Lauren DeStefano - Broken Crowns

“Lex doesn’t deserve you,” I say. “Truly.”

She smiles. “But there is nothing left for me up there,” she adds. “Since you asked. Everything I need is here.”

I don’t know that there’s much left on Internment for me either. I tell myself that my father is still alive up there, and that I’ll be reunited with him. But when that happens, will he want to leave Internment behind? He risked his life trying to do just that.

After Alice and I have finished with the dishes, I slip outside unnoticed, and I walk to the ocean’s edge, where the boats bob along lengths of rope. This place is asleep, like all of Havalais, lying in wait for a solution to this war. I lie in the sand for what feels like hours, fixated on that dark shadow of earth in the sky.

Long after the sun has set, Nim still hasn’t returned. The smallest Pipers are asleep.

I lie in bed while Pen reads one of Birdie’s catalogs by candlelight. She’s got a drawing pad resting on her knee, and she keeps returning to a sketch she started earlier this evening of Ehco, a divinity that lives in the sea and contains all the world’s sadness. It’s Birdie’s favorite story from The Text , and I suppose the drawing will be a gift for Birdie when she returns home.

“Pen?”

I can hear the rapid strokes of the pencil on the page. “Mm? Sorry, am I keeping you awake?”

“No.” I turn onto my side so I’m facing her. “It’s just that you’ve been so guarded with your secrets lately. Why did you tell me your theory about Internment sinking?”

She goes on sketching. “It wasn’t the right time before now. No sense making you panic until King Ingram was back and we could do something about it.”

“It’s just … After I told Celeste about the phosane, and she went to the king, I thought you hadn’t forgiven me. I thought I’d been locked out of your head.”

The pencil stills in her hand. She stares down at the page as she speaks, with difficulty. “I thought about everything,” she says in a soft voice. “I thought about what it would have done to me to pull you out of the water, with you the one not breathing. I …” She draws a line on the page, feebly. “I saw it all very clearly, and I understood why you did it. I can’t say I’d have done something different if the tables had been turned.”

She clears her throat. “And besides, you could strike a match and set Internment on fire. You could lose your wits and destroy it all. I’d still be here. There’s nothing in the worlds that I couldn’t forgive you for.”

The words are so sincere and candid that I’d like to get up and embrace her. But I don’t move for fear of breaking this fragile moment between us. I have known Pen since before we were old enough to speak, and perhaps that is why so much of our friendship is built on what goes unsaid. But it feels so good to hear her say those words.

“I could never turn my back on you, either,” I tell her.

“I know what I’m like, Morgan. I know it’s not easy.”

“So it’s not easy,” I say. “What is?”

She smiles briefly, and then allows herself to be distracted anew by her drawing.

I close my eyes, and eventually I feel myself fading into sleep, soothed by the sound of pencil on paper and catalog pages turning.

But it isn’t a very sound sleep, because when there’s a knock on the door, I’m startled awake.

“You girls awake?” Nim whispers through the door.

Pen is still sitting up by the candle. “Come in,” she says.

I comb my fingers through my hair and wipe away the drool in the corner of my mouth, hastily trying to make myself presentable.

Nim opens the door and peeks his head in. “I didn’t see the king. Or my father. I wasn’t permitted into any of the meetings. My father isn’t exactly happy with me these days.”

“But you were gone all day,” Pen says. “What were you doing?”

Nim smirks. “I was speaking with a few of the king’s men. You remember how I said they were unhappy with things since the harbor? One of the men is assigned to guard King Ingram’s special guest, come down from Internment. My contact is escorting the guest to a meeting spot for us, but we have to go right now.”

“Him?” I say, trying to keep myself from hoping that the guest from home could possibly be my father. The disappointment would be unbearable if I were wrong.

“I think you’ll love this,” Nim says. “Hurry on and get dressed. I’ll meet you outside.”

I’m on my feet as soon as he’s closed the door. I’m finished changing before Pen. “I have to get Basil,” I say. “He’ll want to come.”

Pen sighs theatrically. “Must you?”

I stare at her flatly. “He’s my betrothed.”

“So?”

“You said you were fine with my telling him about all this. He’s coming.”

“Fine. But if you wake Thomas, I’ll strangle you.”

“Noted.”

I turn the knob to the boys’ room very slowly, wincing as I push the door away from the frame. I tread lightly past Judas’s and Thomas’s beds.

“Basil,” I whisper, as quiet as breathing.

He murmurs something, tries to embrace me when I lean in. It’s my breathy laugh that wakes him. “Morgan?”

I put my finger to his lips, nod my head at the door in gesture.

He climbs out of bed and follows me out to the hallway. In whispers I tell him that Nim is taking us to see King Ingram’s guest from Internment.

“‘Hostage’ may be more accurate,” Basil whispers.

“Perhaps, yes.” There are many people on Internment who secretly dream of life beyond the edge of the city, but most would be too terrified to ever leave. Especially now that King Ingram and his men have likely taken over the city.

We meet on the front steps, and Pen shivers excitedly. She has been carrying this information about Internment sinking in her head for months, and now finally she will be able to put her knowledge to use.

“Are you going to tell us who this mystery guest is?” she asks as we start walking.

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I did,” Nim says. “I’m not sure I’ll believe it myself until I see him.”

“How trustworthy are the men at the castle you’ve been speaking with?” Basil asks, the most practical of us all.

“Extremely. I’ve grown up in and out of the castle walls. I know which men are good and which are bad news.”

“How can you tell which are good and which are bad?” Basil asks.

“The bad ones are friends of my father’s.”

Despite the grim sentiment, Nim is the most upbeat he’s been in months. After the bombings and after Celeste’s departure, he became despondent. I’ve been worried about him, but Pen’s theory and the hope it brings has put light back into his eyes.

We can’t fail. I run the words in my head over and over as we walk through the darkness and into the woods. We can’t fail.

We walk for miles in fields and wooded areas off the main road. We must be near the city, because I can taste the burnt metallic quality to the air and I’m sure it’s from one of the fuel refineries. Whatever King Ingram is doing with that phosane, it can’t be right. I have never been inside the glasslands, but I have been near them, and there was never any smoke, never any horrid fumes.

Pen’s father works in the glasslands. He’s one of their top engineers. But Pen has not brought him up since our fight several months ago, when I found her request paper and she reluctantly confessed that he had hurt her in some way she wouldn’t share with me. I have wondered in silence since then, hoping for and dreading her confidence in the matter. But Pen cannot be pushed. She cannot even be coaxed. I know this.

I walk between her and Basil, and for the next several paces it almost feels as though we’re still back home, returning late from a play at the theater. We’re just ordinary schoolchildren and our world is intact.