Lauren DeStefano - Broken Crowns

I know it isn’t meant to be a compliment, but somehow I am flattered that my attempts to blend in and hide my daydreams convinced someone up there.

The prince turns on Pen. “But you, Atmus. The daughter of the top engineer at the glasslands. A perfect student. You have the lights on up in your head, don’t you? You’re just like your father. A budding engineer.”

“I’m not like him,” she says feebly. “Having a brain in my head doesn’t make me like him.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “But you know things. You figure them out. Who else in this bloody world down here would have thought to calculate Internment’s position in the sky? Nobody but you.”

Pen has nothing to say to this. People who figure things out on Internment are likely to end up dead for treason. If her father knows as much as she does, he’s not foolish enough to say it aloud while he’s in the city.

The other man clears his throat. “Your Highness, we should be getting back before King Ingram notices that you’re gone.”

“We want to go back to Internment,” I say. “The three of us. We want King Ingram to send us under the pretense of helping his cause, and then we want to help your father overthrow King Ingram’s men however we can.”

The prince gives a sad smile. “You want to help my father? Our world is being drilled apart, bled dry, and my father has been reduced to nothing. He cannot save us.”

“So who can save us, then?” I say. “You?”

“No,” he says softly. “Not me.”

He allows the other man to lead him back toward the castle. Down here, he is not a prince, but a prisoner.

“Wait!” Nim calls after him. “Your sister, Celeste, is she all right? Is she alive?”

The prince stops but doesn’t turn to face us. “Celeste is a silly princess with silly ideas that she can think the way a king thinks. She fancies herself the political sort. But she only ever makes things worse. You would be wise to forget about her.”

Nim’s shoulders sag with what may be despair or relief, or both. The prince spoke of Celeste as though she were still alive and well, and that’s something.

“I can’t stand that little nit,” Pen mutters.

“But he listened,” I remind her.

Nim is staring off into the darkness. The lantern has been blown out, and the prince and his escort have disappeared from view. Even in the frail bits of moonlight, I can see the pain in Nim’s eyes.

“Are they twins?” he asks. “Celeste and her brother.”

“No,” Pen says. “But they are equally annoying.”

“Stop,” I whisper to her.

She softens. “Don’t let what he said get to you,” Pen says to Nim. “You’ll see her again. You can try to come back to Internment with us.”

Nim shakes his head. “I can’t leave Havalais. Someone will have to keep an eye on things here once you’ve gone. I don’t trust my father, or the king.”

Two kings who can’t be trusted. What a fabulous predicament we’re all in now.

We walk back to the hotel, all of us silent, knowing there are no words that could reassure any of us.

It’s a week before Jack Piper returns home. Nimble plays a contrite role that is painful to watch, but it pays off. He convinces his father that we could be of some help to the king.

Jack Piper, whether it is arrogance or exhaustion, mistakes our scheme for gratitude for Havalais’s hospitality. Over dinner he tells us that he’s arranged a meeting with King Ingram in the morning.

I stare at my plate, trying to ignore Judas’s and Amy’s stares. True to my promise to Pen, I have not told anyone about our encounter with the prince. Not even Alice or my brother.

If things go as I hope, I’ll tell Lex that I’m leaving. He may wish to stop me, but he won’t be able to. He knows that he owes me that much, after letting me think our father was dead. I have to try to find my father as well.

Thomas clears his throat. “Pen?” he says. “Can I speak with you privately?” His calm tone is a mirage.

“It’d be rude to leave the table before dinner is over,” Pen says, mirroring his tone.

Basil and I exchange worried glances but say nothing.

When the Pipers begin clearing the dinner plates, I have never been so relieved in my life as I leave that dinner table. Pen, poised and cool, follows Thomas outside. Basil and I go upstairs.

Once we’re in my room, I close the door behind us and drop onto the edge of my bed.

Basil sits beside me. “That’s going to be an ugly fight the two of them have.”

“I wish she had just told him,” I say. “He would have been happy. He wants her to go home. He begged me to find a way to get her back to Internment.”

“Unless she means to go without him,” Basil says.

“I believe that’s it,” I say. “She’s forever evading him. It’s been that way since we were children.”

“They’ll work it out eventually,” Basil says. “They always do.”

I think of Pen’s drawing, the ugly word she wrote over and over on that scrap of request paper, and I wonder if I will ever fully understand her. I wonder if she would want anyone to.

And am I any better than she is? I’ve got secrets of my own. Even now, the words are on my tongue: Basil, I kissed Judas.

I almost say it. I let it replay in my head over and over as this loaded silence exists between us.

But I don’t. Selfishly I rest my head on his shoulder and I think about the jet breaking through Internment’s atmosphere. I think about what will await us when we arrive, if we arrive, and I wonder if any of it can be undone.

Pen is gone for most of the evening, and she returns just as I’m turning down the covers. I’m only going through the motions; I know I’ll be too nervous to sleep.

“Well, that was brutal,” she says, and falls onto her bed.

“What happened?”

“He was upset that I didn’t clue him in to what’s going on. It’s just that he worries about me, and I feel how much he worries about me.” She squirms against the mattress. “All his doting can make me so itchy.”

“Did he go along with it?” I say.

“Ultimately, yes. He hates this world. Maybe he’s foolishly hoping that we can go back to Internment and it will be as we left it. I don’t know.” She wriggles under the blanket. “He’s going to try to come with us if the king will allow a fourth. I suppose I owe him at least that much.”

“Mind if I turn out the lights?”

She shakes her head, closes her eyes.

It’s only after I’ve gotten into my bed and we’ve settled into the darkness that I’m brave enough to say what’s on my mind.

“Do you think I’m a detestable person for kissing Judas?”

“From what I saw, he was the one who kissed you.”

“Even so.”

I hear the sheets rustling as she moves. “You’re not a detestable person, Morgan. I mean, if you were—what does that make me? I’m sure if we kept a tally of our sins, I would be in the lead.”

“It’s not the quantity of sins in this instance, but the magnitude.”

“I don’t think it was right,” she admits. “But I know you, and I know you wouldn’t have done something like that at home. It’s this mad world that’s made us all feverish.”

I think of the night I saved Judas from the patrolmen who were coming for him. I pushed him into the lake to hide him, and after that he tried to scare me off. I still remember the fresh grief in his eyes, the severe angles of his face. He was nothing at all like Basil, and yet he stood so close to me that I could feel his breath. I was terrified with intrigue.

But Pen is right. I wouldn’t have kissed him, because back home I did all I could to follow the rules, to be what was expected of me.