Take the Key and Lock Her Up

It’s been over a day since the king took my burdens into his own hands, and now as I stand in the window of my room in the palace, I can feel something inside of me. It bubbles and percolates. It grows and swells. And it scares me more than any of Dominic’s warnings. There’s a tiny voice in the back of my head whispering that we are in the endgame of a two-hundred-year-old chess match.

I might still get a happy ending, the little voice says, but I’d give anything to quiet it, because I learned a long time ago that as soon as I want something—as soon as I dare to believe—that’s when I get hurt.

“Well, isn’t that a pretty sight?”

The maid is at my door, closing it behind her. The long blue gown is draped across her outstretched arms. I want to tell her it’s too pretty, too perfect and stately and royal. I want to tell her to take it back and leave me up here in my tower, where nothing can possibly hurt me, much less my own foolish expectations.

But it’s too late for that.

Because that’s the thing about hope—you can never kill it yourself.

“Are you excited for the party, Your Highness?”

“I’m not—” I start to correct her, then stop myself. She doesn’t want to hear me explain yet again that I’m not really a princess, that I don’t really belong here. So I save my breath.

“Yes,” I say instead, terrified to realize that it’s true. “I think I am.”

I expect the young woman to smile back, to be happy at this. But it’s like a cloud is passing across her face.

“I know you saw the king yesterday.”

It sounds like an accusation, like I’ve done something wrong. I can just imagine the Society briefing their spies and setting their traps, wondering if it’s time to maybe get rid of me once and for all.

“Yeah,” I shoot back. “I did. And you can tell your … sisters … that I’ll speak with whomever I please. I took their bargain. I’m here. And that’s the last order I’m going to take.”

The maid’s smile is completely gone now. Her last words are a warning. “It would be a mistake to trust the wrong people.”

She doesn’t speak again as she helps me dress and does my hair. Carefully, she paints my face with makeup, covers my lips with something sticky and super pink.

I must look like a girl—I might even look like a princess, because an hour later there’s a knock on the door, and I open it to find the prince standing in the hallway. He looks at me for a long time, staring, before he actually says, “Wow.”

“Wow what?” I ask.

“You look nice.”

He sounds so surprised that I suppose I could be insulted, but I’m not. That’s the thing about hope. It affects you in the most unexpected ways. I’m too optimistic to be hurt by insults. Even by compliments. Even by future kings.

Thomas rocks back on his heels and runs a hand through his hair. “I came to see if you wanted to go down together. My mom said I should ask.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to read Thomas’s eyes. Is he afraid of his mother? Mad at her? Does he understand that someone wanted me dead, and apparently it isn’t the king? If he knows his mother is a killer, I can’t decide, and I don’t want to be the one to tell him.

“I would have asked anyway, you know,” Thomas says. “I’m not here because of her. But she did ask.”

I can imagine Ann’s train of thought. It would make for great optics, the sight of me walking in on the future king’s arm. It would plant the seed, start the talk.

But that’s not why Thomas is holding his arm out for me. It certainly isn’t why I take it.

We’re quiet as the prince leads me through the halls. When I try to start down the main corridor in the center of the palace, he tugs me in another direction.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Shortcut.”

The hall is narrower here, less busy. “I was just thinking that I might make it all day without getting lost in this place.”

He laughs. “I promise not to get us too lost.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “I trust you.”

I’m not just talking about the mazelike halls, and I know the prince can tell. I’m shocked to realize that it’s even true. I do trust him. And I trust the king. I only wish I could trust the future.

“I met your mom once.”

Thomas’s words come out of the blue, and I can’t help myself: They stop me.

“What?”

“I met her,” he says again. “It was a few years ago. She came to see my mom. I remember it because … well … not many people come to see my mom.”

I know what he means. The palace is huge and crowded. And lonely. My friends haven’t been to see me once since I moved in. Not even Rosie has stormed the gates. They have their reasons—good ones, I’m sure. But it’s easy to imagine that after a few years inside these walls I might not have many friends left outside of them. I tremble to think that, someday, I might end up just like Ann.

“Anyway, that afternoon I found your mom wandering around the corridors but laughing about it. She’d been wandering for almost an hour,” Thomas tells me with a smile. “She’d gotten turned around, too.”

It’s one more thing my mother and I have in common, I guess. We both came here and lost our way. I don’t let myself think about the rest of it: about how easily that can be a person’s downfall.