CHAPTER 1

Tourists streamed up the steep staircase toward the wedding-cake contours of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, and I pressed myself against the railing, out of their way. “Are we sure this is where he said to meet him?”

“First landing on the stairs to the west of the carousel,” Jack said. “That’s here.”

Jolly accordion music started up nearby, like we were in an old-timey Charlie Chaplin movie.

“He’s late,” I said.

“You can’t expect criminals to keep regular hours.” Jack boosted himself onto the low wall lining the landing, and I paced in front of him, searching faces for the heavyset man we’d given our photos to a week ago. All I found was the regular Montmartre Sunday-afternoon crowds.

The accordion in the courtyard down the street stopped, and there was a smattering of applause. At any time of the day here, street performers could be found playing instruments or doing over-the-top mime shows or painting portraits of tourists. This neighborhood had been a haven for authors and artists since groups of expats claimed it in the early 1900s—Montmartre had been home to Hemingway, Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And now us.

It had been two weeks since Jack and I had escaped the wedding where I was supposed to marry Luc Dauphin, after which the Order kidnapped my mother and killed my friend and Jack’s mentor, Mr. Emerson. Overall, not a great day.

Two weeks since the chase across Europe that left us with this bracelet I kept on my wrist all the time now, even while I was sleeping. I held up my arm, and it glinted dully in the warm afternoon sun. The wide band of tarnished gold had belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte, and it was part of a string of clues he’d left that led to the tomb of Alexander the Great.

The tomb and the weapon against the Order allegedly inside it—which the Order would do anything to keep the Circle from procuring—were our only bargaining chips for my mom’s release. The bracelet had an inscription on it that referred to my twin and I, indicating that it was part of a matching set. To find the tomb, we had to find the other bracelet.

And so it had been two agonizing weeks of holing up in a tiny apartment and spending the days searching the Internet and scouring museums online and around Paris for the bracelet’s twin.

Two weeks of my heart racing every time the phone rang, wondering if it was the Order calling to say they’d killed my mother because we weren’t fast enough. I hoped that as long as we were actively searching, they wouldn’t do that—why would they want to lose their leverage? But Jack was worried that they might do it on a whim, and then kill or kidnap me. That’d be just as good for them—then no one would find Alexander’s tomb.

They were already working on making sure the Circle would never be able to find it. At first the attacks had seemed random: A Saudi Circle member. Liam Blackstone, an American actor. An attack on the Dauphin family, which killed one of the twins Madame Dauphin was carrying. But it wasn’t random. The baby girl would have been the first girl in the Circle with purple eyes . . . besides me. The rest of the assassinations targeted boys who might be the One, so they couldn’t marry me and fulfill the mandate, which was meant to reveal the way to the tomb.

So it had been two weeks of looking over my shoulder for the Order and for the Circle, who still wanted me for their own and still thought Jack was a traitor.

I rubbed my eyes and scanned the area. Like the rest of Paris, Montmartre straddled the line between dirty big city and fairy tale. At the bottom of these steps was an apartment building that would have been considered a castle anywhere else. It had wide wrought iron balconies and dark stone turrets, which contrasted starkly with the dirty ground-level tourist shops that sold postcards and scarves and fake Dior sunglasses, like the huge pair I was wearing right now as a disguise.

This neighborhood was also the highest point in Paris. One day I’d spent a good half hour looking for Notre-Dame. I found it immediately now, even though its twin spires were barely visible among the rest of the cream and gray buildings.

“You didn’t see anything when you did recon, did you?” I said.

Jack shook his head.

I knew he was good at watching out for us, but I couldn’t stop being extra cautious. We never went outside without sunglasses and hats, and tried to stay away from places like Metro stations—which we knew had cameras. “I just keep thinking someone’s going to see us.”

Jack rocked forward on his palms, and the compass tattoo bulged on his forearm. “I know. But they probably think we’re halfway across the world by now. Eating dim sum in Shanghai. Hiding out on a beach in Brazil. We’d never be dumb enough to stay in the Dauphins’ backyard, right?”

That was true, but it was also the problem, and the reason we were waiting here now. As of this week, we’d exhausted every bit of research we could do in Paris, and at the worst possible time.

Scarface, one of the Order’s minions, called to check on our progress every few days. Yesterday, though, he’d sounded agitated. The Commander, his boss, was getting antsy. They’d already given us two weeks to follow these clues, he’d said. Two more seemed sufficient.

So now we had two more weeks to deliver Alexander the Great’s tomb, and that was it. Two weeks to find something archaeologists and treasure hunters had been searching for unsuccessfully for centuries. If we didn’t find it, they’d kill my mother.

Two more weeks.

We had to get out of Paris. We had to figure out where Napoleon might have planted the twin bracelet, and search there. Museums and art collections and historical sites . . . There was a whole world to consider.

The problem was, I had no documents, Jack’s were under tight surveillance, and unless you happened to be on a jet chartered by the Circle, you needed a passport to leave the country. Jack was used to getting what he needed through the Circle, but after a bit of searching, we’d found this seedy dealer of fake passports right in our neighborhood.

Off the landing was a narrow street lined with cafes, their rickety tables spilling onto the cobblestones, and finally, between them, lumbered a familiar stocky guy in a stained gray T-shirt and khakis. Jack hopped down from the wall, brushing dust off his dark jeans. “There he is.”

I readjusted my wide-brimmed hat over my face, and we made our way down the steps to a bench next to the carousel. The music stopped, and a round of kids got off while another hopped on.

“Have you got them?” Jack said.

The guy wheezed, pushing greasy red hair back from his face. “It is taking longer than I anticipated,” he said in a heavy French accent. “Complications.”

“You told us it would be this week,” I said, my voice rising. “How much longer?”

“One week longer.” He wiped his nose. “Perhaps two.”

I gritted my teeth. Over Jack’s shoulder, an opera singer had replaced the accordion player.

“That’s too long,” I said. “Is there any way to rush it? We’ll pay more.” I was trying to make my voice sound annoyed, but it came out somewhere between defeated and panicked.

“Non,” he said. “There is no way.”

I felt like cursing, and throwing things, and crying. Instead, I said, “Forget it, then.” We walked away from the guy’s protests, and I took the flight after flight of steep steps into the hills of Montmartre two at a time. I think I’d almost been expecting this. It couldn’t be that easy.

“Hey,” Jack said, catching up to me. “It’ll be okay, yeah? We’ll figure something out.”

I nodded silently, but didn’t slow down. I felt Jack watching me. There was one other way to get around Europe, and he hadn’t been subtle about the fact that he thought it was the best idea.

The Saxons could help us. My newfound family.

It had also been two weeks since we’d seen them.

If I was being honest with myself, I was practically obsessed with the idea of my father, and the brother and sister I’d just learned about. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get to know them, and to give them the chance to help. But with so much on the line, I couldn’t take any chances. Could I trust these strangers when my mother’s life hung in the balance?

Jack stopped me at the top landing and pulled off his sunglasses. I tensed, not ready to have this conversation again right now. But he just said, “There have got to be other delinquents in this city who can get us fake passports on short notice. We’ll just pop in to every dodgy bar we pass until we find them. All right?”

A desperate laugh escaped my throat, but I nodded, and actually did relax a bit. Maybe there was another way. He took my hand, dragging a thumb across my palm. Goose bumps rose on my arms, like they always did when he touched me like that.

Jack noticed and dropped my hand so abruptly, it fell to my side. He pushed the sunglasses back over his face and turned away from the stairs, down a side street. “We should go to the market on the way home. We’re out of coffee.”

I rubbed my arms to banish the chills and caught up with him. I wasn’t allowed to feel like that.

Despite everything that had happened, Jack and I were not together. Not dating. Certainly not boyfriend and girlfriend.

Early on, we’d talked. It would be too distracting. He didn’t want to put me in an uncomfortable position. No matter what we felt for each other, it would be best to put our relationship on the back burner until we were no longer in a life-or-death situation.

I knew he was right. Besides, it was bad enough that he was helping me hide from the Saxons. If they found out that something inappropriate was going on . . .

Yes, we’d slipped up sometimes. Just last week, we were sitting on the couch, flipping through Napoleon history books, and we thought we’d made a breakthrough about a museum in Austria. Without thinking about it, I’d kissed him. He’d kissed me back like he’d never wanted to do anything more in his life, which only made it more awkward minutes later, when he’d let go of me like he’d just committed a crime. The Austrian museum turned out to be nothing, anyway.

So Jack and I were friends now. Teammates. People who lived together—slept in the same room in our tiny apartment—but in separate beds. People who tried really hard not to remember how it felt to wake up with my head on his chest.

Or maybe that was just me.

I looked up at him, heavy brows over gray eyes like storm clouds, the square line of his jaw, a knit beanie that disguised his dark hair.

We were the definition of it’s complicated.

“Yeah.” I adjusted my own dark glasses. “Coffee. And more Parisian document forgers. It’ll be fine.”

We were almost back to the apartment when my phone rang. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jack sigh.

It had also been two weeks of Stellan. He was across Paris, at the Dauphins’, but ever since we learned he was part of the lost thirteenth bloodline of the Circle of Twelve, he might as well have been living in our little apartment with us. And though no one besides us knew it, he was also the One. The heir of Alexander the Great. And the person who I, according to the Circle’s ancient mandate, was meant to marry in order to find Alexander’s tomb. Of course, I didn’t believe that part for a second.

I answered the phone. “Do you need something?”

“Only wondering what you’re doing today,” he said casually. A car horn sounded up the street from us just as one honked in the background on the phone, and I could picture Stellan weaving between little black Vespas near the Louvre, out on an errand for the Dauphins.

“Nothing important,” I answered. Jack and I paused on the curb as a red Fiat sped by, then continued across the cobblestones and around the overgrown garden on our corner.

Jack pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He pretended he thought the whole thing was as ridiculous as I did. That me marrying Stellan wouldn’t do anything. But he’d grown up in the Circle. The union in the mandate, between the One and the girl with the purple eyes, meant marriage to him, like it did to the rest of the Circle. I knew it bothered him more than he’d say.

“Where are you?” Stellan asked. Over the past few weeks, his light Russian accent had become as familiar to me as Jack’s British one.

“Why?” I answered suspiciously. “Where are you?”

We stepped onto our street, and there was Stellan, leaning against the wall in front of our apartment, his tall, slim frame clad in his usual uniform of skinny jeans, a close-fitting T-shirt, and boots. He flipped his blond hair out of his eyes and grinned. I sighed and put my phone back in my bag.

“Does he realize he doesn’t have a standing invitation?” Jack grumbled.

“I can hear you,” Stellan called.

Jack pushed past him without a hello and punched in the door code to our building. The now-familiar scent of old wood followed me up the stairs. Jack held the apartment door open for me, then frowned. “We forgot the coffee.”

“I can go out later—”

“I’ll just go. You all right?” His eyes cut to Stellan, who stepped inside the apartment. I nodded. “I’ll be back in a minute,” Jack said, closing the door behind him.

“This playing house you two are doing is adorable.” Stellan flopped onto the couch, stretching his arms along the back. The apartment had only two rooms—a closet-sized bedroom and this one, which contained an efficiency kitchen, one small table, and a couch that backed up to windows overlooking a sunny courtyard.

I tossed my hat and sunglasses on the table and glanced at our wall of clues, where we’d pinned Xeroxes of pages from Napoleon’s diary—which we’d also found from Mr. Emerson’s clues—the wording of the inscription on the bracelet, photos of the gargoyle that had pointed us to the diary, and a map of the world. I’d marked the cities we might want to visit with colorful pins, and tacked up museum brochures and notes. All in all, it looked like crazy conspiracy theorists lived here. I guess that wasn’t far from the truth.

“Do you actually need something, or are you just here to bother us?” I said over my shoulder.

“Have you actually made any progress, or did your fake passport idea not go as intended?” he retorted.

My chest squeezed painfully. “I guess I missed the part where you had a better idea. Or where you were willing to search the continent for the second bracelet on your own.”

Stellan drummed his fingers on the back of the couch. “You know very well that I do have a better idea . . .”

I shook my head and retrieved a newspaper article we’d found earlier from my bag. Another item for the crazy clue wall.

“Just tell me one thing,” Stellan said after a minute. I could feel him watching me as I tacked up the article. “Is it because of him?”

“What?” I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“I mean, kuklachka, do you refuse to fulfill the mandate because of your feelings for someone you’ve only just met?”

I rubbed my face. “I think the real question is, why do you want to marry me? The tomb of Alexander the Great has been lost for centuries. I’m not denying that us getting married might mean something in the world of the Circle, but a church and a white dress isn’t magic.” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “‘Union’ could mean something besides marriage—something that would actually help us find the tomb—but until we figure out if that’s true and what it is, we have a better chance of finding it by following actual clues left by someone who’s been there than by pledging our eternal love. And we have those clues. There’s a second bracelet out there that we need to find. And then we’ll find the password, and it’ll tell us how to get to the tomb. I hope,” I finished under my breath.

That was another thing. It wasn’t just the twin bracelet we had to find. I slipped a thumb between the bracelet and my wrist. The outside of it just had the inscription and decorations. But once we’d inspected it more, we’d realized the inside was a whole separate layer. Its width was divided into five equal bands I could spin around my wrist independently, each with a long string of letters etched into it. We assumed it would work like a combination lock: if we rotated the rings so the letters were arranged in the correct password along the indicated line, something would happen. We hoped the rest of the letters might line up to form more words—like, for instance, the location of the tomb.

Stellan sat forward, fingers steepled under his chin. The backlight from the window made him look like he was glowing at the edges. “First off, let me remind you that I’ve got fireproof skin.”

His hand drifted to the translucent scars that showed above his collar. It was true. When he’d held a lighter to his skin in the Dauphins’ basement, his skin hadn’t even singed. The One who walks through fire and does not burn, the mandate said. The Circle didn’t realize it was so literal.

“I’m not going to say the word magic, because if it is a trait in my bloodline, there must be a scientific explanation,” he went on, “but there’s more going on here than we understand.”

I pressed my lips together and turned back to the clue wall.

“And second,” he went on, “if anyone in the Circle finds out about the thirteenth bloodline—which you uncovered, by the way, so thank you for that—and you don’t back me, I’m dead. They’ll assume I’m planning a coup. If I did manage to get away, I’d be running my whole life, and so would my sister.”

Stellan’s accent got a little thicker on the last words. I pictured the little blond girl he’d showed me a picture of. Anya. Just after we’d escaped the wedding, he arranged for someone in Russia to hide her away, just in case, but I knew he still worried.

“But if I did have you on my side,” he continued, “if I was bound to the girl they believe to be their savior? The Circle might not have a single leader, but the closest to it is you. And if we were together, us. Then I could sleep at night no more worried someone was going to kill me than I am right now. That’s why I want to do it.”

Somehow, through all of this, I hadn’t thought of it that way. The leader of the Circle? I twisted a pushpin deeper into the wall. “You think someone’s planning to kill you?”

Stellan sank back into the stiff green couch, and it creaked in the quiet. “In this world, there’s always someone planning to kill you.”

At that, we both glanced out the window, then at the door. “And besides,” he said, “how do you know the union is not marriage?”

“Napoleon’s diary—”

“Didn’t say specifically that it’s not.”

“I know what the Circle believes, but why would Napoleon have left clues if marrying two people created some kind of North Star that pointed the way?” I repeated, gesturing to the wall.

“I am only saying.” Stellan stood up from the couch. “You claim you’ll do anything to help your mother, but even with this new very short time line, you’re not willing to consider the union. Or going to the Saxons, for that matter.”

I stiffened. “You too? They’re my family. I should be the one to decide what I want to do or not do with them.”

He raised a finger to stop me. “They’re your blood. They don’t have to be your family unless you want them to be. Maybe you don’t.”

I shivered. It was warm outside, but these old stone buildings retained the cold. “What does that even mean? Of course I want them to be my family.” I only wished it was as easy as that; that wanting made things true. My fingers tightened around my locket, which contained the only picture I had of the person who had always been my family. The person who had to be my first priority now.

If my mom were here, what would she do? Would she trust the Saxons? Would she try to find another way? My mom had never been the pro-and-con-list type. Whenever I was trying to make a decision, she’d tell me my heart knew what it wanted, and if I followed it, I wouldn’t go wrong. And then I’d remind her that my heart would probably never want to take three AP classes in one semester, but that my college applications would. And it wasn’t like that helped me now. All my heart wanted was to save her, but I didn’t know how.

Stellan raised his eyebrows.

“I just think I should be the one to choose who I want to marry and when. And for all I know, the Saxons could marry me off to someone who might—maybe—be even worse than you,” I said flippantly.

“Now, that is just rude.” Stellan crossed the room and pulled aside the heavy front drapes that we usually kept closed and peered into the street, letting in the soft glow of sunset.

I brushed a stray bread crumb off the counter. “If I went to the Saxons, they might help . . . or they might lock me up in their basement and force me to marry the highest bidder. Which means the safest thing for me to do is find the tomb on my own.”

“If you find it.”

I huffed out a breath. “Don’t the Dauphins need you for . . . something? Anything?”

“That’s code for she doesn’t want you here.” Jack came inside, tossing a bag of espresso beans on the counter.

“Fine.” Stellan let the curtains fall, and the light in the room dimmed. “Lovely to see you both, as always. Talk tomorrow.”

He left, but everything he’d said had brought my worries rushing back even stronger. My plan—to figure out and follow these clues on our own—wasn’t working. Something was going to have to change.

• • •

After dinner, I sat on the couch and Jack stood in front of the clue wall, reading over the new article I’d pinned up earlier. It was about a cache of Napoleon artifacts found at a site near New Delhi, India.

“So what this means is that Napoleon’s been everywhere,” he said.

I shrugged. We knew we had to search places other than Paris—if we could ever get passports—but the list of where to search just kept growing.

I buried my face in my hands, and after a second, I felt the couch dip as Jack sat beside me.

“Yes, there are lots of possibilities,” he said. “But we’ve already determined that he’d likely have left the second bracelet, or any other clues, in places important to him or the Circle or Alexander, right?”

I nodded. If he wanted someone to find the clues, he wouldn’t bury them in a random field somewhere.

“So we’ll figure out how to get out of here, then we’ll do a methodical search of Circle headquarters cities, Alexander monuments . . . every place we can in the time we have,” he said.

He always sounded so calm. So logical. He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder, then pulled back and hovered awkwardly. “I’m going to bed.”

Don’t, I almost said. I don’t want to be alone in my own head right now. I need somebody. I need you.

“Good night,” I said instead. At least pretending not to care—forcing myself not to care—was something I had plenty of practice with.

“It’s like I said before,” Jack said after a second. “It’ll be all right, yeah? We’ll figure it out.”

I nodded and tried to believe him.

He disappeared into the bedroom, kicking off his shoes as he went. I sighed and pulled a history book from the stack on the coffee table. I read about Napoleon’s campaign through France for the thousandth time. Alexander’s time in Egypt. Napoleon’s outposts in northern France. Alexander’s conquests in India.

I grabbed my phone. India. Elephants. Bright colors. Bright colors painted onto elephants. The Napoleon treasure they found recently was in Delhi, not Kolkata, where the Circle family based in India lived. I looked up important monuments in Kolkata. Temples. The Indian Museum, which supposedly had both Alexander artifacts and European art and jewelry. It was a pretty building, but too new-looking. Built—hmm. Built in 1814. The year Napoleon was exiled from France.

I scribbled a note about it on a piece of paper and tacked it to the board. Maybe India could be our first stop, if we ever figured out how to get out of Paris.

For just a second, I pictured allowing myself to trust the Saxons. With their resources, we could go anywhere. And, whispered a little voice in the back of my head, I’d really be part of their family. My family. I’d been trying not to think about how badly I wanted that, but it was like any craving—the more I denied it, the worse it got.

No matter what, it wasn’t worth risking my mom’s life, said my logical side. But would it really be that much of a risk?

I scrubbed my hands over my face. I couldn’t do this anymore today. I had to at least try to sleep.

I took out the brown contacts disguising my purple eyes and snuck into the dark bedroom.

Jack had made up my slim, hard bed this morning, tucking the blankets in to form precise corners, the pillow fluffed and centered. Just as perfectly as he made our beds every day, like he washed every dish, like he patrolled the neighborhood for anything out of the ordinary on a down-to-the-minute schedule. Everything was tidy and in its place, including him, a dark lump under the covers in a sliver of moonlight, sleeping. Just like he was supposed to be, just like he was every night while I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Thinking, worrying, trying to shut off my brain long enough to close my eyes without seeing terrible things behind my eyelids.

I was mentally preparing myself for another long, restless night when Jack stirred. In the dim light, the whites of his eyes glowed as he blinked once, twice. His covers lifted, and he moved to the edge of the mattress, leaving a me-sized space next to him on the bed that was barely big enough for one person.

I hesitated only a second before bypassing my own bed and crawling gratefully into his, my head on his chest and his arm tight around me. That night, I didn’t have to stare at the ceiling long at all.

The next morning, on the first day of the third week, I woke up still in Jack’s arms. He opened his eyes when I sat up. “G’morning,” he said sleepily, his hair matted down on one side. I fought the urge to pull my fingers through it.

“Good morning.” I don’t know whether it was finally getting a little sleep or being reminded that, even if we weren’t technically in a relationship, Jack really did care about me and would never suggest anything he thought was dangerous, but all of a sudden, I knew what I had to do. There was only one thing that made sense. “We have to go to the Saxons,” I said.