The Frewell administration liked to propound the age-old fiction that women were frail and indecisive creatures, badly in need of homes and husbands to give them structure and guidance. But even the most cursory glance at the late pre-Crossing suggests otherwise. American women were extremely resourceful in this period; they had to be, in order to survive in a world that valued them for only one thing. Indeed, many women were forced to create secret lives, lives about which we know very little, and about which their husbands certainly knew nothing.
—The Dark Night of America, GLEE DELAMERE
After two days, Lily had run out of books. Dorian was a voracious reader, and she went through Lily’s hidden stash like lightning. Lily offered her a pocket reader, but Dorian dismissed it with a contemptuous sniff. “All the e-books are edited and purged. I worked a stretch in a SmartBook factory, and the government people were all over the place, editing content. Stick with hard copies; they’re harder to alter after publication. In the better world, there won’t be any electronics at all.”
The better world. Lily had thought it was only a slogan, something that the Blue Horizon used to make its deeds seem more innocuous. But now she wondered. The tall Englishman, Tear, had seemed so certain that it was real. “There is no better world.”
“There will be,” Dorian replied calmly. “It’s close now . . . so close that we can almost touch it.”
That was the same thing Tear had said. The words had the ring of religious rhetoric, but Dorian seemed too practical for that. For that matter, so did Tear. In the past couple of days Lily had done several online searches, but the information was very sparse. There was a birth record for a William Tear from Southport, England, in 2046, and eleven years ago, a William Tear had been awarded the Military Cross for heroism with the Special Air Service. Lily had assumed that the Special Air Service was the British version of the old American Air Force, but after some more research, she found that the American analogue to the SAS was actually the SEALs. Now she was certain she had the right man. She had met plenty of paramilitary types through Greg, and the men always projected an air of invincibility. Tear had given the same impression, but it was combined with something else, something close to omniscience. For a few insane moments there in the nursery, Lily had been sure that he knew everything about her.
There was no other information on Tear, which seemed impossible. Lily could look up her friends’ drug prescriptions—the legal ones, anyway—their genealogies, their medical records, tax statements, even their DNA sequences, if she felt like it. But William Tear had been born, had served in the British special forces, and that was all. The rest of his life had disappeared. When Lily searched for Dorian Rice, she found the same thing. The results yielded countless news stories, but they had all been published in the last few days and dealt with the explosion at the airbase. Greg had said that Dorian had escaped from the Bronx Women’s Detention Center, but there was no arrest record online. There was no mention of Dorian’s family, no birth certificate. It was as though someone had literally wiped Dorian and Tear from history. But only Security had the power to remove things from the net; the days when citizens could edit their own information had vanished with the enactment of the Emergency Powers Act.
Lily longed to ask Dorian about herself, but she didn’t want Dorian to know that she’d gone snooping. Dorian had stopped jumping at every little thing, but she still displayed an odd paranoia that came and went. She didn’t want to discuss William Tear; whenever Lily mentioned him, Dorian would snap, “No names!” making Lily feel as though she had blasphemed somehow. Dorian was able to sit up now, to make her way across the nursery, but she still froze whenever the phone rang, and she didn’t like to be touched. She insisted on doing her own injections.
Tear wasn’t the only topic that was off-limits. When it came to the better world, Dorian remained maddeningly evasive, speaking in vague phrases and giving no real answers. Lily couldn’t tell whether she was holding something back; maybe Tear’s followers didn’t understand the better world either, maybe they were just as much in the dark. And yet Lily was desperate to know. The vision she had seen that night with Tear had taken hold in her mind: a vast, open land, covered with wheat and the blue ribbon of river. No guards or walls or checkpoints, only small wooden houses, people moving along freely, children running through wheat.
“When does it arrive, this better world?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know,” Dorian replied. “But I don’t think it’s very far off now.”
On Sunday Lily had to leave Dorian alone to go to church, and she fretted through the service. She barely heard the priest’s lecture on the sins of a childless woman, although, as always, the priest looked right at Lily and the other delinquents in his congregation. Greg put a hand on Lily’s back, trying to convey sympathy, she supposed, but the deep gleam in his eyes made her uneasy. Greg was planning something, certainly, and it could be nothing good. For a brief moment she wondered if he was scheming to divorce her; even after the Frewell Laws, the government would still ease the way for rich executives who wanted to shed barren wives. But Lily was beginning to see something now that she had never seen before: to Greg, she was property, and Greg wasn’t a man to give property away, not even if it was damaged. Lily wondered if things would change someday, when she became irreparably childless.
Cheerful thoughts, candyass, Maddy whispered, and Lily blinked. Ever since Dorian had rolled over the back wall into the garden, it seemed as though Maddy was everywhere, always ready to offer her opinion. But it was rarely anything that Lily wanted to hear.
After church, Greg directed his driver, Phil, to take them to the club. Lunch at the club was a Sunday routine, but Lily wished she could beg off. The thought of their friends was almost unbearable today. Lily wanted to be back in the nursery with Dorian, trying to unravel the mystery of the better world.
As they pulled out of the church parking lot, Greg pushed the button that raised the partition, blocking Phil out. Lily was alarmed to see his eyes bright with excitement.
“I found a doctor.”
“A doctor,” Lily repeated cautiously.
“He’s not cheap, but he’s licensed, and he’s willing to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Plant you.”
For a moment Lily had no idea what he was talking about. The word plant made her think of implants, and her mind went automatically to the tag in her shoulder. But no, Greg meant something else. A truly awful idea popped into Lily’s mind, and she shrank from it . . . but she also knew that it was exactly what Greg meant.
“In vitro?”
“Of course!” Greg took her hand, leaning forward. “Listen to this. The doctor says he can use my sperm, just stick it in another woman’s eggs. You have the baby and no one ever has to know.”
Lily’s mind went blank. For a moment, she considered simply throwing open the car door, rolling out while it was still in motion and fleeing to . . . where?
“What if it’s not my eggs that are the problem?”
Greg’s brow furrowed, and his lower lip pushed out a fraction of an inch. He had expected his idea to be received with enthusiasm, Lily saw now, and the unadulterated contempt that had reared its head on the night of Dorian’s arrival (of the rape, Maddy reminded her) seemed to multiply and fester inside her. Greg thought that he had come up with a great idea, that having another woman’s eggs forcibly implanted inside her would seem like a godsend to Lily. And for the first time, it occurred to her to wonder whether Greg even understood that he had raped her. After Frewell, it was almost impossible to prove rape at all, and spousal rape hadn’t been prosecuted in years. What would consent even mean to Greg? The bulk of his sexual education seemed to have come from his father and his frat buddies, and none of them had done him any favors.
Lily cleared her throat, dragging the words up as though with a chainfall. It would be so much easier not to say anything, but she had to know. “The other night—”
“I’m sorry, Lil.” Greg took her hand, cutting her off. “I didn’t mean to take it all out on you. Even without the bombing, work has been so bad lately.”
“You raped me.”
Greg’s mouth popped open, an expression of such complete surprise overtaking his face that Lily realized she had been right: he didn’t know. She turned away, staring out the window. They were just passing through the great stone arch of the New Canaan Country Club, and beyond, the vast greens of the golf course stretched toward the near horizon. Greg cleared his throat, and Lily knew what was coming even before he spoke.
“You’re my wife.”
Before she knew what she was doing, she laughed. Greg’s face darkened, but he didn’t know that Lily wasn’t laughing at him, but at herself. Frewell’s bullshit had worked on her too, because until the other night she had honestly believed that marriage turned men into better people, better protectors. But marriage didn’t change anyone. Lily had married a man shaped by his father, the same father who had put a hand on Lily’s ass at the wedding rehearsal dinner and asked whether he could get an early slice of the cake. Was she actually surprised, now, that this was where they had ended up? Was she even allowed to complain?
The tag, Lil, Maddy whispered, and she was right. The tag was the great equalizer. Lily couldn’t run, because no matter where she ran to, all the money in the world wouldn’t keep Greg from finding her there, and Security wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him from taking her back; they would fall all over themselves to assist one of their own.
The car pulled up at the entryway, and Lily sensed Greg’s relief at the end to the conversation. Coldness had descended on Lily now, a state of nearly frozen calculation. For the first time, she saw that she might have even bigger problems than what had happened the other night. She knew the amount of professional grief Greg was enduring about being childless; it was certainly impeding his career. But she had underestimated how desperate Greg was, how far he was willing to go. They moved through the enormous marble entryway of the club, an edifice that Lily usually admired, but now she barely saw it, her mind continuing forward on its unpleasant track. In vitro fertilization had been illegal since Lily was in grade school, but it was a booming black market among wealthy couples, who saw additional children as an easy way to earn the Frewell tax breaks. If Greg had found an in vitro doctor, would that doctor be able to tell that Lily was on contraception? Was there a way to flush the hormones out of her system somehow? She couldn’t ask the Internet; that was the sort of search that got you a visit from Security.
Why don’t you tell him you don’t want kids?
But that was no longer possible, if it ever had been. She had told Greg so, in tiny ways, for years. It was nothing he was able to hear. And if the other night had proven anything, it was that what Lily wanted wasn’t worth a damn. She would have to find a way around the in vitro doctor, just as she had always circumvented the surveillance system in her house. But at the moment she could think of nothing. All of the years of her marriage, years she had spent scrambling, trying to escape this noose . . . and now it seemed to be drawing tight around her neck. Lily estimated that she had less than half an inch of space left.
In the restaurant, the maître d’ led them toward their table, where Lily saw several of their friends, the Palmers and Keith Thompson, already seated. Lily didn’t enjoy the circle jerk that was lunch with Greg’s golf buddies and their wives, but their presence suddenly seemed like a godsend, infinitely better than sitting across from Greg alone. And Keith wasn’t too bad, definitely her favorite of Greg’s friends. He never leered or groped or shot veiled barbs about Lily’s failure to get pregnant. He was a hurried little man who’d risen to become president of his family’s grocery chain; his father was the chairman. At one of their dinner parties, Keith had wandered, extremely drunk, into the kitchen where Lily was organizing dessert, and they’d had a long talk, during which he confessed to Lily that he was simply waiting for his father to die. But he was only drinking water today, and his brittle smile telegraphed his displeasure at his lunch companions.
“Mayhew!”
Mark Palmer stood up and Lily saw that he was already drunk; his cheeks were rosy and he had to grab the edge of the table for balance. Michele, beside him, had her own buzz going; her eyes were dull and she merely nodded as Lily greeted her and took a chair. When Dow and Pfizer had merged, the resulting company had kept Mark and fired Michele, but Michele still had friends somewhere in the production line. She sold under-the-counter painkillers to half of New Canaan, and made a good profit. Lily’s body still ached whenever she sat down, and for a moment she considered doing a little business with Michele today, but then discarded the idea. She was hiding a terrorist in her nursery, and Greg wanted to haul her off to a back-alley doctor. Painkillers would make Lily as dull as Michele, who was her own best customer, and Lily couldn’t afford that. But they would still need to go off to the bathroom at some point, so that Lily could return Michele’s books and ask for more.
Greg ordered whisky, shooting another resentful look at Lily as the waiter walked away. She had driven him to drink, that look said. There was no introspection in Greg’s gaze; the word rape seemed to have rolled off him like water. Lily suddenly remembered a day several years ago, a weekend in college when they had driven up the coastline, not going anywhere in particular, simply cruising, Lily with her right foot stuck out the passenger-side window and Greg with his left hand on her thigh. What had happened to those two kids? Where had they gone?
Lunch was served, but Sarah and Ford did not appear, which was odd. They always lunched at the club on Sundays. Lily hadn’t seen them in church either.
“Where’s Sarah?” she finally asked Michele.
The table went quiet, and Lily realized that everyone knew something she didn’t. Michele gave her a discouraging shake of the head, and Mark quickly began to tell a story about some mix-up at work. A few minutes later Michele jerked her chin toward the lobby, and Lily stood up.
“Where are you going?”
Greg had grabbed her wrist and was looking up at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Lily suddenly realized that she hated her husband, hated him more than she had ever hated anyone or anything in her entire life.
“To the bathroom. With Michele.”
Greg let go, giving her arm a small jerk as he did so, and Lily stumbled away from the table. Keith Thompson stared after her with concerned eyes, and Lily wished she could tell him that it was all right, but that seemed extremely optimistic.
In the bathroom, Lily asked again, “What happened to Sarah?”
Michele paused in the act of fixing her eyeliner. “It happened three days ago. How do you not know?”
A fair question. There were no secrets in New Canaan; Lily usually knew the scandals of her neighbors before they even knew themselves. “I’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
“Nothing special. What happened?”
“Sarah’s in custody.”
“What for?”
“She tried to take out her tag.”
Lily said nothing for a moment, trying to connect this information with Sarah, who had once told Lily that her husband only used his fists because he cared so much. Of all of Lily’s friends, Sarah seemed the least likely to try something so drastic. “What happened?”
“Don’t know.” Michele began to fix her lipliner. “She went at her own shoulder with a knife. Missed the tag, but she nearly bled to death. Ford turned her in.”
Now that was in character. Once, on a family vacation, Ford had left Sarah at a rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If Sarah hadn’t called him a few minutes later, he might have been all the way to Harrisburg before he noticed she was gone.
“What’ll happen to her?”
Michele shrugged, and Lily saw that Michele had already begun to forget about Sarah, to move on. This forgetting was something you learned to do when someone disappeared, the response so ingrained that it seemed like poor taste to do anything else. Lily had not been able to forget Maddy, but that was different. She bore fault.
“I have your books.” Lily pulled them from her bag, but before she could hand them over, Michele reeled away, bent over and threw up into the sink. Even before she was finished, the sink’s cleaning mechanism began to wipe it away, making small, methodical sweeping sounds.
“Are you all right?” Lily asked, but Michele waved her away. Her voice, when it came, was garbled.
“I’m pregnant again.”
“Congratulations,” Lily replied automatically. “Boy or girl?”
Michele spat into the sink. “Boy, and a good thing too. If we had another girl, Mark wanted to have it taken care of.”
“What?”
“I don’t really care, either way.”
Lily stared at her. Michele had never talked this way before, and although Lily could imagine that it was no picnic being Mark Palmer’s wife, she had always assumed that Michele was like the rest of her friends: happy to be a mother. Michele was always going to soccer games and bragging about her children’s grades. Lily tentatively offered her the books again, and Michele shoved them inside her enormous purse. The size of Michele’s handbags was a running joke among their group of friends, but she needed the space for all the contraband she had to transport around New Canaan. Michele did many of her dealings in this very bathroom, one of the few places in the city that had no surveillance camera.
“What are you going to do?” Lily asked.
“Have it. What else am I going to do? Mark’s already bragging to everyone at work.”
“What about the painkillers?”
Michele narrowed her eyes. “What about them?”
Lily pursed her lips, feeling like the unpleasant chaperone at a party. “Aren’t they bad for the baby?”
“Who cares? Eighty percent of upper-income mothers are on tranquilizers or painkillers, or both. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Of course you didn’t. Drug companies don’t want that information made public. People might start asking why.” Michele fixed her with a disgusted stare. “And then there’s you. Never have to be pregnant, do you? Never have to be a mother.”
Lily recoiled. She and Michele had never been good friends, but they had always gotten along . . . and now Lily realized how little that meant.
“Mark laughs at you two all the time . . . Greg and his empty oven. But you’ll never have to have four screaming kids hanging off you, will you?”
Lily backed up a step at the sight of Michele’s normally pretty face, contorted with hatred and—jealousy? Lily thought it was. But even as she backed away, she felt her temper rising. The picture Michele painted was the stereotype of a poor woman with too many mouths to feed. Lily had even seen the image on government posters whenever a social services bill was up in Congress. But Michele had two nannies to help raise her three children. Some of their friends even had three or four nannies. Michele spent perhaps an hour a day actually being a mother.
Michele had taken out a bottle of pills now, and she swallowed two of them with ease. The digital cleaner had finished, and now the sink was as clean and gleaming as it had been when they came in. Michele splashed some water on her face and dried it with a towel. “We should go back out.”
When they sat down at the table, Keith leaned over and asked Lily, “Are you all right?”
She nodded, fixing a pleasant smile on her face. For the rest of the meal, she tried to keep her eyes off Michele, but she couldn’t help it. Were all of her friends so miserable on the inside? Sarah had answered that question. Jessa, maybe; her husband, Paul, was a decent enough guy until he drank. Christine? Lily didn’t know. Christine’s eyes had a constant, glazed shine that could be either drugs or religious fervor; Christine was the head of the Women’s Bible Circle at their church. Lily had never trusted any of her friends, but she had thought she knew them.
Over lunch, Lily tried to talk to Keith, who asked after her mother and about her plans for the rest of the summer. But Greg was now staring at Keith as well, with the same narrow, suspicious stare. Lily had seen that look many times growing up, on their dog, Henry, who didn’t like to share his chew toys with anyone else. Here was the real pig in a poke: she didn’t belong to herself anymore. She was a doll, a doll that Greg had bought and paid for.
There are ways around that, Maddy whispered, but it did nothing to alleviate Lily’s anxiety. Dr. Davis’s clinic was one thing, but finding a doctor who would perform an abortion . . . that was a whole different level of illegal. She suddenly remembered the heavily pregnant woman in the clinic, the one who had bled all over the chair. Was it possible that Dr. Davis performed abortions as well? Lily had never heard a whisper of that, but of course she wouldn’t have. That was something you didn’t tell anyone.
Greg was staying at the club to play golf with Mark and a few of their other friends, so Lily went home alone, glad for the quiet emptiness of the backseat. After Phil dropped her off, she made Dorian some broth and took it to the nursery, along with a bottle of water. She had been afraid to feed Dorian anything but broth, chicken and beef, but if Dorian had grown tired of the selection, she didn’t say anything. When Lily entered the nursery, she found Dorian on the floor, stretching, reaching for her toes. Her shirt was soaked with sweat. She must be getting better, to be able to stretch that way, but she still looked very pale.
“Won’t you tear your stitches?” Lily asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dorian grunted. She had tied her blonde hair up into messy pigtails, and this made her look more like Maddy than ever. “Can’t afford to be laid up.”
“I’m sure he’d rather you get well first.” Out of deference to Dorian, Lily didn’t use Tear’s name out loud. But she wondered: was the Englishman really so demanding that he would expect Dorian to be up and about two days after being shot? Or did she put this pressure on herself?
“This is a nice nursery,” Dorian remarked. “But I don’t hear any kids running around.”
A wild giggle popped from Lily’s mouth. “I don’t want kids.”
“Me neither.”
“No, I mean, I might want them. But not here.” She gestured toward the house around her. “Not like this. I take pills.”
She had hoped to surprise Dorian, maybe impress her, but Dorian merely nodded and continued with her stretching.
“Have you ever been married?”
“God, no. I’m a dyke.”
Lily recoiled, slightly shocked. “You have sex with women?”
“Sure.”
The nonchalance with which Dorian confessed this stunned Lily into silence. Openly confessing a crime to a stranger, especially a serious crime like homosexuality . . . that seemed like real freedom. She pointed to the scar on Dorian’s shoulder. “Was that from your tag?”
“Yup. First thing we do is remove that little bastard.”
“How?”
“Can’t tell you,” Dorian replied, panting, as she reached for her toes. “Valuable information if you were ever taken into custody.”
“I wouldn’t tell.”
Dorian smiled grimly. “Everyone tells in the end.”
“I mean I’m trustworthy.”
“Trust me with a secret, then. Where do you hide your pills?”
Lily showed Dorian the loose tile in the corner, the pile of contraband underneath.
“It’s good, well camouflaged. How many hiding places do you have?”
“Just this.”
“That’s no good. You should always have more than one hiding place.”
“I can’t hide anything anywhere else. Greg will find it. He does inspections now. But he never comes in here.”
“Jonathan says you fixed the surveillance in this place.” Dorian gave her a look of frank admiration. “Where’d a wall lady learn to do something like that?”
“My sister. She was good with computers.”
“Well, I’d still get another hiding place. One is never enough.”
“How many do you have?”
“When I was a kid, dozens. But I don’t have any now.” Dorian pushed herself up and reached for the bowl of broth. “In the better world, we won’t need to hide anything.”
“I don’t understand. Is the better world biblical? Are angels going to descend and wipe the earth clean?”
“God, no!” Dorian replied, laughing. “In the better world, no one will need religion.”
“I don’t understand,” Lily repeated.
“Well, why should you? The better world’s not for people like you.”
Lily recoiled, as though she’d been slapped. Dorian didn’t notice; she was busy eating her broth and staring out the glass doors into the backyard. She was waiting, Lily realized now, waiting for the Englishman to come and take her away. Part of her was already gone.
Lily left the nursery, closing the door carefully behind her, and went downstairs. It was all nonsense, she told herself. Tear and his people were probably crazy, the whole lot of them. But all the same, she felt as though they had left her behind.
When Kelsea came back to herself, she heard thunder.
She looked up and found the blessed comfort of Carlin’s bookshelves, the long rows of volumes, each in its own place. She reached out to touch the books, but then Lily’s sorrow echoed in her mind, pulling her back across centuries.
Why am I seeing this? Why do I have to suffer with her, when her story is already done?
The thundering sound came again, and with it, the last of Lily’s memories faded away, and Kelsea was suddenly alert. Not thunder, but many feet, moving in the hallway outside. Kelsea turned away from the books and found Pen standing just behind her, listening intently, his manner so grave that Kelsea forgot to be angry at him.
“Pen? What is it?”
“I had a thought to go investigate, Lady, but I’m not supposed to leave you at such times.”
Now Kelsea heard a hollow, muffled groan, slightly distant, as though it came from down the corridor. “Let’s go and see.”
“I think it’s Kibb, Lady. He’s been sick for two days now, getting worse all the time.”
“Sick with what?”
“No one knows. Flu, maybe.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Kibb didn’t want us to, Lady.”
“Well, come on.”
She led him into the corridor, where nothing was moving, only the flicker of torches. In the dim light the hallway looked twice as long; it seemed to stretch miles from the darkened door of the guard quarters to the well-lit audience chamber.
“What time is it?” she whispered.
“Half past eleven.”
The hollow groan sounded again: muffled agony, weaker this time, near the guard quarters.
“Mace won’t want you down there, Lady.”
“Come on.”
Pen didn’t try to stop her, which afforded Kelsea some small satisfaction. Weak torchlight gleamed from the open door of one of the chambers near the end of the hallway, and Kelsea walked faster, her feet hurrying her along.
Turning the corner, she found herself in what was clearly a man’s bedchamber. Everything seemed to be dark, and there was very little decoration, but Kelsea admired the room’s austerity; this was just the way she imagined her guards’ quarters.
Kibb lay on the bed, his brow shiny with sweat, naked down to his hips. Bent over him was Schmidt, Mace’s doctor of choice for emergencies. Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer were at the bedside, and Mace, crouched at the foot of the bed, completed the tableau. As Kelsea entered the room, Mace’s face darkened, but he only muttered, “Lady.”
“How is he?”
Schmidt did not bow, but Kelsea did not take offense; there seemed to be no ego to compare with that of the doctor in demand. His voice revealed a heavy Mort accent. “The appendix, Majesty. I would try to operate, but it would do no good. It will burst before I am able to get in there clean. If I perform as quickly as I must, he will bleed to death. I have given him morphia for his pain, but I can do nothing else.”
Kelsea blinked, horrified. Appendectomy had been a routine pre-Crossing surgery, so common and simple that Lily’s procedure had been done by machines rather than human hands. But the grim resignation on the doctor’s face said everything that needed to be said.
“We’ve promised to take care of his mother, Lady,” Mace murmured. “We’ve made him as comfortable as possible. There’s little else we can do. You shouldn’t be here for this.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s a little late to walk away.”
“El?” Kibb asked. His voice was slurred with some kind of narcotic.
“I’m right here, you ass,” Elston muttered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Elston was holding Kibb’s hand, Kelsea saw. It looked odd, Kibb’s small hand buried in Elston’s giant fist, but she couldn’t even smile. They did everything together, Elston and Kibb, and Kelsea couldn’t remember a time when she had seen one without the other. Best friends . . . but now, looking at their clasped hands, at the agony that Elston was trying so desperately to hide, Kelsea’s mind came up with a third and fourth piece of information: neither Elston nor Kibb had a woman in the Keep, and their chambers adjoined.
Elston looked up at her dumbly, and Kelsea did her best not to blush. She reached for Kibb’s other hand, which lay fisted at his side. His eyes were closed, his teeth clenched against another groan, and cords stood out on his neck. Kelsea could see individual beads of sweat as they rolled down his temples and cheeks to settle in the matting of his hair. At the touch of her hand, Kibb’s eyes opened again, and he attempted a smile through gritted teeth.
“Majesty,” he croaked. “I am a Queen’s Guard of the Tear.”
“Yes,” Kelsea replied, not knowing what else to say. Her own helplessness had frozen her tongue. She wormed her hand inside his, felt him clasp it gently.
“My honor, Lady.” Kibb smiled, a smile of drugs, and his eyes slipped closed again. Elston made a choking sound and turned away, but Kelsea could not. Schmidt was undoubtedly the best doctor Mace could find, but he was only the shadow of a dead breed. There was no real medicine anymore; all of it had gone down with the White Ship, the medical personnel left behind, bobbing in the waves beneath the storm. What Kelsea wouldn’t give for even one of those doctors now! She thought of the brutal cold the survivors must have endured, treading water in the middle of God’s Ocean until exhaustion made them sink beneath the waves. By the end, they must have been in agony. Frigid air seemed to coalesce around Kelsea and she began to shiver helplessly, her legs cramping. Her vision went dark.
“Lady?”
A great shock slammed into Kelsea’s chest, so hard that she gasped. Pen caught her from behind, or she would have fallen backward. She clamped Kibb’s hand more tightly, struggling to hold on to him, knowing somehow that if she let go, the spell would be broken and nothing could be done—
Her stomach imploded in pain. Kelsea clamped her mouth shut, but a shriek built behind her lips and her body bucked in rebellion. Unbearable pressure laced across her abdomen and seemed to wrench her muscles, stretching them beyond their capacity.
“Hold her! Get her mouth open!”
Hands were on her arms and legs, but Kelsea barely felt them. The pressure on her abdomen doubled, tripled, going up and up, a feeling that had no comparison for Kelsea beyond the increasing scream of a teakettle. Her body continued to thrash, her heels digging into the chamber floor, but the inner Kelsea was thousands of miles away, struggling in the dark of God’s Ocean, trying not to go under. A wave of freezing water broke on her, closed over her head, and Kelsea tasted bitter salt.
Fingers forced her mouth open—somehow, she knew they were Pen’s—and groped for her tongue, but it all seemed very distant. There was only the shredding agony in her belly, and the cold, a paralyzing cold that seemed to have enclosed the entire world. Kelsea breathed in shallow gasps, trying not to gag at the intrusion of fingers pinning her tongue.
“You! Doctor! Get over here!”
Hands on her shoulders now, bruising hands, holding her down with great force. Mace’s hands, his face above her torn with anxiety, shouting commands because that’s how Mace dealt with crisis, sometimes it seemed that he could do nothing but give orders—
The pain vanished.
Kelsea took a deep breath and lay still. After a few moments, the hands on her relaxed, but didn’t let go entirely. She looked up and saw them crouched over her: Mace, Pen, Elston, Coryn, and Wellmer. The ceiling was a mass of incomprehensible tiles over their heads.
With a murmured apology, Pen removed his fingers from her mouth. Kelsea’s body felt light, clear, as though her blood had been replaced with water . . . the water that came from the spring near the cottage, so clean that they could prepare food with it directly from the pool. The unnatural cold had gone as well, and Kelsea was warm now, almost drowsy, as though someone had wrapped her in a blanket.
“Lady? Are you in pain?”
Kelsea was still gripping a hard object: Kibb’s hand. She sat up, feeling Pen move to support her shoulders. Kibb lay entirely still now, his eyes closed.
“Is he dead?”
Schmidt leaned over Kibb, his hands moving in a rapid, clinical way that Kelsea admired: forehead to pulse, and back to forehead again. He checked these areas with increasing agitation before finally turning to Kelsea, his face blank. “No, Majesty. The patient breathes easy.”
He pressed downward on Kibb’s abdomen, tentatively, ready to withdraw at any twitch. But there was nothing. Even Kelsea could see Kibb’s chest rise and fall now, the deep, even breathing of a man in the darkest part of unconsciousness.
“His fever is finished,” Schmidt murmured, pressing hard on Kibb’s stomach now, as though desperate to elicit a response. “Really, we should dry and cover him, or he will take a chill.”
“The appendix?” Mace asked.
Schmidt shook his head, sitting back on his heels. Kelsea reached up to clutch her two sapphires. They hadn’t spoken to her since the Argive, but still their weight was comforting, a solid thing to hold.
“Sir?” One of the new guards was peeking around the doorway. “Is everything all right? We heard—”
“Everything is fine,” Mace replied, turning a threatening glare on everyone in the room. “Back to your post, Aaron, and shut the door behind you.”
“Yes sir.” Aaron vanished.
“He’s all right?” Wellmer whispered. His face was pale and young, just as it had been months ago when Kelsea first met him, before life had begun to mature him a bit. Mace did not answer, only turned to Schmidt with a resigned expression, the face of a man waiting for a verdict who knows that he is already condemned.
The doctor wiped his forehead. “The swelling is gone. He appears to be completely healthy, but for the perspiration . . . and even that could be explained as the cauchemar, the night terror.”
Now they all turned to look at Kelsea, all of them except Elston, who continued to stare at Kibb.
“Are you all right, Lady?” Pen finally asked.
“I’m fine,” Kelsea replied. She thought of that first night when she had cut open her own arm. She had done so several times since; it was a coping mechanism, and her body was a good place to divert the rage. Her legs were better to cut than her arms, easier to hide. But was this a similar thing, or was it different? If it was her jewels, why didn’t they give any sign? Kelsea’s shoulders felt like brick. “I’m tired, though. I’ll need to sleep soon.”
Schmidt’s face was a portrait of upset, his eyes moving swiftly between Kelsea and Kibb. “Majesty, I do not know what I have just seen, but—”
Mace grasped the doctor’s wrist. “You saw nothing.”
“What?”
“None of you saw anything. Kibb was ill, but he took a turn for the better in the night.”
Kelsea found herself nodding.
“But—”
“Wellmer, use the brain God gave you!” Mace snapped. “What happens if word goes out that the Queen can heal the sick?”
“Oh.” Wellmer pondered this for a moment. Kelsea tried to think as well, but she was so tired. Mace’s words jangled in her mind: heal the sick . . .
What did I do?
“I see, sir,” Wellmer finally replied. “Everyone would have a sick mother, a sick child . . .”
“Kibb!” Mace bent down and shook Kibb’s shoulder, then slapped him lightly across the face. Elston winced, but said nothing. “Kibb, wake up!”
Kibb’s eyes opened, and by a trick of the torchlight Kelsea thought that the pupils seemed almost transparent, as though they had been cleaned out and replaced with . . . what? Light? She turned her senses inward and examined her own body, her own heartbeat. Everything was moving faster. She shook her head, trying to get rid of the rays that seemed to be shining through her mind. They went, but with a slight twinkle of mischief that did nothing to allay the feeling of unreality that swamped her.
“How do you feel, Kibb?” Mace asked.
“Light,” Kibb groaned. “All light.”
Kelsea looked up and found the doctor staring at her again.
“Do you remember anything?”
Kibb laughed softly. “I was on the edge of a cliff and sliding. The Queen grabbed me back. Everything was so clear—”
Mace crossed his arms, his jaw clenched in frustration. “He’s like a man on an opium binge.”
“Will he sober up, Lady?” asked Coryn.
“How would I know?” Kelsea demanded. All of them, even Pen, were looking at her with the same suspicion, as though she had hidden something from them, some longtime secret that had finally come to light. She thought of the cuts on her arms and legs again, but forced the thought away.
Mace grunted in exasperation. “We have to hope he’ll come out of it. Leave him in here and post a guard. No visitors. Lady, you should go on back to bed.”
This sounded so wonderful to Kelsea that she merely nodded and trudged away, ignoring Pen’s nearly silent tread behind her. She wanted to sort things out, but she was too exhausted to think. If she could heal the sick—but she shook her head, cutting off the rest. There was power there, yes, but it was a ruinous sort of power. Even now, she could feel the edges of the idea curdling inside her head.
Heal the sick, heal the sick.
Mace’s words rang like bells in her mind, no matter how she tried to push them away.
The next evening, after dinner, Kelsea was in the middle of her daily argument with Arliss when a messenger arrived, bearing the news she’d been dreading: six days ago, the Mort had broken through on the border. Having been frustrated in several attacks by the line of archers in the trees, Ducarte had finally taken the most direct method and simply set the entire hillside on fire. Hall had had the good sense to withdraw his battalion back toward the Almont and avoid direct battle, but nearly all of his archers had been caught in the fire, burning to death in their treetop nests. By now the Mort would be transporting their heavy equipment over the hillside, and the bulk of their infantry would already have moved down into the Almont. On Bermond’s orders, the Tear army had pulled back to the Caddell. Fire still raged across the Border Hills; if it didn’t rain soon, thousands of acres of good timber would be destroyed.
Kelsea had thought herself prepared for this news; after all, it had been inevitable from the start. But still it hit her hard, the idea of Mort soldiers on Tear land. For the last two weeks a separate wing of the Mort army had been besieging the Argive Pass, just as Bermond had warned her; the Mort Road was a much more convenient route by which to move supplies from Demesne than the rough ground of the Border Hills. But so far the Argive had held, and while the Mort had been pinned inside their own territory, the invasion had seemed somehow less real. The Mort would find no reward in the Almont; the eastern half of the kingdom was nearly emptied now, but for a few isolated farming villages on the extreme northern and southern outskirts whose occupants had chosen to remain where they were. There was nothing for the Mort to pillage, but still Kelsea hated the idea of them out there, moving like a slow dark tide across her land. She crumpled the message in one fist, feeling a new cut open on the inside of her thigh. The cuts kept her anger inside her, kept it from spilling out all over everyone surrounding, but it had grown frustrating, always having to hold back. Kelsea longed for a real target, someone she could actually injure, and this longing then led her to cut herself more deeply, to relish the pain even while she bled. The cuts healed themselves at an incredible rate, sometimes even before a day had elapsed, and so they were fairly easy to hide from everyone . . . everyone except Andalie, who dealt with Kelsea’s laundry. Andalie remained silent, but Kelsea knew that she was concerned. Despite the heat of the summer, Kelsea had taken to wearing nothing but thick black dresses with long sleeves, and this only served to deepen her kinship with Lily Mayhew, who had so many things to hide. Kelsea spent long periods of time trying to understand Lily, to understand what possible connection there could be between them, for Kelsea could not believe that she would see anything so detailed, so realistic, for no reason at all. With Father Tyler’s help, she had now been through all of Carlin’s history books, and there was no record of Lily anywhere. Historically speaking, Lily was unimportant . . . but it never felt that way when Kelsea was with her, bound up inside her life. Still, she had tabled her research, for there was only so much time she could expend on Lily, on the past. The present had become too terrible.
With Bermond’s message still clutched in her fist, Kelsea left Arliss’s office and stormed down the hall to her own chamber. Closing the curtain on Pen, she wandered over toward the fireplace. The portrait of the handsome man still leaned on the wall, covered with a dropcloth. Kelsea had found that the picture made her a bit uneasy; the man’s eyes did indeed follow her wherever she went, and he seemed to be smirking at her. Andalie, too, disliked the man in the portrait intensely. If she, or Glee, had had any more visions, Andalie kept them to herself, but she treated the portrait like poison, and she was the one who had draped a sheet over the man’s face.
Now Kelsea pulled off the sheet and stared at the portrait for a very long time. If nothing else, the man from the fireplace was extremely handsome, enjoyable to gaze at. Andalie said that the man was evil, and he was; Kelsea could sense it even in the portrait, the hint of cruelty in his smile. But, Kelsea realized, that was also part of the draw. She’d had several dreams about the man now, barely remembered dreams in which she had been naked before him on what felt like a bed of fire. Always, Kelsea woke up just before physical contact, her sheets soaked with sweat. It was different from what she felt for the Fetch, who, despite his misdeeds, seemed fundamentally decent. This man’s wickedness pulled at her, magnetic. She drew a finger down the canvas, debating. He had said he knew how to defeat the Red Queen. Kelsea had only half believed him, but the Mort were here now, and she could no longer afford not to grasp at straws. The man had said that he wanted freedom. He had said he would come when she called.
Kelsea sat down in front of the fire, crossing her legs beneath her. The fire was strong, and the heat baked her face.
I am only keeping my options open, she told herself firmly. There’s nothing wrong with that.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
Something seemed to gather darkly in front of the flames, like coal dust compacting, and a moment later he appeared, just in front of the mantel, tall and substantial. Kelsea’s reaction to his presence was even stronger now than it had been before, a flurry of pulse and nerves that she fought to force down. Lust made her stupid, she saw now . . . and she could not afford to be stupid with this creature.
Where do you come from? she asked him. Do you live in the fire?
I live in dark, Tear heir. I’ve waited long years to see the sun.
Kelsea pointed to the portrait. This picture is very old. Are you a ghost?
He surveyed the portrait, a humorless smile crossing his face. You might think of me as a ghost, but I am flesh. See for yourself.
He placed a hand on Kelsea’s chest, just above her breasts. Her shoulders hitched involuntarily, but he didn’t seem to notice, giving her a searching look. You are stronger, Tear heir. What has happened to you?
I want to bargain.
What, no time for pleasantries? He smiled, and Kelsea was alarmed by her own response to that smile. Pleasure makes life bearable, you know.
Kelsea shut her eyes, focusing, then hissed as a new slice opened on her forearm. It was a deep one, and painful, but it steadied her, calming her pulse, the ache in her breasts. You said you knew how to defeat the Queen of Mortmesne.
So I do. She is not invulnerable, though she would like to be.
How can she be beaten?
What do you offer in return, Tear heir? Yourself?
You don’t want me. You want your freedom.
I want many things.
What can a creature like you possibly want in the physical world?
I still take joy in physical things. I must sustain myself.
Sustain yourself on what?
He grinned, though a flare of red sparked in his eyes. You are quick, Tear heir. You ask the right questions.
What do you want? Be explicit.
Shall we draw up a bargain, like the treaty that wrecked your mother?
Did you appear to my mother this way as well?
Your mother was beneath my notice.
He meant this as a compliment to Kelsea, she could tell, and it worked, creating a tiny, warm glow inside her. But she pressed on, knowing that she could not afford to be sidetracked. If we’re to bargain, I want the terms clearly defined.
Fine. You will set me free, and I will tell you of the Red Queen’s vulnerability. Have we a bargain?
Kelsea hesitated. Things were moving too quickly. The Mort were hampered by their siege equipment; by Hall’s estimates, Kelsea had at least a month before they reached the city. That was not long, but it was enough time to reflect, to make a good decision. And now a new worry struck Kelsea: even if she was somehow able to destroy the Red Queen, would that necessarily translate to defeating her army? Would it die with the head cut off, or would it simply grow a new one, hydra-like?
Too many unknowns here, Kelsea, Carlin whispered, and Kelsea knew she was right.
I will consider it, she told the man before her. He blinked, as though fatigued, and Kelsea realized that he looked less substantial, somehow. . . . Squinting, she saw that the fire behind him was clearly visible, flames flickering dimly through both his clothing and the area where his rib cage should have been. His face, too, had turned pale with fatigue.
Noticing the direction of Kelsea’s gaze, the man frowned. He closed his eyes for a moment, seeming to solidify right in front of her, becoming more opaque. When he opened his eyes, he was smiling again, a smile of such warm, calculating sensuality that Kelsea took a step back. Her arousal instantly darkened, became tinged with an edge of fright.
What are you?
His gaze darted behind Kelsea, over her left shoulder, and his face compacted into a snarl, lips drawing back from his white teeth. His eyes gleamed red, burning with a sudden, blazing hatred that made Kelsea stumble backward, her feet tangling in her dress. She braced herself to land on her tailbone with a hard thud, but before she could, someone caught her beneath the arms. When Kelsea looked up, the last of the fire had gone out and the man was gone, but arms remained around Kelsea from behind, and she struggled, kicking against the floor.
“Easy, Tear Queen,” a voice murmured in her ear, and Kelsea quieted.
“You. How did you get past Pen?”
“He’s unconscious.”
“Is he all right?”
“Of course. I put him out for a bit, only long enough for us to do some business.”
Business. Of course it would be business. “Let me go. I’ll light a candle.”
The Fetch released her, giving her a firm push up, and Kelsea shuffled her way to the bedside table. Her cheeks were still flushed, and she could feel the blood burning there. She took her time about lighting the candle, trying to get some control back, but as she fumbled around on the table for her matches, his voice echoed behind her.
“Two inches to your left.”
So he does see in the dark, Kelsea thought, irritated. When she finally lit the candle and turned to face him, she expected to see the man she remembered, all amused mouth and dancing eyes. But his face was grave in the candlelight.
“I knew he would come here, sooner or later. What did he ask for?”
“Nothing,” Kelsea replied. But she knew that the blush on her cheeks would give her away. She had never been able to lie well, and certainly not to the Fetch.
He stared at her for a long moment. “Let me give you some friendly advice, Tear Queen. I have known this creature for a very long time. Don’t give him anything. Don’t even converse with him. He will only lead you to grief.”
“Who is he?”
“Once he was a man, a powerful man. You would know him as Rowland Finn.”
The name rang a bell, deep in Kelsea’s mind. Carlin had mentioned Finn once, something to do with the Landing . . . what had it been?
The Fetch stepped closer. He was staring at her face, Kelsea realized, cataloguing the changes, and she dropped her chin, peeking up at him as she pretended to study the floor. He looked healthy, if somewhat leaner than the last time Kelsea had seen him. His face was slightly tanned, as though he’d been in the south. He still pulled at her, as much as he ever had, and the pull was accompanied by a sick sense of loss, deep in Kelsea’s stomach. All the lust that had governed her body in the last few minutes had transferred easily to the Fetch, and now she realized how hollow her earlier reactions had been; what she felt for this man dwarfed anything she would ever feel for anyone else. She had dreamed of the day when she would see the Fetch again, when she would greet him not as a round-faced girl but as a pretty woman, perhaps even a beautiful one. But she didn’t like the way he was staring at her, not at all.
“Who are you, Fetch? Do you have a real name?”
“I have many names. All are useful.”
“Why not tell me the real one?”
“A name is power, Tear Queen. Your name was once Raleigh, and now it’s Glynn. Did the change mean nothing to you?”
Kelsea blinked, for his question made her think not of Barty and Carlin, nor even of her own mother, but of the Mort Treaty, the signature in red ink at the bottom. The Queen of Mortmesne, her true name hidden from the world. Why did she hide it so closely? Kelsea was Glynn now, but she had also been Glynn as a child, because the entire world was looking for a girl child named Raleigh. But why would a woman as powerful as the Red Queen need to hide her birth name from anyone? Was she so anxious to leave the past behind?
Who is she, really?
The Fetch had wandered over to her desk, fingering the papers there. “You’ve lost weight, Tear Queen. Don’t you eat enough?”
“I eat plenty.”
“Then stop trying to hide your face. Let me see what you’ve done to yourself.”
There was no help for it. Kelsea turned for his inspection, keeping her eyes on the floor.
“You have transformed,” the Fetch stated flatly. “Is this what you wanted?”
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to her sapphires. “My knowledge of those things is not extensive. But this isn’t the first time I’ve seen them grant a wish. You performed a great feat in the Argive. What else have you been able to do?”
Kelsea firmed her jaw. “Nothing.”
“I know when you’re lying, Tear Queen.”
Kelsea recoiled. His tone was eerily reminiscent of Carlin’s when she caught Kelsea committing minor infractions: sneaking an extra cookie from the kitchen, or dodging chores. “Nothing! I have dreams sometimes. Visions.”
“About what?”
“The pre-Crossing. A woman. What does it matter?”
His eyes narrowed. “When, in our acquaintance, have you ever been the one to decide what matters?”
Kelsea’s composure seemed to buckle beneath her, like a beam made of weak wood. “I’m not a child in your camp anymore! Don’t talk to me like that!”
“In my eyes, Tear Queen, you are a child. An infant, even.”
Angry tears sprung to Kelsea’s eyes, but she fought them, swallowing great gulps of air, the bleak thought recurring in her mind: This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
“What does she look like, this pre-Crossing woman?” the Fetch asked.
“She’s tall and pretty and sad. She hardly ever smiles.”
“Her name?”
“Lily Mayhew.”
The Fetch smiled then, a slow, genuine smile that undermined Kelsea’s anger, washing away its foundations like the tide. “Is there a girl there? A girl with long reddish hair?”
Kelsea blinked. Running quickly through Lily’s memories, she shook her head, and was shocked by the disappointment in the Fetch’s face. He had needed her to say yes, needed it badly.
“Who is Lily Mayhew?”
The Fetch shook his head. His eyes glimmered, almost with tears, though Kelsea refused to believe that, when she had never seen this man moved by anything. “Only a woman, I suppose.”
“If you’re only going to ask questions and give no answers, then fuck off.”
“The mouth on you, Tear Queen.”
“I mean it. Speak plainly or get out.”
“All right.” He sat down in her armchair and leaned back, crossing his legs, all trace of emotion gone. “There is a protest movement growing in Mortmesne.”
“I’ve heard about it. Lazarus has sent them some goods.”
“They need more support.”
“Support them, then. My kingdom barely has the cash to arm itself.”
“I do support them. I’ve funneled a considerable amount of my own wealth in that direction.”
“Ah. So it is you. Levieux, is it? The old? Did you never think of funneling some of that wealth into the Tear?”
“Until very recently, Tear Queen, I would sooner have invested my money in magic beans. Now I’m committed to these people, who agitate for a more equitable Mortmesne. But they require victories to keep going. Open support from the Tearling would be good for morale.”
“What of Cadare?”
“The Cadarese have already begun to sabotage their tribute to Mortmesne, which is a useful distraction. But the Mort hold the Cadarese in small esteem, whereas you’re a figure of much curiosity over there, particularly among the poor.”
“I’ll consider it. I need to talk to Lazarus.”
“You know the Mort have broken through the border.”
“Yes.”
“What will you do when they come?”
“The entire population will be in New London by then. It’ll be a tight fit, but the city can hold them, at least for a time. I have an entire battalion laying in supplies for siege and fortifying the back side of the city.”
“They will breach the walls eventually.”
Kelsea frowned. “I know that.”
“And what will you do?”
She said nothing, kept her eyes away from the fireplace. The Fetch didn’t press her further, only leaned his chin on one fist, watching her with clear amusement. “Your mind is a fascinating thing, Tear Queen, always moving.”
She nodded, wandering across the room to her desk. She realized that she was trying to put herself front and center, trying to force him to notice her, the way she always noticed him. She suddenly found herself loathsome. She was the same Kelsea she had always been, and he hadn’t wanted her before. If he suddenly wanted her now that she had a pretty face and a pretty body, what did that make him?
I can’t win. Her old appearance had been genuine, and had gained her nothing. But her new appearance was worse, hollow and false, and anything that she gained by it would carry that falsity like a disease. If this was the work of her jewels, then Kelsea didn’t want it anymore.
“You grow pretty, Tear Queen.”
Kelsea flushed. The statement, which might have pleased her moments before, now made her feel sick.
“What will you do with your new beauty? Catch yourself a rich husband?”
“I won’t share my throne, not with anyone.”
“What about an heir?”
“There are other ways to get one.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Practical, Tear Queen.”
Kelsea looked toward the curtain, thinking of Pen. If the Fetch’s laughter hadn’t woken him, he really must be out cold.
“Your guard is fine. I’ll wake him on my way out. If it’s any consolation, he was a tougher mark than your uncle’s guards ever were; at least Alcott stays awake on duty.”
Seeing an opportunity to change the subject, Kelsea jumped on it. “I suppose I should thank you for my lawn ornament.”
The Fetch’s face sobered, turning thoughtful. “Thomas died well, though it galls me to admit it. He died like a man.”
Dying well. Kelsea closed her eyes and saw again the Mort coming, crossing the Caddell and breaching the walls. She turned away, staring at the fireplace. Where was the handsome man, Rowland Finn, now? Where had he gone back to?
“Don’t think about him, Tear Queen.”
She whirled to face him. “Do you read minds?”
“I don’t need to. You’ve never hidden anything from me. I can’t stop him from coming here as he pleases, but I repeat my caution: give him nothing. Nothing he asks for, no house room in your mind. He’s a seductive creature, I know—”
Kelsea started in surprise, feeling caught.
“—and even I was deceived once, long ago.”
“How long?” Kelsea blurted out. “How old are you?”
“Too old.”
“Why haven’t you died?”
“A punishment.”
“What are you being punished for?”
“The worst of all crimes, Tear Queen. Now be quiet and listen.”
Kelsea winced. He had used Carlin’s tone again, the tone one would take with a wayward child, and Kelsea felt a sudden desperation to prove him wrong, to show him that she wasn’t a child anymore. But she didn’t know how.
“Row Finn, the man, was a liar,” the Fetch continued. “He’s a liar still. The Mort Queen gave in; she was a fool. Are you a fool as well?”
“No,” Kelsea mumbled, though she knew she was. She had become pretty, and she no longer felt like a child. But she was the worst fool in the world for thinking that these things would make a difference to the Fetch. He was still as far beyond her reach as he had ever been.
“You’ve impressed me, Tear Queen. Don’t ruin it all now.” The Fetch stood from the chair, pulling something from his pocket, and Kelsea saw that it was his mask, the same dreadful mask he liked to wear about the countryside. He meant to leave now. This was all she would have.
Good riddance, a voice whispered inside her head. But Kelsea recognized that for what it was: her mind’s sad attempt at self-defense. The Fetch would disappear now, leaving her with nothing. She longed for something to hold on to, and on the heels of that longing came anger. She was the most powerful woman in the Tearling, and still this man was able to wreck her with only a few words. Was this really the way it would always be?
Not always. Not forever, please God. Give me some light at the end.
She took a deep breath, and when she spoke, she noted with pleasure that her voice had strengthened, become hard. “Don’t ever come here uninvited again. You’re not welcome.”
“I’ll come and go as I please, Tear Queen. I always have. You just make sure I don’t have to come for you.” He drew the mask over his head. “We made a deal.”
“Fuck the deal!” Kelsea snarled. “That creature Finn offers actual aid. What have you ever offered?”
“Only your life, you ungrateful brat.”
“Get out.”
He gave her a mocking bow, eyes gleaming behind the mask. “Perhaps in time, you’ll grow as pretty as your mother.”
Kelsea grabbed the book from her bedside table and flung it at him. But it only bounced harmlessly off his shoulder. The Fetch laughed, bitter laughter that emerged hollowly from the mask’s mouth.
“You can’t hurt me, Tear Queen. No one can. I don’t even have the ability to wound myself.”
He slipped into Pen’s antechamber, closed the curtain behind him, and was gone.
Kelsea fell on the bed, buried her face in the pillow, and began to cry. She hadn’t cried in months, and tears were a relief, easing some strand inside her that had been stretched tight. But the pain in her chest wouldn’t ease.
I’ll never have him. She even murmured it into her pillow, but the Fetch remained there, lodged in her chest and throat like something she’d swallowed, too big for her to contend with. There was no way to make him be gone.
A hand touched Kelsea’s shoulder, gently, making her jump. Looking up with bleary eyes, she saw Pen standing over the bed. She put up a hand to convey that she was fine, but he stared at her in quiet consternation, and the anxiety in his face brought on fresh tears.
Here’s the man I should have fallen in love with, she thought, and that only made her weep harder. Pen sat down on the bed beside her and placed his hand gently on top of hers, clasping her fingers. The small gesture wrecked Kelsea, and she cried even harder, her face swollen and nose running freely. So many things in this life had proven more difficult than they were supposed to be. She missed Barty and Carlin. She missed the cottage, with its quiet patterns, where everything was known. She missed the child Kelsea, who had never had to make more than a day’s decisions, or worry about more than a child’s consequences. She missed the ease of that life.
After a few minutes Pen tugged her up from the pillow and wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his chest, rocking her in the same way Barty used to when she’d taken a fall. Pen wasn’t going to ask her any questions, Kelsea realized, and that seemed such a gift that her tears finally began to subside into gasps and hiccups. She huddled against Pen’s bare chest, liking the feel of it: warm and hard and comforting against her cheek.
It could be a secret, her mind whispered, the thought coming from nowhere, but a moment later Kelsea realized that the voice was correct. It could be a secret. No one had to know, not even Mace. Kelsea’s private life, her private choices, were her own business, and now she found herself whispering, repeating the thought out loud. “It could be a secret, Pen.”
Pen drew back, looking down at her for a long moment, and Kelsea saw, relieved, that he knew exactly what she was offering, that she didn’t have to explain.
“You don’t love me, Lady.”
Kelsea shook her head.
“Then why would you want this?”
That was a good question, but part of Kelsea was annoyed, anyway, that Pen had asked it. I’m nineteen! she wanted to snap. Nineteen and still a virgin! Isn’t that enough? She didn’t love Pen and he didn’t love her, but she liked the way he looked without a shirt, and it seemed desperately important to prove that she wasn’t a child. She shouldn’t need a reason for wanting the same things as everyone else.
But she couldn’t say these things to Pen. They would only hurt him.
“I don’t know. I just do.”
Pen closed his eyes, his mouth twisting, and Kelsea recoiled, suddenly remembering the balance of power between them; did he think she was ordering him to sleep with her? Pen had principles, and as he had pointed out, he was a Queen’s Guard. Maybe it wasn’t enough that no one else would know; Pen would know, that was the problem.
“It’s entirely your choice, Pen,” she told him, placing a hand against his neck. “I’m not the Queen right now. I’m just—”
Pen kissed her.
It wasn’t anything like her books. Kelsea barely had time to decide what she was feeling; she was too busy trying not to be inept, trying to figure out where her tongue was supposed to go. A lot of work, she thought, slightly disappointed, but then Pen’s hand crept up to her breast and that was better, closer to the way she thought it was supposed to be. Kelsea wondered if she should take off her own dress or let Pen do it, and then realized that he was already far ahead of her, half of her buttons undone. The room was cold, but she was sweating, and when Pen’s mouth found her nipple, she jumped, stifling a moan. He pulled the rest of her dress off, then froze.
Kelsea looked down and saw what Pen saw: her arms and legs, crisscrossed with wounds in various stages of healing. They didn’t look as bad as they would have in the daylight, but even Kelsea, who was used to her own injuries, knew that her limbs were a ghastly sight.
“What have you done to yourself?”
Kelsea grabbed her dress, tugging the sleeves back on. She had botched this, just as she always seemed to ruin things when she tried so hard to behave like an adult.
Pen stopped her, taking her wrist in a light grip, his face unreadable. “You can’t talk about it?”
Kelsea shook her head, staring truculently at the ground. Pen ran a light thumb over the scar on her thigh, and Kelsea realized suddenly that she was sitting there nearly naked, a man looking over her body, and she wasn’t even blushing. Perhaps she was growing up a bit, after all.
“I see,” Pen said. “It’s not my business.”
Kelsea looked up, surprised.
“You live in a world none of us can see, Lady. I accept that. And your choices are your own.”
Kelsea gazed at him for a moment longer. Then she took his hand from her thigh and placed it, gently, between her legs. Pen kissed her, and she suddenly found her hands all over him, as though she couldn’t pull him close enough.
“This may hurt,” he whispered. “It does, your first time.”
Kelsea stared up at him, this man who had done nothing for months but guard her from danger, and realized that the vast majority of her books had been misleading. They painted love as an all-or-nothing proposition. What she felt for Pen wasn’t close to what she felt for the Fetch . . . but it was love, somehow, all the same, and she placed a hand against his cheek.
“You won’t hurt me, Pen. I’m tough.”
Pen grinned, his old grin, the one Kelsea hadn’t seen in weeks. When he pushed inside her, it did hurt, a stinging burn that made her want to close her legs, but Kelsea would not have let Pen know it for the world, and she pushed up against him, trying to match his movement. The pain deepened, but there was no going back now; Kelsea felt as though she had crossed a chasm, some bridge that lay broken behind her. The Mort were there, waiting . . . Kelsea shook her head, trying to shove the thought away. The invasion shouldn’t intrude here, not now. She tried to focus on Pen, her body, but found that she could not rid herself of the image: ahead, waiting, like an awful tide, the Mort.