Once An Eve Novel

thirty-four



I STOOD OUTSIDE, KNOCKING UNTIL MY KNUCKLES HURT. “Open the door, Clara,” I yelled. “This isn’t a joke.” I glanced down the hallway. A soldier stationed by the parlor was watching me. Beatrice stood beside him, whispering something, trying to explain away the fight. I finally gave up, letting my forehead rest against the wood door. I could hear her pacing the length of her room, the muffled smacking of her bare feet against the floors.

She paused on the other side of the door. There was the familiar electric sound of the keypad. She opened it a few inches, revealing a sliver of her face. She no longer had the scribbled note in her hands. “Wow, Princess,” she said, barely able to get the words out without laughing. “I never would’ve pegged you for a subversive.”

I gave the door one big push, shoving my way inside. She rubbed her arm where the door had bumped her. “Where did you put that slip of paper?” I opened the top drawer of her desk, thumbing through a stack of thin notebooks. Beside them was a creased picture of a little boy and girl sitting in a wooden porch swing, a kitten curled up in the boy’s lap. It took me a moment to realize that the girl was Clara. The boy looked just a few years younger, with thick black hair and ivory skin.

“Have you completely lost your mind?” she asked. She slammed the drawer shut, nearly closing my fingers inside. “Get out of my room.”

“Not until you give that back to me,” I said, scanning the night tables beside the bed. The fluffy pink comforter was covered with pillows of all sizes. Some were lace, others embroidered with delicate white lilies. There was nothing on the top of her dressers. Nothing in the trashcan beside the desk. She’d probably hidden it away somewhere, waiting until she had the perfect opportunity to expose me.

“What does it matter? I already read it.” Clara crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s that boy, isn’t it? The one you were seeing at night?”

I shook my head. “Just leave it alone, Clara.”

“I wonder what Charles would think about this. You sending messages through the paper.” Her cheeks were red and blotchy, her fingers still rubbing the tender spot on her arm. “At least this time you can’t call me a liar. Now I have proof.”

I let out a long, rattling breath, unable to contain myself anymore. “Do you think I chose this? If it were up to me I never would’ve come to the City in the first place. I never wanted to be here.”

Clara’s thin brows were knitted together. “Then why are you marrying him? I was standing right there when he asked you. No one made you say yes.”

I stared at my shadow on the floor, debating what to tell her. She already had enough to turn me in. The truth couldn’t make things any worse. “Because they were going to kill him—Caleb. Agreeing to marry Charles was the only way I could stop it.”

Clara walked toward me, her head cocked slightly to the side. “So help me understand this. You would leave the Palace right now if you could?”

“Of course,” I said softly. “But I can’t even leave my room. Everywhere I go someone is watching me. When I step into the hallway, Beatrice will be waiting there with the soldier by the parlor. Charles escorts me to every meal.” I glanced at her window, which was open just a crack, the curtains billowing in the breeze. “Haven’t you noticed I’m never alone?”

We stood there in the quiet room, facing each other. She looked more hopeful than she had in days. I straightened up, realizing I did have something to offer her, after all. “So if you want to tell Charles,” I went on, “or the King, or your mother about that message, then fine. I’ll marry Charles in a week and that will be it. But if you want me gone, those codes are my only chance.”

I could see her considering it, weighing what she had to gain by outing me against what would happen if I escaped. She pursed her lips. “You don’t love Charles?” she asked. Her eyes were clear when they met mine, the resentment in them diminished.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

She walked over to a porcelain piggy bank on her nightstand. Its paint was chipped in places and one eye was nearly rubbed off. She held it up, a faint smile crossing her lips. “I’ve had this since I was three.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t move to the City without him.” She flipped it over, pulling a broken piece of cork out of the bottom. The ripped newspaper was inside, my writing scribbled in the margins. She handed it back to me. “You have my promise, then. I won’t tell anyone.”

I ripped the square into the tiniest pieces I could, tucking them away in the pocket of my jumper. She’d given it back. She’d said she wouldn’t tell. And she had no reason to—it would guarantee that I could never leave the Palace. She opened the door for me, and I started down the hall, turning over the scraps in my pocket, finally able to breathe.