“Who?” I snap, but she doesn’t answer. She just turns and starts down a long, winding corridor.
Are we underground? I wonder as I follow. Am I still in DC? It’s possible, I suppose. But I know in my gut that I’m a long, long way from safety.
“Why am I here?” I ask, and the girl glances back, gives me a smile that’s too peaceful—too serene. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s been drugged, I wonder as I fight the urge to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake her until she’s as screwed up and cynical as I am.
I want to tell her that there’s no reason to smile, that there is no peace. But, most of all, I want to ask her where I might find a bathroom.
I’m just opening my mouth to speak when I hear the voices. The corridor twists and curves. Brighter lights shine beyond the bend. It’s not the flickering gaslight of Adria. No. This light is yellow and blue and red. The girl eases forward, stands in what looks to be the end of a rainbow, but I’m not looking for a pot of gold.
“It is not our place to interfere!” a woman shouts. “It has never been our place. It will never be our place.”
I might stay in the last shadows, out of the conversation and out of the fight if not for the next voice I hear.
“People are dying.”
Eleanor Chancellor is my grandfather’s chief of staff, but she’s more than that. She is a member of the Society. She is one of the underground leaders of Adria—of the world. She is a woman with secrets. And she is on my side. Or so I’ve started to think.
Slowly, I inch into the brightly colored light and take in the room before me.
Stained glass. That’s the first thing I notice, and I realize that we aren’t underground. No. The room before me curves like the corridor outside. Round, with benches and railings atop risers made of heavy wood circling the perimeter. I stand in a narrow gap in the circular bleachers and study what appears to be the room equivalent of Arthur’s Round Table. No head. No foot. All the women here are equals, I can tell. Or at least they’re supposed to be. And the ceiling above us? It is made of stained glass. I can’t help but crane my head up to take in the intricate pictures. I’m reminded of the mural in the secret underground headquarters in Valancia. But this window doesn’t tell the story of the king who founded Adria and his knights and their wives and the Society’s origin. No. I see pictures of castles and churches and the great landmarks of the world. A thorny rosebush wraps around them all, circling the window. Covering the globe.
“The situation changed as soon as innocent people started paying the price,” Ms. Chancellor says. She stands in the center of the great, round room, her back to me, and I know she has no idea I’m here. The women in the risers study her with calm indifference. It’s like she’s giving a book report and not talking about matters of life and death.
One woman actually shrugs. “People have always died,” she says in a British accent.
“You are too attached to the child, Eleanor,” another woman adds. She has an East Indian accent and wears a beautiful sari. She sounds almost sympathetic as she says, “You can no longer be objective.”
“The child has a name!” I’ve never heard Ms. Chancellor yell before. Not like this. She’s always been so cool that I used to wonder if ice would melt in her hands. Now she is practically radiating fury and heat. “And she did not ask for this. None of us asked for this, but our ancestors made a decision two hundred years ago, and now the responsibility falls to us.”
The room sits in silence. It seems to take forever for the British lady to lean closer to where Ms. Chancellor stands. “Are you saying the Society should not have saved the baby Amelia?”
“I’m saying our ancestors knew what they were doing when they hid the princess. They knew the danger she would face. Otherwise, why didn’t they reveal the princess was alive once the coup was over? Why didn’t they put her on the throne when she was grown?” Ms. Chancellor sounds tired. Desperate.
“Exactly!” the British lady cries. She’s leaning over the railing now, practically standing. “Following the coup, Adria was safe! King Alexander’s brother was on the throne, and Europe was stable. To bring Amelia back from the grave would have disrupted the peace then. It would shatter it now.”
“No.” Ms. Chancellor is shaking her head. She looks like a child refusing to eat her vegetables. “I’m not saying that we need to put the Blakely children on the throne. I’m saying we need to keep them alive!”
The words are desperate, and they echo around the room.
Hushed silence descends until the woman in the sari says, “For many, there is no difference.”
Nods of agreement and murmurs of ascent follow.
I can see Ms. Chancellor’s hands shaking, her body radiating with rage.
“They won’t stop until she’s dead. Until they’re both dead.”
“The boy is not one of us,” says a woman in the back—I can’t tell which one.
“The boy will die if we don’t help,” Ms. Chancellor shoots back.
“Everyone dies eventually,” says the British lady with a shrug. “The boy is not our concern.”
They’re talking about my brother—about me—as if we are characters in a play, pieces in a chess set. Should we live or die? Should they order in Chinese food or pizza? There’s really not much difference.
Now I’m shaking. I’m stepping forward. I’m about to do something stupid—which is, of course, what I do best—when the British woman looks Ms. Chancellor up and down again and asks, “The question, Eleanor, is what do we do with the girl? And with you?”