Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(63)

He turns from me to run a hand along the ornate ironwork. “Not then, though. Two hundred years ago, these gates mattered very much. And this”—he holds the relic up to the light—“was their key.”

I look at the old-fashioned key that still lies in the palm of the king’s large hand. It doesn’t look like it should hold any power at all. But once upon a time it changed the world.

“What most people don’t understand,” the king goes on, “what most people fail to realize is that no mob forms overnight. The royal family knew the people were angry. So the king ordered the gates closed and locked. And what no one ever says—what very few people even realize—is that the guards—the men who threw the gates open and let the mob run in—didn’t have the key.”

I look at the gates and the walls as if the truth were out there somewhere. But it isn’t. I’m just not entirely certain it’s in here, either.

“I don’t understand,” I tell him.

“This is the literal key to the kingdom, Ms. Blakely. And two hundred years ago there were only two in the world. One was held by the king and one was held by his brother. This is the king’s key.”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Of course. You’re the king.”

He nods. “I am. The king’s key was given to me at my coronation. Just as it was given to my father before me and his father before him—all the way back to the War of the Fortnight. But this key did not belong to my great-great-great-grandfather. He wasn’t the king, you see. He was the king’s brother. And so a part of me has always wondered what became of his key. I told myself that it was lost to the war and to time, but now I highly suspect it lies locked inside that box.”

He points behind me, and I turn to see the prince holding a second box.

“I lied,” Thomas admits with a shrug. “I did go into your room.”

But I’m no longer angry. There are no words for what I feel as the prince holds the box out to me, but for some reason I pass it to the king, who runs his hands along the smooth wood, almost reverently. Within a few seconds the puzzle Megan and I have been trying to master for days snaps open with a click. A second key comes tumbling out onto the king’s palm.

“So that’s where that is.” His voice is soft, and it takes a moment for him to meet my gaze. When he does, he’s almost crying. “I don’t know where your mother got that box, Ms. Blakely. But it has been missing for two hundred years. Ever since the night this key was used to open those gates and let in the mob that killed the royal family.”

There are minutes—seconds—when the whole world can change and your life will forevermore be marked before and after. No one knows that more than I, and as I study the king of Adria, I know he’s having one of them now. I just can’t quite wrap my head around why.

“So a guard or someone stole the box,” I say. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I don’t see …”

“You have a good heart, don’t you, Grace?” the king asks me.

“That’s probably up for debate,” I say, and the king laughs. He doesn’t know that I’m not joking.

“Have you learned to open the box?”

“No,” I say, almost defensive.

“Very few ever do,” the king says. “When you’re raised in this house, then history is all around you. My ancestors hang on the walls; my family tree is memorized in schools. My world should have no secrets, Ms. Blakely. No mysteries. And so since I was a boy, I have clung to one of the few unknowns that my family has left. A single question: What became of the second key?”

The king takes a breath and the prince eases closer.

“Oh, I told myself that the historians were right,” the king says. “I assumed the box had been stolen—that it had been smashed or destroyed and the key removed. I was certain that explained it. But …”

“But if the box wasn’t destroyed …” I fill in.

“Then it was opened, wasn’t it?” he says. “By one of the two men in the kingdom who knew how.”

The king draws a deep breath, as if telling this story means also tempting fate.

“Do you think Alexander the Second gave the guards this key, Ms. Blakely? Do you think he threw open the gates and let in the mob that would massacre his family?” The king shakes his head. For the first time, he looks old. “No. Of course he didn’t. And so I have to think it was Alexander’s brother who opened this box and turned over the key that stood between him and the throne.”

“But that would mean …” I start, but I’m too afraid of the answer.

“It means my great-great-great-grandfather was a killer, Ms. Blakely. It means I am descended from a traitor, a usurper. It means I sit upon a stolen throne. But what I don’t know is …” The king hardens now. His gaze is so hot it almost burns. “Why are you here, Ms. Blakely?”

“Thomas,” I say. I’m backing away and running on instinct. “I was looking for Thomas.”

“No.” The king shakes his head. “Why are you here?”

“I …”

Lies swirl inside my head, options spiral. I need Dominic or Ms. Chancellor—an embassy full of marines and every trick my big brother ever taught me to keep the bullies at bay. I need to run or fight, and I might do both if the king’s gaze doesn’t soften.