Tandem

“You asked me if I was in love with her and you—you—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but I caught his implication just fine without it. He thought I was in love with him, and that I wanted to destroy what he had left of her to get my own way. I couldn’t believe that he would consider me capable of that, after everything we’d been through.

“Be careful what you say next,” I warned him. “You won’t be able to take it back once you do.” But we both knew we had already gone past the point of no return.

“I won’t stand here and listen to this,” he said. “I won’t.”

“And what about Lucas? You think I’m lying about him, too?”

Thomas’s jaw tightened. “You don’t know anything about my brother, or Juliana, either. You think you do because you’ve been here for three days, but you don’t know anything about this world or our lives. You’re just trying to manipulate me so I’ll send you back, but if you think that I’m going to take your word for it that the two people I trust more than anyone have been playing me for months, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.”

“Thomas,” I said. I’d managed to get my anger under control somewhat, and my tone was even. “I know this is a shock. I know you don’t want to believe it. But I wouldn’t be telling you if I didn’t think you needed to know.”

“You don’t know what I need,” Thomas snapped. “Our deal is off. I’m not going to tell the General about your little ‘ability,’ because I don’t think it actually exists. But you’ll stay here until he decides to send you back. I’m not going to stick my neck out for you anymore. From now on, you’re on your own.”

Back in Juliana’s room, I sat immobile on the bed, trying to process the emotional runoff of what had just happened with Thomas in the library. I considered searching for him, but the Castle was huge, not to mention the rest of the Citadel—I’d never find him if he didn’t want to be found. I wanted to dissolve into tears, but they wouldn’t come; my entire body had frozen up.

I felt like I’d been torn in half. One part of me was so angry with Thomas that I wanted to hit him until he felt even a small amount of the pain I’d felt at his unfounded accusations. Jealous? Manipulative? How could he believe those things of me? He knew who I was, more than anyone else, and yet it was so easy for him to just assume I was lying about Juliana and Lucas. I hated him for that. I hated him for having more faith in them than he had in me, when I was the one who’d done everything he asked, the one who’d tried to help him. How could he turn his back on me when I was the only one who hadn’t turned my back on him?

But as much as I wanted to sink into my anger, there was another part of me that understood what he was going through. Thomas wasn’t difficult to figure out. He was a truth-teller, a boy with scruples and dignity and an outsized capacity for loyalty. He wasn’t naive, but he trusted himself and his instincts, and those instincts had told him that Juliana and Lucas were loyal to him. Doubting them meant doubting himself, those things that he counted on every day in his job, to keep people safe, to keep me safe. From his perspective, I was telling him that he was a fool, that he’d let emotion override common sense and perhaps, unknowingly, jeopardized his own mission. My heart broke for him, because I knew what it was like to have your entire world ripped away, to discover that someone you cared about wasn’t who you thought they were.

The two halves of me were playing tug-of-war with my brain and with my heart and eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a distraction, something else to occupy my mind so I didn’t go crazy trying to figure out what I was going to do about Thomas. Because at the moment there was nothing to do except to hope that he would come to his senses. I opened the nightstand drawer and took out the copy of Twelfth Night that Thomas had sent through the tandem with me. Tears sprung to my eyes at the sight of it as I tried to reconcile the boy who’d thought to bring my favorite book into an alternate universe in the hopes that it would comfort me with the boy who’d just called me a jealous liar. No, I couldn’t read it, not today. I went to put it back when the little blue origami star caught my eye. I pulled it out and held it in my palm.

I’d seen Juliana write something on the inside of the paper before she folded it up and placed it in the drawer herself, the night she had escaped. I didn’t even have to open it to know what it said, because I’d seen the words in a vision of Juliana, as if I’d written them myself:

T—I’m sorry, but I can’t. I wish I was better, but I’m not. —J

She’d wanted him to know what she had done. Or maybe she thought he’d figure it out on his own, that he’d suspect her without needing to be told, and this was her apology. It was a sorry attempt at making things right. Maybe those words would mean more to Thomas than they did to me, but they felt insubstantial for the amount of trouble she’d already caused, and the amount that I was sure would come. I placed the star on the nightstand and stared at it. I wasn’t sure yet what I should do with it. It felt obvious that I should give it to Thomas and allow him to make of it what he would, but what was the point? He’d already decided I was a liar; why would this note, which I could have easily forged, convince him of anything?

I sighed and lay back on the bed, feeling very weary. As I shifted my back, I heard the familiar crumple of paper and, reaching behind, found that someone had laid a more traditional note on the pillows for me to find.

Was looking but couldn’t find you. I’m in the garden, would love some company if you’re not busy.

—Callum

I walked onto the terrace and scanned the gardens; Callum was sitting on a low bench, sketching in the black notebook he always carried. There was something comforting about seeing him there, hunched over and absorbed in his task. I liked that I didn’t have to perform for him the way I had to perform for the queen, and that I didn’t have to answer to him the way I did with Thomas and Gloria. For better or for worse, I could be myself with Callum, or what was passing for myself these days, even if he didn’t know who that was.

I called his name to get him to look up; I waved, and he waved back. I held up a handful of fingers and he nodded, then I went back inside, taking a brief moment to fix myself up before heading out to meet Callum among the roses.

“Hey,” I said as I approached. Callum glanced up at me and smiled.

“Hey yourself.”

I nodded at the agents who were hovering within earshot; they shuffled off to stand in the shadows and give us our privacy.

I joined Callum on his bench. “What are you drawing?” I asked, leaning over to take a look. “Oh,” I said in surprise. “It’s a window?”

To be fair, it wasn’t just any window. The drawing was a simple black-and-white charcoal sketch, but it was obvious from the elaborate design that the original was stained glass. Callum had done all sorts of intricate shading to register the subtle differences in color.

He pointed ahead with the tip of his pencil. “It’s that window.”

We were seated about ten feet away from one of the Castle’s interior brick walls and, indeed, the window Callum was putting on paper was directly opposite us. At first, I thought it was abstract, just a hundred or so different colored pieces in various shapes and sizes, but as I stared at it a more deliberate picture emerged.

“It’s the Seal of the Commonwealth,” I told him. I recognized it from the marble floor of the Castle’s grand entrance, in which a large bronze replica of the Seal was embedded. It showed an eagle, legs and wings outstretched, holding a rowan leaf in one talon and a bundle of arrows in the other. The shield over the great bird’s torso depicted a gold crown against an azure blue backing, crested by a golden sun with twenty-one rays. The sun itself was surrounded by an undulating pale green ribbon—I assumed it represented the aurora for which the planet was named. A rattlesnake wound its way around the seal’s edge, making it a perfect circle. The eagle clutched a scroll in its mouth upon which the motto of the Commonwealth was inscribed: Sic tyranno liberi sumus.

Thus we are free from the tyrant.

“Yup,” Callum said. “I’m not doing it much justice like this, but in black and white it’s easier to see the design.” He handed me the sketchbook. He wasn’t wrong. Though the stained glass was beautiful, the Seal popped so much better without the distraction of color and the glare of the setting sun. Still, it wasn’t quite right without