Queen (The Blackcoat Rebellion #3)(53)

I hesitated. “I thought I’d stay with Greyson. Who’s my brother,” I added, more out of reflex to avoid hurting Benjy’s feelings than anything else.

He chuckled. “Yeah, I’d put that one together, don’t worry. You can sleep wherever you’d like, but they sent some of your things—Lila’s things—here, and I thought you might like to know where they are. Clothes, jewelry, all ofthat.”

I didn’t care about clothes or jewelry, but I nodded anyway, because it was an excuse to spend a few more minutes with him, and I needed confirmation that we really were okay. That he’d meant the things he’d said as much as I did.

He led me down the hall to the next suite over, exactly the way it had been at Somerset, too. “Here,” he said, opening the door for me. “I need to go, but I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Be careful,” I said. The thought of him alone in a room with Daxton and those guards made my blood boil, but if Daxton had wanted to kill him, he would have let the executioner do it. For now, Benjy was as safe as any of us could be, and I had to take comfort in that.

He waved goodbye and disappeared around a corner, leaving me to explore the room. It was decorated in shades of purple and silver, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that stood out. Nothing that looked like it had belonged to Lila.

As soon as I wandered into the bedroom, however, I froze. Sitting on the nightstand, angled toward the bed, was a golden picture frame with a maze design. It was the frame Greyson had given me the night I’d been arrested. I hadn’t seen it since the Battle of Elsewhere.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I picked it up and stared at the picture displayed. Greyson and I sat together in the library of Somerset, and we looked relaxed—happy, almost, despite the turmoil at the time. I found the button on the back of the frame easily, and I pressed it long enough for a second, hidden picture to show up—the one of me and Benjy, before I’d been Masked.

Seeing us together, happier than we’d likely ever be again—it made me ache with regret and loneliness. We’d made the right decision today. Clinging to the past wasn’t going to help us get through the future, and while we wouldneed each other now more than ever, it wasn’t in the same way. But it still hurt like hell, and I wasn’t sure it would ever be completely okay.

As I stared at my old face, however, suddenly it shifted again—this time into a photograph I’d never seen before. It was a picture of Hannah and I together in Mercer Manor, talking during a moment I’d long forgotten. Knox musthave taken the picture—Jonathan Mercer sure as hell hadn’t—but however it had gotten there, I was glad it existed.

I examined the picture closely. Hannah hadn’t fully realized I’d been her daughter until after it had been taken, but Knox had managed to capture a moment when we’d looked comfortable together. Not quite mother and daughter, but likely the closest he’d been able to get.

Hannah was still out there somewhere, hidden where Daxton would never be able to get his disgusting hands on her. And suddenly, more than anything in the world, I wanted to find her. I’d lost enough. I wasn’t going to lose my mother, too—not when I’d only just met her.

“She wanted you to have that,” said Benjy from the doorway, and I jumped, nearly dropping it. “I’m sorry—Daxton’s in a meeting with Minister Bradley. Told me to come back later.”

And instead of doing anything else, he’d come back to see me. If I’d had any doubts that we would be okay, they were gone now. “You saw her?”

He nodded. “That’s where Knox sent me. He thought I’d be safer there.”

“But—they caught you.” A bubble of panic formed inside me. “Is Hannah—”

“She’s fine,” he said. “I was caught when I left with a handful of other Blackcoats to go on a mission. It was stupid—we should have stayed put, but Elsewhere had just been destroyed, and our lines of communication were scrambled.” He nodded toward the frame. “She talked about you all the time. Asked me a million questions. I repeated the stories so many times that even I got sick of them, but she never did.” He grinned, but it faded quickly. “Thisisn’t over, Kitty. There must still be Blackcoats out there.”

“Even if there are, there’s nothing we can do now,” I said. “Daxton is constantly guarded. I would kill him—I will kill him—but it’s going to be a long time before he trusts me enough to be in a room alone with me. If he ever does again.”

“There are other ways to kill someone than stabbing them through the heart.”

I frowned. “Poison?”

“That could work, but he has food tasters,” said Benjy with a shrug. “Besides, that’s not what I’m talking about. He’s crazy, and all he wants is power. If we expose that—”

“We’ve already tried,” I said. “If anyone says a word about what’s really going on, he’ll have them killed in an instant. And no one wants to take that risk.”

“It’s easy now, though. Don’t you see? Winning this war. Once he’s gone, the position will pass to Greyson, and then it’ll be over.”

“It’s already over,” I said, that familiar ache filling my chest. “If I could kill him, I would. In a heartbeat. But it’s impossible.”