Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(4)

“Yes or no?” I snap. “Is the royal family of Adria trying to kill me?”

The PM carefully considers her answer. “Probably.”

It’s all the verification I need. The truth hurts, when I let myself remember. Better to keep it like a thorn pressing against my skin, never quite piercing through.

“I met the king once,” I tell her. “He was nice. But that was before he needed my brother dead.”

Sometimes I hate my mother for what she found, what she learned. She was about my age when she first started this hunt, and now she’s gone. I think about my mom’s best friends. One now lives in the palace with the people who want me dead. One hasn’t been seen in a decade.

“Where’s Karina Volkov?”

The PM studies me. “Where is who?”

“Alexei’s mother. Where is she? What happened to her?”

I expect a lecture on understanding my place or respecting my elders. I’m not at all prepared for the look in the PM’s eye as she turns back to the gray waters of the sea and says, “Why should I know?”

“Because she was part of the Society. And the Society knows everything.”

“Karina went away several years ago, but that was no surprise to anyone. She was always … flighty.”

“Why does everyone think she could just run off and leave Alexei?”

“Are you saying you could never leave Mr. Volkov, Ms. Blakely?”

I don’t know if it’s her smirk or her question that knocks me back a step, but I move anyway, carefully across the slick rocks.

“I’m saying moms don’t do that.”

“Your mother didn’t do that.”

“No. She didn’t. She just kept picking at a wound that was two hundred years old until some powerful people needed her dead. And now they want to kill me. They’ve already gotten way too close to killing my brother.”

I take a step closer. She might be powerful in Adria, but I know every inch of this rocky shore. This is my turf. I’m not going to be intimidated by anyone here. Even her.

“Why are you here?” I demand, but the PM only smirks again.

“You’ve been a very bad girl, Ms. Blakely.”

I ease closer. “You’re under the impression that I care, Ms. Petrovic.”

The wind blows her white hair around her face, and it’s almost like she’s risen from the sea, an omen or a curse.

“The Society has operated in secret for a thousand years. Four times longer than this”—she gestures to the land and water that surround us—“has been a country. Regimes rise. Dictators fall. Wars rage the world over and still we stand. Do you know why, Ms. Blakely?”

“Because I wasn’t around to ruin everything?”

She raises an eyebrow as if to indicate I have a point, but she doesn’t say so.

“We survive because we take care of our own. I’m here because you need a friend. I’m here because you need us.”

“Am I supposed to believe that you care about me? Or do you just care about the lost princess of Adria?”

That I can even ask that with a straight face shows how surreal my life has become. But, then again, maybe it’s not real?

Maybe I’m still in a psych ward, strapped to a bed. Maybe that would be better than this, because then, at least, Jamie would still be at West Point—Jamie would still be safe.

“The Society needs you, Grace. And you need the Society.”

“The Society needs me for what?”

Sometimes the scariest answer is silence. I stand in the wind, listening to the waves crash and the birds cry. It sounds almost like Adria. Perhaps I could close my eyes and pretend that I am back on the beach, looking up at the wall. But I don’t want to. I’m on the other side of the world for a reason.

“You are significant. And for that reason you’ve been summoned.”

“I’m doing just fine on my own, thank you.”

I’m starting to turn. I’m desperate to leave. I’m going to run, swim … fly. But then the PM calls, “If I found you, then others will, too!”

And that’s the point, isn’t it? That I wasn’t safe in Adria. And, in time, I won’t be safe here.

Someone managed to blow up a car belonging to the Russian government. Someone managed to kill a West Point cadet and frame an ambassador’s son. Someone wants my brother dead.

The wind blows the PM’s chic white hair across her face, but I can see her eyes. I just can’t read them.

For a second, I am tempted. I really, truly am. But then the PM says, “Come with me, Grace. Come home,” and something inside of me snaps.

“I’m not going back to Adria. I am never going back to Adria. I made that decision while I watched my brother lie on a dining room table with his blood all over my hands. I am never going back there. Ever.”

I turn and start down the beach. As I round the bend, I can see the little water plane that brought her here, bobbing on the waves, waiting to fly far, far away.

“We can help,” the PM offers, as if it is a last resort.

But it just makes me want to laugh.

I face her. “Like you helped my mother? Like you helped my brother? He’s learning to walk again, by the way. He doesn’t even need the canes anymore if he goes slowly. We’re just lucky that he never lost blood flow to his brain, because then … Excuse me if I think your help might be a little too late.”