The Conspiracy of Us

by Maggie Hall

Jack came out of the bathroom, buttoning his still-damp shirt. “I’ll be back with the Saxons and our guards within the hour—”

  I held up a finger, listening, more confused by the second. Finally, the message ended.

  “What is it?” Jack said. He perched on the edge of the bed next to me.

  “I thought I’d check my mom’s messages, just in case there was anything from the airlines about a delay or something, but . . . I think this one’s from Mr. Emerson.”

  I pressed the button to replay it and put it on speaker:

  “It’s me. People have been watching me. They’re here. If I don’t make it, I need you to find what I’ve left.” Mr. Emerson was breathing raggedly, rushing through the words. “The tomb. I’ve been searching for years. Napoleon found it, and hid it again. I have three clues he left, but there are more. I’ve hidden them, and you’ve got to get them before the Circle does. Start at my—the office I sometimes call you from. Follow from there. I’m sorry I’ve never told you.

  “It’s the union—Napoleon discovered some disturbing things. And there’s more. I was searching for information about the One, and . . . you won’t believe it, Carol. I can’t say any more, but I believe I’ve found one of them, and brought—I’ve been trying to protect—never mind. Both of them are in great danger. You have to find—”

  The message cut off abruptly.

  My mouth was hanging open. “What—”

  Jack replayed the message again. “Some of it’s what he told us in the note. But he told her a lot more. Your mom. Which means what?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I stared at the phone, still ticking off seconds as the mechanical operator’s voice asked whether I wanted to save or delete the message. I pressed save. “Maybe we can go through the diary again. See if this connects?”

  “Definitely.” Jack turned down his collar and stood up. “But first, I want to get you out of here. We can talk about it all when you’re safely with the Saxons.”

  I got out of bed and looked down at our feet, his stuffed into shoes, mine bare and cold.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He paused, then ran his fingers down my arm. “And, um. Thanks. Last night. Thanks for letting me get in out of the rain.” He grabbed his jacket and stepped out the window and down the long balcony.

  I watched him until he disappeared, then locked the window behind him. I collapsed on the bed, my mind spinning. What could Mr. Emerson possibly think my mom could do with the clues? How was she involved in all this?

  There was a tapping at the window, and I jumped out of my skin. Through the panes, I saw Jack standing outside. I leapt off the bed and threw the window open.

  “I forgot something,” he said. He reached through the window, took my face in his hands, and kissed me.

  I meant to only kiss him back for a second, but then my hands were around his neck, my fingers in his hair, my body pressed into the windowsill between us. He still smelled the tiniest bit like last night’s rain. And then he was climbing over the sill, back into the room, tossing his jacket onto the bed, his lips not leaving mine the whole time.

  “Why didn’t you do this last night?” I murmured against his mouth.

  He let his fingers slide over my shoulders, down to my hips. He broke away far enough to let his eyes follow their path, tracing lines of fire over my skin. “Avery, if I’d let myself do this last night . . .” His thumbs slipped under the hem of my shirt. “I might have lost what hint of self-control I had left.”

  “Oh,” I whispered, and all of my own self-control flew out the window.

  I waited for him to tell me that we couldn’t do this here, now, that he had to go—waited for myself to come to my senses and tell him this was dangerous. That we had more important things to do. That we just couldn’t. He didn’t. I didn’t.

  We stumbled backward onto the chaise. And then I was on his lap and he was kissing my cheeks, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, always back to my lips.

  Finally, he pulled away. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he murmured. I knew he’d be responsible. I started to pull away with a resigned sigh. “But I don’t care,” he finished with a grin.

  I forgot where we were, all the danger we could be in or not or why it ever even mattered. It all faded away as my body melted into his, and the daylight streamed through the window and wrapped around us.

  A buzzing sound made me jump. It took me a second to realize it was Jack’s phone.

  “I don’t have to answer it,” he said, but I saw his eyes dart to his pocket.

  “No, you should.” I shifted on his lap enough that he was able to pull the phone out.

  He frowned down at the text, and his grip tightened on my waist. “It says there’s an emergency. And—” He cursed. “There are more, from early this morning. We must have slept through them. It doesn’t say what it’s about. I have to go.”

  I stayed on his lap for as long as I could, fingers tracing over his shirt. Even through the worry, a smile lit his eyes and he leaned in for one last lingering kiss.

  A noise in the hallway stopped us both still, his arms tight around me. Jack put a finger to his lips. We both held our breath, and I leaned toward the noise.

  And then, I heard the most frightening thing I’d ever heard.

  A key, turning the lock on my bedroom door.

  CHAPTER 36

  We both jumped up. The door opened a few inches, then got stuck on the chair I’d wedged under the knob. Jack bolted for the window, grabbing the incriminating tuxedo jacket on the way. Someone kicked the door open, shattering the little gold chair into pieces.

  Monsieur Dauphin strolled in. He nodded at Jack, halfway out the window, and a dozen guards streamed into the room, their guns trained on him. Jack stopped still and raised his hands above his head, jacket dangling from his fingers. The guards surrounded him and wrenched him back inside.

  Behind Monsieur Dauphin, Stellan slipped into the room.

  How did they know? They cuffed Jack’s hands behind his back. I was going to throw up. But he wasn’t the Dauphins’ to punish. They’d have to give him back to the Saxons. I could reason with my father. Couldn’t I?

  A guard pressed a gun to Jack’s side. “This isn’t what it looks like,” I pleaded, even though it was obviously exactly what it looked like. “He was helping me, um . . .”

  “I couldn’t care less what he was doing with you.” Monsieur Dauphin’s cold, low voice sent a shiver down my spine. “He won’t live long enough to do it again.”

  “No!” I lunged toward Jack, but another guard grabbed me and turned me to face Monsieur Dauphin. Between him and Stellan, Luc peered out. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he looked shaken.

  “What I care about,” Monsieur Dauphin said in that same eerily calm voice, “is what you’ve been hiding from us.”

  My stomach dropped to my toes. Monsieur Dauphin crossed the room toward me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I struggled against the guard’s iron grip.

  “Don’t touch her,” Jack snarled from behind me, but he cut off abruptly, and I turned to see a knife at his throat.

  Monsieur Dauphin, towering over me, grabbed my face in one massive hand. He leaned down, peering into my eyes, so close I recoiled from his hot breath on my face.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and then a hand from behind me was forcing them open, holding my eyelids apart.

  “Stop!” I tried to yell, but Monsieur Dauphin gripped my face so hard, the word came out as a whimper. His other hand came up to my eye, and I knew what he was doing.

  His thick fingers swiped at my eyeball, and I could feel my contact lens, dry and sticky from having been slept in overnight, ripped from my eye. Half my vision went blurry, made the world look unreal.

  Monsieur Dauphin let go of my face. I blinked involuntarily, and a gasp went up from the room.<
br />
  “It’s true,” Luc breathed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Beside him, Stellan watched impassively, but I could see his jaw twitch. It was him. He’d figured it out and turned me in.

  “She didn’t tell you because Saxon had some kind of plan with her.” Monsieur Dauphin continued to peer at me curiously. “But now, she’ll help us instead.”

  “No.” I shook my head desperately. “There’s no plan. Saxon doesn’t even know about my eyes,” I said, then had a flash of inspiration. “Don’t you need his permission to do anything to me? He’ll be here any minute. He’ll stop this.”

  “Ah, but he’s been told you’ve run away. He’s off looking for you right now. Unfortunately, he won’t find you until you’re already ours. He won’t be happy about it, but it’ll be done.” Monsieur Dauphin wiped his hands on a handkerchief.

  “But you’re not even sure who the One is,” I choked out. “You don’t know it’ll work.”

  He handed the handkerchief to a guard. “And we’re not going to know, so it’s time to take matters into our own hands.”

  The room looked fuzzy, wrong. “You don’t need me,” I said desperately. “You have the baby.”

  I saw nothing more than a flash of movement before the back of Monsieur Dauphin’s hand hit my cheek with a deafening thwap. I fell to my knees, choking on a cry.

  Luc stepped out from behind his father to help me up. I wiped the tears out of my eyes and could see, up close, that Luc had been crying, too. I looked at the others again. At the unfamiliar dark circles under Stellan’s eyes. At the rage in Monsieur Dauphin’s.

  “Luc?” I whispered.

  “The Order attacked my mother on the way home from the ball last night,” he said. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “She’ll pull through. And the baby boy is fine.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and it hit me. The baby girl was not fine. “Oh, Luc—” I whispered.

  With a flick of Monsieur Dauphin’s hand, the guards holding Jack bundled him out the door. My eyes swam.

  Monsieur Dauphin turned to Luc. “The tailor is waiting for you, son,” he said. “I got you a new suit for your wedding.”

  • • •

  The hard wooden cot was a far cry from the plush mattress on the bed upstairs. I shifted my weight, trying to find a position where it didn’t jab into my shoulders or hip bones as I stared up at the ceiling. I’d already been in this cell for a couple hours, and I had no idea how much longer I’d be here.

  We’d passed a whole hall of these sparse rooms—probably some kind of servants’ quarters—and as soon as they’d left, I’d yelled for Jack, but got no answer. I could only hope my father found us before anything happened.

  I stared at the dress hanging on the wall. It was ivory, with a V-neck and a delicate lace overlay. It was beautiful. It made me want to throw up.

  Out in the regular world, some girls might see this place, think of the clothes and the balls and the fact that they would be literally in charge of what went on in the world, and sign on the dotted line.

  I glanced up at the ironwork across the windows. The Circle might be a beautiful, gilded cage, but it was still a cage. Even before I knew about them, my whole life had been about running from them. They’d taken my past, and now they wanted my future.

  On top of it all, if the mandate was fulfilled, if the union happened, I had no idea what would happen to Mr. Emerson. What good were hostages when the ransom didn’t matter anymore? And it was unlikely my father was out looking for him if Jack and I were missing.

  There was a knock at the door and I bolted upright.

  Stellan poked his head in.

  “Stellan, please. Let me go.” I jumped up. “I’m not trying to hurt the Dauphins. I promise.”

  He scowled. “Here.”

  He held out a box. I’d insisted they bring me clear contacts if they were going to make me take mine out. I ripped open the box and popped a contact first in one eye and then the other. I blinked, and the world fell into place again.

  Stellan couldn’t keep the hint of wonder out of his expression as he watched me. But then he hardened again. “You should have told me. All those times I asked you what you were, and you lied.”

  “You would have just turned me in even sooner.” I crossed my arms over my chest, shivering in the pajamas they hadn’t given me time to change out of.

  “But if I’d known . . . if I hadn’t been watching you last night, and I’d stayed with Madame—” Anguish twisted his face, and for one charged second, his hands curled into fists at his sides and I winced away. I realized just as quickly that the anger wasn’t directed at me.

  “I’m so sorry about what happened to Madame Dauphin, but it is not my fault. And it’s not yours either,” I said. He started to protest and I went on. “Madame Dauphin told you to follow me. I heard her, remember? In fact, if I heard correctly, she seemed to be blackmailing you or something.”

  “That is none of your business,” he said under his breath. He turned to go.

  “Wait,” I said. “Is Jack . . .”

  Stellan stopped, his hand on the doorframe. “He’s in a cell. Someone will deal with him later.”

  Relief filled my chest. I stood up. “How did you know?”

  He turned halfway. He was wearing a simple white T-shirt and gray jeans, like the first time I’d seen him in Lakehaven. “Does it matter?”

  “Then why not tell me?” He must be feeling especially dejected. Normally, he’d jump on the chance to brag about how he caught me.

  He sighed. “I saw you talking to the Saxons. I noticed you looked alike, but since you were supposedly a Saxon yourself, I didn’t think much of it. Then you mentioned the contact lenses. And I remembered how you were looking at Alistair Saxon, and the pieces just fell into place.”

  He spread his hands and turned to go again. “Wait,” I said. There was nothing more Stellan could do to me. If I had any chance of helping Mr. Emerson, I had to tell him the whole truth. I stood up from the edge of the cot. “Fitz knows something about the mandate, and the tomb.” Stellan stopped short, and I barged ahead. “That’s why the Order took him. He left us clues, including a diary of Napoleon’s that talks about everything. The tomb, the mandate, the One. The Order wants to know who the One is, or they’re going to kill him.”

  Stellan turned, one hand still on the doorknob. “You just said a lot of things that make no sense. The Order’s ransoming Fitz? Are you talking about the tomb?”

  “Yes. We’ll tell you everything. Let’s just go talk to Jack.”

  Stellan stepped the rest of the way back inside. “Why would Fitz know anything about the tomb and the One?”

  “I have no idea, but he did. And he wanted us to find clues. He left us a note, with photos. Of Jack, you . . . and me.”

  Stellan raised his eyebrows, but I plunged ahead. “I knew Fitz, back home. Long story,” I said before he could ask the obvious question.

  Stellan’s eyes narrowed. “And you expect me to believe this? You’ve lied to me over and over.”

  Footsteps went by outside, and voices speaking French echoed down the hall. I waited, then lowered my voice. “I lied because you would have turned me in to the Dauphins, which you did. I’m telling you the truth now.” I realized with a jolt that this was the same thing Jack had told me outside the club in Istanbul, when I trusted him as little as Stellan trusted me right now. It was odd being on the other side.

  Stellan shook his head. “I doubt Fitz would leave whatever this is for me. He . . . he always liked Jack better.”

  I felt a quick pang of sadness for him. At least Jack knew he had Fitz on his side. “Apparently he trusted you with this, too.”

  Stellan eased the door closed. “You say Jack has this diary right now?”

  “Unless they took it. Just come see. Please. For Fit
z. And if that’s not enough, you’ll want to see the rest of what we found. The stuff about the tomb might be interesting for the Dauphins.”

  He hesitated, and I took advantage of it, pushing between him and the door. “We only have until noon to contact the Order, and it’s not like I can escape.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll go get it from Jack, then, and tell you if I find anything.”

  “No!” The diary mentioned something about the union, too. It was a long shot, and Mr. Emerson had said not to tell the Circle, but if we discovered something that could get me out of this wedding, I’d have to take it. For Mr. Emerson, for my mom, and for myself. “The three of us should talk through it together, like Fitz wanted. We have to be missing something.” I looked up at him. “You’ve already ruined my life by turning me in. You owe me this much.”

  Stellan pursed his lips. “Okay, but only for Fitz. It’ll be hours until the wedding, but they’ll be looking me to work soon. I’ll give you”—he looked at his watch—“ten minutes. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Jack was unhurt, sitting on a metal cot, his tux jacket lying beside him. I was so relieved, I almost cried. He jumped up and stared from me to Stellan, eyes bulging when Stellan demanded to see the diary. Jack pulled it out of the jacket.

  Stellan glanced through it. “Okay. I need to go make an excuse so no one bothers us. Don’t try anything.”

  He left, and I fell into Jack’s arms.

  “Can we trust him?” Jack murmured into my hair. “He turned you in.”

  “What other choice do we have? We must be missing something. And if not, we can at least get him to call the Order. Ask for more time. Something.”

  I felt Jack nod, his chin moving on top of my head.

  “I’m assuming they took your phone?” I said. I was sure he would have called Saxon if not.

  “Yeah.”

  It was colder down here. I shivered, and Jack rubbed my arms. “At least they didn’t find the diary.”

  “They took my gun and my phone, but they barely looked at the book,” he said. “It’s actually lucky we got caught how we did. They didn’t suspect there was anything more to it than me taking advantage of the pretty new family member.”