Chapter Twenty-three

An explosion has been reported at the Modern Music Museum in Central London, during an official visit from His Majesty the King, Evangeline Bright, and Lord Clarence. The area surrounding the museum has been evacuated, and there is no word yet on casualties.

—Breaking news alert from the BBC, 11:17 a.m., 12 January 2024

ALL I HEAR IS SILENCE.

I don't know where I am. I don't know what time it is, or what day it is, or why I can't see. Vaguely I'm aware that I hurt—that my body is aching in ways it shouldn't, that something has happened, something I should remember. But all I can feel is a strange tingling that seems to be holding the real pain at bay.

There's something warm beside me—warm and wet, I think, but I can't be sure. My senses aren't working properly, and I'm floating in the dark, yet at the same time held down by something foreboding and impenetrable. None of it makes sense, and I want to slip back into nothingness when a high-pitched sound pierces my eardrums, and the world around me seems to shift.

Suddenly it's daylight, bright and overpowering and filled with dust as it chases away the darkness. I squeeze my eyes shut, but not before I see the white arched ceiling of the museum high above me, partially collapsed where two of the shimmering columns should be.

"I've got Evangeline here!" The deep voice mingles with the whine in my ears, and I'm vaguely aware of someone touching the pulse point on my neck. That brush is enough to ignite the rest of my dormant nerves, and suddenly the pain hits me like a tidal wave, leaving me gasping for breath.

I open my eyes again, and there's a man in a firefighter uniform peering down at me as others clear the debris around us. It's mostly plaster, I think, but there are some heavier chunks of marble, too, and only then do I slowly start to understand what happened.

"What—" I manage, but it comes out as a gurgle. Another emergency worker lifts a piece of stone that landed inches from my head, and he inhales sharply.

"Found a body," he calls, and I notice the dark red stain on the bottom of the marble. Some small part of my mind is screaming at me, but I don't understand why—until I turn my head and see the mess of blood and bone beside me, so close that I can feel what's left of its heat.

"Keep still," orders one of the men working to excavate the rest of me. "I need a collar over here!"

I'm still staring at the body, mostly buried under marble that missed me by inches. That voice in my mind grows louder, clawing away at the fog until I finally hear what it's saying.

Kit. Kit. Kit.

Kit was next to me. Kit was exactly where this body is now,and—

The world goes dark once more, and when I come to again, I'm lying on a stretcher, surrounded by medics. There's an oxygen mask over my mouth, and a woman is doing something to one of my legs. When I glance up, I see the gray sky again, but this time there's no hole to look through. We're outside.

"Kit?" I whisper, but if anyone hears me, they don't react. Someone shouts nearby, and another team of medics rolls a second stretcher past mine, though I can't see who's on it. When it's gone, however, my blurred vision focuses on the top of the steps, where several long black bags are lined up side by side, one after another.

Body bags.

"Evangeline?" A woman with black hair and a nose stud shines a light in my eyes, and I blink, not sure if I'm crying or not. "Can you hear me, Evangeline?"

I nod—or at least I try to, but something is holding my neck in place. "Kit?" I repeat, louder this time.

"We're taking you to hospital now," she says like I haven't said anything at all. "We'll get you sorted there, all right?"

Time slips away from me again, even though I think I'm still awake. I hear the sirens, can feel every bump in the road as the ambulance rushes through traffic, and when we arrive at what must be the emergency room—AE in England, says a dry voice in my mind that sounds an awful lot like Tibby—I'm surrounded yet again by a medical team.

"Kit?" I say desperately as a doctor removes my oxygen mask. "Is he okay?"

"Can you tell me where it hurts?" she replies, and if I wasn't crying before, I am now. I try to sit up, but hands hold me down as I babble Kit's name again and again, and all I can see is that crushed body in the rubble.

The doctor must sedate me, because the next time I open my eyes, I'm in a room that's eerily similar to the one I woke up in on Christmas Eve. The whining in my ears is fainter now, and in its place, I hear a steady beep-beep-beep that must be my pulse.

"Kit?" I say before I can even think of why. But then the memory of that morning hits me, and I suck in a breath. "Kit—"

"It's about bloody time," says a clipped voice from my bedside. "The doctors said you'd be awake an hour ago, but as always, they're utterly incompetent and haven't a clue what they're doing."

For a split second, I'm positive I'm dreaming. But sure enough, when I turn my head, I see my grandmother sitting straight-backed in a plastic hospital chair, her expression drawn, her eyes red and swollen, and her designer coatdress buttoned to her throat.

"Constance?" I manage. "What are you doing here?"

"You will address me as Your Majesty," says my grandmother sternly. "And I am here because I've long since done my duty to the crown, and no one cares what happens to me."

This doesn't make any sense, and I lift my head. The brace I wore on the stretcher is gone now, and even though every inch of my body aches, I can still move my fingers and toes. "Where's Kit?" I say as I struggle to sit up. "Is he—"

"Would you please lie still? For the love of…" Constance reaches forward, and a moment later, my bed begins to whir and guides me into a sitting position. "You're a very lucky girl, you know. You have a mild concussion and a nasty gash on your leg that needed stitches, but beyond that and a few bumps and bruises, you ought to be perfectly fine. If you don't strain yourself over the next few days."

I shake my head. I don't feel lucky—I don't feel anything but creeping dread. "There was a body beside me," I whisper, my fingers digging into the thin mattress. "There was blood—so much blood—and before…before, Kit was there, and—"

"My understanding is that Lord Clarence is awake and being treated a few rooms down," says Constance so matter-of-factly that it knocks the wind out of me. "He's not the one who had the bloody ceiling fall in on him."

I look at her sharply, not sure I've heard her right. "Kit—he's alive?"

Constance sniffs. "Honestly, Evangeline, your life would be so much easier if you learned to listen."

Something hot and liquid seems to explode in my chest, and before I realize it, I'm sobbing. From relief, from shock, from delayed fear—I don't know what it is, but I'm crying harder than I ever have in my life.

Kit's alive. He's okay. It wasn't him. It wasn't him.

Constance stiffens, seemingly frozen in place by a show of actual emotion. But eventually I feel her tentative touch on my back, and a moment later, she snakes a thin arm around me with the kind of awkwardness usually reserved for middle schoolers at a dance.

I don't care that we've never said a nice word to each other. I don't care that she hates my guts and is only here because she has to be. I bury my face in her shoulder as every last emotion wrings itself from my body, leaving me quaking and boneless when my sobs finally start to subside.

"Who was it, then?" I say hoarsely as I let her go. "Who—"

But then another possibility occurs to me, and I study her face. Her swollen eyes. Her haggard expression. The way she suddenly looks every single one of her seventy-plus years, despite a lifetime of facials.

"Where's Alexander?" I say as cold horror sweeps through me, taking every ounce of my relief with it. "Constance, where—"

"Your Majesty," she corrects, but her voice hitches. "You will call me Your Majesty, Evangeline, or I—"

"Where is he?"The guttural sound that comes out of me is inhuman, and all I can think about is that broken body beside me, and how I know beyond a doubt that my father, king or not, would have done everything he could to protect me. Even if it meant taking the death that was supposed to be mine.

Constance swallows hard. "His Majesty was pulled from the rubble shortly after you were," she says slowly, like it's taking everything she has to keep her voice steady. "He sustained crush injuries to his legs and chest, and—"

"Is he alive?" I demand, sick with fear all over again. Her chin quivers now, and I reel, trying to brace myself for the reality I don't want to face.

"Yes," she whispers. "He's still alive. But he is critical, and the odds the doctors have given him…"

She closes her eyes, and twin tears escape down the sides of her nose. Before I can think better of it, I'm hugging her again, numb to the inconsequential aches and pains in my own body now. And when she slumps against me, all her carefully crafted royal veneer vanishing in a single shudder, I know that there's a very real chance I'll never see my father again.