Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(64)

“Amelia lived, didn’t she?” He’s smiling now, and almost eerily calm. I look at Thomas, and I don’t know what to say. The king doesn’t seem like a villain in this moment—not the mastermind of my terrible fate. Is it possible he’s as innocent as he seems? Is anyone? Ever?

“Amelia lived and her descendants live, and … and now I sit upon your throne, don’t I, Ms. Blakely?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer.

Instead, he does the strangest thing. He bows. To me.

“Get up! What are you doing?” I look up and down the hall, panic filling me. “You’re the king of Adria.”

“Am I?” he asks.

“Yes! I don’t want to be a princess. My brother doesn’t want to be king. We just want …”

Justice.

Revenge.

But I can’t say any of that, so I just shake my head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I want anymore.”

There’s a window seat nearby, and the king eases me toward it. “Sit, Grace. Breathe.”

I don’t cry and I don’t scream, but I don’t run, either. I’m just so tired of running. Sometimes, Dr. Rainier says, your only job is to breathe, and so that is what I do. In and out. Until the king of Adria takes the seat beside me and says, “Now, Grace, I believe it’s time you tell me a story.”

So I do.

I tell him everything. About my mom and the Scarred Man and the fire. I tell him about the comatose PM and the night Jamie lay on the embassy’s dining room table, his blood covering the floor.

I look up at the man I’ve been hating for weeks and say, “You didn’t know any of this, did you?”

“No.”

“You didn’t try to kill me?”

“No. Though I would understand if you choose not to believe me.”

I can’t help myself. I look at Thomas, then back to his grandfather. “I believe you,” I say, and the crazy thing is that it might even be true.

When the king stands, he pats my back. “Now why don’t you go get some rest? You must be tired.”

I stand, suddenly shaking. “But … what happens now?”

The king smiles and pats me on the back again. “Now you leave everything to me.”

I bristle involuntarily and pull back. He already knows me too well and can read me too easily because he says, “Trust is hard, isn’t it?”

“You have no idea.”

“You can trust me,” the king says. And as he does, Dominic appears over his shoulder.

“Yes, Grace Olivia,” the Scarred Man tells me. “You can.”

The king pushes me back toward my rooms. “Go, rest. I’ll take care of everything. This fight isn’t yours anymore.”

He hands me my mother’s box and his great-great-great-grandfather’s key, and the prince and I start silently down the halls.

I can’t read his tone when Thomas asks, “So does this mean you’re not going to marry me anymore?”

“I don’t know. Does it?”

He gives me a cocky smile, but neither of us says another word.





Hope is a delicate thing.

A dangerous thing.

I had it once, back when I thought we were going to live in that little army town and I was going to graduate high school, maybe travel around Europe with my mom before I left for college. I thought I’d grow up, maybe meet a nice guy.

I thought I’d get a happy ending.

Those are the only endings anyone ever talks about, after all. What the world doesn’t tell you—what you don’t see in the movies and in books and on TV—is that not everybody gets one. And no one ever thinks they’re going to be the very unlucky exception to the rule.

It’s been over a day since the king took my burdens into his own hands, and now as I stand in the window of my room in the palace, I can feel something inside of me. It bubbles and percolates. It grows and swells. And it scares me more than any of Dominic’s warnings. There’s a tiny voice in the back of my head whispering that we are in the endgame of a two-hundred-year-old chess match.

I might still get a happy ending, the little voice says, but I’d give anything to quiet it, because I learned a long time ago that as soon as I want something—as soon as I dare to believe—that’s when I get hurt.

“Well, isn’t that a pretty sight?”

The maid is at my door, closing it behind her. The long blue gown is draped across her outstretched arms. I want to tell her it’s too pretty, too perfect and stately and royal. I want to tell her to take it back and leave me up here in my tower, where nothing can possibly hurt me, much less my own foolish expectations.

But it’s too late for that.

Because that’s the thing about hope—you can never kill it yourself.

“Are you excited for the party, Your Highness?”

“I’m not—” I start to correct her, then stop myself. She doesn’t want to hear me explain yet again that I’m not really a princess, that I don’t really belong here. So I save my breath.

“Yes,” I say instead, terrified to realize that it’s true. “I think I am.”

I expect the young woman to smile back, to be happy at this. But it’s like a cloud is passing across her face.