Queen

  Without another word, he ducked into the hallway, leaving the three of us alone. I strode over and locked the door, and once that was taken care of, I wheeled around to face Benjy.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “What had to be done,” said Benjy, and to his credit, he didn’t flinch. “I believe him, Lila—”

  “Kitty,” I said. “Greyson knows.”

  “Good.” He and Greyson exchanged looks before he continued. “We have the gun. That’s what we need, right?”

  Reluctantly I nodded, opening the cylinder to make sure it was full. “These could be blanks.”

  Greyson peered over my shoulder. “They’re not. See the way the metal crimps?”

  “I can do it,” said Benjy as I inspected the bullets. “I’m with him every day. The guards search me, but I could find a way—”

  “No.” I closed the cylinder and set the pistol aside. “You’re not taking that risk.”

  He scowled. “Kitty—”

  “If you do it, you’ll just be a rebel, and he’ll die a martyr,” I said. “If Greyson does it, people will speculate he only wanted his father’s power. But if Lila does it—if the beloved mouthpiece of the Blackcoats does it—the people will be behind her.”

  Greyson bit his lip. “It’ll have to be in public. On camera, if we can manage it.”

  “That’s the only time we’re allowed to get close to him anyway,” I said. “You’ll pardon me, won’t you?”

  That got a small smile out of him. “I think I can manage that.”

  “Good. And Benjy—” I looked at him. “Thank you.”

  Benjy crossed his arms, and the tips of his ears turned red. “I don’t want you doing this.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It has to be done. Everything will work out—we’ll make sure it does.” I touched his elbow. Part of me was hoping for the spark we’d been missing, but as reassuring as it was to have him there, planning and strategizing with us, that was all it was: a familiar comfort. The boost of confidence I needed to go through with this. If there was a hole in the plan—a real hole, and not simply Benjy’s fears about losing me—then he would tell us.

  “Okay,” said Greyson, looking back and forth between us. “First chance we get.”

  I nodded, my heart racing. We could do this. We could really do this. “First chance we get.”

  * * *

  That chance didn’t come for weeks.

  With Greyson busy tinkering with his bug, and with Benjy catering to Daxton’s every want and whim, I was left largely on my own each day. Sometimes I sketched while Greyson worked; sometimes I watched the news. But mostly I explored Creed Manor.

  There were parts I couldn’t access—Daxton’s quarters, mainly, which put a damper on things. And the vents were far too small for me to fit inside, much to my frustration. But I memorized every hallway, every room, every closet of Creed Manor I could find, until I knew it as well as I had known Somerset.

  My knowledge of the manor’s layout came in handy when, at last, Greyson managed to get his bug up and running. We weren’t sure what we expected to get out of it, but it was comforting, having a way to find out what Daxton was really up to. And once the bug had the run of the manor, Greyson and I spent hours in his suite, watching the feed and waiting for anything telling to happen.

  It never did. And the more time that passed, the more discouraged I grew. Daxton had yet to give us an opportunity to kill him, and though I was tempted to do it over yet another course of roast beef, I knew that would only put every other person in that room in danger. Greyson was right—it had to be public. All we could do was wait.

  One morning, at the crack of dawn, a guard burst into our bedroom. “Get up,” he ordered. “The car leaves in an hour.”

  “We get to leave?” I said groggily, sitting up from the second bed in Greyson’s suite. “Where?”

  “Oversee reconstruction of Somerset,” the guard grumbled.

  Greyson and I exchanged a look, and my heart leaped into my throat. This could be it. This could finally be the opportunity we’d been waiting for.

  Once the guard left, we got ready, and I carefully hid the gun inside the lining of my bulky winter coat. One shot. That was all I needed, and all of this would finally be over.

  We took two cars to Somerset, with Daxton and Minister Bradley in the first while Greyson, Benjy, and I followed in the second. I checked to make sure the privacy screen was up, blocking our conversation from the driver. “Do you think the guards will try to protect him?” I said in a low voice as we drove down an avenue toward Somerset. Creed Manor wasn’t far, but that only gave us a few minutes to talk, and I needed to be prepared for anything that could happen once I pulled the trigger. Having Greyson and Benjy there wasn’t ideal, but with luck, I could separate from them. If the guards retaliated, I wanted to be the only one who paid the price.

  “Maybe,” said Greyson grimly. “If you think for a moment they might—”

  “I’ll stop,” I lied. I knew I wouldn’t, and they knew I wouldn’t, either. But as willing as I was to die for this cause, I couldn’t stomach the thought of dying today—of never seeing the light at the end of the dark tunnel that had become our lives—and I told myself again and again that it wouldn’t happen. I would hide the gun in my coat. They wouldn’t be able to tell it was me until Greyson was in charge, and he would pardon me. It would work out.

  It had to.

  When we arrived at Somerset only a few minutes later, there was a crowd of onlookers waiting for us at the gates, held back by armed guards. Daxton’s car slowed, and he cracked the window to stick a hand out and wave.

  A few members of the crowd clapped, but it didn’t look terribly enthusiastic. Maybe public sentiment was turning against him more swiftly than we’d thought. Or maybe it was too cold out for anyone to feel particularly enthusiastic about anything. With that in mind, I rolled down our window.

  “What are you doing?” said Greyson, trying to snatch my hand from the button. I gave him a look.

  “Seeing how much fallout we’re going to have to face.”

  Sticking my head out the window, I beamed at the crowd and waved, and a roar of applause and whistles began. Nearly everyone in the crowd lit up, and they began to shout and wave back. My smile grew genuine. Daxton was the only one feeling the cold, it seemed.

  “Get back in here before someone shoots you,” hissed Benjy, but I only slid back into my seat once the crowd was out of sight. Greyson hastily rolled the window up.

  “No one’s going to shoot me,” I said. I was the one with the gun, after all. “Did you see that?”

  “Yes,” said Greyson, frowning. “It was unnecessary.”

  “No, it was exactly what they wanted,” I said. “Daxton waved, and no one cared. I smile and wave, and they’re practically crawling over themselves to get closer.”

  “It was still dangerous,” said Greyson, and I shrugged.

  “I’ve been shot at before. Besides, this was worth it.”

  “I don’t see how,” he said, but Benjy spoke up before I could.

  “In the court of public opinion, Lila will win every time against Daxton. We can use that. We will.”

  When the white manor of Somerset came into view, my stomach knotted, and I had to force myself to breathe steadily. This was it. This was the moment we’d been waiting for. I touched the inside of my jacket, the metal cool and reassuring to the touch. I could do this. I would do this, and by noon, everything would be exactly the way it should be. I just had to pull the trigger.

  In a stroke of inspiration, I secured my right sleeve in the pocket on that side, making sure it wouldn’t accidentally fall out. This way, it looked like I had both of my hands in my pockets, but my right arm was inside my coat instead, within reach of the gun h
idden in the lining. It wasn’t the most graceful of plans, but it would give me a way to shoot Daxton without giving the appearance of pointing a gun directly at him. It might buy me the few precious seconds I would need to keep myself alive.

  As we piled out of the car, Daxton watched me coldly from the other side of the drive, and it took me a panicked moment to realize it wasn’t because he had noticed my empty sleeve. He must have witnessed my impromptu rally. I couldn’t decide whether to feel smug about it or worry about his potential retaliation. But what could he do? As long as I did my job, he would be dead in a matter of minutes, and the country would be ours. If I survived that long.

  I swallowed that thought and steeled my spine against the fear washing over me. Too many people were counting on that bullet for me to change my mind, but it was far more difficult to find my courage now than it had been in a room far from Daxton and his guards and the consequences of my actions. I bit the inside of my cheek. This was exactly the version of me Knox would have been thrilled to see—someone thinking her actions through before taking them. Only now, that hesitation could blow things all to pieces.

  As we had hoped, a camera crew had gathered to record our observation of what remained of Somerset. They likely planned to show this clip on the six o’clock news as a fluff piece about how the Hart family was rebuilding after the war; they had no idea this would become a shot that, with any luck, would go down in history. My palms began to sweat. I could do this. I had to do this.

  Construction crews had cleaned up the worst of the wreckage in Somerset, and they had already built scaffolding around the parts that had to be reconstructed, including the residential wing. Seeing the destruction from the outside made me wonder how anyone had survived at all. As we all gathered on the brown front lawn, a foreman in a construction hat joined us, and he and Daxton shook hands.

  “It’s a pleasure, Prime Minister,” he said, and I caught a glimpse of the V on the back of his neck.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” said Daxton with grace and charm I’d nearly forgotten he was capable of. “I hear you’re planning on remodeling the residential wing completely.”

  “We are,” said the foreman, and he launched into a description of the new amenities. My heart pounded, and blood rushed in my ears as the world outside my mind grew noiseless. One twitch of the finger. That was all it would take.

  Under the guise of getting a better look at the manor, I shifted my stance, giving me a clear shot. I was only a couple feet from Daxton—even without aiming, it would be hard to miss him. Guards surrounded us just off camera, ready to jump in at the first sign of trouble, but none of them were watching me. Despite Daxton’s abundance of caution, none of them seemed to expect an inside job.

  At last I screwed up my courage and moved the gun in the right position. At the edge of my vision, I could see Greyson watching me, and as our eyes met, he gave the slightest hint of a nod.

  With my expression as impassive as I could manage, I took a breath, steadied my hand, and pulled the trigger.

  Bang.

  Daxton cried out and collapsed. A chorus of shrieks rose up from the crowd, and several people ducked. At the last second, I remembered to duck as well, and I twisted around wildly, pretending to search for the shooter. But I didn’t have to fake my pounding pulse or the fear in my eyes.

  In an instant, the guards turned toward us, and several flung themselves over Daxton protectively, but it was too late. He lay still while the rest of us remained close to the ground.

  All of us...except Minister Bradley.

  “Is he—?” Bradley’s eyes widened, and rather than backing away, he stepped closer to the pile of guards. Even as close to the ground as I was, I could see the faintest hint of a smile on his face.

  Idiot. Idiot.

  But there was nothing I could do in the chaos of the moment without giving myself away. I replaced the gun in the lining of my coat and, as the remaining guards rushed to protect us and guide us safely back to the car, I looked over my shoulder at Daxton. He lay motionless on the grass, and though I could already hear sirens in the distance, it was too late.

  I’d done it. I’d pulled the trigger.

  And now it was over.

  XIV

  Room of Horrors

  The car sped back to Creed Manor with Greyson, Benjy, and me in the back. Two guards had come with us, squeezing in on either side of Greyson, and no one said a word throughout the journey. I didn’t trust myself to speak without giving the game away, but mostly I was shocked I’d managed to do it. Greyson and Benjy looked equally stunned, as if they, too, hadn’t been sure this would happen.

  Good. Better to fool the guards, then. And when the truth came out—when I confessed to killing Daxton in the memory of the Blackcoats and for the good of the country—Greyson would have the power to pardon me.

  Everything would be fine.

  Except, as the three of us were rushed inside Creed Manor, the slightest suspicion began to bloom in the back of my mind. I heard our protectors’ earpieces crackle, and one gave a grunt in reply. Something wasn’t right—not that anything could be right for the men who had just failed to protect their charge from being assassinated, but it was something more than that. Benjy was ushered off to Daxton’s office, while the pair of guards joined Greyson and me upstairs.

  “You’re to remain in separate rooms,” said a gruff man with cropped hair who reminded me far too much of Strand, and he stepped in front of me, blocking my way into Greyson’s suite.

  “On whose orders?” demanded Greyson, standing up straight and radiating confidence. Maybe he was faking it, or maybe power suited him—either way, he was right. They should have been listening to him, not anyone else.

  “On the Prime Minister’s orders,” said the guard.

  “Greyson is the Prime Minister now,” I said sharply, but he didn’t so much as blink.

  “Separate rooms. Those are the orders.”

  I stared at Greyson, desperation coursing through me—not because we needed to be together, but because if the guards were still taking orders from Daxton, that meant one of three things:

  One, Victor Mercer wasn’t the only person Masked as Daxton Hart.

  Two, he’d planned for this and, in the event of his death, we were to be executed.

  Or the third and most frightening possibility: somehow, someway, Daxton had survived my bullet, and now we would all be facing the consequences of my actions.

  I didn’t know which option was worse. At least if Daxton were dead, others could steer the country toward the Blackcoats’ ideal, no matter what happened to me and Greyson. But if he had been Masked again—if there was an endless supply of Daxton Harts sitting around in a facility somewhere, ready to take the old one’s place—then we were never going to win.

  “If you will, Miss Hart,” said a second guard, taking my arm and leading me to my suite down the hall, which I hadn’t slept in since arriving. I dug my heels in and tried to return to Greyson, but the guard’s grip was incredibly strong.

  “Greyson!” I shouted, yanking so hard that I was sure my arm would be bruised in the morning. “Let me go. I’m staying with my cousin.”

  “No, you aren’t.” The guard opened the door and unceremoniously flung me inside. I stumbled and landed on the floor, but he didn’t seem to care. He slammed the door shut firmly behind me, and I sat there in silence, my head spinning. Whatever this was, it was clear something had gone horribly wrong.

  All I could do was wait.

  * * *

  The first thing I did was hide the gun.

  I tried to open a window to get rid of it, but they were all firmly locked, and I wouldn’t be able to control where it landed anyway. It was entirely likely it would bounce into the open grass, and even if I did manage to make it land in the shrubs, a gardener wou
ld find it eventually, and it wouldn’t be difficult to guess where it came from.

  Instead I hollowed out a thick book with the blade of a razor. It was crude, but it worked, and I returned the book to its place on the shelf. It wasn’t the best hiding spot in the world, but it was better than underneath my bed.

  I waited for Greyson to contact me on the ear cuff, but the crackle of static never came through. Maybe he’d forgotten about it, though that seemed unlikely, and the more time that passed, the more anxious I became. I tried everything I could think of to escape that room and get to Greyson, even if all I could do was make sure he was okay, but there were guards stationed at my door constantly, and I had no doubt the same was true for his. Days passed, and my meals were brought to me on silver platters, but no amount of finery could disguise the fact that once again, I was a prisoner.

  No one answered my questions about the state of Daxton’s health. If he was dead, if he was alive but barely hanging on, if he was perfectly fine and playing yet another sadistic game—no one said a word. Over and over, I pictured the shooting in my mind, trying to figure out where he’d been hit. Or if he’d been hit at all. I hadn’t seen any blood, but we’d been ushered out of there so quickly that it was impossible to say for sure whether there had been any or not.

  At last, five days after I’d tried to kill Daxton—or succeeded, and didn’t know it yet—my door burst open. I sat on the couch with my sketch pad, expecting a servant with my lunch. Instead, two guards strode in and immediately took me by the arms, hauling me to my feet.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I growled, struggling against them, but they swiftly yanked my hands behind my back and handcuffed my wrists. Neither of them offered an explanation as they half led, half dragged me out of the suite and down the hall. I twisted around in time to see the guards standing in front of Greyson’s door, and the knot in my stomach lessened. At least Greyson was still all right. Or as all right as he could be when he probably hadn’t left his room in days, either.