I nodded. “I understand.” I wondered if perhaps the queen was against it because her own marriage to the king had been so unconventional. If the king hadn’t been allowed to choose his bride, the queen would still be Evelyn Eaves, a lawyer with the Royal Counsel and not much else.
“I know this is hard for you,” the queen continued. “But you have to believe that it’s for the best. The past is the past, but the future is still worth preserving.”
Before I could respond, the doors of the front entrance to the Castle swung open, and in stepped the most beautiful young man I’d ever seen. To my surprise, this wasn’t the first time I was seeing him; his analog was Will Base, an actor on one of Gina’s favorite television shows. I struggled against an overwhelming starstruck feeling. This was no time to lose my composure.
Callum was shorter than I would’ve imagined, only an inch or two taller than my five-seven. He had a mess of curly brown hair tamed with some kind of gel, big blue eyes and soft, handsome features. He wore a gray three-piece suit with a red pocket square and carried a large black leather notebook in his left hand. The Farnham Royal Guard gathered behind him, their expressions as sober as the ones the KES agents wore.
The queen descended the staircase with me at her heels, alighting in the main foyer with the practiced aloofness of a true royal, while I tried not to stumble in my four-inch suede cobalt heels. “Welcome to the Commonwealth, Your Highness,” she said, extending her hand. Callum bowed his head to kiss it.
“Thank you for having me here, Your Majesty,” he said with a polite smile. He released her hand and she stepped away so that I could greet him. I’d forgotten that this was expected of me; for a moment it was as though I’d slipped out of time and was watching all this play out from a safe distance.
“Hello, Prince Callum,” I said. Gloria had coached me to address him that way, but it still felt strange, calling someone “prince.”
Callum reached out and took my gloved hand, kissing it in the exact same manner he’d kissed the queen’s—polite, but removed. He was wearing a signet ring on the pinky finger of his right hand, a black bird fixed on a red stone. The symbol was familiar to me, but I wasn’t sure where I’d seen it, though the ring itself reminded me a little of the one Thomas wore to signify his active duty in the KES. I resisted an urge to turn back and look at him, focusing instead on the boy in front of me. I had to say something, so I went with, “I like your ring.”
“Oh,” he said, after a strange pause. “It was my father’s. Rick gets the kingdom, I got this.” He meant his brother, Richard, who was heir to the throne and would become king when their mother, Queen Marian, died or stepped aside. Callum was the second of three brothers; the other, Samuel, who went by Sonny, was eleven. I’d learned all this from Gloria.
“I think you got the better part.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back.
“I think I did, too,” he said.
“Do you know what the symbol means?” I asked, struggling to make casual conversation.
His brow furrowed in confusion. “It’s the Farnham phoenix … the one from our flag?”
I should’ve been panicked, but I didn’t have the mental energy to worry about my mistake, because I remembered why I recognized the phoenix.
The flag
. It came to me in a flash, a red flag with a black bird on it, its wings outstretched, its mouth open in a battle cry, and midnight-colored flames licking its feet.
Oh my God,
I thought, stunned by the realization.
I knew where Juliana was.
“Well,” I blurted out. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Okay, Sasha, calm down,
I commanded myself. But it was hard to relax, because what I wanted to do was run off to process what it was I had seen. The dreams weren’t worthless after all. If I could remember seeing the flag, I could remember other things, things that could lead the KES to Juliana. I didn’t know what the General had in mind for when my six days were up, but I was sure that it was something I wouldn’t want to do; this was the leverage I needed to escape it. This was my ticket home.
“Thank you,” Callum said. I could tell my behavior bewildered him, but he was trying hard not to show it. “I—I brought you something. A present.” He glanced behind him, and one of his guards rushed forth with a gift bag, its handles tied together with a silver bow. I accepted it with as much grace and gratitude as I could muster. Because Callum seemed to expect me to open the present immediately, I reached my hand into the bag and pulled out the gift.
“A potato?” That’s what it was, just a regular old potato, like the ones you could buy in the supermarket. Why would Callum give a potato to his fiancé? It was literally the most unromantic thing I’d ever heard of, and Gina’s ex-boyfriend, Noah, had once given her a bottle of hand sanitizer for her birthday.
“It’s from one of our state farms in the Mountain region,” Callum said by way of explanation, although it didn’t illuminate the situation much for me. “I assumed you’d never had one before.”
I laughed. “Of course I’ve eaten a potato!” It wasn’t as if they were some sort of delicacy, at least … not on Earth. It dawned on me then that I’d committed a strange, incredible faux pas. I went rigid. After everything I’d been through in Aurora, was a potato going to be the thing to unmask me?
The queen looked at me in shock. “When have you
ever
eaten a potato, Juliana?”
“I—I’m sure I have.” I couldn’t remember Thomas or Gloria ever mentioning anything about potatoes. I was so stunned, I couldn’t come up with an excuse that sounded halfway believable.
Callum cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve never had one quite like this. You should have your kitchen bake it for you with butter and salt.”
“Okay. I’ll, um, do that,” I mumbled. “Thank you so much. What a thoughtful gift.”
Nobody seemed to know what to do after that. Eventually, the queen took charge, for which I was grateful.
“I’m sure it’s been a long journey for you, Prince Callum,” she said. “This is Agent Bedford.” A tall red-haired man in a suit stepped forward and approached Callum. “He’s with the King’s Elite Service and will be supervising your protection. You can dismiss your men. You won’t be needing their services anymore.”
Callum hesitated. “I was hoping I’d be able to keep my own bodyguard.”
“Unfortunately, it’s against our diplomatic policy,” the queen told him. “But I assure you, the KES is second to none. You can trust them.”
I couldn’t blame Callum for being uncomfortable with this proposition. He’d probably been taught from an early age never to trust anyone from the UCC, just as Thomas and everyone else in the Commonwealth had been raised never to trust anyone from Farnham. Though Callum appeared nice enough, the animosity between the two countries—and between the two royal families—ran deep, deeper than I could possibly ever understand.
But Callum, overpowered by the queen’s insistence, relented. He spoke with the head of his bodyguard in a hushed voice, and they left as silently as they’d entered.
“Wonderful.” The queen was smiling, but I could tell she was ready to be done with this farcical show of international goodwill. “Agent Bedford will accompany you to your rooms and give you your security briefing. Afterward you will have some time to yourself before dinner.”
Callum must’ve found the queen as intimidating as everybody else did, but he found the courage to ask a question. “I’m sorry if this is forward, but when will Juliana and I be able to talk in private?”
“We have some time scheduled for the two of you to get properly acquainted after dinner,” the queen told him, with a calculated, frigid imperiousness that set my teeth on edge. Against all odds, Callum seemed pleased by this, as if the queen had wrapped her arms around him and welcomed him to the family, which meant that he was either very stupid, or had resolved to be a ray of sunshine no matter what the cost—and he didn’t look stupid.
Agent Bedford gestured for Callum to follow him up the grand staircase. He paused first and glanced over at me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Juliana,” Callum said. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you.”
“Likewise.” I nodded at him as he passed.
“I guess I’ll see you later,” Callum said, taking the stairs backward in order to keep looking at me. I gave him a little wave, and he returned it with a grin.
Well, at least one person was happy about the impending wedding. It surprised me. Shouldn’t Callum hate the idea as much as Juliana did? Wasn’t he infuriated at having to live his life the way other people wanted him to? I would’ve been. I guessed I would find out, because Callum clearly had a lot he wanted to say to Juliana—alone.
“What was that with the potato?” the queen hissed at me as soon as Callum was out of earshot. “You’ve never eaten a potato!”
“I’m sorry, I—I thought I had,” I stammered.
“Where? On some holiday to Farnham? You were just trying to show off. I won’t stand for it, Juliana, do you hear me? You promised me that you were going to behave yourself and I expect you to do that. This marriage is the key to peace, and if you endanger that …” She let the threat dangle in the air, but it seemed to me that it was the queen who was really frightened. “You should go back to your room. I’m going to sit with your father for a while.”
The queen shook her head at me and left with her bodyguard. I was alone in the foyer. I sank down on the bottom step of the grand staircase and buried my face in my hands. Waves of powerlessness washed over me. I couldn’t seem to do anything right, even when I tried.
Thomas took a seat beside me on the step and reached into the bag, pulling out the potato and cradling it in his palm. “Potatoes,” he said softly. “They don’t grow here.”
“In Aurora? Then how did Callum—”
“In the Commonwealth,” Thomas explained. “We can’t grow them. Something about the soil … but they’re a Farnham specialty. They import potatoes from their farms in the Mountain region all over the globe.”
“But not to the UCC?”
“No. Trade negotiations keep falling through. Another thing the peace treaty will fix, which is probably why he brought you one in the first place.” He stared at the spud in his hands. “This would fetch a high price on the black market. I wonder what it tastes like.”
“You can have it,” I said.
“Don’t be silly. It was a gift.” But he eyed it covetously all the same.
My chin quivered and a tear slipped down my cheek. I hated to cry, but seeing Thomas holding that potato so gently, like a baby bird, broke something inside of me. Meeting Callum had made me aware, in a way I hadn’t been up until then, of the incredible realness of my situation, and how out of my depth I was. My allergic reaction the night before had been dramatic and alarming to everyone involved, but Dr. Moss’s confident—if biologically suspect—explanation seemed to have done its job of banishing any suspicions it had caused. And perhaps my most recent mistake would be written off as confusion, or even bad behavior, but I couldn’t keep making mistakes and drawing attention to myself. Yet that seemed to be all I was doing. Sooner or later, I was going to be found out, and thinking about what might happen to me threatened to send me right over the edge.
“Hey,” Thomas said. “What’s wrong?” He reached out a hand as if to touch me, then took it back, obviously unsure how I would react to such a gesture. I would’ve been grateful for it, but I didn’t want him to know that.
“I have to tell you something,” I said, struggling to keep calm. “But if I do, you have to promise not to tell the General.”
Thomas shook his head. “Then you shouldn’t.”
“What? Why?” I demanded. “You said I could trust you!”
“You
can
trust me,” he said. “But if it’s a matter of national security, I have an obligation …”
“Screw your obligations,” I snapped. “If the General finds out, he’ll keep me here forever. I know he will. He’ll lock me up in some cell and never let me go. Is that what you want? Me trapped here forever?”
“No, of course not,” Thomas said, his voice low and hoarse. A stray hair fell across his forehead, and I had the sudden urge to smooth it back, but I didn’t. I couldn’t figure out what it was about him that made me so angry, and at the same time melted my insides like butter left out to soften. I wished things had gone differently between us; I wanted what had happened back on Earth to have been the real thing, and this whole experience in Aurora some sad, strange fiction. Because no matter how hard I tried to make myself see reason, all the feelings I’d started to have for Thomas when I thought he was Grant just
wouldn’t go away
.
Whether I liked it or not, my relationship with Thomas was important. It had been the difference between life and death for me in the Tattered City, and it was the difference between success and failure at the Castle. I depended on him. I needed him. And despite everything, I wanted him to need me, too, if only so that we were even. If only so I knew I wasn’t as helpless or desperate as I sometimes felt. I had to tell him what I was seeing. I had to know that I’d done something to rescue myself. For whatever reason, I’d been given this ability a long time ago, as if someone, somewhere, somehow knew that one day I would need it. I couldn’t just ignore it and pray the General kept his word, and I couldn’t abandon Juliana to her fate because it was easier to let the clock on my time in Aurora run out—if it ever would. But I couldn’t do it without Thomas.
“Please,” I whispered. I couldn’t fathom a scenario in which the General was aware that I could see Juliana’s life through her eyes and allowed me to return home. Best case, he’d keep me in Aurora and let the scientists who worked on the many-worlds project run test after test in the hopes of making more discoveries about the tandem; worst case … well, I couldn’t even say, and didn’t want to imagine. But I was certain that a man who had sunk so much money and so many resources into developing technology to travel from one universe to another wasn’t going to just let me waltz out of his clutches with a direct line to my analog’s mind.
I could see in his eyes that Thomas was struggling. It was against his training and his nature to keep vital information from his superiors. How could I have ever believed that he would be more loyal to me than he was to the KES, than he was to his own
father
? The worst part was, I understood it. The General had taken him in, had given him a family after his was stripped away from him. I knew what it felt like to owe someone like that. I’d go to the ends of the world for Granddad, do anything I could to protect him and make him proud, because when everything I’d come to count on had been lost, he’d gathered me in his arms and told me I wasn’t alone. How could I ask Thomas to betray the person who had done that for him?