3
When I woke, a yellow haze of snowy sunshine crept around the edges of our curtains. My head felt groggy and my body heavy. The dreams I’d had were still running through my mind, pieces of them sticking to me like shards of glass. Ships on the sea, tracks in the snow, the bloody hook in the deer’s neck. And the other nightmares, the ones I’d been fighting for months, but always as frightening as the first time I’d had them. My father, dead on the ballroom floor at the Roses Ball. The bloodthirsty cries of Hollister’s soldiers at Death Night, cheering as they watched the murder of captured enemies. Wesley, standing with his father on the roof of the Tower of London, his gaze full of pain. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate to block out the screams.
But I was the one screaming.
“Eliza!” Wesley was saying, pulling me into his arms. “Eliza, it’s okay. It’s just a bad dream.”
If only they were just bad dreams, and not my past. I held tight to Wesley, my head nestled in his shoulder, my fingers clinging to his back as I tried to fight back the sobs that kept threatening to break through. “Come on,” he finally said, settling the blanket around my shoulders and leading me into the kitchen. “I’m making breakfast.”
I stood there watching Wesley, reassured by the simple sounds of pots and spoons clanging together, butter sizzling on the skillet. My stomach growled, and he turned to me with concern. “You must be starving, after everything that happened last night. Here.” He handed me a plate heaped high with scrambled eggs and toast.
“You look ready to go,” I said, between mouthfuls. He was already dressed in boots and a jacket, the horses saddled out front.
“I’ve been up since dawn.” He smiled ruefully.
Half an hour later we were on the road, following the highway south to central London. The concrete highway was still buckled from the earthquakes of the Seventeen Days, so we tried to ride alongside it wherever we could, to protect the horses from tripping or losing a shoe. We didn’t pass any other travelers. Still, Wesley carried a rifle strapped to his back, and we each had a pistol in our pockets. Though Mary had done her best to protect the highways from the dangerous bandits known as Roamers, it never hurt to take extra precautions.
By the time we arrived at Buckingham Palace, the sun had set, casting long shadows across the city streets. Our clothes clung to our skin, damp and cold. My fingers beneath my heavy gloves were numb. We cantered up the wide avenue of the Palace Mall, past the statue of the golden horse that had been destroyed in the war and then pieced back together, the cracks in its bronze still showing in places. Like the entire country, it might not be whole again for many years.
As we approached, the iron gates encircling the palace swung open. I noticed that barbed wire was looped around the top.
What had happened to prompt that?
I wondered.
The palace looked even more war-torn than the statue. The north wing was engulfed in scaffolding, the stone still blackened from the fire set during Hollister’s uprising. Just looking at it gave me chills. The palace was full of so many dark memories, haunting it like ghosts. How could Mary live here, knowing our parents had been murdered in these very walls?
We cantered into the main courtyard to find Mary and Jamie waiting for us. Then I was sliding off Caligula’s back, tossing the reins over her neck and running to hug my sister. For a moment I could do nothing but stand there, enfolded in Mary’s arms. She felt thinner than I remembered. Her skin still smelled the way it had when we were little, like the rose petals she liked to add to her bathwater. I remembered with a sudden pang how close we used to be, back when we shared everything—our clothes, our toys, our secrets. We’d lie awake in the giant canopied bed in Mary’s room, holding hands and whispering until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer. But ever since the Seventeen Days, there had been something of a distance between me and Mary, and I wasn’t sure how to bridge it. Especially now that she was queen.
Jamie ran over, throwing his arms around us both and laughing in delight, and I smiled. I would never, ever get enough of his laughter. Jamie had grown up sickly and weak—Cornelius Hollister poisoned our mother while she was pregnant with him, and though the doctors had been able to save Jamie, it was too late for her. But the poison had already infected Jamie’s blood. Only when Wesley stole the antidote from his father last
year, an antidote that we hadn’t even known existed, did Jamie start to recover. Looking at him now, a healthy, normal ten-year-old, I thought he was a miracle.
Even though I missed Jamie, I was glad that he lived here at the palace with Mary. Eoghan’s sons Aiden and Liam were just a few years older; so for the first time, Jamie had boys his own age to play with. Like so many others, Eoghan’s wife had died during the Seventeen Days. I remembered how strong he’d been during the disaster, for his boys and for all of us, even while mourning her. Who could have guessed then that he would find happiness again, and with Mary?
I rustled Jamie’s mop of hair and whispered in my sister’s ear, “I need to talk to you in private.”
She eyed me curiously. “Aren’t you hungry? We have dinner ready for you.”
“This is important,” I said, and Mary nodded.
“Okay, then. Let’s go to the sitting room. Jamie, why don’t you run inside and tell them to hold dinner for a few minutes?”
“Eliza!” Eoghan exclaimed when I stepped in the door, Mary and Wesley right behind me. He gave me a quick hug, then turned to shake hands with Wes. Eoghan had been instrumental in the battle against Cornelius Hollister and the New Guard army. I would never forget what he said to me that last night before the final battle when I started to doubt myself. “You may have lost your faith, Princess, but
I
know we are doing the right thing,” he had said to me, his deep-set brown eyes boring into mine. He loved Mary with all his heart; and for that, I loved him with all of mine.
The moment that the four of us were inside the sitting room, I blurted out the words I’d been biting back since we arrived. “I saw a ship.”
Mary tilted her head sideways as though she didn’t understand. “A ship?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” Eoghan broke in eagerly.
“Off the coast. Just past the cottage.”
I explained what had happened: being woken by the dogs, the deer killed with a fisherman’s hook, the trail of footsteps leading into the sea—and finally the gunmetal-colored ship disappearing into the horizon.
Concern flooded Mary’s features. “Come with me.”
She took me by the hand, leading me out of the sitting room and to a dark wood-paneled door that I recognized as the entrance to the old guardroom. Wesley and Eoghan followed close behind. Two guards stood at attention in front of the doors, moving aside at Mary’s nod and letting us pass through.
Inside, seated at the head of a conference table, General Wallace was studying a stack of documents. He quickly stood up as Mary entered and bowed respectfully to both of us.
“Princess Eliza,” he said, grinning. “I’m so glad to have you back with us.”
As he walked toward me, I could see how much the general had aged in the past few months. His fingers trembled as he took my hands in his. His old, blue eyes seemed to have faded to a paler shade of gray, and he walked with a wooden cane. I moved forward to hug him, realizing how fragile and thin he’d become. I loved the general like a grandfather. He’d been one of my father’s most trusted friends, and had fought alongside me in the final battle against Hollister.
Mary wasted no time delivering the news. “Princess Eliza saw a ship off the coast of Southshore.”
A hush filled the room.
“What kind of ship?” the general asked me.
“It looked like a tanker,” I said, and did my best to describe the ship for him. “But the snow was falling so heavily …” I fumbled for words. “It was difficult to see exactly.”
“I’m sorry,” the general said, “but you must have been mistaken, my dear.”
“Excuse me, sir?” I turned to Mary for support, but her eyes were locked on the general’s.
“So it couldn’t be possible,” she said, her voice heavy with defeated hope.
General Wallace shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Wesley’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the back of a wooden chair. “Eliza knows what she saw,” he said quietly.
Mary offered me a sympathetic look. “Please sit down, all of you, and I’ll explain.”
We quickly settled around the conference table. I drummed my fingers on the wooden surface, anxious to hear her explanation. Finally Mary sighed. “We’ve been sending out radio messages for a few months now,” she said. “With no response.”
“Radio signals?” I repeated, confused.
“From the palace broadcast room. We rebuilt the guard towers destroyed in the Seventeen Days, taller than before, and have been sending out a signal on a loop. But so far, no one has answered.” She sighed again. “I was just so hopeful that someone else had survived, that there were others out there.”
“We’ve been actively searching, Your Highness,” General Wallace cut in. “But no ship would approach without first trying to make contact.”
Wesley and Eoghan were looking at me with kindly concern.
“Maybe you just got confused about what you saw,” Eoghan said. “With all that snow.”
“What about the footprints?” I snapped. “Someone was there, at our cottage, close enough to see us through the window. I didn’t imagine that! Or the hook in the deer’s throat!”
“That could have been Roamers,” General Wallace said gently.
Wesley took my hand in solidarity. “I believe you, Eliza,” he said.
But I couldn’t help thinking what I had thought that night—that it could have been Portia. And I didn’t want Wesley’s mind working along those lines. Portia was a dangerous topic for us.
“Thank you,” I said instead, squeezing his hand. “But they may be right. I was half-frozen when I finally made it home; you remember. I guess my eyes were just playing tricks on me.”
