Broken Crowns (24 page)

I strain my ears to listen, but I can hear nothing on the other side of the door now.

“This is typical of her,” the prince says. I can hear the worry under his cool tone. “She doesn't think things
through
. How am I supposed to pull her out of this one?”

“I think the whole point is that you can't,” I say. I pause to see if my boldness has offended him, but he's listening. “She didn't want you to save her. She's never wanted to be saved. She had it in her mind that she was going to do this, and it can't be undone.”

“I think you're right about that,” he says. I have seen the prince dozens of times in regal sketches, at festivities, and on broadcasts, and this is the first time I look at him and truly see an equal. A person as powerless as the rest of us.

“My sister thought that our father would come around, that he would see what she was doing for the kingdoms and accept this child of two worlds. She's always believed he loves us more than he does.”

“Perhaps he will, with time,” I try.

“No,” he says. “Papa was livid. The only reason he didn't hold her down himself and force her to have a termination procedure is because it was too late by then. She'd have bled to death.” The words are horrible, but he's so utterly drained that he can speak only frankly. “Once the child is born, he has asked me to drown it like a double birth. And then it will be as though this never happened. There's to be no love story for my sister and that boy from the ground. She'll be lucky if she sees daylight again before her eighteenth birthday, when she's married off to her betrothed.”

Though I suspected something like this, it nauseates me. My heart is pounding. “You can't let that happen.”

He looks at me, that trademark royal brightness in his eyes. “I have a plan I've been working out, but I'll need you to prove to me that you're competent,” he says, and I should be offended but I find his familiar cockiness to be a sign that things will be all right again. “I'll need you to go to the prison and create a diversion. Get Nimble Piper out of there through the back entrance.”

“The one that leads to the plum court?”

“Yes, the very same. Here—” He hurries down the hall and returns with a scrap of paper and a pen. He sketches a crude map of the woods surrounding the clock tower. “There are several stone caverns off the trails. Hide him there. Stay with him and wait for me.”

“How long?” I ask.

“I don't know how bloody long. However long it takes babies to be born.”

“But Basil and Pen,” I say.

“What about them?”

“If you're asking me to betray the king, and I'm certain you are, I need to know that they won't be punished on my behalf.”

“You do this for me, and I'll make certain they're someplace safe. You have my word.”

A scream from beyond the closed door makes us both wince. “What about Celeste?” I say.

“What about her? She can't very well go sneaking away into the woods right now, can she?” His face has paled considerably. “I'll look after her. But I can't be everywhere. Morgan, I need you.”

There's a set of words I never expected to hear from him, but all I say is, “What kind of diversion?”

“It will have to be something that requires the attention of every patrolman. Tell them—tell them my father has been wounded. Say that he's been stabbed by a citizen who's been maddened by the edge or some such. After weeks being cooped up down in the cellar, they're all just itching to be heroes. Go on now, go.” He fumbles with the key ring and extracts the key to Nim's cell. “Don't get caught. I can't afford to save you too.”

I nod. I hurry through the apartment before I'm made to listen to another scream. I couldn't bear it. The prince is left rooted to the hallway, his sister struggling behind one door, his mother dying behind another.

His diversion works. The patrolmen are so lost and desperate for their leader that when I tell them the king has been harmed, they are eager to rush to the king's side. They pay me no mind as they hurry past.

My hands are shaking as I work the key into the lock. I drop it twice. When I finally get the door open, I find Nim sitting up against the wall. He was dozing in a fitful sleep, but his face registers alertness when he sees me.

“Morgan?” His voice is hoarse, his lips cracked and bloody. But he does look better than he did the last time I was down here. “Is it really you? Is Celeste—”

“Can you stand?” I work the key through the lock on his restraints, and they fall away. He clenches his fists. “Come on. There isn't time.” I pull him to his feet and position him so that he can rest on my shoulder as we walk. He stumbles dizzily.

“Wait,” he says. He's delirious. I can feel the heat of his fever when he drops his face against my neck.

“We can't wait. We have only a few minutes before the patrolmen realize they've been tricked. They'll be combing the entire city looking for us.”

I don't think he hears my explanation. He's scarcely conscious.

All I am thinking as I drag him from the clock tower and into the woods is that I won't allow him to die on the day when his child is born.

I sit huddled
in a cavern much like the one Pen and I claimed as our sanctuary. This place feels familiar even though it's the royal family's private property, where the prince and princess do their hunting for sport.

Or they used to, at least.

Nim weaves in and out of consciousness. In his brief lucid moments, I tell him that we're someplace safe and that the others will be with us soon. I tell him over and over, reassuring myself as well.

Before the ground was ever introduced to our city, these woods would have been lined by patrolmen keeping trespassers away, but now there's only the rustle of leaves and a chilly breeze that comes along with the short season.

It was sometime past noon when I left Celeste at the hands of that doctor with the soulless eyes. Now the sun has melted below the city's edge and stars have begun to show themselves.

I wonder if her child has been born. I wonder if Prince Azure has managed to keep it alive.

Nimble stirs. He reaches out and touches my arm. “Birdie?”

“No,” I say. “It's me. Morgan.”

He struggles to sit upright and I help him. The prince was giving him sedatives to help with the pain, and now he's starting to emerge for the first time in weeks. Awareness is starting to show in his eyes. “Do you know where you are?” I ask.

He looks over my shoulder, at the darkening sky. “Internment,” he says. “I was in prison.”

“Yes.” Hope fills me. “Yes, and you're out now.”

“Where's Celeste?” he says. “I have to go to her. You have to take me.”

“Soon,” I say, uncertain whether I'm lying. He's already in so much pain, I don't want to add to that the pain of uncertainty.

But after weeks of a medicated haze, Nim isn't having it. He's awake now. “What's happened to her?”

He tries to climb out of the cavern, and I hold his shoulders down. “She's having the baby now. Or maybe she already has—it's been hours since I've seen her. Prince Azure is with her.”

“I have to get to her.” His voice is desperate. For all his injuries, he's found the strength to fight me off when I try to keep him down. He scrambles out of the cavern and starts pacing furiously through the trees.

“Nim,” I whisper harshly. “You can't. The king will have patrolmen looking for us. If we're caught, it's all over.”

“She needs me!”

I grab his arm, and he stumbles, still dizzy. “Yes, she needs you. She needs you outside of a prison cell, and more important, she needs you alive. I can't promise either of those things if you go bursting into the clock tower demanding to see her.”

He looks helplessly into the distance. He wouldn't know how to get to the clock tower even if I did let him go. “The prince won't let anything happen to her.”

Nim shakes his head. “She wanted to believe the best of her father, but I knew—I knew he would put her in danger. Her and the baby.”

I drop my arms to my sides. “What did you expect, Nim? You've got royal blood; you've seen how kings are. They don't like having their position challenged, much less by an infant.”

He stumbles forward and catches himself against a tree. He's breathing hard, teeth gritted. In his urgency to get to Celeste he forgot about his injuries, but the pain has reminded him now.

“All we can do is wait for word from the prince,” I tell him. “I'm sorry.”

He limps back to the cavern, utterly defeated, and hits the rock face in frustration. Almost in tandem with the motion, there's a sound within the depth of the woods. A creak. I push Nimble into the shadows of the cavern and follow after him and hold my breath.

It was foolish of us to speak as loudly as we did. Patrolmen will be looking for us by now.

I hear the noise again, not so much a creak as a whimper. A figure emerges from the trees, and it whispers my name.

Prince Azure. His steps were silent, not so much as a rustle of leaves or the snap of a twig, expert hunter that he is, but that whimpering persists, and as he gets closer, I realize that he's holding something in his arms.

“Morgan!” he whispers.

I crawl out of the cavern. “I'm here.”

Nim is rushing to get past me, but before he can make it to his feet, the prince has knelt down before us. The bundle in his arms is moving, and it gives out a feeble croak.

Nim gasps. “It's—”

“Yes, yes,” the prince says, like he's bored with the whole thing. “It's a girl, born just a few moments ago. Perfectly healthy from what I can see, but I'm no doctor.”

“Is it safe for a newborn to be outside like this?” I say, marveling despite myself at its pale face like a faded little moon in the darkness. “There's a chill in the air.”

“Safer outside than inside,” the prince says. “My father thinks I've taken her outside to drown her in the ravine.”

Nim is shaking when he reaches for the infant, but the prince hands her to me. He's perhaps still too untrusting of this boy from the ground.

I hold the infant, feel her slight bit of weight. The next generation of an ancient royal lineage in my arms. Instinctively I raise the blanket up past her ears to keep out the chill.

“I'll escort you to the jet,” the prince says. “I've been interrogating men from the ground and there are three whom I trust to fly you back to the ground.”

“The ground,” I echo dumbly. “But Basil—”

“He's already there waiting for you. Your loudmouthed blond friend too. See? I keep my promises.”

Nimble is staring at the child. His child. He surely has a million questions, but all he says is, “What about Celeste?”

“What about her?” the prince says, exasperated.

“Is she coming with us?”

“No, she's not coming. Don't be a moron. She's so heavily sedated, she wouldn't know her own name if you asked her.”

“I'm not leaving without her,” Nim says.

“Suit yourself.” The price rises to a stand. “But that baby is leaving this city tonight, if you want it to survive.”

I move to follow the prince, and Nim grabs my sleeve. “Morgan.”

“He's right,” I say, with all my sympathy. “I can't make you come along, but I think you should. Celeste would want you to take care of your kingdom. You'll find your way back to each other again; of course you will.”

Nim looks up at the prince. “You claim to keep your promises. I need your word that Celeste will be safe.”

“She's not the one in danger,” the prince says.

Hesitantly, Nim moves to follow, and in a rare display, the prince helps pull Nim to his feet. Prince Azure doesn't wait for us, though, before he moves forward into the darkness.

The prince has a hunter's stride. Silent, graceful. Nim struggles to keep up, panting and clutching his wounds.