Главная страница | Современная зарубежная литература | Queen

Queen
Aimee Carter


PAWN…CAPTIVE…QUEEN? Kitty Doe is a Blackcoat rebel and a former captive with a deadly connection to the most powerful and dangerous man in the country, Prime Minister Daxton Hart. Forced to masquerade as Daxton's niece, Lila Hart, Kitty has helped the Blackcoats take back the prison known as Elsewhere. But Daxton has no intention of ceding his position of privilege—or letting Kitty expose his own masquerade. Not in these United States, where each person's rank means the difference between luxury and poverty, freedom and fear…and ultimately, between life and death.To defeat the corrupt government, Kitty must expose Daxton's secret. Securing evidence will put others in jeopardy, including the boy she's loved forever and an ally she barely trusts. For months, Kitty's survival has hinged on playing a part. Now she must discover who she truly wants to be, and whether the new world she and the rebels are striving to create has a place in it for her after all.







PAWN...CAPTIVE...QUEEN?

Kitty Doe is a Blackcoat rebel and a former captive with a deadly connection to the most powerful and dangerous man in the country, Prime Minister Daxton Hart. Forced to masquerade as Daxton’s niece, Lila Hart, Kitty has helped the Blackcoats take back the prison known as Elsewhere. But Daxton has no intention of ceding his position of privilege—or letting Kitty expose his own masquerade. Not in these United States, where each person’s rank means the difference between luxury and poverty, freedom and fear...and ultimately, between life and death.

To defeat the corrupt government, Kitty must expose Daxton’s secret. Securing evidence will put others in jeopardy, including the boy she’s loved forever and an ally she barely trusts. For months, Kitty’s survival has hinged on playing a part. Now she must discover who she truly wants to be, and whether the new world she and the rebels are striving to create has a place in it for her after all.




Queen

Aimée Carter







www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)


For Matrice


AIMÉE CARTER was born and raised in Michigan, where she currently resides. She started writing at age eleven and later attended the University of Michigan, graduating with a degree in screen arts and cultures. Aimée is the author of The Goddess Test series of fantasy novels and the dystopian trilogy The Blackcoat Rebellion. Catch updates on her website, www.aimeecarter.com (http://www.aimeecarter.com), and through Facebook, or Tweet her: @Aimee_Carter (https://twitter.com/Aimee_Carter).


Contents

Cover (#ub6871108-0d16-525e-bc4d-4a60945ed2ba)

Back Cover Text (#u0ccfa61b-859c-5e22-8630-aa373b4a62e2)

Title Page (#u7a645410-99f7-50a6-b4a5-a805c9f46bb1)

Dedication (#u5bf214f0-2f2b-5886-ab37-6b78eddbc048)

About the Author (#u43827c75-b2a2-5fdf-bc2e-b1e2ff3adbf7)

I: Speak (#ulink_57012a8e-24ed-50d7-9ff3-80ae7f1ca118)

II: Supply and Demand (#ulink_ad308e15-7856-56f1-b6fa-deeea450ad98)

III: Crack (#ulink_61f1d230-6b47-5dad-a2f1-85a5436fed54)

IV: Burn (#ulink_c646c412-5502-52de-b19b-e0436a0957b2)

V: The American Dream (#ulink_d7009013-d219-57fb-9885-feb343112cc0)

VI: Sacrifice (#litres_trial_promo)

VII: Déjà Vu (#litres_trial_promo)

VIII: Oasis of Sand (#litres_trial_promo)

IX: Ghosts (#litres_trial_promo)

X: Noose (#litres_trial_promo)

XI: Ashes (#litres_trial_promo)

XII: One Chance (#litres_trial_promo)

XIII: Bugged (#litres_trial_promo)

XIV: Room of Horrors (#litres_trial_promo)

XV: Gilded Cage (#litres_trial_promo)

XVI: Checkmate (#litres_trial_promo)

XVII: Death by a Thousand Cuts (#litres_trial_promo)

XVIII: Scars (#litres_trial_promo)

XIX: Cottage in the Woods (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


I Speak (#ulink_8e7afb51-a712-50d5-9bb4-2cef3d6ba9ef)

I gazed out across the gathering crowd, my heart in my throat. The citizens of Elsewhere shifted restlessly, their red and orange jumpsuits bringing color to an otherwise gray winter landscape, and I could feel them growing impatient.

They weren’t the only ones.

“Knox, everyone’s waiting,” I said from my corner of the stage the Blackcoats had constructed over the past several days. It was made of whatever materials they’d been able to salvage from the buildings that had been destroyed during the Battle of Elsewhere. Two weeks later, they were still pulling bodies from the wreckage.

Knox Creed, one of the leaders of the Blackcoat Rebellion—and my former fake fiancé—looked up from his spot at the base of the stairs. His forehead was furrowed, and the annoyance on his face was unmistakable. “I’m aware, thank you,” he said. “There’s only so much I can do to hurry things along.”

I hopped down the steps to join him and the other Blackcoats who lingered nearby. He’d made no secret of his distaste for my less-than-obedient attitude, and though I’d done my best to play by the rules after the battle ended, we were still on shaky ground. I wasn’t so sure our friendship would ever be mended completely, no matter how the rebellion turned out. But right now, we both had more important things to worry about: he had a rebellion to lead, and I had a speech to give. As soon as the cameras were ready for me.

“Benjy said the test run this morning went fine,” I said. “Is there a problem now?”

“There’s always a problem,” said Knox. Turning away from me, he spoke into a cuff on his wrist. “What’s the holdup?”

I waited in silence as he listened to the reply in his earpiece. He muttered what sounded like a curse, and it was my turn to frown. “How much longer?”

“They’re having trouble breaking through the network’s security,” he said. “Something about encryptions and passcodes.”

In other words, nothing I could help with. Or Knox, for that matter. “Why don’t we just record the speech and broadcast it once they’ve found a way around it? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“If it comes to that, we will, but we can give them a few more minutes.” As if realizing for the first time that I was standing next to him, he did a double take, his dark eyes looking me up and down. “Did you bathe?”

I blinked. “Are you joking? I spent an hour letting them do my hair and makeup.”

“What did they do, stare at you the entire time?” He ran his fingers through my hair in an attempt to do—something. I didn’t know what. “You look nothing like Lila anymore.”

Lila Hart—one of the founders of the Blackcoats, who also happened to be Prime Minister Daxton Hart’s niece. Four months ago, on my seventeenth birthday, I’d been kidnapped and surgically transformed to look exactly like her in order to take her place. She had been Knox’s real fiancée. I was only playing the part.

But now, after the dust had settled, the entire world knew there were two of us. Lila was working for Daxton, who had to be holding something over her. Whatever it was must have been a matter of life or death, because the Lila Hart I knew, while not particularly brave, would have never openly supported the government that had murdered her father and turned her mother into a fugitive rebel. Not like this. Not unless there was a gun to her head—or someone else’s.

There was little we could do about Lila’s sudden change in allegiance now, though, and in the meantime, I was working for Knox and the Blackcoats. He had plenty to hold over me, but none of it mattered, because Knox didn’t want me here. I was in Elsewhere because I wanted to be. I was about to speak in front of countless Americans because it was the right thing to do. And no matter how many times he tried to intimidate me into leaving, nothing would make me change my mind.

“I look exactly like Lila, and everyone in this damn place knows it,” I said firmly. “You’re just beginning to see the differences more clearly. There were two boys in my group home—they were identical twins, and no one could tell them apart at first. But the more we got to know them, the easier—”

“You can spare me. I know how telling twins apart works.” His scowl deepened, and I wondered what I’d said to upset him. But it was gone as soon as it came, and someone must have talked in his ear, because he stopped fussing with my hair and touched the piece. “All right. Kitty—they’re ready for you. Remember your talking points, and for once, would you please stick to them?”

I shook my hair out, letting the shoulder-length blond bob fall wherever it wanted. “Do I get to tell my version of events, or yours?”

“I want you to tell the truth,” he said. “The entire truth. We can’t afford lies and misdirection anymore, not when Lila and Daxton are the ones feeding them directly to the people.”

The corners of my mouth tugged upward in a slow smile. “Really? The entire truth?”

His dark eyes met mine, and he leaned in until I could see the gray that ringed his irises. “Every last bit of it.”

Whatever his reasoning was—whatever he was using me for—I didn’t care. He was giving me permission to be myself for the first time in months, and I wasn’t going to turn him down.

Someone had fixed a bright light over my spot behind a makeshift podium, and I climbed back up the steps and walked over, my boots thumping against the wooden planks. Hundreds of faces stared up at me expectantly, but the more I focused, the more discontent I saw in the crowd. The people of Elsewhere, who had not only survived the battle, but in some cases an entire lifetime of captivity, were less forgiving than most. During my few days here as a prisoner, I’d been beaten up and threatened more times than I could count. They were hostile, merciless, and quick to protect their own skins above all else.

But this was different. The government had cut off several of Elsewhere’s key supply lines and destroyed most of the stores in the battle, and the more time that passed, the fewer resources Knox and the Blackcoats had to take care of everyone. They were going hungry, slowly but surely, and if I didn’t do this—if I couldn’t convince the people to listen—then we would soon starve. And they knew it.

I cleared my throat. The microphone hooked up to the podium amplified my voice, making it echo through the square. Two weeks ago, a cage had stood in the center, and every evening, insubordinate citizens had been forced to fight to the death for a second chance. Now only a twisted lump of melted steel remained.

Things in Elsewhere weren’t easy, and they wouldn’t be for a long time. But at least that ruined cage was a reminder that they were marginally better than before.

In my peripheral vision, Knox stood with his arms crossed, giving me a look, and I didn’t need to hear him to know what he was trying to tell me. They wouldn’t be able to hold the broadcast channel open forever. If I wanted the five hundred million people who lived in the United States to hear me, I had to start talking.

I pushed the number from my mind and held my head high. This wasn’t about me. This was about the rebellion, about freedom, about doing the right thing for the people—I was just the mouthpiece. Nothing more.

“Good afternoon,” I said, and for the first time, I used my own voice and accent instead of the dialect I’d painstakingly learned in September. “As I’m sure you’ve put together by now, my name is not Lila Hart.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, and Knox took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling slowly. His lips were pressed together, and even from twenty feet away, I could see the fear and anticipation in his eyes. We were both keenly aware of how much was riding on this.

“My name is Kitty Doe, and seventeen years ago, I was born here, in Section X of Elsewhere,” I said. “My biological mother is Hannah Mercer, and my biological father was Prime Minister Daxton Hart.”

These were facts I had only become aware of two weeks earlier, when Hannah—my mother—had confessed her affair with the Prime Minister. The words stuck in my throat, and even after repeating them countless times to myself, they still didn’t feel real.

“I was lucky,” I continued. “Because of who my father was, he had the power to make arrangements for me outside Elsewhere, in a group home for Extras and orphans in Washington, D.C. I am, as far as I know, the only person to ever leave Elsewhere.”

Once someone was convicted of a crime, no matter how innocent or small, they were sent to Elsewhere for life. Population control, I’d been told by Augusta Hart, Daxton’s cold-blooded bitch of a mother. In reality, it was just one more way for the government to assert control over the people.

“I was raised in a group home with thirty-nine other children,” I said. “I thought it was a relatively normal life. I went to school. I played with the other kids. We dodged Shields, snuck into markets, and imagined what our lives would be like after we turned seventeen, when we would take the test and become adults. But there was one thing no one had ever told us—that the freedom we’d imagined, getting to make our own choices and deciding what our lives would be like...that was all an illusion.

“We were naive to believe it, but we never knew to question it until it was too late,” I added. “We’re all given ranks based on that single test. Compared to the rest of the population and put in our place. A low II, a high VI—it doesn’t matter. Our lives are never in our own hands. Our rank dictates everything. Our jobs. Our homes. Our neighbors. Where we live, what we do all day, the amount of food and care we’re allowed—it can even decide when we die. Some of you have been lucky enough to have easy jobs, ones that don’t take an insurmountable toll on your body. But others aren’t so lucky.

“I wasn’t one of the lucky ones.” I turned around and swept my hair aside, revealing the VII tattooed on the back of my neck and a scarred X running through it. I let the camera linger for several seconds before I turned around. “What you see now is a VII, but the ridges underneath will tell you my real rank—a III. I was assigned to clean sewers far away from my home and the only family I’d ever known. It’s good, honest work,” I added. “But it wasn’t what I’d dreamed of doing. I was one more cog in a machine too big for any of us to fully comprehend, and because I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving my loved ones, I chose to go underground and hide in a brothel instead.”

At some point while I’d been speaking, Benjy had joined Knox on the side of the stage, his red hair fiery in the sunlight and the look on his freckled face relaxed and encouraging. I flashed him a small smile. He was the reason I’d risked my life and entire future to stay, but he was mine—he was private, and while anyone in Elsewhere could see the pair of us walking around together, working on target practice or tending to the recovering victims of the battle, I wasn’t going to tell the world about him. He was the chink in my armor, and I wouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to use him against me.

“If you’ll bear with me, I promise this all has a point,” I said as more and more people began to shift and glance at their neighbors. The revelation that I was really the Prime Minister’s illegitimate daughter was only good for so much rapt attention, and I was rapidly burning through it. But the Blackcoats wanted me to tell my story. I wasn’t the only victim of the Hart family, but I was the only one who the people already cared about, without even realizing who I truly was.

“At the brothel, Daxton Hart bought me. But instead of—well, you know—he offered me a VII.” The highest rank in our country, one you had to be born into in order to receive. “I had no idea I was actually a Hart at the time, but even then, no one turns down a VII. No one. A VII meant luxury, enough to eat, and what I thought would be a good life—it was an easy choice, so of course I said yes.” I leveled my stare at a painfully thin woman in a red jumpsuit. I didn’t recognize her, but I needed to look at someone. “On the way out of the brothel, my best friend saw us together by chance. Daxton Hart had her murdered in the alleyway, and while I was screaming, he gave me something that made me black out. When I woke up, it was two weeks later, and I had been Masked—surgically transformed into an identical version of Lila Hart, whom her family had secretly assassinated days earlier.”

More murmurs ran through the crowd, and the woman I was watching held my stare. I had their attention again. Good.

“I was given a choice. Pretend to be Lila, or die. It wasn’t a real choice at all. It never is when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun and waiting for someone to pull the trigger. And I thought that was what my life was going to be—a series of dodged bullets until one day, I wasn’t lucky anymore.

“But when I agreed to impersonate Lila, it opened up an entirely new world to me. Not just the unparalleled luxury of the Hart family’s day-to-day lives, but a real opportunity to change things through a revolutionary group called the Blackcoats. As soon as my education on becoming Lila began, Celia, Lila’s mother, and Knox, Lila’s fiancé, made sure my education on the Blackcoats did, too.

“They didn’t have to tell me about the injustices our citizens face day in and day out. How Shields often kill and arrest innocent people in order to meet their quotas, or because they’re having a bad day and have the power to take it out on us. I already knew that—I’d been dodging Shields since I was a kid. But Celia and Knox did tell me how IIs are given rotting food, houses with leaking roofs, and no respect or support from anyone above them. How most extra children born to IIs and IIIs are sent to Elsewhere, to be raised inside a prison, and never see the outside world. How our entire lives are dictated by a single aptitude test that only caters to one type of intelligence, and how children who are lucky enough to be born to Vs and VIs get certain advantages. Tutors, inside information—in fact, every single one of the twelve Ministers of the Union received VIs, not on their own merits, but because of the family they were born into. They never took the test, and neither will their heirs.

“Before I became Lila, I believed the lies the government feeds us—that we’re in charge of our own lives, that if we just do well enough on the test, they’ll take care of us. They’ll tell us where we belong, and that every single one of us has a place in society. I believed them when they told us we were all important and needed. I may have rejected the life they wanted for me, but I still believed them.

“The first lesson in my education came the day I was finally declared ready to impersonate Lila. Daxton Hart brought me to a wooded area for a hunting trip. But we weren’t hunting deer or quail,” I added. “We were in Elsewhere, and we were hunting humans.”

I let this sink in for a moment, and the crowd stared at me with slack jaws and pale faces. During my few days as a prisoner, I’d quickly discovered none of the other citizens of Elsewhere knew why so many of their ranks were plucked without warning, never to be seen again. Now they knew. Now everyone knew how VIs and VIIs had hunted humans for sport, all because there was no one to stop them.

“All of the VIs and VIIs took part in these hunting trips, and as Lila, I was expected to shut up and go along with it. And I did, because while I hated watching innocent people die, I knew that blending in and doing what was expected of me then meant a chance to help others now.

“America is supposed to be a fair meritocracy. We’re all supposed to receive what we deserve based on our skills and intelligence. But unlike the rest of us, there is a small section of the population that is born into a life of luxury that they never have to work a day in their lives to earn. The Hart family included.

“But being born into a life of privilege isn’t the only way to get a VI or a VII. I received a VII after I was Masked, for instance. And I wasn’t the only one.” I gripped the edge of the podium so tightly that I felt a splinter wedge its way into my palm. “Over a year ago, another citizen was Masked as a Hart—a man named Victor Mercer. Except he wasn’t Masked as a background figure like Lila, too many steps away from power to be anything more than a pawn. Victor Mercer was Masked as the one and only Daxton Hart—Prime Minister of the United States.”

An audible gasp rose through the crowd, and they began to push forward in their eagerness to hear more, jostling for a better position. Victor Mercer had been a high-ranking official who ran Elsewhere with his brother for years, and no doubt many of the former prisoners remembered his particular brand of sadism. Several shouted at me, demanding proof, and I shook my head, my voice rising.

“I’ve felt the V on the back of his neck myself. But he’s done a masterful job of destroying nearly all of the evidence that he was Masked. Some still exists, though. And when the time is right, the Blackcoats will release it and prove that the man who calls himself Daxton Hart—the man dictating our lives, the most powerful man in the country—is an impostor.”

I had to shout the last few words into the microphone to be heard over the audience’s roars of outrage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Knox give me an approving nod, though he still didn’t smile. Either way, it was enough. At last we’d agreed on something—that telling the truth, the full truth, was what would eventually help lead the rebellion to victory.

“This country belongs to the people, not to the ruling class,” I called above the noise. “We’re the majority—we’re the ones their policies and decisions affect, while they constantly hover above the law. They kill the lower ranks for sport. They live in luxury while IIs and IIIs starve. And we have the power to stop them. Yet not once, in the seventy years the Harts and the Ministers of the Union have been in power, have we risen together to face these injustices. But now we can. It’s our responsibility to stand together against these monsters—against the impostors that rule our government. This is our country, and we need to take it back before the man who calls himself Daxton Hart destroys it completely.”

At last a rousing cheer rose from the crowd, and I exhaled sharply. My hands shook, and my heart pounded, but I felt as if I were floating. I wasn’t done yet, though, and the next portion wouldn’t be so easy. I’d gone back and forth with Knox, arguing about it for days, but ultimately telling the truth meant telling the entire truth—and that meant calling out the real Lila Hart.

“Daxton will try to tell you that every word I say is a lie,” I said. “He’ll ask for proof. He’ll call this a trick to gain sympathies. He’ll insist I’m only acting as a puppet for the leaders of the Blackcoat Rebellion. But the real puppet here is Lila Hart. I’ve seen the speeches she’s given since the Battle of Elsewhere. I’ve heard her cries for peace. And we—the Blackcoats—will do all we can to make sure no more blood is spilled in this war. But when peace means lying down and allowing the government to execute us, for standing up for our freedom and for those who can’t stand up for themselves, I’m afraid we can’t do that. Peace without freedom is imprisonment. It’s oppression. They can try to scare us. They can try to threaten our families and our lives, but ultimately we won’t have lives if we can’t decide for ourselves how we live.

“I don’t blame Lila,” I added. “I know that, if she could, she would be here with me, giving this speech much more eloquently than I ever could. And I say to her, right now—” I looked directly into the camera. “You are not alone. Whatever Victor is holding against you, whatever he’s doing to make you obey—we know those aren’t your words, and we know they aren’t your beliefs. And we will do everything we can to help you, the way we’re doing everything we can to help the people. You are one of us, and we will not forget you.”

I paused to allow that to sink in. While the citizens of Elsewhere couldn’t have cared less about Lila, the rest of the country did, and they had to know she was a puppet. It wouldn’t completely cut off Daxton’s counterpoints, but maybe it would be enough to plant the kernel of doubt.

“This isn’t about Lila, though,” I said at last. “It isn’t about me, and it isn’t even about Victor Mercer posing as Daxton Hart. This is about you—every single person watching right now. This is about your future, your family, your health and happiness and hopes. All our lives, we’ve been living under a dictator masquerading as a friend, with no way to overthrow him and take back the freedom Americans enjoyed a hundred years ago. But the Blackcoats have opened the door of possibility. They’ve paved the way for real change, and it’s up to us to take this opportunity and turn it into a reality. Our reality. Not a dream, but something we can live. The chance to choose our own paths in life. To be more than the numbers on the backs of our necks.

“The Blackcoats have crippled the military and seized control of their main arsenals. They have infiltrated the government, and they have worked tirelessly to give us back the inalienable rights that were stolen before any of us were born. But it’s up to us to finish the job. We need to stand together against the Shields, the Harts, and the Ministers of the Union. We need to remind them that we are the ones in charge, not them—that this is our country, and after all they’ve done to us, our families, and our friends, we are revoking their privilege to rule. Because it is a privilege,” I added fiercely. “Not a right. A privilege we gave them through our compliance. And the time has come to take back what is ours. Together, we will prevail, and we will be free.”

The cheers from the former prisoners were deafening. I could see it in their faces—for these few moments, they forgot about their hunger and their despair. They believed in what I was saying. They believed in hope, and that alone had made everything I’d been through worth it.

Knox joined me on stage, but instead of saying anything to the audience, he set his hand on my shoulder and led me away. “Good,” he said. “Lila couldn’t have done it better.”

High praise, considering she had managed to rally the initial support for the Blackcoats from nothing but mild discontent. “Do you think they’ll listen?” I said.

He pressed his lips together as we descended the stairs toward a waiting Benjy, the crowd’s screams ringing in my ears. “They’d better. We can’t do this alone.”

And if we didn’t have the support of the people outside Elsewhere, too, then we were already dead.


II Supply and Demand (#ulink_40dc6b3f-90b9-5c9c-90af-cb35c12399a8)

The highest-ranking Blackcoats gathered in the living room of the luxurious Mercer Manor, a mansion that had been built inside Elsewhere to house Jonathan and Hannah Mercer. It served as our headquarters now, and most of the rebel leaders were hulking and scarred soldiers who appeared extremely out of place beside crystal vases filled with fake flowers and paintings of pastel landscapes. They looked as uncomfortable sitting on the fancy gilded sofa as I felt standing underneath a portrait of Daxton Hart. The way a few of the soldiers were eyeing it, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be there long.

While we waited for Knox to finish up in his office, Benjy joined me and laced his fingers through mine. After my speech, he’d gotten swept up in a discussion with a handful of officers, and we hadn’t had the chance to talk until now. As the others spoke in low voices, I squeezed his hand. “That was terrifying.”

He ducked toward me, his lips brushing my ear. “I can’t believe Knox finally let you tell everyone about Daxton.”

I bristled. “He didn’t let me do anything. We planned it together, and I was the one in front of the cameras.”

Benjy hesitated, and I half expected him to drop my hand. Instead, to my surprise, he kissed my cheek before he straightened. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

I forced myself to unclench my teeth. It had been a long, stressful morning, and the last thing I wanted was to take my anxiety out on him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Benjy, more than anyone else in that room, understood why Knox and I fought constantly. As much as Knox had helped me since I’d been Masked as Lila, he had also played fast and loose with my life, at times seeming as if he didn’t care at all whether I made it out of this alive. And while I loved to blame him for it, I hadn’t exactly been as careful as I could have been about my safety, either. But when I took risks, I did so willingly, knowing full well what the consequences might be. When Knox took risks, his own neck was never on the line. It was always mine. And he usually didn’t bother to tell me what he was doing.

More often than not, Benjy was caught in the middle somehow. Knox had had no problem faking his death, sending him to Elsewhere, and putting him at risk time and time again as well, and no matter how often he insisted he did it for Benjy’s safety, I had stopped believing him the moment he first put Benjy in the line of fire by hiring him as his assistant. I was the pawn in this game, not Benjy. I was the III who had no place in the world beyond the rebellion. Benjy was a VI—the highest rank a citizen could attain—and he had a future. A real future. I wouldn’t let anyone, especially not Knox, take that away from him.

But no matter how bitter I was about everything that had happened since I had become Lila Hart, the fact remained that I believed in Knox. I believed he was doing the right thing, and even if I didn’t always agree with his methods—or, more accurately, with how he didn’t seem to trust me with his plans, even when I was a key part of so many—I still knew he wouldn’t sacrifice my life unless he had to. And if my death was the difference between winning the war and losing, I would walk the plank willingly. He knew I would do anything to destroy Daxton Hart and help the people win freedom and equality and real opportunity.

So he used me. And no matter how much I complained, I let him.

We were both too stubborn and too convinced we were each in the right. It worked well when we were on the same page, but when we weren’t, we both used our strengths against each other. And that had yet to turn out well for either of us.

Benjy and I stood in silence, our fingers still intertwined, until at last Knox appeared. He looked even worse than he had earlier, with deep shadows under his eyes and his hair sticking up as if he’d run his fingers through it one too many times. He stepped in front of the fireplace, with Benjy and me on one side, and his lieutenant, a fierce man called Strand, on the other. I hadn’t liked Strand since he’d first arrested me and Hannah the day the Blackcoats attacked Elsewhere, but Knox trusted him, so I grudgingly tolerated him for now. He had, after all, just been doing his job.

“Now that the country knows Daxton’s real identity, we have to be prepared for a backlash,” said Knox without preamble. “It could go either way. We could gain support—I’m sure we will gain support, after Kitty’s speech. But the government has supporters, too. Powerful supporters who won’t be so willing to lose their Vs or VIs and find themselves on equal ground with the IIs and IIIs. That’s what we’re working against. The brightest and most privileged in the country aren’t interested in equality, and while they’re a small percentage, they have enough power and smarts between them to come up with a countermove to anything we try.”

“So we just have to be smarter than they are,” said Benjy, releasing my hand. “For every move we make, we’ll have to anticipate their countermoves and come up with our own solutions before they realize what they’re going to do. We have to be three steps ahead of them at all times.”

“We’re already two steps behind,” said Strand. “They’ve choked off several of our main supply lines. The few we have left are sporadic at best, and half the time it’s too risky to even attempt deliveries. We may have enough bullets to storm D.C., but without food and medical supplies, there won’t be enough of us left to do it.”

“The citizens of Elsewhere are days away from rioting,” said a fierce-looking woman with a scar running down the side of her face. I recognized her from the Blackcoat bunker in D.C. “If we don’t find a way to feed them, we’ll be dead before the battle even begins.”

She was right. There were thousands upon thousands of former prisoners in Elsewhere who had chosen to stay and fight for the Blackcoats. We had an army at our disposal, but it was an army that could turn on us at any moment if we didn’t give them what we’d promised: a better life than the Mercers and the Harts ever had. So far, we weren’t delivering.

“Is there another way to get supplies here?” I said. Several pairs of eyes turned toward me, and I crossed my arms. I had no military experience and no gift for strategizing, not like Benjy did. But I was excellent at asking stupid questions.

“Such as?” said Strand, barely masking his impatience. He liked me about as much as I liked him.

“Isn’t Elsewhere almost completely surrounded by lakes? Can’t we come in from a direction they won’t expect?” I said.

“That’s an idea,” said Benjy suddenly, and he met my eyes and flashed a smile. It was the same smile he had given me back in the group home every time I’d bothered to help him with my homework, and no amount of applause could warm me from the inside out the way that smile did. “We have a strong defense here, and we know that any strike they mount will come from the south, over land. But the lakes surrounding the rest of the state—we have enough ships under our control to bring in something. It won’t be enough to give anyone a life of luxury, but we’ll have the basics, at least.”

“They’ll be expecting it,” said Strand. “That’s why we haven’t tried it.”

“So we create a distraction. Set up another supply line—make ourselves look desperate. Divert their attention from the water.” Benjy glanced at Knox. “What do we have to lose?”

“Lives, that’s what,” said Strand. “Human lives.”

“People are going to start dying anyway if we don’t do something,” I said. “We’ll ask for volunteers. No one goes who isn’t willing. But we’re all prepared to die for this, or else we wouldn’t be here right now. And I, for one, don’t plan on dying of starvation.”

All eyes turned to Knox. He stared down at the carpet, his arms crossed as he worried his lower lip between his teeth. He was only in his twenties, but in the few months I’d known him, he seemed to have aged a decade.

“If we do nothing, nothing changes,” he said, his gaze not wavering from the ground. “We do what we have to do to feed our soldiers. Benjy, you’re in charge of setting up the new supply line and the diversion. Strand, you assist.” He called out several other names, assigning them to find volunteers for the mission, as well as to round up whatever supplies we had left. By the time he fell silent and the meeting ended, everyone had a job.

Except me.

Benjy turned toward me, his eyes alight with purpose. I hadn’t seen him look so determined since before we’d been sent to Elsewhere, and with as much as Knox and I fought, I was relieved he wasn’t taking his frustration with me out on Benjy. “Do you want to brainstorm with me and Strand?”

“If feeding everyone in Elsewhere depends on Strand and I working together, we’re all going to starve,” I said, only half joking. “I’ll be around when you get back.”

Benjy hesitated and glanced at Strand, who tapped his foot impatiently near the entrance to the kitchen. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Now go before he tries to shoot me or something.”

Benjy gave me a quick kiss and hurried to join Strand, leaving Knox and I alone in the living room. As much as I wanted to be useful, elbowing my way into Benjy’s assignment wouldn’t help anything. He would spend the entire brainstorming session trying to explain something to me or backing me up whenever Strand tried to tear me down, and now that we both had a chance at a future beyond whatever the Harts dictated to us, I refused to hold Benjy back. I’d done enough of that already.

“So.” I turned to Knox. “What do you want me to do?”

Knox moved to one of the abandoned couches and sat down heavily, settling his head in his hands. He had been slowly breaking down over the past couple weeks, and as hard as that alone was to watch, it was even more difficult seeing him struggle to hold it together in front of everyone else. Why he was letting his guard down with me, I didn’t know, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured it was some form of a compliment. Or maybe he just didn’t care what I thought of him anymore.

“I want you to explain to me why you thought pardoning Lila in front of the entire nation was a good idea,” he muttered.

I blinked. “Out of all the things I said, that’s what you’re upset about?”

“She’s going to get countless numbers of my men and women killed.”

“So will you. He’s blackmailing her, Knox. She doesn’t have a choice—”

“Of course she does.” At last he looked at me, his eyes narrowed. The dark smudges underneath them seemed even more pronounced than usual. “We all have a choice, Kitty. Every last one of us, and she’s made hers. She’d rather see everyone inside Elsewhere die instead of face whatever consequences Daxton has in store for her.”

“And what if it’s a choice between us or killing Celia? Or Greyson?” I said. “You can’t tell me you’d refuse.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “It wouldn’t be easy, but—”

“Right. You’re the one who isn’t afraid to sacrifice a pawn or two if it means winning the game.” I glared at him. “The people love her. You can’t condemn her as a war criminal, no matter what she does. The best way to get around what she’s saying is to do exactly what I did—acknowledge her. Acknowledge the fact that she’s really on our side, but is being blackmailed. It discredits anything that comes out of her mouth.”

“If they choose to believe us. They could easily turn the tables.”

“Our story’s believable,” I said firmly. “Theirs isn’t.”

Silence lingered between us. He stared at me, and pinned by his unwavering gaze, I felt more exposed than I had in front of the camera that broadcast my face to millions. “Do you understand how perception works?” he said at last.

“I’m not an idiot,” I said, though I regretted the words the moment they left my mouth. Predictably, Knox’s eyebrow shot up, and he smirked humorlessly.

“Depends on who you ask, which is exactly my point. To us, the truth is obvious. Lila is being blackmailed. She doesn’t believe a word of what she’s saying. But to others, especially those who don’t want a war—who are content with their place in society and refuse to acknowledge the cruelty committed against the lower ranks—they see what they want to see, and they’ll eat up anything that affirms their beliefs. Daxton knows that. He may not be a VI, but he knows how to manipulate the public—something he learned from Augusta, possibly, or perhaps it’s an innate talent that made her choose him in the first place. And while we know how, too, he got there first. It’s harder to disprove a lie than it is to tell people the truth from the beginning.”

“Then we stick to our story,” I said. “We don’t pander or tell the country what they want to hear. We tell them the truth, over and over if we have to. Daxton will slip up eventually, or Lila will find a way out. Whatever he’s holding against her—”

“She’ll still be responsible for the deaths of countless people.”

“And so will you.” I crossed my arms tightly. “We’re all going to be responsible for whatever happens next, so we better make sure things go our way. Lila isn’t the enemy. She’s never been the enemy. And if that’s how you decide to start treating her, then we will lose every inch of support from the people that we’ve gained since the battle, and we will eventually lose the entire rebellion. Sacrifice a pawn to win the war, remember?” I shot. “The pawn isn’t always a person. Sometimes it’s your damn pride.”

Knox stared at me, his jaw clenched and his fingers digging into the arm of the couch. For a moment I thought he might lash out at me, but if he had any desire to do so, he managed to swallow it. Instead he said in a shaky but measured voice, “If you want to protect someone who’s trying to get us all killed, then you better make sure she doesn’t succeed. Whatever happens as a result of her words and actions—that’s now on you, is that understood?”

“Just add it to the list,” I said. “I didn’t kill Victor when I could have—that’s on me. I told the Blackcoats the truth about him being Masked—that’s on me, too. Lila’s just another drop in the bucket.”

“Until millions of people are dead because you have no idea what you’re doing,” he said. “Must be a hell of a bucket.”

“You know what would be great?” I snapped. “If you could stop treating me like a problem for five minutes. I’m not completely useless, you know. You never would’ve taken over Elsewhere if I hadn’t helped.”

“Debatable,” he said coolly.

“Seriously doubtful. Either way, doing it your way has gotten us here—with the supply lines cut off, and with thousands of people on the verge of anarchy, ready to hang you by the neck and flay you alive because you can’t feed them. And I just bought you a few extra days.”

“What do you want, a medal?” he said. “If they come after me, they’ll come after you, too.”

“Probably. But now we have a little more time to make sure that doesn’t happen, don’t we?” I headed toward the archway. “If you could give those speeches yourself, you would. But we both know you can’t, so that’s why I’m here. To give a voice to the rebellion now that Victor controls your first pick. Like it or not, you need me, Knox, and the sooner you realize it, the easier this’ll be for the both of us.”

He was on his feet in an instant, and he crossed the room faster than I’d seen him move since the battle. Grabbing my arm, he stared down at me, his skin hot against mine. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d willingly touched me, as if he were trying to deny that I really existed, and I told myself that was why I didn’t immediately pull away from him. Because it was nice to be acknowledged.

“You want to be more than a pawn?” he said. “Then be useful. Start figuring out how to keep the promises you’re making to the people. If you were still one of them, what would you want on the other side of this? What does this ideal world of yours really look like?”

I glared at him. “If you don’t know how to give the people their freedom, then why are we doing this in the first place?”

“Because people like you do,” he said. “I can win us this war, if you’ll let me. That’s my place in all of this. Yours could be so much more if you stopped fighting me all the time and started thinking of solutions.”

“Then stop pretending I’m incompetent and give me that chance,” I snapped.

“Stop acting incompetent, and I will.”

Yanking my arm from his grip, I muttered a curse under my breath and stormed out of the room, making my way out the front door and into the frigid winter air. The days when Knox and I saw eye to eye were clearly over, and never in my life had I been more aware of how easy it was to believe in the same principles, yet not be on the same team. I wanted to be on Knox’s team. I wanted to be on his team more than anything in the world right now, but he refused to let me.

Maybe Knox felt the same way about me. As I marched down the muddy main street of Elsewhere, past men and women dressed in orange and red jumpsuits, my gut twisted, rejecting the thought. I wasn’t completely unjustified, and after all, despite his many good qualities, Knox had never been the understanding or forgiving type. But from where he stood, I knew damn well I’d been a problem. Although Lila had copped an attitude, she had always done what he and Celia had told her to do, nearly losing her life as a reward for her cooperation. I was the one always questioning him. I was the one refusing to do what he told me to, because I was sure I had a better way, and he wouldn’t tell me why it wasn’t acceptable.

And though I’d listened to him upon occasion, I usually did what I wanted to do, never mind what he thought. Time and time again, throughout the months we’d known one another, I’d gone against his wishes. Most of the time, things had turned out all right, though he’d often had to scramble to fix whatever problems I’d caused in the process. But that was what our relationship was like: I caused problems, and he fixed them.

I paused in front of a burned-out shell of a building that used to be a bunk, the ruins black and charred. In all fairness, the problems I’d caused had paved the way for the progress the Blackcoats had made so far. I may not have been terribly obedient, but Knox always found a way to make the best of it, opening doors and finding opportunities we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Sending me to Elsewhere for my insubordination, as much as I still loathed him for it, had given him a reason to come here and spy for the rebellion without raising suspicion.

We were already a team, I realized. A messed-up, dysfunctional team, but a team nonetheless. And that, ultimately, was why I couldn’t leave Elsewhere. If I joined Hannah in some cottage in the woods like Knox wanted me to, he would have no one to blame when things went to hell. And blaming someone instead of taking responsibility for his own weak plans—that was how Knox kept his ego functioning. And without the belief that he alone could make this revolution happen, I was sure he would have stepped aside and let someone else handle it a long time ago.

I shook my head. It was ridiculous, but if he wanted me to try to do more, then I would. I had no idea how to form a government, or how to make good on the promises I’d made the people, but I would do my best. That was all any of us could do anyway.

“Hey, you. Hart.”

I began to turn, but someone shoved me from behind, and I stumbled into a pile of blackened wood. “It’s Kitty Doe, actually,” I said as I righted myself and brushed the charcoal off my trousers. I turned, facing the woman and three men who had me cornered. Perfect. I tightened my hands into fists, but that wouldn’t do me much good against all of them.

“Doesn’t matter what you call yourself. You’re still as much of a Hart as the rest of them.” One man, squat and with a ragged mustache, stood in the front, his lips pulled back to expose several gaps in his smile where his teeth must have fallen out. That wasn’t uncommon here. No use in the government paying for trivial things like dental work when the citizens of Elsewhere would probably die soon anyway.

“I’m an Extra,” I said. “I didn’t know who my parents were until—”

“You think we care about that, either?” The man stepped closer, his dark eyes narrowing. “Doesn’t matter who you were. Just matters who you are now. And you’re a Hart.”

A second man cracked his knuckles, and inwardly I groaned. This couldn’t be happening.

“The Blackcoats are on your side,” I said. “I’m on your side.”

“Then why do you sit up there in the manor all pretty and comfortable while the rest of us wallow in the mud like pigs?”

“You’re welcome to leave anytime you’d like,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” said the woman. “Let’s walk out into the wilderness in the dead of winter with nothing but the clothes on our backs.”

I gritted my teeth. She had a point. It was hard enough walking away from the life you knew when you had the ease of doing so without risking your life. “I’m trying my best. We’re all trying our best,” I said.

“How about a little incentive?” said the first man, and he grabbed my hair and shoved me to my knees. I yelped, and a heavy boot connected with my stomach, forcing the air from my lungs.

“Let go of her immediately,” demanded a deep, familiar voice, and the former prisoner hesitated.

“Make me.”

I tightened my abdominal muscles, preparing myself for another blow, but it never came. Instead I heard the click of a gun, and my attacker went still.

“Fine,” he growled, releasing me. “Worthless bitch.”

I fell to my hands and knees, wheezing as my hair fell into my face, forming a curtain around me. If I’d had the breath to reply, I would have, but instead they all slunk away without another word, their boots crunching against the frozen ground. It was probably for the best. I didn’t want anyone else to die because of me.

“You’re never going to be one of them, you know.” A gloved hand appeared in front of me, and I took it, letting my defender help me up.

“It’s not my fault my biological father was a Hart,” I muttered, wincing as I touched my ribs. Rivers, one of the former prisoners who had been lucky enough to be picked as a low-level guard, touched my chin and inspected my face. His blue eyes were the same shade as mine, and I stared back. I’d been beaten up enough in the past month that another set of bruised ribs wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it was the way they were talking, the things they were saying—that was what made a hollow form in the pit of my stomach. Was this what they all believed?

“It’s not your fault you’re a product of Daxton Hart, but it is your fault you’re up there instead of down here,” he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you to the doctor before they come back with friends.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” I muttered. “I need something to do.”

“You mean getting yourself beaten to a pulp isn’t enough?” said Rivers.

“I’ve been doing that for weeks. I want to help.”

“You just did this morning.” Instead of leading me back up the hill, he guided me into the maze of narrow alleyways behind the buildings, away from the main streets.

“That wasn’t helping. That was just—talking.”

“It did more to help than anything the Blackcoats have done since the battle,” said Rivers, and I huffed.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Had it been almost anyone else, I would have turned right around and returned to the relative safety of the main road. But Rivers had protected me time and time again, and if he was going to kill me, he would have done it ages ago. Besides, though we’d never voiced it aloud, we both suspected the unique color of our eyes wasn’t by chance. If Daxton Hart had fathered me with a prisoner in Elsewhere, then it was possible he’d had other affairs. If I couldn’t trust my potential half brother, then I couldn’t trust anyone, and I wasn’t that far gone yet.

We passed a few lone citizens in the darker alleyways, and though they all stared, none bothered to approach us or offer help. It was clear Rivers was right. I wasn’t one of them, and I never would be.

But I wasn’t a Hart, either, and I was barely a member of the Blackcoats as it was. I didn’t belong down here, but I also didn’t belong in the manor. And that was far scarier than anything Daxton could throw at me—the realization that no matter what rank I’d earned or whose face I wore, I had no idea where I really belonged.


III Crack (#ulink_fcaa61f5-fc3f-5b7d-a144-52cf14c1e4d5)

We wound through the alleyways in the heart of Elsewhere until, at last, Rivers opened a door and gestured for me to enter. It led into a building I’d never been inside before, and the smell of stale chemicals burned my nostrils.

“Do I even want to know what this place is?” I said, scowling as Rivers led me into a dank storage room filled with what looked like old towels.

“Better if you don’t. Then you might have a chance of sleeping tonight,” he said as he tugged on a rusted metal shelf. With a loud creak of protest, it swung aside as if it were on a pair of hinges, revealing a door. “I found this when I was still doing a work order here as a prisoner. It’s an entrance into a network of tunnels.”

I blinked in surprise. I’d thought the tunnel under Mercer Manor—the same that had protected any number of citizens during the Battle of Elsewhere—had been the only one. A last resort for the Mercers, if the prisoners ever started an uprising the guards couldn’t handle. Hannah had shown it to me when she’d discovered that her husband planned to kill me on sight, and she’d insisted it let out somewhere safe beyond his reach. It had never occurred to me that there could be others. Mercer Manor had been protected—no citizen could have accidentally stumbled upon the entrance to the tunnel in their cellar. But this was right here, staring me in the face, where anyone could’ve found it. Where Rivers had found it.

“How far does it go?” I said, stunned. Suddenly the ache in my side from where steel-toed boots had connected with my ribs didn’t seem to hurt as badly.

Rivers scratched his head, his blond hair falling into his eyes. “Not sure. I know some of the tunnels lead into the other sections, at the very least. For all I know, it spreads throughout Elsewhere.”

I took a hesitant step into the darkness, and Rivers produced a flashlight, illuminating the narrow passageway. The ground was hardened from countless footsteps, but clumps of dirt hung from the ceiling, giving me the sickening sensation that it could collapse at any moment. “Have you told Knox?”

“Yeah. Even gave Strand a tour. They didn’t seem interested.” Taking my elbow, Rivers led me inside, swinging the shelf and door into place behind us. The tunnel sloped steeply, descending far belowground.

“Why not? This could solve the supply lines issue, if one of the tunnels leads out of Elsewhere,” I said. “Not even Knox is that shortsighted.”

“Couldn’t tell you. Asking questions isn’t my job,” said Rivers, giving me a significant look as we approached a fork.

I hesitated. “But you think it’s mine?”

Rivers shrugged and headed down the left branch. “Maybe they have a good reason for not using it, but like you said, it could solve all our supply line problems. What’s going on between the two of you, anyway?”

“Who? Me and Strand?”

He snorted. “I know exactly what’s going on between you and Strand. You both hate each other so much that it’s a miracle the walls don’t ice over when you two are in the same room.”

I made a face. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’ve seen machine guns that are more subtle. I mean you and Knox, you goof. What’s going on there?”

“Nothing,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. Rivers raised an eyebrow, and I raised one right back. “I mean it. Nothing’s going on there. He was my fake fiancé, and now he’s the head of the Blackcoats and wants to send me off to join my mother in hiding instead of letting me fight, but he knows he’ll lose support if he doesn’t have a mouthpiece who can string a sentence together, so here we are.”

“Yes, I know all of that, thank you. I mean what is it you two aren’t telling the rest of us?”

I eyed him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I expected some kind of quip in return, but instead Rivers studied me. Even in the dim light, I could see the blue in his eyes. He must have been able to see it in mine, too. “You know he’s crazy about you, right?” he said.

“If you mean I make him crazy, then yes, I know,” I said carefully.

“That, too,” he agreed with a grin. “But we both know what I’m talking about.”

Except I didn’t. All I could see when I looked at Knox was the way he viewed me as nothing more than an annoyance. Our so-called friendship had been going steadily downhill since Augusta’s death, and now we could barely say a word to each other without bickering. That wasn’t him being crazy about me. That was us driving each other insane.

“I’m with Benjy,” I said resolutely. “I love him.”

“Doesn’t stop Knox from wanting you.”

“Knox is better than that,” I snapped, and as soon as I realized what I’d said, I clamped my mouth shut. It was too late, though, and Rivers grinned.

“Is he? Wouldn’t have thought it from the way you talk about him.”

I gritted my teeth. There was no winning with Rivers, not when he seemed to be so damn sure and I had no way of defending myself. I had no idea how Knox really felt, but it didn’t matter. My loyalty to Benjy would never waver, and the insinuation that I would happily betray my best friend for someone who barely seemed to like me made me bristle.

“You think you’re being funny, but you’re not. This isn’t some sideshow to entertain you. This is my life. Benjy has been there for me in a way no one else ever has. He’s my family, and you don’t just push family aside for some itch you want to scratch. That’s not how real love works. Real love is support, even when you’re fighting. Real love is honesty, even when the truth hurts like hell. Real love is being there through every miserable minute and every infinite moment. Real love is—it’s sitting in that cage together with a gun pointed at your head, knowing all you have to do to save your life is kill him, and instead you hold each other because living without him isn’t living at all.” I sucked in a deep breath and blinked hard, an unnamed part of me twisting sharply. “Knox would have killed me if it meant winning the war. I’m nothing more than a pawn to him. But Benjy would have died for me.”

Rivers was quiet for several seconds, until at last he slipped an arm around my shoulders. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the things I see when you aren’t looking are just my imagination. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a pawn to him. You’re even more than the most important piece on the board. To Knox, there is no game without you.”

“Then he’s going to be bitterly disappointed when it ends.” Pain radiated down my side, and I winced. “I’m with Benjy. I love Benjy. Nothing will ever change that.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Rivers, and at least he had the decency to sound slightly abashed. “Just—don’t forget that there’s more than one kind of love.”

I scowled, shrugging out of his embrace despite the ache it caused. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Whatever you need it to,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Come on—this fork will take us as close to Mercer Manor as we’re going to get.”

I took a deep breath, willing the snarling, angry monster in the pit of my stomach to retreat. Rivers wasn’t in charge of my life. Just because he had an opinion didn’t give him any power over me. Who I chose to love was entirely up to me, and I’d made my decision long ago.

As we wound through the tunnel, I tried to map it in my head. It wasn’t unlike the way I’d memorized the sewer tunnels back in the Heights, where I’d grown up, and if I was right, the tunnel would let out in—

“Clothing storage,” said Rivers as he pushed open a piece of the wall. It, too, swung on hinges, but unlike the entrance we’d used, this closet was filled with racks and racks of boots. Most were worn and falling to pieces, and even those in the best condition were too far gone for anyone still in society to wear. Even IIs.

It was yet another reminder that despite being liberated by the Blackcoats, the prisoners were still exactly where they’d been before. But now we may have found a way to fix it.

“I want to map the entire tunnel system,” I blurted. “And I want you to help me.”

“I’d be happy to,” said Rivers grandly, as if he’d expected this all along. But unlike when Knox blatantly used me to further his own goals, I didn’t really mind. At least Rivers had had the forethought to let me think it was my idea.

We stepped out into a dingy hallway inside what must have been the garments building, where the clothing for the prisoners was made and stored. It was one of the nicer buildings in Section X, no doubt thanks to its proximity to Mercer Manor. To my surprise, we passed a few former prisoners still working, and in the distance, I heard the faint whirring of sewing machines.

“Don’t they know they don’t have to do this anymore?” I said as we reached the exit.

“We can’t all sit around and think all day. This needs to be a functioning community,” said Rivers. “Don’t worry—they’re here because they want to be, not because anyone is pointing a gun at their heads.”

“They’re here to avoid having someone point a gun at their heads,” I pointed out. “There’s no safe place for them outside Elsewhere.”

“That’ll change,” said Rivers with such offhanded assuredness that, had he been able to bottle it, I would have given anything I owned for just a taste. “We’ll start mapping out the tunnels tomorrow, once you’ve had a chance to rest.”

“We’ll start on it after dinner,” I corrected. “Once I’ve had time to take some painkillers.”

We argued all the way back to Mercer Manor, where Rivers reluctantly agreed to meet me that evening—but only to draw a guide to the tunnels he was already familiar with. It wasn’t the exploration I’d had in mind, but at least we were doing something.

I refused to let the doctor examine me, instead choosing to lie down upstairs in the bedroom Benjy and I now shared. We’d spent three days trapped together in that room while the Battle of Elsewhere raged outside, but I didn’t see it as a prison. Not anymore. Instead, it was a refuge from whatever storm Knox and the Blackcoats were brewing downstairs, the one place I could be me without having to worry about being silenced or ignored. Or mistaken for someone I wasn’t—though now that the entire country knew who I was, with any luck, those instances would become few and far between.

I turned on the radio and listened to the soft music, trying to lose myself in it and forget the rest of the world for a little while. But as soon as I closed my eyes, someone knocked softly on the door.

“This better be good,” I called, turning my face from the pillow enough to watch the door. Benjy slipped inside and offered me a smile.

“Heard what happened,” he said. “Rivers said you wouldn’t see a doctor.”

“I’m fine,” I muttered. “Breathing hurts, that’s all.”

“Oh, that’s all?” He rubbed his hands together, warming them up. “If you won’t let them take a look at you, then at least let me check to see if anything’s broken. You could puncture a lung and die, and then where would we be?”

“You’d be fine,” I said. “Knox would be adrift. He just wouldn’t realize it for a while.”

He smiled, but it resembled a grimace far too closely for it to be genuine. “I’m sure Knox will be pleased to know you’re so concerned about him, but I wouldn’t be fine without you, either. Let me take a look.”

I immediately regretted bringing Knox up at all, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Reluctantly I tugged up my shirt and let him take a look at the angry purple bruise already forming on my side. Benjy gently began to examine my ribs.

“You shouldn’t go down there alone anymore,” he said. I frowned.

“Why are we doing any of this if we’re too scared to talk to them? They have a point, you know. We’re up here, getting the best food and the best medical care—”

“We eat the same things they eat,” he said. “And they have constant access to doctors and nurses.”

“We still live in this house while they live in bunks,” I said. “That kind of difference might not seem like much, but to them, we might as well be poking them in the eye with our superiority.”

“We need space to meet and plan.”

“We could use the dining hall for space,” I countered. “This manor is where the Mercers lived for years. Staying here, while nothing’s changed for the rest of them—it isn’t doing us any good.”

“What would you prefer we do? Let everyone crowd in here?” said Benjy. His fingers pressed against a particularly tender spot, and I hissed. “No matter what kind of equality we want, there will always be leaders, and those leaders will always have some kind of marginal privilege.”

“Then what’s the difference between us and the Harts?” I said. “What makes us any better?”

“We won’t abuse our privileges. We won’t take and take and take and give nothing in return.” He pulled my shirt back down and gently draped a blanket over me. “We’re doing everything we can to make them as comfortable and happy as possible. The bunks aren’t bad at all. They have heat. We’re giving them fresh mattresses and clothes. We can’t do it all immediately, Kitty, not when we’re barely keeping our heads above water. But the sacrifices they’re making right now—if we win, they’ll be worth it. They know that. It’s just a little hard to remember right now.”

“It’s a little hard to remember a lot of things,” I mumbled, and he sat down on the bed beside me, running his fingers through my hair.

“Like what?”

I gave him a look. “You’re patronizing me.”

“No, I’m serious,” he said. “Talk to me, Kitty. Let me help.”

There was nothing he could do, not really—but he’d always been a salve to the terrible circumstances of our lives before. Taking a deep breath, I finally said, “I think I’ve forgotten what I really look like.”

His hand stilled. “I haven’t.”

“How? I’ve looked like this—like Lila—for months,” I said. “How could you possibly still look at me and see Kitty Doe?”

Benjy shifted so we were face-to-face, and he touched the curve of my jaw. Lila’s jaw. “It isn’t about what you look like. It never has been. It’s about what’s underneath, and that hasn’t changed.”

He was trying to be kind—he was being kind, like always. But I could see the way he looked at me sometimes, especially when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Benjy were Masked into someone else—Knox, or Greyson, or Strand—and part of me knew that no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn’t be able to separate them completely. He would always be somewhat changed. Maybe Benjy was better at this than I would be—maybe he still saw the real me underneath. But I wasn’t the same anymore. The past four months had changed me irrevocably, and sometimes I wondered if he knew that. Or if he wanted to pretend as badly as I did.

“Yeah, but—” I hesitated, not knowing how to put the knot of frustration in my throat into words. “It’s not just that. I don’t know where I belong anymore. I’m a Hart. I’m a former prisoner. I’m a Blackcoat. But I’m not really any of those things, either. And I’m not who I look like. I’m not anything except that speech. And even that wasn’t good enough for Knox, not really.”

Benjy’s hand resumed running through my hair, and he toyed with the ends. “Forget Knox. He’s under so much pressure right now that nothing is going to make him happy, so you might as well focus on making yourself happy instead.”

I frowned. Happy had become such a foreign concept to me that I wasn’t sure I remembered what it felt like. “I don’t know how to do that anymore.”

“Sure you do.” He smiled, but it faded quickly. “This isn’t forever, Kitty. And when we’ve won, there will be a place for you in our new world, and a place for everyone who doesn’t feel like they belong.”

I wanted to believe him, but there was no good place in the world for me after the war was over. I would never be me anymore. I would always be Lila’s double. And while others—smarter than me, most likely—would know how to use that to give them the life they wanted, I didn’t.

At the rate I was going, as lost and confused as I was, I would always be someone else’s idea of who I should be. And I hated that thought nearly as much as I hated the man known as Daxton Hart.

The radio crackled, the music replaced by white noise. I muttered a curse and reached over to turn it off.

“Wait, keep it on,” said Benjy, and I frowned. But before I could ask when he’d gained an appreciation for static, a voice began to speak—one as familiar to me as my own.

“My apologies for interrupting your evening,” said Lila Hart, though she didn’t sound very sorry at all. “This will be brief. Earlier today, a girl by the name of Kitty Doe, who was hired to impersonate me at public events for my own safety, made several claims against my uncle, Prime Minister Daxton Hart. I am here of my own free will to tell you all that every word out of her mouth is a profound, grievous, and traitorous lie. The man who is your Prime Minister is and always has been my biological uncle, and the United States government will take every measure not only to prove this, but also to show you how deep into the well of lies the entire Blackcoat rhetoric goes.”

I stared at Benjy, my stomach constricting painfully. He shook his head in resignation. “We knew this was coming,” he murmured. “There was never any question how they were going to counter.”

“But—” My mouth went dry. No matter how stupid it was, part of me had thought offering Lila a lifeline would change something. But of course it hadn’t. She was still under Daxton’s thumb, and she would be until one of them was dead.

I almost couldn’t bear to listen to the rest of it as, one by one, Lila recounted my claims and insisted they were false. No matter how many holes she alleged were in my full story, she returned to Daxton’s true identity over and over again. But while I dug my nails so deep into my palms I was sure they’d start bleeding, Benjy smirked.

“Do you hear that?” he said, and I shook my head. “‘The lady doth protest too much.’”

“I have no idea what that means,” I said miserably. “Can we please turn it off?”

Benjy switched off the radio, and merciful silence filled the room. Or mostly silence, anyway—from somewhere in the manor, I could hear Lila’s voice filtering up toward us, her words muffled. But that was infinitely better than having her blasted in my ear.

“It means there’s a very thin line between rightfully protesting, and protesting so much that it becomes clear you’re trying to hide something,” said Benjy. “Anyone with half a brain can tell she took a flying leap over the line.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Do you think she’s doing it on purpose?”

“Maybe, if her speech isn’t scripted,” he said. “If it is, clearly someone’s panicking, and that someone is probably Daxton.”

So there was a chance Lila was fighting back after all. I forced myself into a sitting position, wincing as my ribs protested. “I need to talk to Knox.”

“No, you need to rest,” said Benjy, reaching for my shoulder. “You may not have any broken bones, but that doesn’t mean you’re not injured.”

I shrugged off his hand. “Benjy, I love you, but Knox was furious that I pardoned Lila for her crimes, and he’s going to use any excuse he can get to undo that. She just handed him one on a silver platter.” I swung my feet around carefully and stood. Though walking back to the manor through the tunnels hadn’t been difficult, now that my body had had time to rest and the adrenaline had worn off, every little wrong move sent aching pain through me. “He won’t listen to me with the other Blackcoats backing him up, so I need to talk to him before he calls a meeting to figure out a rebuttal.”

“I’ll be there to support you,” he pointed out.

“And a dozen other Blackcoats will be there to support him,” I said.

Benjy didn’t look convinced, but rather than fight me on it, he stood as well and offered me a hand. “At least let me help you down the steps.”

I gave him a long, searching look, but at last I accepted. Together we made our way through the hallway and down the staircase, his grip on me strong and steady, the sort that never made me question whether he’d catch me if I fell. I didn’t know how I’d lucked out, having Benjy in my life, but it was one of the few things I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I was positive he would try to weasel his way into my talk with Knox, but to my surprise, once we reached the foyer, he let me go. “I’ll be helping with dinner. Shout if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” I said, watching him head into the kitchen. As soon as he disappeared, leaving me alone in the marble entranceway with an ornate H decorating the floor, I crossed to the office that had once belonged to Jonathan Mercer, Hannah’s husband. Even now, two weeks after she had killed him, I still felt a shiver run through me every time I approached the white double doors.

I cracked them open, my mouth open and a greeting on the tip of my tongue. Before I could say anything, however, Knox’s voice shot through the room like a whip. “No.”

“I need—” I began, but the words died on my lips. Knox wasn’t talking to me. Instead he paced in front of his desk, and on the monitor I saw a feed of Celia Hart. The real Lila’s mother.

Knox shot me a vicious look over his shoulder, but rather than forcing me to leave, he gestured for me to come in, sparing us both that fight.

I slipped inside and closed the doors, sticking to a corner where Celia wouldn’t be able to see me. On the monitor, she leaned forward until her face took up the entire screen. She was beautiful, with long dark hair and the Hart eyes, but there was a fierceness to her that no one in their right mind would challenge.

Except Knox.

“I don’t care whether you approve or not, Creed. I am just as much a founder of the Blackcoats as you are, and the D.C. team is under my command. This is not up for discussion.”

“If you raid Somerset, everything we’ve worked for will be destroyed. We will once again be the enemy—do you understand?” said Knox, his hands tightening into fists.

My jaw dropped. Somerset was the traditional home of the Hart family, nestled in the heart of D.C., far away from the slums I’d grown up in. I knew eventually the Blackcoats would have to seize control of it to cement their power, but we weren’t ready for an invasion yet. The majority of the Blackcoat army was trapped in Elsewhere, slowly starving to death. Celia might have a few hundred people at her command, but Somerset was undoubtedly crawling with guards and Shields. It was suicide.

“I don’t care about raiding the manor,” said Celia. “I care about separating the impostor’s head from his body.”

“If you kill Daxton—”

“He isn’t Daxton.” Her voice rang out through the speakers, as clear as if she were standing right next to Knox. “How long have you known, Creed?”

Knox stiffened. “Lila told me late in the summer. She found out when Daxton tried to assault her.”

For a long moment, silence filled the office, and my heart pounded. “You’ve known for nearly six months, and you never said a word to me?” said Celia at last, her voice dangerously soft. “He tried to kill my daughter. He tried to kill me. All this time, all I had to do was tell the public who he really was—”

“And what good would that have done?” said Knox. “At best, Daxton—”

“Stop calling him Daxton.”

Knox took a deep breath and released it. “At best, Victor Mercer would have done exactly what he’s doing now—deny it and use your family to discredit the claim. Augusta would have backed him up, and you would have come out of it looking like a lunatic.”

“I could have leaked it to the press without my name attached.”

“No newspaper in the country would have printed it. They’re completely under the government’s control. At best, Victor would have forced the most trustworthy and liked members of the Hart family into backing his claims. At worst, we would have been at war before we were ready. Victor would have pulled no stops to protect his secret, and the Blackcoats would be nothing more than a footnote in the history books, if that. I knew if I told you the truth before we were ready, everything we worked for would be ruined. And that is why I kept it from you.”

Celia stared at him, her blue eyes wide and full of shock—or shame, maybe. Or sadness. Anger. Betrayal. All of it combined into something I couldn’t name. When she spoke, her voice trembled, as if it took every ounce of willpower she possessed to stop herself from bursting into flames. “How dare you.”

“How dare you try to destroy everything we’ve worked for,” said Knox. “You’re blinded by anger and revenge. You’ve lost sight of the objective. This isn’t about vengeance or payback for what Victor’s done to you. This is about the country and its half a billion people counting on us succeeding. If you kill Victor now, you’ll only turn him into a martyr, and no one will ever know who he really was. No one will care, because to them, he is Daxton Hart. Is that what you want? For that monster to go down in history as your brother?”

“Stick a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger,” snarled Celia, and a moment later, the screen went black.


IV Burn (#ulink_9d3b82f7-97e1-5943-9f15-07e64cba8f31)

Knox stood in the middle of the office, his shoulders slumped and his head down, taking one deep breath after another. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was trying not to lash out or break down or both.

“That—” I began. Knox snapped around to look at me, his dark eyes already accusing. I dropped my folded arms and let them hang loosely at my side. As often as we bickered and fought, we were still on the same side. “That was pretty badass of you, you know. Standing up to her like that.”

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was tight and his words were clipped, and he lumbered over to the couch and dropped down gracelessly. “She’s going to raid Somerset and try to kill Daxton anyway.”

“Can’t really blame her,” I said slowly, not wanting to upset him more than he already was. “Lila’s the only family she has left. Maybe she’ll get her out of there and spare Daxton.”

Knox shook his head, his fingers tangling in his hair. “If she has a shot, she’ll take it. She isn’t thinking rationally.”

“Maybe he won’t be there.”

“We can play the maybe game all day, Kitty. In the end, we won’t know until it’s over.”

I was quiet for a moment, my gaze drifting over to the black screen. There had to be something we could do. “Have you tried contacting Sampson? He could put a stop to this.”

“She’ll anticipate that. Sampson knows he ought to stop her anyway. He’s the one who helped me come up with this playbook. If he has any say at all, he’s already trying.”

“Then maybe he’ll succeed.”

Knox sighed wearily. “Maybe. What do you want, Kitty?”

“I—” A pang of pity needled my side as I took in the circles under his eyes and the lines in his face that seemed to grow deeper every day. Now wasn’t exactly the time, but there would never be a good time for this. “Did you hear Lila’s speech?”

“Yes. I take it you did, too.”

I nodded. “Most of it. You know she’s saying those things under duress.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s still saying them.”

“But—Benjy noticed something.” I took a step closer to the sofa. He watched me, his dark gaze unwavering. “She’s shoving it down our throats, that Daxton isn’t Victor. She said it at least a dozen times. Benjy said she’s pushing too hard—that any idiot with half a brain can tell she’s protesting too much.”

“Only those who are willing to hear it,” he said. “Perception, remember?”

I frowned. “Still. Don’t take this out on her.”

“You’ve already pardoned her,” he said. “I’m not going to undermine you, not when the public needs to trust you. But you will do and say exactly what I tell you to from now on, understood?”

Relief flooded through me, and I shrugged. “I could say yes right now, but we both know that would be a lie. But I do promise to talk to you about what I want to say ahead of time, if it comes to me. If something’s impromptu—”

“Try to do as little of that as possible,” said Knox.

“I’ll do my best.” I glanced at the door. “Dinner’s almost ready. Are we calling a meeting?”

Knox sighed and straightened, his hair sticking up. “Nothing we can do here to stop it. Whatever happens is going to happen, whether the rest of the Blackcoats are worrying about it or not. And the last thing we need is half of them agreeing with Celia while the other half agrees with me.”

“So...that’s a no?”

“That’s a no,” he confirmed, and I furrowed my brow. I couldn’t remember any issue within the past two weeks that the Blackcoats hadn’t discussed and dissected ad nauseam. The idea of Knox hiding something this big from them was practically unfathomable.

“If Celia and the D.C. Blackcoats go through with it, you’re going to upset everyone here when they find out you knew ahead of time.”

“I have no intention of letting them find out,” said Knox, and he leveled his gaze at me. “Can I trust you?”

It was the first time in weeks that he had even asked, let alone offered me the chance to prove it, and I nodded. “I’ll grab some dinner for us.”

“For us?” he said.

“I’m staying in here until we know what happened,” I said. Knox started to protest, but I cut him off. “Don’t pretend you’re not going to sit in this room all night, scouring the news for any sign of the raid. I’m watching with you.”

He rubbed his face with his hands. “It won’t change what happens. If Somerset falls, there’s nothing we can do but watch it burn. And if it does—”

“We’re screwed. I know.” I opened the door. “Chicken or tuna?”

“Chicken,” he said, and as I stepped out of the room, he added, “Kitty?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

There was a note of warmth in his voice that hadn’t been there before, and I offered him a small, but genuine smile. “You’re welcome.”

In the kitchen, Benjy helped two other Blackcoats prepare enough plates to feed everyone staying in the manor, and before I stepped into his view, I watched him chat with the woman with the scar running down her face. He smiled broadly, his eager voice filtering over the clatter of dishes, and for a moment I let myself be carried back to the countless evenings we’d spent in the kitchen of our group home, helping Nina with dinner or washing up after. The cold marble of Mercer Manor fell away, replaced with wood and brick and heat from the fireplace. I would have given anything to go back there, even for just a day, and have Benjy look at me like I was me again. Maybe I was imagining it, but now that I saw him like this—with someone else, when he didn’t know I was watching—it was clear that there was something missing from the way he talked when we were around each other. An easiness to our banter, jokes that made us both laugh, the way we used to tease each other without wondering if it was the last conversation we would ever have—even though I couldn’t name it, I knew it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe he was the one who felt he couldn’t wholly be himself now that I wasn’t completely me.

After I’d been Masked, we hadn’t had much time at Somerset to be together, and any time we did have was spent worrying that someone would catch us. In Elsewhere, before the battle, we’d been separated—and, for several days, I’d thought he was dead. That all-encompassing grief had turned into unbridled joy and relief when Knox had revealed Benjy was, in fact, alive—and the weeks we’d spent together since had been comfortable and more like a taste of home than I’d thought I would ever have again. But maybe that was an illusion. Because we weren’t home; we would never go home again. Benjy was the closest thing I would ever have to home again, but as I watched him turn to ladle gravy onto a plate, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was, yet again, holding him back.

He caught my eye, and something in his expression changed. Once upon a time, seeing me would have sparked joy, and to some extent, it still did. But it was tainted with something else now, and I couldn’t blame him for it. As much as I knew he loved me, I was also tied to the worst memories of his life, and I didn’t know how many more he could stand before he cracked. I’d lost count of the number of times he’d nearly died because of me, and each one was another lifetime of guilt looming over me, knowing I’d never be able to make any of this up to him. We’d been here before, with me holding him back—when I’d achieved only a III on my test, and he was bound to get a VI. I would never be good enough for him, and the more I tried to hold on to him, the harder his life would be. The more his smile would fade every time he looked at me.

“Kitty—are you hungry?” He quickly finished preparing the current plate before grabbing another. “Chicken, right?”

“Two. One for Knox, too,” I said, moving forward to help him. The portions were meager at best, but they were exactly what the former prisoners ate, too, and after today, I had no complaints. “How did everything go with Strand?”

“We’ve brainstormed a few ideas that we can implement starting almost immediately. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is, right?” He grinned. “Rivers told me about the tunnels. If they really do extend as far as he thinks they do, that will make our jobs infinitely easier.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope he’s right,” I said. It was hard to say when he’d never tried to explore them, but then again, with the guards keeping such a close eye on the prisoners, I wasn’t sure how he ever could have slipped away long enough to do so.

“He said you’re going to start mapping it tonight—do you mind if I join you?” added Benjy, and I blinked. With the news of Celia’s plan to attack Somerset, I’d completely forgotten.

“Actually, do you mind taking my place? I—” I hesitated. “I’m going to spend the evening with Knox.”

Internally I winced, knowing how it must have sounded to Benjy, and sure enough, his hand stilled in the middle of placing a piece of chicken on a plate. “Oh. I thought we could spend some time together tonight.”

Guilt twisted in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t tell Benjy the truth about why I wanted to stay with Knox, not without revealing Celia’s call, but I owed him some kind of explanation. “I need to talk to him about everything going on with Lila,” I said as steadily as I could. “If we don’t come up with a counterattack soon, we’ll lose any ground we gained this morning.”

Benjy eyed me, and I could sense his uncertainty. I gave him a questioning look.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, and he finished preparing our plates. “If you finish early, come find me.”

“I will,” I promised, and taking the plates, I forced a smile before heading back to the office, feeling worse with each step I took. I hated keeping secrets from him, but the more time I spent as Lila, the more of a habit it became.

As I walked away, able to feel his gaze burning into the back of my skull, I made myself a promise, too. After this war was over, there would be no more secrets between me and Benjy. Even if it meant telling the whole ugly truth, at least we would be honest with one another.

Knox and I settled in on the sofa, him sitting rigidly while I propped my feet up on a footstool. Every screen in his office displayed a different news channel, and together we watched as the anchors droned on and on about acts of terrorism that hadn’t happened and shortages that didn’t exist. Whatever Daxton’s game was, it involved feeding the public lie after lie about our campaign. With communication between cities nearly nonexistent, few had any way of disproving the news channels’ claims. Or any reason not to believe them.

“How can you stand watching this?” I said as I ate the last bite of hard biscuit. “It’s all lies. Everything they say is just a bunch of propaganda for Daxton and the Ministers.”

“I remind myself that out of all the crimes the government commits, lying to the public is pretty low on the list. Every government does it, no matter how good their intentions are or how much they care about their people.” He glanced at me. “We’re doing it right now, to our little part of the world.”

I scowled. “That’s not what I—”

“I know what you meant, Kitty. And I gave you my answer.” He leaned back, his posture still stiff. “Once you accept that everything that comes out of a news anchor’s mouth is propaganda, it gets easier to read between the lines. And that’s what I’m listening for. The things they aren’t telling us.”

I fell silent for several minutes, listening to a man drone on about how the Hart family was holding together during this difficult time, in the midst of such terrible and hurtful accusations from someone they had treated like family. It was easy to sniff out the real story when I already knew it, and I waited for another to come on.

“How did you get started with the Blackcoats, anyway?” I said. “I know you knew Celia through Lila, but—what, did the three of you have dinner one day and decide to start a revolution? How did that happen?”

“Something like that,” he muttered. “Celia’s never been particularly subtle about her political ideology. I sought her out, and the rest fell into place.”

“Wait—was your relationship with Lila an arrangement, then?” I said as a piece of the puzzle clicked into place. It made sense—Lila and Knox had never seemed to get along. “Was it a way to spend time together without being discovered?”

“Yes,” said Knox, his tone growing shorter. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m not in the mood for conversation right now.”

It wasn’t all the same to me. I still had a million questions to ask, ones I’d gathered every minute of every day we’d been forced to play pretend. But tensions were high enough right now, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to try to kick me out.

So for the rest of the night, as the hours dragged by, I kept quiet. Sometimes Knox would make a comment about a story, and I would chime in with a response, but he never elaborated further than that. Those occasional remarks grew less and less frequent as midnight came and went, and sometime around one in the morning, I said hopefully, “Maybe Sampson talked her out of it.”

Knox’s jaw tightened. I set my hand over his clenched fist, and only then did he relax marginally. “If we haven’t heard anything by dawn, I’ll believe it.”

Sometime around two, I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to—I’d promised I’d stay up with Knox, and I wanted to. But my ribs ached, the couch was warm, and the lull of voices was too much to resist. I rested my head against the armrest, promising myself I’d only close my eyes. Within seconds, I was fast asleep.

The sound of sirens jolted me awake, and I sat up, my head spinning. “What—?”

Beside me, Knox’s expression was impassive, but his fingers were digging into his thighs. The sirens weren’t coming from Elsewhere. They were coming from the televisions.

Every news network had a different view of the same scene: an image of the front gate of Somerset. Lights from emergency vehicles flashed across the brick wall, and a camera zoomed in on a team of Shields climbing over onto the property.

My heart sank. “They raided Somerset after all. Is Daxton...?”

“I don’t know,” said Knox. “If Celia had the chance, she took it. I guarantee you.”

Wide-awake now, I leaned forward and watched the images unfolding on the screens. It was the middle of the night in D.C., too, but light flooded Somerset like it was midday. Gunshots sounded in the distance, and I briefly closed my eyes, trying not to imagine where those bullets might wind up. I may not have known the other Blackcoats well, but we were still on the same side.

Someone knocked on the door, and I jumped. Strand poked his head inside, first glancing at Knox and me, then the televisions. “You’re watching this?”

Knox nodded. “Call a meeting for dawn. However this turns out, we should know by then.”

Thirty seconds after Strand left, one of the feeds cut to a reporter whose face was mostly obscured by a thick scarf. She didn’t seem to care, however, as she excitedly rambled into the microphone. “We are receiving reports now that Prime Minister Daxton Hart’s body has been spotted near the front of the Hart family home. Do we have visu—”

Suddenly an image of Somerset appeared. Normally it was a beautiful sight, and no matter how many times I’d been down the drive heading toward it, I’d always been captivated by the high windows into the atrium, the opulent balconies, the shining white exterior that reflected a shimmer of rainbow in the sunlight. But this time, I had to swallow a gag.

Daxton’s body hung from the front door, held up by a chain wrapped around his neck. A hunting knife was buried to the hilt above his heart, and a big red X glistened across his chest. I doubted it was paint.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, clasping my hand over my mouth. Beside me, Knox remained silent, but out of the corner of my eye, I watched his expression go from painfully neutral to barely suppressed rage.

“That’s it,” he said tightly. “It’s over. We’ve lost the war.”


V The American Dream (#ulink_25d07a56-1dd1-57a5-ab71-234749b202f8)

The camera lingered on Daxton’s body for far longer than anyone decent ever would have looked. I turned away after I inspected the portion of his face I could see for any sign it wasn’t him, but every detail matched. Even his dark eyes, which stared blankly out into the night.

Knox buried his face in his hands and didn’t move for nearly an hour. I didn’t know what to say to him—there was nothing to say, nothing that would make any of this any better. I couldn’t apologize for revealing Daxton’s real identity that morning, but that was the root of it. It was my fault Celia had done this, and it was my fault Daxton was dead. I didn’t mourn him, but I did mourn our chances at a fair fight. Already the news networks were showing highlights from the late Prime Minister’s life—mostly from before Victor Mercer had been Masked, which was almost amusing, considering the real Daxton Hart had died over a year ago. Better late than never, I supposed.

None of them even hinted toward the atrocities Daxton had committed in his lifetime. There wasn’t a single word about the facts I’d laid bare in my speech. Just as Knox had predicted, Daxton was celebrated as a hero and a martyr who had died protecting his family and his country from a violent fringe group bent on terrorizing honest and decent American citizens. Any ground we might have gained that morning had disappeared beneath our feet, and already we’d begun to fall.

“We need to tell the others,” said Knox roughly, once he finally came up for air. It was nearly dawn by now, and through the window I could see a pink stain on the edge of the horizon. “We need to prepare them for—”

He stopped, but he didn’t need to finish. They needed to prepare to either spend the rest of their lives on the run as traitors, or they needed to prepare to be executed. We needed to prepare.

Benjy. Knox. Me. We weren’t just enemies of the state anymore—we were enemies of the entire country. And no speech could change that now.

I stood. “I need to find Benjy.” We needed to figure out what we were going to do, and fast. Benjy would be able to hide in plain sight, but everyone in the country knew my face. I would have to spend the rest of my life underground.

I was halfway to the door when the networks all crackled at once—the same sound I’d heard on the radio the night before. But this time it wasn’t Lila’s voice on the other end.

“I see you have once again tried to murder me, and once again, you have failed.”

I whirled around, my heart in my throat. Seated behind a desk in a room I didn’t recognize was Daxton Hart. “What—?”

Knox leaped to his feet and hushed me, his eyes glued to the screen.

“A knife to the heart and a chain around the neck. Not terribly symbolic, dear sister, but I suppose it gets the job done.” Daxton leered at the camera, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes. Like this was a game to him, and he’d just outsmarted us. “Only problem is, it wasn’t me.”

At this, he seemed to sober up. He folded his hands and furrowed his brow in his best impression of someone deeply troubled, but I knew him well enough to see the grin desperate to emerge.

“You and your band of terrorists didn’t kill me, Celia. You killed a father of two who bravely volunteered to serve as my double at Somerset while I took refuge in a safe place far from your guns and threats.” He stared into the camera, and the glint in his eyes never faded. “My son, Greyson, and my dear niece, Lila, are both safe with me, and they will remain so for the duration of this fight. And I promise you, citizens of the United States, I will stop at nothing to see these so-called Blackcoats brought to justice. The entire weight of the United States Army is coming for you, and the people will not protect a bunch of murderous traitors. And I promise you, sister, by the end of this—” He leaned in close enough for me to see a popped vein in his eye. “You will be the one in chains.”

The broadcast cut out, and the stunned reporters and anchors all scrambled for something to say. Rather than listen, however, Knox turned the screens off, and silence permeated the room for several long seconds before he let out a victorious holler.

“That idiot. That egomaniacal fool.” Knox whooped and hit the desk so hard that a paperweight toppled to the floor. “He’d won the war. He had it wrapped in a bow and delivered straight to his doorstep. All he had to do was keep quiet and let his generals do his dirty work, and he would have had us.”

“And now he doesn’t?” I said, confused. Knox turned to me, grinning for the first time since—I couldn’t remember ever seeing him grin like that, actually.

“Because he couldn’t stand giving Celia even the impression of a victory.” Knox punched his fist into the air. “Now the whole country knows doubles of Daxton exist. First they’ll question whether he’s really who he claims to be—if he isn’t a double himself, and the real Daxton’s dangling by his neck on that door.”

“He’s the real Daxton. Or Victor, I guess,” I said quietly. No one could fake that sadistic stare.

“I know,” said Knox. “But they don’t. They’ll question it, and before long, that conversation will lead to them wondering if you were telling the truth after all. He just blew his entire defense. The sympathy, the martyrdom, his legacy—all because of his stupid pride and need to make sure everyone knows he’s still in control.” He shook his head, still beaming. “We have a chance, Kitty. We actually have a chance.”

“We have more than a chance,” I said firmly. “We’re going to win this.”

Knox and I walked into the noisy living room side by side, and instantly everyone fell silent. Several members of the Blackcoats paced, their expressions twisted with anger, while others slumped over with disappointment. No one, not even Benjy, looked happy.

“Why are you smiling?” demanded Strand as we headed to the front of the room. Knox stopped underneath the portrait of Daxton, and I stood beside him, for once not feeling like a burden or a nuisance. I hadn’t done anything, but even if I had, Knox was too happy to care.

“Because we just went from losing this war to having a real chance at winning it,” said Knox. As he launched into an explanation, Benjy joined me, his brow furrowed.

“Where have you been?” he whispered, taking my hand in his.

“I was watching the news with Knox,” I whispered in return.

“All night?”

I nodded and gave him a strange look. “What else would I be doing with him?”

Benjy opened his mouth to say something, but wisely shut it. His grip on my hand tightened, however, and he didn’t let go.

“Though Celia’s plan backfired, it’s also offered us an unparalleled opportunity to gain the country’s support,” said Knox to the other Blackcoats. “We must seize this chance and prove our allegations are true.”

“How? By tying Daxton down and forcing him to admit it?” said Strand. But before Knox could answer, I knew exactly what he was going to say.

“The file.”

Everyone in the room looked at me. I cleared my throat. It wasn’t the first time I’d blurted out something ridiculous, but this time, I was absolutely sure I was right.

“There’s a file full of evidence that Daxton is really Victor Mercer,” I said. “I stole it a few weeks ago. It’s part of the reason Daxton had me arrested and thrown into Elsewhere. I hid it,” I added. “In Somerset.”

“We’ll send word to the D.C. team at once,” said Strand. “We can have it in our possession in minutes and out to the public by noon.”

Knox shook his head. “I’m not trusting anyone else with something this important. There could be spies among us, and this folder is the only chance we have to prove Daxton is Victor Mercer.”

The rest of the room grumbled their discontent, but I understood Knox perfectly. We both knew the real reason for his hesitation was Celia. After the stunt she’d pulled the night before, I didn’t blame him for not trusting her. He couldn’t very well throw Celia’s loyalty and rationality into question in front of her army, however, not when she was the one running the rebellion outside Elsewhere.

“So what are we supposed to do, then? Go get it ourselves?” said Strand.

“Yes,” said Knox. “I’m going to assemble a team of volunteers willing to sneak into Somerset and steal the file back without ever alerting the other Blackcoats to our presence.”

“We’re not at war with ourselves,” said Benjy. “Given the importance of this file, we could use all the help we can get.”

“This is a need-to-know mission only,” said Knox. “It does not leave this room, is that understood?”

The others nodded, though several cast wary looks at Knox. I squeezed Benjy’s hand.

“I’m going with you,” I said. Knox scowled, but I cut him off before he could protest. “I’m the only one who knows where the file is, and even if I tell you how to get there, it’s possible you won’t be able to reach it. Besides, I’m the one who hid it. I should be the one to recover it.”

A deep line formed in his forehead. “If something happens to you, our campaign will never recover.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to make sure it doesn’t,” I said. “I know exactly where to find it. We’ll be in and out, no problem.”

“Don’t jinx it,” muttered Knox, but he nodded stiffly. Beside me, Benjy shifted.

“Kitty—”

“I’m the only one who can get to it,” I said quietly, looking up at him. “It’ll be fine.”

He stared at me, doubt clear in his gaze, but there was no talking me out of this. I didn’t just owe it to Knox and myself—I owed it to the entire country to do this. I was the reason Daxton wasn’t dead in the first place, and countless people would suffer—had already suffered, and would continue to suffer—because of it. This was mine to make right; no one else’s.

“We’ll only have a short time frame before the Shields launch a counterattack,” said Knox. “But if we can get in before sunset, we should be fine.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” said Strand. Knox and I glanced at one another.

“I’m afraid that’s classified,” said Knox. “I’ll need half a dozen volunteers. We’ll take a jet out in exactly one hour.”

What he needed half a dozen other people for, I couldn’t fathom, but I didn’t question it, either. It would only take two of us to get into Somerset—hell, I could do it on my own, but I knew Knox wouldn’t let me go in without him. The more people who came with us, the worse our chances of going undetected were, and ultimately they would only get in our way.

When the meeting disbanded shortly after, I headed upstairs with Benjy at my heels. Neither of us said a word until we reached our bedroom, and he closed the door firmly behind him. “Kitty, you don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” I said, searching for a clean set of clothes. “I know why you don’t want me to go—”

“Do you? Because it doesn’t seem like you do.” He raked his fingers through his short red hair, exasperated. “How many times have we almost lost each other?”

“Benjy...” I paused long enough to study him. His face was stricken, and I softened my tone. “Too many. We’ve nearly lost each other too many times, and if this war keeps going on like this, eventually we will.”

“If you keep taking risks like this—”

“Sometimes the risk is worth it. And some things—some things are more important.”

“More important than what? Protecting the people you love?”

“Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing by fighting this rebellion in the first place?” I dug out a pair of black pants and a black top. Perfect for sneaking around. “I need to take a shower. I’ll be home by dinnertime.”

“Kitty—”

“We’ll talk about this then, okay?” I said, but he grabbed the bathroom door before I could open it.

“No, we’re talking about this now, because there might not be a then.”

I let my hand fall from the knob and stared up at him defiantly. “You’re not talking me out of this.”

“Then we have a problem, because I don’t know how many more times I can do this.”

My mouth went dry. “You don’t have to do this, Benjy. It would be safer for you if you weren’t here anyway.”

“Do you really think being away from you would help? I’d still worry constantly—”

“I don’t want you to worry,” I said, exasperated. “You should be focusing on your own life, not mine. And it feels like the deeper we go into this war, the more I distract you.”

“You’re part of my life, Kitty. The most important part.” He reached out to touch me, but I shifted back, and he dropped his hand. “Yes, I worry about you. I worry about what this is doing to you—being Lila, fighting for people you didn’t even know four months ago. I can tell it’s slowly chipping away at you, one day at a time, and I hate myself for not being able to protect you from all of this.”

“It isn’t your job to protect me.”

“But you’ll let Knox try.”

The ground felt as if it had dropped out from under me, and I opened and shut my mouth in shock. “Is that it, then? Is that what all of this is about? You’re mad I stayed with Knox last night?”

“Well, I’m not exactly happy about it,” he said, with more sarcasm than I’d thought he had in him. “You’re hurt. I wanted to be there for you—to give you a relaxing night where you could rest. Instead, you spent it with him. And sometimes—” He stopped.

“Sometimes what?” I pressed, an edge in my voice. “Whatever it is, let it out, Benjy. Because there might not be a then, remember?”

The moment I said it, guilt washed over me. He’d done nothing to deserve this fight, and I was being a complete jerk about something I knew was quickly becoming a problem for us. Rivers pointing out Knox’s supposed feelings had been bad enough; Benjy bringing it up made me want to claw the walls with frustration and anger. And if he really thought I would ever do anything with Knox when he was waiting for me just a room or two away, then he didn’t know me at all.




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/aimee-carter/queen/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.