Invasion: A Sequel to The Last Princess (13 page)

There was nothing to do for the next few hours but wait. Tanner checked and rechecked his weapons, the knife inside his boot, the pistol strapped to his calf beneath his pants. I stared off into the distance, replaying Wesley’s voice in my head over and over.
I’m sorry that we have to kill Mary, Eliza, but this is our only chance. Don’t you see?

How could Wesley betray me this way?

When I thought he was dead, I had mourned him, properly, with love and sadness. I could miss him and hurt in a way that made sense. Now nothing made sense. My feelings for Wesley were a confused blur. And then there was Tanner, making everything even more complicated.

Tanner listened at our train car door for clues as to what was going on outside. A portion of the rebel camp had already begun leaving for the palace, but they were heading out in shifts, and too many still remained to safely bust out of our car just yet.

“From what I can tell,” he said, “a few guards have been ordered to stay at camp just to keep an eye on our prison car. But I expected that.”

I nodded, watching Tanner as he paced back and forth, a high-strung ball of energy, but still focused. Sometimes, he tossed his dark brown hair back from his face with a restless energy. He was so different from Wesley, who would have spent these moments sitting utterly still.

And what was Wesley doing now? Setting a bomb that would kill my sister, with hands I knew so well, hands that had held me close, curled in my hair as we kissed. I couldn’t believe it.

“Eliza.” I dimly realized that Tanner had been saying my name repeatedly. “I think it’s time.” He put his ear to the door and listened. “If we wait any longer, we’ll risk missing Mary. Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready for hours,” I said, standing up so quickly I got dizzy.

Tanner attached two of the explosives to the doorway and turned to me. “Once these go off we have to make a break for it. Head for the Jeep, and don’t stop or slow down for any reason. If we get separated, go on to the palace tunnels without me. I’ll catch up to you.”

“I don’t want to get separated,” I said.

His face softened. “I will do everything in my power to not let that happen. But remember to save yourself first. Worrying about me will only slow you down.”

I didn’t like the sound of this warning. “You said there are probably guards out there anticipating an escape attempt,” I said. “Do you really think we can get past them?”

Tanner patted at his gun. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Then he reached for me, pulling me toward him. “But if anything happens, Eliza, I want you to know—”

I couldn’t bear it, couldn’t listen to him say that he loved me. Not right now, with everything I was feeling swirling so confusingly inside me. So I did the only thing I could think of to stop him from saying it.

I kissed him.

It was a quick kiss, light and soft on the lips. I let it last for just a moment, then stepped away.

“Okay,” he said, grinning, his face flushed. “Now let’s go save your sister.”

I stepped back to the far end of the car, ducking down behind a torn-up leather seat as he pulled the insectlike explosive from his pocket. He fastened it onto the train door’s surface and ran to me, ducking down alongside me just in time.

The blast was small but effective. I winced, squeezing my eyes shut, reopening them to find that what had been the door was now a gaping hole, and the inside of the train car had filled with gray smoke.

“Go, go, go!” Tanner ran ahead of me with his gun drawn.

There were a few rebels left behind to watch us. They’d all been knocked down by the blast. Some of them appeared to be injured, but none of them had been killed. One caught Tanner by the ankle, bringing him tumbling down to the ground.

I hesitated.

“Go!” Tanner screamed.

I ran ahead as fast as my legs would carry me, trying to ignore the sounds of fighting behind me.

But then two gunshots rang out, echoing across the Tube, and I froze in my tracks.
Tanner
.

“Tanner!” I screamed.

I started running back toward the noise. I couldn’t lose him, not him, too. I had a terrible flashback to the moment when I looked over the railing of the tanker, right after Wesley had been thrown overboard, and realized that my world would never be the same.

But then he appeared, running straight for me with blood-splattered clothes. He caught me by the hand and we continued through the Underground together.

We didn’t stop running until we were out onto the street and in sight of the Jeep. I was running on adrenaline, the high of Tanner surviving, of him being there with me at my side, hitting me with full force. I almost felt like I could fly.

Before I knew it, we had parked the Jeep and were dropping down into the palace tunnel entrance. Sweating, hyperventilating, limbs aching, we let ourselves freefall into the tunnel’s black-hole darkness.

Tanner landed beside me with a thump. When I caught his eyes I could see they were filled with hope.

“We made it,” he said, his chest heaving.

“Almost.” I pulled him off the ground to a standing position. “Follow me.”

We moved in sync, running together as I led the way, pure instinct kicking in. I could navigate these tunnels with my eyes closed if I had to. Each step was bringing us closer to Mary’s bedchamber, where she would be getting ready. We would get there and help her escape before the blast.

I thought I heard sounds farther along the tunnels, but I just turned and redirected our route, making us run faster. No living soul could outwit me in this maze. It belonged to me and my sister.

We were quickly running out of time.

“Fifteen minutes and counting,” Tanner said, checking the stopwatch around his neck. Its blocky typeface cartwheeled the seconds and minutes until six p.m., when the bombs would go off.

We were hurtling down the final rocky passageway as fast as we could, trying to outrun the ticking clock. I knew it was enough time, but just barely. As we ran, I tried to send Mary a message from my mind to hers; that we were coming to help her
. Just be strong
, I thought.
Soon you’ll be safe
.

I couldn’t let the possibility of not making it enter my mind. I would never be able to live with myself if Mary died because of me.

“We’re almost there!” I yelled to Tanner.

The old dumbwaiter that led to Mary’s bedroom was nearly in sight. It rose up through the back of her closet door. Tanner and I would have to ride up the dumbwaiter, break through Mary’s closet door, and eliminate whatever Rykers were standing guard in her room.

The dumbwaiters were also the way I escaped the palace the night of the Roses Ball, when my father died. Wesley had been fighting with his father, had seen me in the dumbwaiter, and helped me escape rather than turning me in.

That was how we met—here, in the dark, surrounded by blood and chaos.

Of course, Demkoe had discovered the closet’s trapdoor when he first took over the palace and had the closets sealed off and the dumbwaiter carts abandoned here in the tunnels. But if we hooked the cart back onto the cord, we could use it to break
into
Mary’s bedchamber. We’d saved one last mini-explosive for this exact purpose.

As we turned a corner, Tanner rummaged through his cargo pants pocket to retrieve one of the little metal creatures, not even breaking stride.

“Ten minutes,” he said, checking the stopwatch around his neck. The anxiety in his voice echoed through the dark and off the dingy cemented walls.

Tanner’s face was flushed, his clothes still splattered with blood from his fight to get us out of the Tube. Sweat had plastered his dark brown hair to his forehead. I could
barely breathe. My chest burned as if my lungs were crying out, begging for a moment of pause.

From a distance I could swear I heard the slightest echo of chamber music, coming from the direction of the chapel. The vibrating strings of a violin or cello, and the soft moan of a French horn.

“Do you hear that?” I panted. “I think the ceremony’s begun.”

“Right on time,” he said. “Demkoe should be entering at any moment.”

And there was the dumbwaiter chute door, square and metal green, decaying into its own corroded background. I lunged for it, gripping its rusty handle. We were so close. All we had to do was ride the dumbwaiter up the chute, break through the closet door, and find Mary.

“You ready?” Tanner asked, fumbling to check that everything was hooked on properly. “Are you clear on the plan once we blast through?”

“Yes.” I had to be.

Adrenaline rushed through my veins. We were so close to Mary now. I could almost see her face bloom with relief at the sight of us breaking through the door. She would be wearing her wedding dress, probably the same one we’d chosen for her to marry Eoghan in. And in spite of her circumstances she would look beautiful.

“I’m ready,” I said, lifting open the dumbwaiter’s door. “Let’s do this.”

That’s when the first bomb hit.

It made a huge sound, like thunder. Apocalyptic thunder of the sort I hadn’t heard since the Seventeen Days.

Tanner and I were blown backward, through the air, hard against the brutal tunnel wall. All the walls around us were shaking. Bits of concrete and mortar crumbled down their surface like rocky streams. I could taste some of it in my mouth. Tanner had landed diagonally across me, still with the insectlike explosive in his hand. Its pin remained securely in place.

What’s happening?
I thought to myself, just before the second bomb hit. It rattled through my whole being, heavier than the first, deep within my bones.

“Tanner!” I screamed out, but he didn’t answer. Then everything went black.

* * *

When I reopened my eyes, Tanner was covering me with his own body, a living human shield. Blood dripped down his forehead, from his nose and his swelling bottom lip. But he was more concerned with my safety than his own.

“Eliza, Eliza, can you hear me?” He kept repeating my name over and over. “Are you okay?”

I could still feel the blasts reverberating in my ears and through my intestines. My hearing had gone fuzzy, as if I’d ducked my head under water. “I’m okay,” I croaked. “What—what happened?”

“The chapel bombs went off early.”

I didn’t understand. Silver had set the bombs off early, just like I had begged him to. But why? What had changed his mind?

I tried to climb to my feet, but I stood up too quickly and nearly fell back onto the ground. “If Demkoe is dead, then this might all be over,” I said, reaching for the crumbling wall for balance. A sharp pain rattled my left ankle.

Tanner tried to steady me. When I was stable, he wiped his hands down the front of his pants, and then rechecked the placement of all his weapons. “We have to find out for sure. We should go to the chapel.”

I shot a look to the dumbwaiter’s door handle. It hadn’t budged.

I knew Tanner was right, but I desperately wanted to see Mary. And she was so close. “Maybe we should split up,” I suggested. “I’ll go on up the chute while you check the chapel.”

“No way. I’m not taking my eyes off you,” Tanner said. “We’re staying together.”

There were faint screams echoing from the direction of the chapel. Tanner took a few careful steps toward them. “It sounds like total chaos up there.”

Not a peep came from the direction of Mary’s room above us. I couldn’t even make out the sound of footsteps. All of our bedrooms—mine, Mary’s, and Jamie’s—were shock fortified, to protect us from just this sort of occasion. So it was possible Mary had experienced the blasts as nothing more than a slight rumble.

Mary might actually be safer in her room without us right now, I realized. If we appeared, the Ryker guards up there might take drastic action. But if we waited just a few minutes, gathered some of Silver’s rebels as backup, we could rescue Mary without risking her life.

The stopwatch around Tanner’s neck told me it was still five minutes before six. I glanced in the direction of the chapel. By the sound of the cries coming from that way, and the damage to the tunnel, I was pretty certain the chapel had been destroyed. I doubted there would be any survivors.

Oh God, I thought, what if Mary
was
in the chapel? What if we’d just miscalculated the time, or they hadn’t left her entrance for last?

“We have to check the chapel,” I said, limping along the passageway that led there. Tanner nodded, following close behind me.

* * *

The sight of the royal chapel reduced to rubble and ash sent a pang of sorrow through my heart. So much history had happened here—weddings, funerals, centuries’ worth of prayers through times of peace and war. And now all of it was gone, replaced by blood and chaos.

Demkoe’s fallen soldiers were recognizable only by their uniforms, their cadet hats and those navy blue shirts badged with red-stitch lettering. Their bodies lay in pieces across the floor.

Those who weren’t dead were gruesomely injured. All those young soldiers and orphans, some of them missing arms or legs or both. I recognized the head of the bald, tattooed pirate who’d thrown Wesley’s body over the railing of the tanker. It was no longer connected to the rest of its body.

I fought the urge to vomit.

The harem girls had worn their best dresses for the occasion, the ones adorned with sequins and silk flowers. There was baby’s breath in their hair.

“Tindra and Ami,” I found myself saying aloud. They’d died side by side, as they so often were in life.

I suppose I was crying, because Tanner pulled me away to a quiet corner where there were no bodies.

“Don’t look.” He brought my head to his shoulder, covering my eyes. “Nothing good will come of it.”

But I had to keep looking. I had to know for sure that Mary hadn’t been present during the blast.

“Where is he?” I heard Silver call out, his usually tempered voice sounding wild.

The rebels were desperately searching through the wreckage, picking through body parts with their bare hands, to try to find any sign of the man who’d been the only real target.

“Nothing so far, Silver,” a young man’s voice replied.

But after a few minutes, it became apparent that Demkoe’s body was conspicuously absent from the rubble. Not whole or in pieces. No general’s uniform or marriage tuxedo was among the debris.

Any sign of Mary, I noted, was also thankfully absent. Tanner met my eyes, acknowledging the same thought. “I think we did it,” he said quietly. “Mary must be safe and sound in her bedroom.”

I nodded. “I think I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Let’s go to her bedroom now.”

“Bring him to me!” Silver’s voice rang out, angry and harsh.

Demkoe? Had they caught him alive? I turned to see for myself.

But the person that the four rebels were dragging into the chapel was Wesley.

“Explain yourself!” Silver demanded. “How could you betray me this way?”

Wesley ignored Silver. The moment that the guards released him, he rushed straight past Silver toward me, throwing his arms around me, almost squeezing the breath from my lungs. But I stepped back, closer to Tanner’s side.

“Eliza,” Wesley said, ignoring Silver, who was hurrying over, still yelling obscenities in his direction. “I was only pretending to support his plan. I had no other choice. He would have never trusted me to plant the bombs otherwise. It was the only way to save your sister.”

Tanner looked on, mentally fitting together the new shapes of the situation.

I was still working it out myself. Wesley was the one who set off the bombs early—just as I’d suggested.

“It was you?” I said.

He nodded. “Seeing you hate me … that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to live through. I wish I didn’t have to lie to you like that. But I needed him to trust me, completely.” He jerked his chin back, indicating Silver. “Eliza,” Wesley said, his voice the tender one I knew so well, “how could you ever think I would hurt Mary?”

“I don’t know, Wesley,” I said. “I don’t know a lot of things anymore.”

Wesley’s eyes shot from me to Tanner and back again, and I saw my own hurt and confusion reflected in his gaze.

“Thank you, though,” I said, unable to choke back my tears. “For saving Mary.”

Silver had found his fists by this point. Overcome by fury, he had wound back to punch Wesley in the chin—but Tanner caught Silver’s fist with his wide-open palm and shoved him backward.

Wesley blinked in a surprise equal to my own. Of all the people to stick up for him, Tanner.

The two of them, Wesley and Tanner, braced themselves for a fight. They raised their fists like boxers, like brothers who suddenly had each other’s back.

By the looks of the surrounding rebels—the way they shifted their weight and their eyes—I got the sense that if this conflict of wills spun out into hand-to-hand combat, they would side with Wesley over Silver.

Silver seemed to sense it, too. He backed down and went back to shouting orders. “I want Demkoe dead or alive! Find him. He couldn’t have gone far!” Then he looked at me. “I hope you’re happy,” he said. “This was all for you.”

It occurred to me at that moment that although I was right about Mary being saved by setting the bombs off earlier, Silver was right, too. Because setting the bombs off early had saved Mary, but it also spared Demkoe. And now the most dangerous Ryker of all was still out there.

Tanner stepped forward to join me on my right side, Wesley on my left.

“Murdering the queen of England should never have been part of the plan,” Wesley said.

Silver stormed away as the rebels returned to their search for Demkoe.

“Don’t listen to him, Eliza,” Wesley said. “It’s not your fault Demkoe got away.”

But my mind was already racing ahead. “We have to get to Mary,” I said. “If Demkoe is still alive, and still in the palace, we need to find her.
Now
.”