Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(16)

“No. But evidently it’s not because of all the assassins who keep trying to kill me. I gather this group is more or less indifferent to assassins.”

No one thinks I’m funny. Not even me.

The British woman is anything but deterred. “You are here, Ms. Blakely, because you violated the sanctity of our sisterhood. You betrayed your heritage and our trust. In short, you told. And that was not very well done of you.”

I find the PM in the crowd. I don’t even try to hide my sarcasm when I turn to her. “So I’ve been summoned because I’m important, huh? You take care of your own, do you?”

“Grace,” Ms. Chancellor whispers. A warning.

I’m not surprised the PM lied to me. I’m mad only at myself for believing her.

“Ms. Blakely?” the British woman prompts, and I spin on her.

“I’m sorry I had to tell my friends about the Society. It wasn’t Ms. Chancellor’s fault. People were hunting me. People were dying. Everyone I knew was in danger—they are still in danger. I didn’t know why then, but I knew I had to try to stop it. If the people close to me were at risk, they deserved to know why. I didn’t have a choice.” I need this group of powerful women to understand, to try to remember what it felt like to be young and afraid and powerless.

“And to tell you the truth,” I say, looking down, “I’d do it again because they were my only chance.”

This, at last, seems to make some kind of impression. I shrug. “At least they cared whether I lived or died. Or maybe I should say that they wanted me to not die, since it seems like maybe you ladies aren’t indifferent at all.”

“Grace, please,” Ms. Chancellor tries. “The elders just need to discuss what happened.”

“It’s not her fault!” I say, ignoring Ms. Chancellor, speaking directly to the British woman and the others who seem least sympathetic to my cause. “Ms. Chancellor told me the situation. She warned me not to tell a soul. She did everything but tie me up and duct-tape my mouth shut.” I give a sad, involuntary laugh. “Even that probably wouldn’t have stopped me. I’m kind of hard to protect—even from myself, if you haven’t already figured that out.”

The woman in the sari leans toward me. “What do you know, Grace?”

I know I’m tired. I know I’m hungry. I know it feels like I’ve eaten roadkill and still have the taste in my mouth.

But, most of all, I know this started centuries ago.

I know it will never, ever be over, so long as my brother and I are alive. No wonder these women aren’t overly concerned about the people who want to kill me. They’re smart enough to know that’s probably the only way this nightmare ends.

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s my nightmare.

“I know there was a coup in Adria two hundred years ago, and a baby named Amelia was the only member of the royal family to survive. I know the Society hid her among their members and she grew up. And I know that my mom and her friends spent years trying to figure out who Amelia’s descendants might be. And when Mom figured out she was Amelia’s descendant—her heir—then someone ordered her murder.”

But I’m the one who pulled the trigger, I think and the memory comes in a wave, crashing over me. I bear myself up against it. Let it pass, and go on.

“I know whoever wanted my mother dead three years ago is hunting down her children now.”

“So you are aware, then, that your brother, James, is the rightful king of Adria,” the woman in the sari asks.

“He doesn’t want to be king!” I yell, the truth flying out of me. “And I don’t want to be a princess. I mean … I can hardly even say that with a straight face. Can you imagine?” I look down at my wrinkled clothes. I’d laugh if it weren’t so painfully sad.

“What do you want?” the woman in the sari asks, her voice soft and kind.

“I want my mother back,” I say without thinking. I shouldn’t let the elders see so far underneath my protective shell. But it’s too late. They’re all smart enough to know that I am broken. “Since that’s not possible, though, I guess I’d settle for not losing my brother, too.”

“But that’s not all, is it, Grace?”

I turn to the prime minister, who looks so sleek in her red suit. She knows me well.

“No.” I shake my head. “I want to make them pay.”

The PM smiles and leans back, her point made.

The woman in the sari looks at me. “The Society is not in the business of revenge, Ms. Blakely.”

“That’s okay,” I tell them. “I am.”

“The past was in the past!” The British woman seems to be on the brink of shouting or crying—I can’t tell which. “It would have been safely behind us all if your mother had simply let it be. If you had let it be.”

Now the hypocrisy is just too much.

“I thought you people wanted to chronicle history—to register the truth because it always repeats itself and it’s almost always written by men. I thought you were founded so that you could guide the world and keep it from doing things that are stupid.” I stop, take a breath. “I thought you were the good guys.”

“This Society has not endured for a thousand years by taking on the pet projects of every one of its members. We work toward the common good,” says a woman in the back. Murmurs fill the room. And then something hits me.