“Don’t,” Alice calls out, but she doesn’t come after me. She won’t leave Lex.
We descend the ladder, and the daylight no longer reaches us. Judas uses the flame of his lantern to light another that used to hang from the ceiling.
The kicking noise persists, and a scream, not of fear but seemingly of frustration.
Pen and I look at each other.
“That sounds like—”
I shake my head. “It can’t be.”
Judas tugs at the heavy door of a storage closet where spare clothes are kept. And, of all things, Princess Celeste is perched on the floor, having been prepared to kick at the door again.
As if that weren’t strange enough, someone is slumped behind her in the darkness. I feel relieved to think that the prince survived Pen’s attack, but when Judas holds up the lantern, I see that the ruffled blond hair and sleeping face don’t belong to Prince Azure.
“Thomas,” Pen gasps.
He doesn’t move, and Pen balls her hands into fists. “What have you done to him, you bloody lunatic?” she cries. I hook my arm around her waist to keep her from lunging.
“Yes, right,” the princess says. “I thought that might be your reaction.” She reaches into the collar of her dress and extracts something that’s wrapped in a cloth. Even before she has unwrapped it, I know it’s the knife I was carrying when she and her brother kidnapped me. She pulls Thomas’s limp body under her arm and holds the knife to his jugular. I can see the blue vein in his throat dangerously close to that blade. The bird is already so rocky, she might kill him even if she means only to bluff.
Preemptively, I clasp my hand over Pen’s mouth. She screams in protest, but Thomas can’t afford any chances. The princess clearly hates Pen after what she did, and Pen is already so distraught from the journey that she could say something she’ll immediately regret.
“I thought you might try to kick me out, even after we took to the sky,” the princess says. Her eyes are on Pen. “I planned to use the boy as leverage, but I believe I could return the favor and kill someone
Pen bites my hand, hard, but I don’t let go.
“What is it you want from us?” Judas says.
“Shouldn’t it be obvious?” the princess says. “I want you to take me to the ground.”
“Well, good news, then, because we couldn’t let you out even if we wanted to,” Judas says. “Opening a door right now would get us all killed at this altitude.”
I pity her. She’s known for her poise, and here she is, undone. Her braided crown is frayed. Her eyes are desperate and vicious. She’s the most popular girl on Internment, but she’ll find little kindness among the lot of us. She looks at me. “Is that true?”
Is it? I have no idea. “Yes,” I say. “Of course. Everyone knows that.”
Princess Celeste has a steady hand on that knife, but the unpredictability of flight makes me nervous.
Pen stops squirming and she has her eyes on her betrothed. His chest rises and drops. His breaths disturb the lace of the princess’s collar just so.
“You,” the princess says. “Patrolman’s daughter.” She pats the small bit of space beside her on the closet floor. “Let’s have a chat, shall we?”
I let go of Pen. “Don’t be stupid,” I whisper, and kiss her cheek. She’s growling.
“Bring the lantern,” the princess says. “It gets dark in here.”
As soon as I’m beside her, she reaches forward and pulls the closet door shut.
She releases Thomas, letting him spill backward into a pile of once neatly folded clothes. I notice that she keeps hold of the knife.
“Don’t blame him for what Pen and I did,” I say. “He didn’t know anything about all of this.”
“Didn’t he?” she says. “He knew where to find you. I followed him all the way to the flower shop.”
I don’t know how Thomas knew to go to the flower shop, unless he’d somehow seen me leaving it with Judas, or had been nearby when Pen and I had been kidnapped.
“I wasn’t planning to hurt him,” she says. “I just needed some kind of backup plan in case you tried to toss me out. And he
“How did you sneak into the bird without anyone catching you?” I say.
“I had to hide in the dark for a long time. But then, before you started moving, everyone stepped out into the dirt to”—she clears her throat—“use the water room behind this thing. I presume there isn’t one on board.” She smirks, clearly impressed with herself. “Anyway, the door was left open. My brother and I have been sneaking out of the tower since we were toddlers, practically.”
“I suppose you can’t be the child of the king without being brilliant,” I say, trying to keep the conversation going. It seems to keep her from doing anything rash.
“No, my brother is stupid quite most of the time,” she says, not without fondness.
“‘Is’?” I ask. Not “was.”
She looks at the darkness beyond the lantern, crestfallen. “He’s breathing, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Will he live?” I ask.
“Never mind that,” she says, and attempts to pat down her frizzed hair. “He isn’t here, and we are, aren’t we? And I need your help. Call me daft, but I like you. You were at least honest with me about this thing existing.”
I wonder if she remembers that she kidnapped me, and that her father is the reason Lex and I no longer have our parents. They should be on this bird, not her.
I swallow my anger. For Thomas. For Pen. For sanity’s sake.
“As you can understand, I don’t feel very safe here,” the princess says. “Especially with that Hensley boy. If he’d murder his betrothed, I can imagine what he’d do to me.”
Judas did not murder Daphne. I’m so tired of hearing the accusation that I could scream. But it isn’t the worst thing for Princess Celeste to fear him.
“And you want me to protect you,” I say.
“I don’t require your protection,” she says. “I require your sensibility. When your beastly friend raised that stone to my brother, you tried to stop her. You saw that it was a bad idea. You don’t act irrationally even if you’re angry, do you?”
It was my irrational need to leave the bird that got me kidnapped in the first place, but I don’t say that. “I have been called a diplomat.”
She sighs. “Being the king’s daughter doesn’t mean much now that we’re no longer on Internment,” she says. “But I will kill this boy if anyone tries to harm me. He’ll wake up soon, but that won’t stop me. And don’t let anyone get ideas about leaving me on the ground, either. I’m to return safely to the sky, or, believe me, my father will make you wish you hadn’t returned. I’ve left him a note explaining where I’ve gone.”
She doesn’t know that this is a one-way trip. Not even the king will be able to retrieve her. It would give me too much pleasure to tell her. But this would be unwise; she’s scared, scorned, likely hasn’t slept, and she’s holding a knife. And the fact that she snuck onto this bird tells me that she must have a compelling reason. Something worth risking as much as she has, leaving her home and surrounding herself with people who might cause her harm.
“I know Pen, and she won’t care how sensible I am. Not if I’m defending a girl holding her betrothed hostage. You have to let Thomas go. If you do that, I’m confident I can keep her from strangling you.”
“And the Hensley boy?”
“I’d just avoid him if I were you,” I say. “He’s not a fan of your family’s.”
The princess stares at me for a few seconds. “And you?” she says.
“I’m not a fan of your family’s, either,” I say. “All you know about me, for sure, is that when Pen attacked your brother, I tried to stop her. It may not be a lot to go by, but there it is.”
She considers this.
Then, without saying anything, she grabs Thomas under the shoulders and hoists the dead weight of him into my lap.
It is a peace offering. She nods.
I kick at the door, and I hear the sound of listening ears backing away. “You can let us out now,” I say.
