“Lil? Say you love me.”
“I love you,” Lily replied, and he kissed her neck, his hand moving to her breast. Lily had to force herself to hold still and not recoil. She didn’t understand how words that sounded so automatic to her own ears could be so pleasing to Greg. Maybe all he really needed was the structure of things. Maybe quality was a different consideration, too graded for him.
I liked this man once, Lily thought. And she had, when they were both young and in college and Lily didn’t know her ass from her elbow, when Greg would buy her nice things and Lily would mistake that for love. Greg said he loved her, but Greg’s definition of that word had morphed into something dark and invasive. Lily’s friend Sarah said love was different in every marriage, but Sarah had been sporting her own black eye that day, and she didn’t believe her own platitudes any more than Lily did.
He doesn’t know, her mind whispered. He still doesn’t know about the pills.
But that was no longer a comfort. Lily had known that she couldn’t get away with the pills forever, but for a long time they had seemed to provide an almost magical protection, the same talismanic quality that she found in her nursery. Even the bad nights had been easier to get through, knowing that some part of her was ultimately safe, that Greg would not have his way everywhere. But she knew that grin, knew it very well. Greg had gotten away with nearly everything in his life, usually with his father’s enthusiastic approval, and now he was once again up to no good. Whatever he was planning, it seemed certain that the status quo wouldn’t hold. Greg was groping around under her dress now, and Lily fought not to move, not to push him away. She thought of saying no–she had been thinking of it for months now–but that no would open up an entire conversation that she wasn’t ready to have yet … what would she say, when he asked why? She closed her eyes and pictured her nursery, that quiet space where there was no intrusion, no violation, no–
KELSEA BLINKED AND found herself in the blessedly familiar space of her library. She was standing in front of her bookshelves with Pen beside her, less than a foot away. For a moment the world wavered, but then she saw all of the books, Carlin’s books, and felt reality solidify around her, the Queen’s Wing settling back in with a solid thud in her mind.
“Lady? Are you all right?”
She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. A hissing sound came from the fireplace in the corner, making her jump, but it was only the fire, dying out in the early hours of the morning.
“I was dreaming,” Kelsea whispered. “I was someone else.”
But dreaming was the wrong word. Kelsea could still feel the man’s hands digging into her shoulders, laying the groundwork for bruises. She could remember each thought that had passed through the woman’s head.
“How did we get here?” she asked Pen.
“You’ve been wandering the wing for the better part of three hours, Lady.”
Three hours! Kelsea swayed slightly, her hand tightening on the edge of the bookshelf. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Your eyes were open, Lady, but you couldn’t see or hear us. Andalie said not to touch you, said it’s bad luck to lay hands on a sleepwalker. But I’ve been with you, to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.”
Kelsea began to protest that she hadn’t been sleepwalking, but then closed her mouth. Something nagged at her memory, something that would shed light. The woman in the Almont! Kelsea had never even learned her name, but six weeks ago she had watched, through the woman’s eyes, as Thorne took her two children. That had not been a dream either; it had been too clear, too sharp. But what Kelsea had just experienced was even sharper. She knew this woman, knew the terrain inside her head as well as that inside her own. Her name was Lily Mayhew, she lived in pre-Crossing America, she was married to a wretch. Lily was no figment of Kelsea’s imagination. Even now, Kelsea was able to picture a whole host of sights she had never seen, wonders lost centuries before in the Crossing: cars, skyscrapers, guns, computers, freeways. And she could now see chronology, the timing of political developments that had always eluded pre-Crossing historians like Carlin, who had no written record to work with. Carlin had known that one of the biggest factors precipitating the Crossing was socioeconomic disparity, but thanks to Lily, Kelsea now saw that the problem had been much uglier. America had descended into true plutocracy. The gap between rich and poor had indeed been steadily widening since the late twentieth century, and by the time Lily was born–2058, Kelsea’s mind produced the year with no trouble at all–more than half of America was unemployed. Corporations had begun to hoard the dwindling supplies of food for sale on the black market. With most of the population either homeless or in unrecoverable debt, desperation and apathy had combined to allow the election of a man named Arthur Frewell … and that was a name that Kelsea had heard before, many times, from Carlin, who spoke of President Frewell and his Emergency Powers Act in the same tones she used for Hiroshima or the Holocaust.
“Lady, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Pen. Let me think.” Memory had suddenly assaulted Kelsea: sitting in the library, five or six years ago, while Carlin’s voice echoed waspishly against the walls.
“The Emergency Powers Act! A lesson in creative naming! Honest legislation would have simply called itself martial law and been done with it. Remember this, too, Kelsea: the day you declare martial law is the day you’ve lost the game of government. You may as well simply take off your crown and sneak away into the night.”
According to Carlin, the Emergency Powers Act had been created to deal with a growing–and very real–threat of domestic terrorism. As the economic divide widened, separatist movements proliferated across America. The better world … Kelsea had seen that in her vision, blue letters more than thirty feet tall. But what did it mean? She wanted so badly to know. To see. She looked down at her two necklaces, expecting to see the stones shining brightly, as they had when she awoke from that terrible vision in the Almont. But they were dark. The last time she remembered seeing them illuminated had been that night in the Argive Pass when she had brought the flood. For the first time, Kelsea wondered if it was possible that the jewels had somehow burned out. They had worked a great and extraordinary miracle in the Argive, but it seemed to have drained everything from them. Perhaps they were no more than ordinary jewels now. The idea brought relief, followed quickly by fear. The Mort were massing on the border, and any weapon would help, even one as inconsistent and unpredictable as her two jewels. They could not burn out.
“You should go to bed, Lady,” Pen told her.
Kelsea nodded slowly, still turning the extraordinary vision over in her mind. Out of habit, she ran a hand over the row of books, taking comfort in their solidity. Sleepwalking or not, she was not surprised that this was where she’d ended up. Whenever she had a problem to consider, she invariably found herself in the library, for it was easier to think when she was surrounded by books. The clean, alphabetized rows provided something to stare at and consider while her mind wandered away. Carlin, too, had used her library as both solace and refuge, and Kelsea thought Carlin would be pleased that she found the same comfort here. Pinpricks of tears stung her eyes, but she turned away from the bookshelf and led Pen out of the library.
Andalie was waiting for Kelsea in her chamber, though the clock showed that it was well after three in the morning. Her youngest daughter, Glee, was asleep in her arms.