a little in.
Bubbles foam instantly. I strip off and sit in the tub while I wait for it to fill. I can already feel the tension melting away from my muscles. The water turns a darker shade when I scrub my aching legs with my hands.
It’s been so long since I had a bath. I used to love them, making deals with the boys to fetch me more scorching water once the tin had cooled. I’d spend the entire morning in there reading if I didn’t have a rehearsal.
That remembrance leads to another one.
My tin bathtub, and my boys who’d do anything for a hairpin or an earring. Back to my life of pretty dresses and even prettier dancing. Back to Ruby, to Denim, to Scout. How I’ve missed his cheeky little face. He was always my favorite.
It feels like another life. Like a dream.
Or maybe it’s this life that is the dream.
It’s so hard to tell now.
Back to Maxim.
&nbs
p; I was just a little girl when I met him. I can’t even remember how I got there. I only remember being terrified of the red-painted face, eyes black with horns attached to his head, and I remember hiding behind Denim’s leg. Somehow Denim was safe, though I’m not sure how I would have known that.
But I was special to Maxim, and I warmed to him quickly.
Maxim, who would have let a giant crush me just to line his pockets. Who would have watched me drown alive if Baron hadn’t saved me.
I fold my legs and lean back, letting my hair fall into the water. I can’t think like that—like Baron saved me. That’s exactly what Baron would want. He’s tried to warp my reality since the day I met him, twisting who is good and who is bad. What is real and what isn’t. What is true and what is false.
Maybe the only truth is that they are all just as bad as each other.
And this boy inside me will grow up to be just as bad as the rest of them. Perhaps worse, if his father gets his way.
How do you make a person great?
You obliterate everything that makes them a person.
My poor little boy.
I close my eyes and submerge my head completely underwater. This bath isn’t good. Too much thinking time. I stand up and a wave of lightheadedness has me reaching for the tiles. There’s a knock at the door before it passes, and I tell Celeste I’m coming.
I towel off as soon as I’m able and wrap it around me before answering.
“There’s tea on the table,” she says, pointing to the small seating area in front of a quilt-covered bed. “Clothes, too.”
I make my way over, hearing the tapping of wood follow behind me at a slower pace.
“Things were normal when I was young,” she says. “Well, normal for me at least. They had already abandoned the cities. Lots of important men had lots of important meetings, and they saw what was coming before the common people did.”
“They prepared for it?” I ask, sitting down on the edge of a comfortable chair while I wait for my skin to dry properly.
Celeste nods. “We lived in fortified communities, each one with a leader and everything else a small community would need to survive. The capital community—the biggest of them all—that was my home, and my father the leader. And I was happy. I had everything I ever needed.”
She takes the seat at the other side of the table and picks up her cup of tea. “I was fourteen when my father dragged me into his office. He told me he was dying, and in the next breath introduced me to his successor, a small man with rounded shoulders who was likely thirty years my senior. They wed me to him that evening.”
When she pauses to take another sip of her tea, I tell her I’m sorry.
She shrugs. “Don’t be. Fiona was born a year later, and I had her to keep me happy. She was small and sickly—but she was a she. I had everything I ever wanted, remember? Bread on the table. Berries for dessert. Fresh milk. New clothes. Fiona had the most beautiful dollhouse. I never questioned where any of it came from, not until it all came crashing down around us.”
“What happened?”
“Too many boys. Too many men,” she says. “They called them the ‘Excess.’ Kept them in huge pits and worked them from sunrise to sunset. You know your history, yes?”
“More than most,” I tell her.
Celeste nods. “Then you’d know that when nomadic tribes unite under one common purpose, there is nothing urban dwellers can do to stop them. It happens again and again, peppered throughout history. Empires rise, become bloated and negligent and corrupted, then fall. And nobody ever sees it coming. The Excess were half-starved and thought too weak to revolt, but that only made them more hungry for it. All it took was one man, one great man willing to go farther than any good man could anticipate, and the world shifted again.”
“Baron told me a man isn’t his intelligence or his strength or his size, only how far he is willing to go.”
She smiles. “And where do you think he learned that? His father never had a name. He was known only as King. A fanatic—but a clever one who I doubt truly believed his own preaching, and believe me, they are the most dangerous types. He was as charming as he was dangerous, and people flocked to him—my daughter included. Just as history always repeats, teenagers will always rebel. He wanted to reset the natural order. Why should the best men, the men willing to go as far as they had to—be locked away and left to rot? We’d make the country great again. We’d repopulate. We’d enslave the weak, not the strong. We’d rebuild. We’d restart. My daughter shared that vision… right up until she found herself living it.”
All the little scattered pieces in my head click together as she tells me the story. “Baron wants to do the same thing.”
And he wants to do it with my baby.
Celeste shakes her head. “No. Though I imagine that’s precisely what he’d want you to think. He only allows people to see what he wants them to see. There is what he wants you to see, and underneath that, there is what he wants the people who think they’ve outsmarted him to see. Underneath that, layers down, is the reality.”
Now I’m the one shaking my head. “You’ve lost me.”
Celeste smiles. “On the surface, there is the monster. The man who makes money out of misery. The man who takes pleasure in killing. The madness. The riddles he speaks. Everyone on this island with any sense fears him, and he likes it that way.”
“And underneath all that?”
“There is the man who is acting. Putting on a show. The man who wants to take over the world and leave it worse than he found it. The man who wants to become his father. The man you think you just worked out.”
I shake my head again. “And underneath all that?”
“Get dressed, and I will show you.” She stands and walks over to a tall dresser in the corner. When she returns, there is a blade in her hand longer than my forearm. “You’re going to hold this to my side for the entirety of the journey. Understand?”
29
Sapphire
The lights of the long corridors flicker as we move through them, the candles on the shrines at intervals and Celeste’s soft whispers the only guide. She speaks without moving her lips, and without the cane she normally carries tapping against the unpolished hardwood, the place is eerily quiet.
She promised me warm clothes, but Celeste is the one who is currently wearing them. Two coats draped over her shoulders and mittens on her hands. As for me, I’m wearing underwear for the first time in months.
Only underwear.
“There is a camera just around this corner. Hold the blade to my neck as we pass it, conceal it quickly after.”
I nod using only my eyes—eyes hidden behind brown contact lenses that make my vision blurry around the edges after every blink.
She said they were necessary.
I assume the disguise is so that if anyone catches us, they’ll simply assume I’m one of the girls who lives here taking Celeste for an evening stroll.
Not that we’ve passed anyone.
Yet.
We speed up as soon as we’re clear of the camera. The woman walks with a determination I didn’t know she was capable of, losing her balance every so often so I have to catch her.
We make it down a set of stairs and along a dimly lit passageway. I don’t think I recognize this one, but then again, they all look so similar.
When she gestures toward a door, I push the bar with my bare hip and a cold rush of air hits me as it swings open. The sky is a soft shade of pink, rays slashing across the clouds as the sun sets behind the building. For all my wandering, I’ve never been around the back, a high barbed wire fence running straight through the grounds always blocking entry.
Before us, on gravel littered with weeds, sits a fortified 4X4, black with tinted windows. The beast of a car dwarves the lone dark-haired young woman standing in front of it, who spins around when she sees us.
She’s wearing a thick coat, big enough that it could be wrapped around her body twice, which is
exactly what she’s attempting to do. “You must be freezing,” she says, eyeing me up and down as she steps from foot to foot, rubbing her bare calves together.
“Here,” Celeste says, shrugging out of the coat and gesturing for me to take it. “Don’t fasten it. Not yet.”
“What is this?” I ask her, not that my confusion stops me from taking the garment out of her hands.
Celeste swallows before glancing toward the girl. “This is Kayleen. You two have met before.”
I turn toward the woman—Kayleen. I’ve never seen in her my life. At least… I don’t think.
As if seeing the confusion on my face, Kayleen presses her lips together and looks down at the ground before she says, “I’m sorry. For what I did. I shouldn’t have. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
It takes me a moment, but I remember where I heard that voice.
“You were the girl in the room beside mine?” I ask her, not waiting for a reply before spinning around to face Celeste. “Baron told me he was going to deal with her?”
Celeste makes a “one moment” gesture to Kayleen before tugging me into an alcove out of earshot some paces away. “She believes I am helping her escape, but that’s just what Baron wants her to believe. She has served her time here—all three-hundred and sixty-five days of it. She’s bound for the country formerly known as Iceland, one of the few places in the world still safe for a woman.”
I shake my head in confusion. “Baron told me with his own mouth that place doesn’t exist. He said he takes them to his basement and shoots them.”
Celeste raises a sparse eyebrow. “I highly doubt he lied to you. He’ll have found some trick with words to make you believe that’s what he said. The men, well, they do indeed go to the basement—he has to cull the vermin—but never the women. It is true, some stay longer than their allotted year, but that’s only because passage across the water is expensive and scarce.” She shrugs without letting go of my forearms. “I send every woman off myself.”
