“Do you have your flashlight?” Jamie asks, proving he’s one of the few people on earth who really know me, because of course I have it. I hand it to him, and he kneels slowly to the dusty floor.
He’s nowhere near recovered, but adrenaline is the most powerful medicine there is, and right now he’s not feeling any pain. He has more energy than he’s had in weeks as he leans over the broken boards and shines my small, bright flashlight into the space below.
“I’m going down,” I say.
“Gracie—”
Jamie wants to tell me to stop, to slow down, to be careful, but as soon as he looks up he realizes he really should just save his breath.
“I’ll lower you down.”
“No,” I say, but I can’t tell him he’s too weak. “There’s a desk. I can just …”
In a flash, I’m on the ground next to Jamie and dropping into the darkness below.
The desk I land on is solid; it doesn’t even shimmy when I touch down.
“Light?” I hold out my hands, and Jamie lets the flashlight drop.
He doesn’t try to join me, and I’m glad. I don’t have the strength to tell him just how fleeting his own strength is. At least Jamie is smart enough to know it.
So I stand alone in the darkness once again. The beam of light is small but startlingly bright as I shine it upon walls covered in maps of Europe and Asia and the Middle East. There’s a globe on the end of the desk, piles of notebooks; Post-it notes cover the walls. And on every piece of paper there’s a handwriting that I haven’t seen in years.
My mother’s lipstick stains the rim of the cup by my feet, but the coffee has long since grown cold and evaporated away.
If not for a thick layer of dust, the room would look like she just popped out to take a call or help a customer. Maybe she’s gone to pick me up from school and will return at any minute. Maybe she’s been down here this whole time, just waiting for me to come back.
“Gracie.” Jamie’s voice breaks through my mind. “What’s that?”
I turn and follow his finger, directing the light at the wall farthest from the desk. I have to hop down off the old metal desk, push aside a dusty chair, but soon I’m standing in front of something like I’ve only seen in movies.
From a distance, it looked almost like wallpaper—maybe a mural of some kind. But the closer I get, the clearer the images become, and I can tell it’s really more of a collage.
Newspaper articles are pasted over magazine pictures that cover maps and photocopies of what must be ancient books.
There are more Post-its and calendars. The dates go back hundreds of years.
Ms. Chancellor told me that my mom was responsible for antiquities, lost artifacts that were relevant to Adria and the Society. But one glance at this wall, and I know it was so much more than that. She wasn’t looking for something. She was looking for someone. And now she’s dead because, in a way, she found her.
“Gracie, what is all that?”
“It’s the inside of Mom’s head,” I say without even having to think about the answer. Really, the most amazing thing is that I haven’t already made a dozen walls just like it.
“What?” Jamie calls.
“Amelia.” I turn and glance up at my brother. “It’s how she figured out what became of Amelia.”
Jamie doesn’t believe the story. Not really, I can tell. And I can’t blame him. I spent my summer sneaking through the tunnels beneath Valancia—I’ve seen the inside of the Society and heard their tales, witnessed their power. And even I can’t really believe what is, by all accounts, unbelievable.
But you don’t send assassins after things that are make-believe.
Two hundred years ago, there was a palace coup and, in the chaos, a baby was smuggled free. The Society hid her among their own. She was raised in secret. Protected. Safe. And, eventually, she grew up, and her bloodline survived.
Until someone started trying to kill us.
I ease even closer, shine the light up and down, sweeping across my mother’s old obsession.
Maps. Articles. Notes. And in the center of it all, a picture.
My mother looks so young. Her hair is long and her skin is tanned, and she’s smiling as if the future would hold nothing but more good days. Two dark-haired girls flank her on either side. One is famous now, the mother of Adria’s future king. And one is a stranger.
“Who is it?” Jamie asks.
“It’s mom and Princess Ann and … is that Alexei’s mother?” I ask. Carefully, I pull the picture off the wall. Then I climb back onto the desk, reach up, and hand the photo to my brother.
“Yeah, that’s her,” he says. “I remember her. Barely. She and Mom used to get together and tell me and Alexei to go play.”
I’ve always known that Alexei had a mother, of course, but for years she was never mentioned, never seen.
“What was she like?” I ask, as if that is the great mystery here.
“I don’t know,” Jamie says, pondering. “She was—”
“Gone,” a hard voice says from behind him. Soon, Alexei is down on the dusty desk beside me. “She was gone,” he says, as if that’s all that matters. And I guess, to him, it is.