She looks like a queen as she gathers up her skirts again and pivots. “It’s yours.”
I always knew I could break anything. Everything. And now I guess it’s official.
One conversation with me can kill a king.
I know it’s true. My words are poison, my mere presence a fire. A part of me wants to run as far and as fast as I can before I spread like an epidemic.
Another part of me wants to stand right here and let the palace burn.
When I make it back to the ballroom, the king’s body is gone. The crowds are, too. But the ghost of the party still lingers in broken glasses and spilled food, overturned chairs and a dull, haunting ache that fills the ballroom like a pulse.
There’s a painting overhead of King Alexander II and his queen and the little princes. They’re my family, I have to think, as I look up at the painting with fresh eyes, trying to see some kind of resemblance. But it’s no use. Even their ghosts have probably moved on.
“She did it, didn’t she?”
I jump at the words and spin, and that’s when I see Thomas sitting on the floor behind me, directly in front of the painting of our mutual ancestors that hangs on the opposite side of the ballroom.
“My mother is a monster,” he says flatly. “You told me. And that says everything, doesn’t it? You come in here—a total stranger—and you tell me that my mom has been trying to kill you. My own mother! And I believe you. What does that say about her? What does that say about me?”
“Thomas—”
“I think I’ve always known it. Is that crazy? I think that sounds crazy. But just because something’s crazy doesn’t mean it isn’t true, you know?”
He looks up at me and I nod. I do know. Far too well.
“I’m going to—” He tries to stand. “I have to tell someone. My father. The authorities. Someone. I have to tell someone it’s her fault.”
“No.” I put my hand out and stop him. “It’s my fault.”
“No.” The prince shakes his head.
“Your grandfather would be alive today—right now—if I hadn’t told him. If I hadn’t kept picking at it and picking at it and making everything worse.”
I make everything worse.
“Grace, no,” the prince says, but I just hear my mother screaming.
“Grace, no!”
I shake my head. I start to rock. Someone dims the lights in the ballroom until only the gaslight in the sconces remains. There’s gaslight all through the palace, covering the grounds. It is the color of fire, and I close my eyes and try to block out the glare.
“Grace, no!”
“You’re shaking.” The prince’s arm is around me. He’s pulling me tight. I should be comforting him. He’s the one who’s lost a loved one. He’s the one who’s been betrayed.
But I can’t stop shaking, saying, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s my fault,” over and over again like a prayer.
He rubs my back, slow and steady. “Why do I get the feeling you think everything is your fault?”
He’s not teasing.
“Because it is. Because I—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“You’re not that important,” Thomas says, stopping the loop that’s been playing inside my head for years. “It’s not an insult. It’s just the truth. If you think you’re to blame for everything, then you’d have to be responsible for everything. And you aren’t. And even if you marry me and pop out a dozen royal babies, you won’t be, will you?”
Somehow, in this crazy place and time, it seems like an extremely valid point.
“No,” I admit.
“Good. Because if it’s your fault, then it’s my fault, too. I’m the one who told him about the box.” The prince looks away, his gaze set on that far-off painting, that far-off time. “And now I’m the reason they’re going to put him in one.”
“Will you go to the funeral?”
“We will go to the funeral,” he tells me. “My mother is going to like the optics. You comforting me in my time of grief, stepping in, being there for the family. She’ll have us married by the time I’m twenty.”
I should hate the sound of that, the truth of it. But I don’t feel anything anymore. Now it just seems like the end.
“Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe we should just accept it.”
“Somehow you don’t strike me as a person who accepts things.”
Silence draws out. In the distance, I hear a vacuum cleaner. They’re going to want to clean the room and polish the floors. But I just keep looking at that painting.
“They didn’t get a funeral,” I say.
“What?”
“King Alexander and the queen and the little princes—someone came and cut them down, took the bodies away. They were never seen again.”
Does the prince know about the Society? About the secrets and the lies on which this very country was founded? I don’t know. And, honestly, I don’t really care.
He just looks up at the painting and says, “I know. It’s practically the Holy Grail of Adria. People keep trying to find them. People petition my grand—I mean, people used to petition my grandfather all the time to get access to royal lands or records or … whatever. People are always looking for dead bodies.”
It’s like he remembers in a rush. The truth comes back, and he sinks lower. I sit beside him, and he falls into my arms.