Chapter Thirty-two

Is it done?

no, and I won't.

Why?

you lied to me.

About?

you know exactly what. I won't.

Then I'll just have to find someone else.

you can't! you'll hurt someone.

And if you don't do this, then I'll make sure you take the blame. Do you think you're my only insider?

you can't. I didn't. I won't.

So you keep saying.

if you do this, i'll tell them the truth.

Will you?

[picture message attached]

you're a monster.

No, I'm simply following the rules. What will it be, love? It's entirely your decision.

find someone else. it won't be me.

Very well, then. It's your funeral.

—Text message exchange between two prepaid mobiles, 17 January 2024

MY MOTHER DOESN'T LEAVE MY side all evening as I sob miserably into my pillow.

I don't tell her why I'm crying—I can't find the words, and even if I tried, I'd have to tell her about Aoife and the Abr, and I already feel like I'm at my breaking point. But once she realizes I don't want to talk about it, my mom doesn't push, and instead we curl up together underneath my blanket, and she tells me stories.

Most of them are fictional and only meant to distract me—the plots of books she's read, movies she half remembers, myths she's always liked—but inevitably they remind her of something that's happened in her life, and she veers into the truth. Stories about her childhood that I've never heard. About her friends growing up, and how they used to make jewelry to sell at craft fairs and how she designed the covers of all her high school yearbooks. She tells me about her time at Oxford, about the classes she took and the traditions I have to look forward to next year, and Alexander slides in and out of her anecdotes like his presence is as natural as breathing.

I don't remember falling asleep, but I must at some point, because I start to dream of her life like I'm her. Like my childhood was normal, or as normal as it could be when her own father died when she was three, and like the only thing eighteen-year-old me has to worry about is making it to my next class on time. But in the middle of this montage of memories that aren't mine, a shrill sound pierces the lecture hall I'm sitting in, spun entirely out of her words and my imagination, and my eyes fly open as my mom and I sit up in the darkness together.

"What is that?" she says, her voice low and sleepy, and I'm relieved she can hear it, too.

"I don't know," I say, already wriggling toward the edge of the bed. My limbs are heavy, and my head feels like it's full of sand, but the screech penetrates my brain like an ice pick. "It almost sounds like a—"

"Miss Bright!"

My bedroom door bursts open, and a protection officer holding a flashlight rushes inside, stopping only a few feet from the bed as he shines the light in our eyes. "Miss Bright—Ms. Bright—we need to go. Now."

I shrink back, but his free hand is already reaching for my elbow, and he seizes it with the kind of force that makes it clear he'll drag me if he has to.

"What's going on?" says my mom, already on her feet.

"There's a fire in the private apartments," he says, pulling me upright. "The castle's being evacuated."

I stumble across the carpet, my mind fuzzy. My rooms are technically in the visitors' apartments, but the private ones—

"Maisie," I gasp, her name caught in my throat, and suddenly everything she said to me flies out of my mind like it was never there at all. "Is she—"

"Her Royal Highness is being seen to," he says, and this is so infuriatingly vague that I can't even begin to interpret what he's really saying. "I'm afraid we must go."

For a split second, I think he's going to pull me out the window. Instead, he leads me and my mother through the sitting room and into the corridor, which is already hazy with smoke.

"Maisie!" I shout down the long gallery. "Maisie!"

"This way, Miss Bright," says the protection officer, and he all but jerks me in the other direction. The exit and the safety that comes with it aren't far, but I can hear other panicked voices call to one another in the distance, and adrenaline spikes through me.

"Let me go," I say, trying to free my arm, but his grip is impossibly tight. "I said let me go—"

Out of instinct, maybe, or pure fear, I twist my wrist in the way Ingrid taught me, pushing against his thumb, and I finally break loose. Instantly I take off deeper into the gallery, toward the thickening smoke.

"Evie!" cries my mom as a crackle of radio static fills the air. "Evie, get back here!"

It's irrational—I know it's irrational. But after nearly losing Alexander, the thought of my sister, trapped and frightened and gasping for air, drives me forward as fast as my legs can carry me.

The shouts grow louder as I dash toward my sister's apartment. But I don't know where I am, exactly, not with the smoke so thick now that I can hardly see, and I'm coughing as I stumble directly into someone's arms.

"Found her!" calls a man whose voice I don't recognize, and before I know what's happening, he picks me up around the waist and carries me around the bend in the corridor.

"Maisie!" I yell, but her name dissolves into another coughing fit. Suddenly ruddy orange flames flicker through the haze, and I see the outline of a doorway—the entrance to Alexander's apartment.

"This way," booms another voice nearby, and just as I spot a second door—Maisie's, which is wide open as smoke pours from her sitting room—my so-called rescuer veers to the left and out into the freezing courtyard.

Almost instantly, the air clears, and I suck in a deep breath between coughs. Dimly I hear my mother calling my name nearby, and within moments, her arms are around me.

"Don't you ever do that again," she gasps, clutching me so tightly that I really can't breathe. "What were you thinking?"

"Maisie's still in there," I wheeze. Sirens sound nearby, and blue lights reflect off the walls of the courtyard as several fire trucks appear, along with multiple ambulances.

"And you were going to rescue her yourself?" says my mom, but she holds me even closer. "Come on—let's get you checked out."

I don't want to go anywhere without knowing my sister's all right, but another pair of protection officers usher us both toward the center of the courtyard, where an ambulance has parked. I crane my neck as we go, anxiously watching the doorway closest to Maisie's room, but no one comes or goes for nearly a minute.

"She probably went out through her window, sweetheart," says my mom as a technician presses a stethoscope to my chest, half an inch from my healing wound. "She'll be in the garden, no doubt."

"But it's a drop," I manage. "And if she jumped out the window—"

Suddenly the doors burst open, and a protection officer with an ash-streaked face barrels out of the castle, cradling a bundle with strawberry-blond curls.

My sister.

"Maisie!"I cry, even though my throat is raw from the smoke. This time, I dodge both my mother and the protection officer hovering nearby as I race across the courtyard toward a second ambulance near the doors. My lungs are on fire, but I don't care. All I can focus on is the fact that she isn't moving.

I reach the ambulance just as Maisie's rescuer sets her on a stretcher, and I skid to a stop a couple yards away. "Maisie?" I say as terror spreads through me, rooting my bare feet to the ground. "Maisie."

She's still—too still. The sleeve of her flannel pajamas is scorched, and her arm is red and angry, but the paramedics pay it no attention as they place an oxygen mask over her face. They move over her, listening to her heart and her lungs with calm urgency, but just as tears sting my already-watering eyes, hers fly open.

"Get—off—me!" she gasps, and my legs damn near give out from relief. But as soon as these three words escape her, she dissolves into a coughing fit so violent that I half expect her to expel a lung. She sits up, hunching over as her entire body contracts with each rattle, but even as the crowd around her gathers, she looks at me.

"Maisie," I choke out, only partially because of the smoke now. "Are you—"

She pushes aside a paramedic who has to be twice her size, and despite the way she's shaking, she slides off the stretcher and crosses the narrow distance between us, her hand pressing the oxygen mask to her face. I meet her halfway, and without a word, she hugs me fiercely, once again clinging to me like I'm the only thing keeping her standing—which, after a second or two, might actually be true.

"I'm sorry," she wheezes as she pulls her mask away. We're surrounded by protection officers and paramedics alike, but she shrugs off their touches as she holds on to me instead. "What I said—"

"It doesn't matter," I say. "Let them take care of you, okay? I'll be right here."

At last she allows the officers and medics to lift her back onto the stretcher, but as they tend to her, her gaze doesn't leave mine. And while the words she said and the accusations she slung hours earlier still hang between us, with the smoke rising from the castle and the flames flickering toward the night sky, they seem to fade until they, too, drift away on the wind.