“Tell me everything that happened last night at the dinner table,” she says.
My gaze is locked in hard, green eyes that look peculiar against her dark skin. “Don’t you have that footage from the cameras?”
“Tell me,” she snarls.
In halting words, I describe how Ingrid taunted Rafaela about her involvement with some actors, and how Prince Kevon intervened when the Amstraadi girls tried to make me say words of sedition on camera.
Her eyes flash at the mention of them. “Did they speak to Rafaela von Eyck?”
I flinch at her words. Somewhere deep down in the pit of my soul, I thought Lady Circi and Queen Damascena had arranged Rafaela’s death. If the lady-at-arms suspects the Amstraadi girls, maybe I was right to be suspicious of their fighting prowess.
“Did they?” she barks.
“I…” My mouth dries, and I swallow. “I don’t remember.”
Lady Circi scowls, looking like she’s about to say something nasty.
I scowl back. “Our table had cameras fixed on us the entire evening. Everything you need to know is in the footage.”
“Excuse me?” says a small voice.
Lady Circi twists around, revealing the woman whose camera I slapped off her face the night before. She stands in the hallway with a colleague.
“I saw Her Majesty enter that room you just left.” The camerawoman raises herself on tip-toes in an attempt to make eye contact with me. “Did you spend a night with Prince Kevon?”
My mouth drops open, and I’m about to sputter a denial, but Lady Circi points a gun into the camera lens. “Would you also like to spend a night at the Royal Hospital? I can arrange that with a click.”
The woman lowers her camera and backs away. “I’m just following orders, My Lady. The Princess Trials are—”
“Come with me.” Lady Circi grabs my wrist.
The muscles around my shoulders tighten. If she has dug any further into my past and discovered my association with the Red Runners, Rafaela won’t be the only one lying in a hazardous waste bag.
She marches me back through the white hallway, where a camerawoman waits outside the door of my hospital room. I glance down at Lady Circi’s hand, which still holds the gun, and a shudder runs down the back of my neck.
What if her suspicion of the Amstraadi is a pretense at making her and the queen look innocent? I shake off those thoughts.
Right now, I’ve got to leave this hospital and rejoin the trials. It’s callous to think about my mission at a time like this, but Carolina, Ryce and hundreds of thousands of people are depending on me to get to the palace.
Lady Circi brings me to my hospital room, which is now empty. She orders me to get dressed and return to the barracks for breakfast. My shoulders slump with relief, and I hurry to the shower room to carry out her orders.
About half an hour later, I arrive at my room just as Berta emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her wet, shortened hair clings to the sides of her face, and her cheeks are flushed from the hot water. She flicks her head at my untouched bed, but all I notice is the gray dress that lies folded on the trunk.
“Were you out all night with the prince?” Berta asks.
My head still pounds from my encounter with Lady Circi and from the constant buzzing of the watch in my boot. I haven’t had a moment alone, and I’m in no mood to explain that I failed to enter the palace.
Raising a palm, I shake my head. “It’s not what you think.”
Gemini sits up in bed. “The other girls were furious when you both left.”
“Did they say anything?” I ask.
“Ingrid and Rafaela got into a stupid argument, and the Amstraadi girls kept quiet and watched.” Berta shakes her head. “I like a good punch-up, but they were salivating over the girls like they were made of white chocolate.”
Does such a thing even exist? I turn to Gemini, who bows her head and shrugs. “They kept making jabs about my execution.”
My lips part, and I’m about to tell her that Prince Kevon agreed to petition for her pardon, but I give my head a tiny shake. He warned me last night in the botanical gardens about the limits of his power. I don’t want to raise Gemini’s hopes in case he isn’t successful.
As soon as I step into the bathroom to answer Ryce’s call, Gemini follows. We take our showers and get dressed, then the three of us make our way down to the dining room. My nerves are frazzled, and I can’t even focus on the mission right now.
All twelve Amstraadi girls sit around their tables in the first row, each clad in black, while the other tables are half-full with girls trailing in at different rates.
On the side table is the usual fare of sliced fruit and jugs of red juice. My stomach churns as I remember the sensation of blood-soaked locks of hair slopping onto the side of my face.
I lower myself into my seat and stare at the empty place setting.
“Trouble’s brewing,” whispers Berta.
“There she is,” says a snide voice. I don’t need to raise my head to know that it belongs to Emmera Hull. “One of the assistants said she saw you walk into the building looking like you’d spent the night rolling in the hay with His Highness.”
“Are you accusing the prince of not being a gentleman?” I snap.
She flinches, and a flush blooms across her cheeks. Her flaxen hair flops about her face as she shakes her head with feigned horror. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Ladies, may I have your attention?” Prunella Broadleaf stands on the podium. She wears a black trouser suit in a similar style to the one Queen Damascena wore with a black, rimless hat shaped like a pork pie.
I glare
