“You think my army would defy me, Benin?”
“No, Majesty, no,” Ducarte backpedaled. “But they are already discontented. Poor morale makes poor soldiers, this is established.”
“They will tamp down their discontent, if they know what’s good for them.” The Red Queen turned back to Kelsea, her eyes gleaming, dark pupils flicking between Kelsea’s face and the sapphires. “Two years.”
“You must not want them very badly.”
“Five years is too long,” the Red Queen repeated, a hint of sullenness in her voice. “Three years.”
“Done.” Kelsea held the jewels out, but kept the chains around her neck. “Take hold of them.”
The Red Queen eyed her warily. “Why?”
“It’s a trick I learned from our mutual friend.” Kelsea smiled at her. “I need to make sure you won’t back out of the deal.”
The Red Queen’s eyes widened, suddenly fearful, and Kelsea saw that she had meant to do exactly that. Ah, she was smart, this woman, clever enough to drive a hard bargain on a promise she meant to break.
“I know you now, Evelyn. Three years, that’s the honest bargain.” Kelsea lifted the sapphires, offering them. “Promise to leave my kingdom alone.”
The Red Queen took the sapphires on her palm, and Kelsea was relieved to see a myriad of conflicting emotions cross her face: lust, anger, anxiety, regret. She knew about Row Finn, then. Perhaps she had even seen his real face.
“Majesty!” Ducarte hissed. “Do not!”
The Red Queen’s face twisted, and a moment later Ducarte was curled in a fetal position, moaning, on the floor. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the sapphires now, and when Kelsea hunted for her pulse, she found it ratcheted sky-high. Lust had overtaken judgment. The Red Queen paused, clearly framing her words before she spoke.
“If you give me both Tear sapphires, freely, of your own will, I swear to remove my army from the Tearling, and to refrain from interfering with the Tearling for the next three years.”
Kelsea smiled, feeling tears spill down her cheeks.
“You leak like a faucet,” the Red Queen snapped. “Give me the jewels.”
Three years, Kelsea thought. They were safe now, all of them, from the farmers in the Almont to Andalie’s children in the Keep, safe in Mace’s good hands, and that knowledge allowed Kelsea to reach up and pull the chains over her head. She expected the necklaces to fight her hand, or inflict some terrible physical punishment when she tried to remove them, but they came off easily, and when the Red Queen snatched them away, Kelsea felt almost nothing … only a small pang for Lily, for the end of Lily’s story that she would never see. But even that loss was drowned under the great gain of this moment. Three years was a lifetime.
The Red Queen put on both necklaces and then turned away, huddling over the sapphires like a miser with his gold. It occurred to Kelsea in that moment that she might escape; Ducarte was still incapacitated, and she could duck out of the tent, perhaps take them all by surprise. But no, the jewels were lost to her now, and without them she was just an ordinary prisoner. She would make it no more than five feet before getting killed, or worse, and anyway, the bridge was broken. Kelsea had done it as a defensive measure, but now she wondered if she hadn’t really been trying to ensure that there was no going back.
The Red Queen turned, and Kelsea braced herself for the triumph on the woman’s face, the vengeance that would surely follow. The Tearling was safe, and she meant to die a queen.
But the Red Queen’s eyes were wide with outrage, her nostrils flaring. Her outstretched fist had closed around the jewels, squeezing so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. Her mouth worked, opening and closing. Her other hand had clenched into a claw, and it reached for Kelsea, clutching madly.
And then, somehow, Kelsea knew.
She began to laugh, wild, hysterical laughter that bounced off the gleaming red walls of the tent. She barely felt the bruising grip of the woman’s hand on her shoulder.
Of course it didn’t hurt when I took them off. Of course not, because—
“They’re mine.”
The Red Queen screamed with fury, a wordless howl that seemed as though it should shred the walls of the tent. Her hand ground into Kelsea’s shoulder so hard that Kelsea thought it might break, but she couldn’t stop laughing.
“They don’t work for you, do they?” She leaned toward the Red Queen until their faces were only inches apart. “You can’t use them. They’re mine.”
The Queen hauled back and slapped Kelsea again, knocking her to the ground. But even this couldn’t stop Kelsea’s laughter; indeed, it seemed to feed it. She thought of the long night past … Lily, William Tear, Pen, Jonathan, Mace … and it suddenly seemed that they were there with her, all of them, even the dead. Kelsea had hoped to emerge victorious, but here was an outcome she had never imagined. The jewels were lost to her; she would never find out how Lily’s story had ended. But neither would anyone else.
Rough hands were on her shoulders, pulling her from the ground. Men dressed in black, like the soldiers outside, but by now Kelsea recognized close guards when she saw them, and she shut her eyes, preparing for death.
“Get her out of here!” the Red Queen shrieked. “Get her out!”
One of them, clearly the captain, pinned Kelsea’s wrists behind her back, and she felt irons cuffing them into place. The irons were too tight; they pinched her skin as he snapped the clasps. But Kelsea still couldn’t stop laughing.
“You lost,” she told the Red Queen, and knew that she would never forget the woman’s face in that moment: the face of an enraged child denied dessert. Kelsea barely felt the guards’ hands tighten on her arms, yanking her out of the tent. The Tearling was safe, her people were safe. The sapphires belonged to her, no one else, and Kelsea roared with laughter, even as they hauled her away.
A
ND AT THE
E
ND
The Crossing
LILY CLUTCHED A line of rope on the railing, trying not to fall to the deck. The ship rocked wildly; the water was roiling, stirred by wind and the thunder of explosions on land. Above them, storm clouds were highlighted against the night sky, a swirling purple bruise. Lily had been on ships before, but those had been powerboats, yachts that cut so smoothly through the waves that they barely felt as though they were moving at all. This was different, a terrible funhouse feeling, the ship’s deck literally rocking beneath her feet as she clutched the rope, trying desperately to support Jonathan with her other arm. Jonathan was barely conscious; Tear had removed the bullet and stitched him up in the car, but by the time he was done, the backseat was covered in blood, and Tear’s grim expression had said it all.
Far behind them was the skyline of New York, a smoldering orange wreck of dark buildings whose windows gouted flame into the black night. But Lily and the other people on the ship were not looking at the skyline. Their gazes were fixed on the sea behind them, on the two huge ships that had materialized from nowhere. From the shouted reports on deck, Lily also knew that there were several submarines out there, rapidly closing beneath the surface. They had been all right as they sailed down the Hudson and entered the lower bay, but then a siren had gone off, and now, as they moved out into the Atlantic, Security was closing.
“Five minutes!” William Tear shouted from the prow of the ship. “All we need!”
He is insane, Lily realized. Oddly, it didn’t seem to matter much. They weren’t going to make it, and Lily was sorry for that, sorry that she would never get to see the deep, clean river beneath the bright sun. But these ships were free, and Lily was going to die a free woman, and she would not have been anywhere else at this moment for the wide world, submarines or not.