We stood there, eyes locked, for what felt like a very long time.
Then the King came rather suddenly to himself and released the woman, hustling to yank his breeches back into place as her slight frame slumped to the ground.
She wasn’t making that horrible sound anymore.
My brain screamed at me to run—this was the King—but that girl. I had to help. I couldn’t leave her after that sound. My feet moved forward of their own accord, crunching on the broken china. One piece jabbed through my slipper, stinging my instep, but I hardly registered the sensation.
I approached the fallen figure, staring, detached, as though she were…not a woman at all. Something else: an elaborate tableau one of the artists at court might stage for our amusement, perhaps. She was lying on her back in a shimmering satin nightgown with a wide décolletage that had slid to the side, leaving one shoulder tantalizingly bare. She wasn’t staff, as I’d expected from such a lurid encounter, but a lady of the court, though I didn’t recognize her. Her curly red hair must have been coiffed to perfection for the ball, but now it tangled like tentacles around her face. Her arms were splayed—one rested by her side, the other arched up near her head.
“Is she dead?” I whispered before reaching out to touch her. But I drew my hand back before making contact.
The rustle of buttons and ties ceased and I sensed the King approaching behind my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to” was all he said, peering down at his handiwork.
I stared at her chest, willing it to rise. But nothing happened. I suddenly realized where I was: standing in an unmonitored hallway with a dead woman and the person who’d killed her. Panic started to cast its net over me, and I began backing away from him, lifting my nightgown’s hem so I could run.
“Danica!” My name sounded in a whisper, but it cut through the fog in my brain. Not from the King, but from the other end of the hallway.
My mother. I hurried to her and yanked on her hand, trying to pull her along with me. “He killed her,” I hissed, desperate to explain.
“Shhh,” she said, pulling me close and taking my face in her hands. “I will handle this. Do you understand?” I caught a telltale glint in her eye.
The cobweb-thin platinum ring encircling the edge of a network Lens was enough to alert me to its existence. I’d taken mine out in preparation for bed, and would be willing to wager the King wasn’t wearing his. The ice in my stomach melted a little as I realized there would be a record of whatever happened next.
My mother turned to the King and raised herself to her full height. No one who saw her at that moment would have guessed she’d been raised working-class and had only gained entrance to the nobility by marrying my father. She looked almost as much a queen as the portraits that lined the palace walls—even in a white nightdress and shawl, with her long hair wound into a thick braid, face washed free of cosmetics. When she spoke, somehow she managed to sound aghast, motherly, and poisonous all at once. “Justin, what have you done?”
As I arrive at the Grayson suites, I shake off the memories of that awful night two months ago. That was the last moment when I truly believed everything would be all right. That justice would be served. That my mother was on my side. I know better now—Angela Grayson is always on Angela Grayson’s side.
After closing the entrance doors behind me, I don’t bother checking on my father—considering his behavior helped to set this latest catastrophe in motion, he can rot in his study for all I care. I go straight to my room, where an unfamiliar pair of bots are busying themselves with my wardrobe. Most of the bots look exactly the same: powdered wigs, blank-faced masks, and red velvet livery with gold trim. But these bots are a touch more formal. More gold braid. Royal bots.
“Send them out, M.A.R.I.E.,” I command, knowing she’s listening. She’s always listening.
The bots leave my room immediately; I wasn’t certain they would. I could imagine His Majesty revoking my credentials, or requiring M.A.R.I.E. to get his direct approval before following my commands.
I flop to my stomach on the lightly carpeted floor and pry a wooden box from where I’ve wedged it under the side rails of my bed. My fingernails work the delicate catch, and after turning my body to shield the box’s contents from the ceiling-mounted dome that serves as M.A.R.I.E.’s ever-watchful eye, I peer inside.
The twine-bound stacks of euros I dig out are both comforting and depressing. I didn’t give up. I’ve spent several weeks selling every piece of jewelry I could get my hands on, though after the Frenchman’s reaction in the catacombs I’m a great deal more discerning. No antiques, no large pieces that have been worn to highly publicized events. Just the smaller bits I’ve been given over the years. Or my mother’s jewelry, when I could get away with it. Occasionally, a piece acquired via some amateur sleight of hand. Unfortunately, all of these put together are worth far less than the better jewels. By last week I was out of pieces to hawk—and not quite three hundred thousand euros richer.
Which would have been an incredible sum if I hadn’t been trying to raise five million. A measly six percent of the money I need, two months of my engagement already gone. Tears sting my eyes as I run my finger along what would, for many, be a glee-inducing stack of money. I’m wallowing in self-pity, and I know it, but—
My fingertips touch a loose piece of thin string. Still blocking the box from M.A.R.I.E.’s view, I peer into the space without opening the lid any farther; the empty loop of string is knotted into a circle just the right size to secure a small brick of paper bills.
I gasp and flip the top fully open, snatching up the offending string between my thumb and forefinger. A small enough amount to miss in a cursory glance, but large enough to devastate my efforts. Who? When? Why? The questions rage, a hurricane in my head, but one answer rises to the top, and as soon as it does, I know it’s the only possibility.
Father.
Rage burns away reason and I stand, clap the lid shut, and storm from the room, the box tucked under my arm.
He would know. The box was a gift from him. I kept it on my dressing table in plain sight until my mother invaded my rooms. If someone knew what they were looking for, how long would it take to find a box this size in a bedroom with little space for concealment? Less time than an afternoon tea party, I’d wager, if my mother and I were both in attendance.
His study doors are closed, locked, but I know the override. I tap out the sequence on the doorframe’s decorative inlay—a simple numeric keypad, really, but of course it’s not allowed to look like what it is, not in Versailles—and hold still just long enough for a face scan. Without knocking, I push my way through the heavy oak doors.
A scuffle of shoes. The thud of something hitting the ground. He’s not alone.
“No!” My father’s voice is gravelly but strong. “I’ve paid you!”
That brings me up short. I watch a man in a dark cloak bend to sweep up a stack of scattered bills, the glint of a knife at his hip. I should move. I should run. Alert security. Something.
But I freeze. There’s something bad, something dark and secret happening here. And I am fear’s slave.
My father, for once, is the active one. “Please,” he begs again. “You’ve been paid.”
I feel the cloaked man look at me, even though I can’t see his eyes under the shadow of his hood. They don’t waver from my face as he spins a small envelope through the air to my father. He starts to back away, and finally I find my nerve.
“Stop!” My voice bursts out so much smaller than it sounded in my head. I try again, but already he’s running down the short hallway to my father’s bedchamber—with a stack of money that belongs to me. Dropping my box onto the desk, I follow the cloaked figure, but the weight of my skirts and the width of my panniers hamper my progress. I round the corner as the criminal—what else could he be?—disappears through a small panel at the back wall.
I run to the wall and fall to my knees, pulling open the door and reaching into the blackness of
…the clothes chute. Of course. A criminal just escaped my father’s chambers through the damned laundry chute.
MY FATHER WASN’T meant to be a nobleman. Not really. He was born into the gentry. We were happy and well supported by his middle-management position at Sonoma Inc., which his mother held before him. Then his stepbrother died, young and unexpectedly, and willed Father his voting shares and place at court. By accident. The document was a prenuptial formality—a relic of their parents’ marriage. My step-uncle would have gotten around to updating it eventually, but no one expects to die in their twenties.
After that, everything changed. My father instantly moved his family from the city of Versailles into the palace. Into the kingdom. I was caught up in the excitement too. I’m sorry to say I took after my mother in that way—hungry for the glitz and glamour of the palace. By the time I made my début, I was so anxious to be a part of the scintillating court of Sonoman-Versailles that nothing could have held me back.
Anger bubbles over as I link to my father everything that’s happened to us in the last few months—even though much of it truly isn’t his fault. I need someone to blame, somewhere to vent my fury, and the obvious person just escaped.
“You’ve ruined everything!” Sobs are trying to force their way into my throat, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let my father see me cry. It doesn’t matter that I was never going to save enough money anyway—with someone stealing from me, it really is impossible.
I feel so young, suddenly. The last few months have forced me to grow up quickly. But now, slumped on the floor and watching my father stare at his parcel, I feel very much like the teenager everyone seems to have forgotten I am. I’m too young for this game with its life-and-death stakes.
He’s staring at the envelope, cradled in his hands as though it were a newborn child, utterly unaware of the daughter whose dreams he’s shattered. “What is that, Father?” I say levelly.
He looks up and blinks. The confusion in his eyes makes it all too clear that he didn’t notice me entering the room at all. At all. Not when I startled the criminal, not when I slammed the laundry chute closed, only now, when I shout directly at him.
“What. Is. That?”
“Dani…Dani, I—” He tries to conceal the envelope behind his back, of all places. But I’m surging with adrenaline and far more nimble than he, gown and all. I expect him to fight, but when I wrench the envelope away he crumples to the floor and begins to cry.
The anger drains from me, replaced by something so much worse. Pity. Disillusionment.
“Father, don’t,” I say gently. But I keep hold of the envelope. I study it, baffled. It’s sealed and there’s nothing written on it, but the lack of a pressed wax circle on the back suggests that it’s from outside Sonoman-Versailles—which would explain why he had to pay for it with euros. The packet is lumpy and bulging. With a quick glance at my father, I slip a finger beneath the flap and tear it open. I tip the envelope and pour a stack of about fifteen beige squares onto my hand. The sound of weeping fades from my awareness as I try to figure out just what I’m looking at.
“What is it, Father?” Though I’m not snapping anymore, I do hold the squares in my fingertips high above him, waving them out of reach.
“Forgive me. I needed it,” he says, stretching his long arms upward, woefully shy of their mark while he kneels on the floor in front of me.
“Needed what, Father?”
“I needed it.”
I grit my teeth and curse my grasping, devious mother for driving him to this, curse the King for stealing what was left of my childhood, and even curse my father’s pox-ridden stepbrother for dying and putting us all in this unbearable situation in the first place. “Tell me exactly what this is or I swear to you I will toss it down the chute after that criminal who gave it to you.”
“No, no!” he says, splaying himself on the floor. “You can’t.”
“Then tell me!”
He’s no longer weeping in earnest, but tears continue to leak down his once-dignified face, wetting the craggy beard I remember stroking as a child. Back then it was a carefully trimmed goatee that he pomaded to a jaunty point at the end of his chin. “You must not tell. You mustn’t. It’s such a secret. I promised him no one would ever know.”
He looks up. I’d almost forgotten how vibrant his eyes can be. Mine are brown. Mother’s, too. But his are green. Once, they were striking against his deep olive skin—a reminder of his Israeli descent. Now the color only makes his pallor look more sallow.
“They make me forget. But if…if I don’t have them, I can’t—please.” He stretches his hands out for the patches, and he makes such a pathetic picture, I can’t do anything but hand them over.
It doesn’t matter; it’s already too late. The money is gone and the criminal with it. May as well let Father have whatever that stuff is—lord knows I can’t do anything with it. My skirts pouf around me as I join him on the cold stone floor, feeling thoroughly defeated and wishing I could curl up on his lap the way I did as a little girl.
I turn to my father, and he freezes in terror. One of the patches is in his hand and he’s peeled off half the backing. I squint at the square, and even in the dim light I see something sparkle on the adhesive side. His eyes leap from my face to the patch and back again. Then, some sort of decision made, he pushes up the unbuttoned cuffs of his linen shirt and pulls another patch away from his skin. My stomach churns—the surface of his arm is crisscrossed with blackened lines where residue from the adhesive clings. He finds a clean(ish) spot and rubs the new patch on. Only then does he release his breath in a long, luxurious sigh.
“It makes me happy,” he says, his voice sparkling with bliss.
Then it dawns on me. “It’s…it’s a drug, isn’t it?”
After a moment, he gives me a barely perceptible nod.
I slump against the wall. Despite the sloth, self-indulgence, and gluttony that are not only accepted but expected in the palace, illicit substances are absolutely forbidden. Thus far the courts have upheld Sonoma’s dearly bought corporate sovereignty, but INTERPOL is always lurking and looking for an excuse to burst through our protective veil and find a way to help the UN seize it back. There isn’t much that can pierce the legal web of power and immunity that Sonoman-Versailles enjoys, but the international narcotics trade is one, and there are ridiculously crushing penalties for those who would dabble.
“How much did you pay for it?” I whisper.
“Six hundred euros.”
My eyes snap to the envelope. Fifteen. The numbers tumble through my head. Forty euros apiece. I narrow my eyes. “How many times?”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but his eyes become even emptier. Guilt or confusion? I can’t tell.
“How often do you buy this much?” I clarify, pointing at the envelope. How much have you stolen from me?
“He comes once a week,” my father whispers.
Six hundred euros a week?
I look up and around the perimeter of the darkened room, lit only by one set of flickering LED candles in an elaborate sconce on the wall. “How have you not been caught?” The Sonoman government does not, of course, work on the honor system. There are scanners in several areas of the palace that can detect all manner of drugs better than any trained dog.
“I never leave this room,” he says simply.
But there’s M.A.R.I.E. The balance between privacy and technology is a concern going back nearly a hundred years to our founding in the twenty-first century, but the convenience M.A.R.I.E. affords us is made possible through constant audiovisual surveillance. Everything that happens in the palace is at least potentially recorded.
“I’m a voting member,” he says, as though that were an answer.
“I don’t understand.”
“Voters’ offices aren’t monitored. It’s a conflict of…of…”
“Conflict of interest,” I finish for him. With the King also being the CEO, early administrators would have de
manded a place to discuss business matters off the record. So all high nobility have one unmonitored office. Most are in the corporate wing of the palace. I hadn’t considered the fact that my father’s is in our home. Their home.
He waves a hand. “Your mother made the arrangements.”
Of course she did.
His eyes roll over to mine. “I failed you.”
The good daughter in me wants to protest—to comfort him—but it would be an untruth. He failed me in so many ways. Especially the night Sierra Jamison was killed. My mother plotted, schemed, informed both of us what our roles were to be. He never demanded justice, nor came to my defense. Looking back now, I understand that she couldn’t have come up with such a tight plan in that moment. I’ve finally realized that she must have spent months looking for an opportunity to trap the King.
Justin, what have you done? she said that night. It sounded so off-the-cuff. I wonder now how long she’d been waiting to say it. What kind of disaster she might have otherwise pushed him—pushed both of us—into to make it happen. My mind jumps back to that night.
“I—I—” the King stammered in the face of my mother’s question. “It was an accident.”
“It wasn’t!” I burst out from just behind my mother. “I saw you. You had your hands around her neck while you—you—” My face was hot and red and I could hardly comprehend, much less explain, what I’d seen.
My mother raised both eyebrows, her expression full of judgment.
He seemed to cower beneath her gaze for a moment, and I was reminded sharply that he was less than two years older than me. Young enough to be my mother’s son. Youngest King in Sonoman-Versailles’s admittedly brief history. But with visible effort he reclaimed his composure and set about dismissively straightening the cuffs of his light linen shirt, even though the front hung completely open, revealing his bare chest.
“Please,” he scoffed. “We’re both consenting and of age, and tonight was hardly the first time.” He raised one eyebrow. “Haven’t you ever sampled this variety of bedsport? You ought to, might loosen you up a bit.”