Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(21)

“Grace—” There’s a tension in Princess Ann’s voice as she steps forward. She isn’t the smiling, docile doll that the world assumes her to be. She’s practically humming with tension—a string that has been pulled too tight. “Where is he? Take me to Jamie, Grace.”

“He’s …” The wind blows my hair in my face. It sticks to the corner of my mouth, and I pause. I think. I had a plan, but for a second I wonder if I should change it. I wonder …

“Grace?” Ann snaps.

“He’s dead,” I blurt. I don’t even have to try to make my voice crack. It’s a scenario that I’ve imagined too many times. It’s far too close to the truth to have to make believe.

Ann physically recoils. “Is that … is that true?” she asks, then yells, “Is it?”

The guards at the end of the bridge fidget, wondering if she needs them, but they don’t move any closer. She and I are still alone when I say, “Mom found Amelia. Did you know?”

The change of subject startles her. She shakes her head, almost stumbles. “What?”

“Princess Amelia,” I say, as if people bring up two-hundred-year-old dead princesses every day in conversation. “You and my mom and Karina Volkov were looking for her, weren’t you? Well, Mom found her. Or who she was, I guess I should say. The name the Society gave her after the coup. The name she grew up with.” The princess’s eyes are shielded behind her dark glasses, but I swear that I can see through them.

I can see straight into her soul.

“Mom learned the names of Amelia’s descendants.”

Ann shifts and glances back at the guards who linger at the mouth of the bridge. She’s starting to shake in frustration. It’s something that happens a lot to the grown-ups who have to deal with me, but with Ann there’s something more.

“Grace, the last time I saw you, your brother was bleeding all over the palace floor. Now tell me, is Jamie okay?” She’s not quite shouting, but her voice carries on the wind.

My words are almost a whisper. “Did you know that Mom found Amelia?”

Ann shakes her head. Frustration comes off of her in waves.

“Grace, your mother and I were obsessed with that as girls. We hadn’t talked about it in ages. I haven’t thought about it in—”

“Stop lying. I know she told you what she found. She probably couldn’t wait to call her best friend. Were you surprised? Was she? Or did my mother always think she might be Amelia’s descendant?”

“Your mother and I hadn’t really spoken in years. We were very close as girls. And even in adulthood for a while, but then I became … but then I married, and she had you and your brother, and life took us in different directions. It was nothing specific. It was just life. It is simply something that happens. I wish I had known what she was doing. I wish I could have stopped her or helped her or—”

“Stop lying to me!”

People don’t shout at princesses. I can tell as soon as the words are free, but I don’t want to take them back. They are out. And they are almost magic.

It’s like a spell is broken. Ann is still smiling, but her expression is morphing somehow. It’s more a smirk when she asks, “Have you been to the tomb? Have you seen it?”

Numbly, I shake my head. They took my mother’s body to Adria, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to visit her grave.

“Answer me, Grace!”

“I … I’ve never been there!” I snap, and I don’t have to act confused and clueless. Lately, that’s my natural state.

“Don’t play coy, Grace. Tell me what you know so I can help you.”

This whole conversation must be another figment of my messed-up mind—like a dream where your English teacher keeps asking you why you didn’t bring a rhinoceros to the picnic. It doesn’t make any sense.

People change. I know it. I’ve seen it. I have changed, that much is true. But people don’t change this quickly. In a matter of minutes, she’s morphed from meek to worried to outraged.

Something isn’t right with her.

No.

Something isn’t right.

The people who are looking at the touristy knickknacks on the vendor’s cart haven’t made a decision since we’ve been talking. They haven’t moved.

The policemen who were wandering through the crowds haven’t wandered on. There’s a woman with a baby in a stroller. But that baby is too quiet—its mother too still.

No one on this bridge is as they seem. Especially the woman before me.

Now I don’t even try to hide it. I ease away, moving until my back hits the rail.

“Who did you tell?” I demand of her. I’m tired of playing pretend. “Who knew you were meeting me here?”

Ann shakes her head. She actually takes off her dark glasses, looks me in the eye. “No one. My husband doesn’t even know where I am. Or who I’m with.”

“What about your father-in-law, the king?” I ask.

Ann shakes her head, her eyes impossibly wide. “No, Grace. No one knows. I’d never tell …” She trails off, thinking. Recognition seems to dawn. “Grace, do you think the royal family would try to harm you?”

I shrug. It’s all I can do not to laugh. The whole thing is so preposterous—too crazy even to be a dream.