LAWSON, but I’d gone by Sasha for so long that I sometimes forgot it wasn’t my real name.
Gloria nodded. “Those of us who know her well.” I wondered if Thomas called her Juli.
“Gloria,” I said. “This interview …”
She pursed her lips, which, I was learning, meant she was trying very hard to think of the exact right way to put something. “It ought to be fine. We have a deal with the CBN. We approve all the questions in advance. But Eloise Dash … she’s a more ruthless reporter than she appears to be. You’ll have to be on your guard with her. Juliana doesn’t like her, but then again she doesn’t like any reporters.”
I took one last look in the mirror. The girl I saw reflected in it looked much more like the girl in the photographs than she did me. Gloria, Louisa, and Rochelle had done their jobs well; I was starting to understand, for the first time, how anyone might mistake me for a princess.
Gloria went to fetch her tablet, and as she passed through a ray of sunlight, I saw something sparkling on her left ring finger.
“Are you married?” I asked, pointing to her hand.
Gloria glanced at the ring as if it was so much a part of her that she had forgotten it was even there. “Engaged.”
“Like me,” I joked weakly.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Gloria rushed to a nearby bureau and started rifling through a carved jewelry box. When she found what she was looking for, she came over and dropped something in my hand—an engagement ring. It had a thin, delicate band of what looked like platinum and a pear-shaped diamond the size of a geode sitting in the center.
“It came from Farnham a week after the engagement contract was signed,” Gloria explained. “Juliana never wore it out of protest, but I think you should. It would look bad if Prince Callum showed up and you didn’t have it on. And God knows what Eloise Dash would say if she noticed your ring finger was bare.”
I held the ring in between the pads of my fingers, shifting it back and forth out of the light. It was the most expensive thing I’d ever held; most of my jewelry came from the sale rack at Target.
“Go ahead,” Gloria prompted. “It’s not going to bite you.”
I slid the ring on; it was heavy but beautiful. Even I couldn’t deny that.
“Is it time to go see the king?” This was the part I was least nervous about. Thomas and Gloria had told me that the king lapsed in and out of consciousness, but that even in his more lucid moments it was unclear how much he was capable of understanding. He would probably be asleep the whole time, which meant that this was the perfect first encounter with someone who didn’t know I wasn’t Juliana.
Gloria consulted her tablet. “It is. Thomas will take you there.”
“Hurray,” I muttered under my breath, though secretly, I was relieved at not having to go alone.
FOURTEEN
“So,” I said, taking a deep breath and turning to face Thomas, who was standing in the doorway. “Am I convincing?”
“Very.” He nodded in approval, carefully avoiding my eyes. “We should go.” He lifted his gaze to Gloria, and I followed it. She was busy scribbling away with her stylus on the glass tablet. “We must keep to the schedule.”
“Yes, you must,” she said, without looking up. “Get out of here.”
Thomas led the way through the Castle’s labyrinthine halls, but as we passed through them it occurred to me that I could’ve done just as good of a job. For whatever reason, Juliana’s surroundings were the parts of the visions that stuck with me the most. I knew what was behind nearly every door we passed, and made a mental note to check out the library, if I ever found myself alone again.
Everything was brighter and sharper outside of my dreams. The walls were covered with paintings depicting a variety of scenes, both wartime and pastoral, portraits of long-dead kings and queens peppered throughout. French windows looked out over the lush garden, magnificent mirrors in gilded frames held our reflections as we walked, and massive crystal chandeliers hung overhead, throwing light over every surface like confetti. Our footsteps echoed as we made our way across the beautiful stone floor. None of the doors had knobs, just LCD panels to the right of each doorframe. Most of the panels were blue, but one or two were green. Thomas had mentioned what the colors meant; green for open, blue for locked. We passed several armed guards in military dress, but they didn’t speak to either of us, nor did Thomas acknowledge their presence. They appeared to be part of normal life in the Castle, but they put me on edge.
“Relax,” Thomas said.
“I’m relaxed,” I insisted.
“You look like you’re being led to your execution,” he told me. “And like your spine is a steel rod—who taught you to walk?”
“These heels are three inches high.
He held up hands in a gesture of surrender. “Never, princess. Never.”
I glared at him, but didn’t say aloud what I was thinking, which was:
Thomas pointed at the panel. I pressed my hand to it and it flashed, bringing up the now-familiar keypad. “Two, five, four, two, four, four,” Thomas whispered. I input the code, committing it to memory. The door looked like it was made of wood, but as it slid open so that we could pass through I saw that the ornate carvings were merely a facade, and that the real door underneath was made of metal, just like the one to Juliana’s bedroom. It was a strange place, the Castle. The old and the new mingled so closely it was as if they were part of a single organism, and I couldn’t deny that the result was beautiful.
I peered into the room. It was large and brightly illuminated by several fluorescent lamps, which gave it the stark feeling of belonging in a hospital, even though it had all the trappings of luxury—intricate moldings painted white against the mint green of the rest of the room, expensive-looking paintings and tapestries hanging from the walls, antique furniture and heavy velvet drapery. The king’s bed, an elegant mahogany four-poster with a rich red canopy, was in the center of the room, surrounded by machines and IV poles.
The queen was sitting next to the bed in a tall chair. I recognized her from a picture Thomas and Gloria had shown me back at the Tower, during my interminable yet somehow insubstantial briefing. The queen was tall and thin, beautiful despite the worry lines that scored her porcelain skin. I wondered if they were new, the result of her husband’s illness and her country’s political problems, or if she’d earned them over the course of many years. Her thick blond hair was gathered in a chignon at the nape of her neck, and she wore a simple, elegant dove-gray shift dress with almost no makeup; her only jewelry was a pair of drop pearl earrings that swung as she turned to see who was entering the room. When she caught sight of Thomas and me, she let go of the king’s hand and rose from her seat.
“You’re back,” she said in a flat tone. She folded her hands at the base of her stomach in a ladylike manner; they were the only things about the queen that were not lovely. In fact, they were knobby and red, like she’d just gotten done washing a sink full of dishes, which I doubted.
“I am,” I said. Just knowing that the queen and Juliana hated each other made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t think of a thing to say to her.
“It’s about time.” The queen glanced back at the king. “He’s been asking for you day and night. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him you weren’t here.”
“Is he lucid?” Thomas asked.
The queen shook her head. “But he is talking. He’s been saying the same thing over and over since you left.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Your name,” she said, with a hint of nastiness. “I’ll leave you alone—he doesn’t seem to notice whether or not I’m here.”
“I’m sure that’s not …” But the queen held her hand up.
