“Do you actually need something, or are you just here to bother us?” I said over my shoulder.
“Have you actually made any progress, or did your fake passport idea not go as intended?” he retorted.
My chest squeezed painfully. “I guess I missed the part where you had a better idea. Or where you were willing to search the continent for the second bracelet on your own.”
Stellan drummed his fingers on the back of the couch. “You know very well that I do have a better idea . . .”
I shook my head and retrieved a newspaper article we’d found earlier from my bag. Another item for the crazy clue wall.
“Just tell me one thing,” Stellan said after a minute. I could feel him watching me as I tacked up the article. “Is it because of him?”
“What?” I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“I mean, kuklachka, do you refuse to fulfill the mandate because of your feelings for someone you’ve only just met?”
I rubbed my face. “I think the real question is, why do you want to marry me? The tomb of Alexander the Great has been lost for centuries. I’m not denying that us getting married might mean something in the world of the Circle, but a church and a white dress isn’t magic.” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “‘Union’ could mean something besides marriage—something that would actually help us find the tomb—but until we figure out if that’s true and what it is, we have a better chance of finding it by following actual clues left by someone who’s been there than by pledging our eternal love. And we have those clues. There’s a second bracelet out there that we need to find. And then we’ll find the password, and it’ll tell us how to get to the tomb. I hope,” I finished under my breath.
That was another thing. It wasn’t just the twin bracelet we had to find. I slipped a thumb between the bracelet and my wrist. The outside of it just had the inscription and decorations. But once we’d inspected it more, we’d realized the inside was a whole separate layer. Its width was divided into five equal bands I could spin around my wrist independently, each with a long string of letters etched into it. We assumed it would work like a combination lock: if we rotated the rings so the letters were arranged in the correct password along the indicated line, something would happen. We hoped the rest of the letters might line up to form more words—like, for instance, the location of the tomb.
Stellan sat forward, fingers steepled under his chin. The backlight from the window made him look like he was glowing at the edges. “First off, let me remind you that I’ve got fireproof skin.”
His hand drifted to the translucent scars that showed above his collar. It was true. When he’d held a lighter to his skin in the Dauphins’ basement, his skin hadn’t even singed. The One who walks through fire and does not burn, the mandate said. The Circle didn’t realize it was so literal.
“I’m not going to say the word magic, because if it is a trait in my bloodline, there must be a scientific explanation,” he went on, “but there’s more going on here than we understand.”
I pressed my lips together and turned back to the clue wall.
“And second,” he went on, “if anyone in the Circle finds out about the thirteenth bloodline—which you uncovered, by the way, so thank you for that—and you don’t back me, I’m dead. They’ll assume I’m planning a coup. If I did manage to get away, I’d be running my whole life, and so would my sister.”
Stellan’s accent got a little thicker on the last words. I pictured the little blond girl he’d showed me a picture of. Anya. Just after we’d escaped the wedding, he arranged for someone in Russia to hide her away, just in case, but I knew he still worried.
“But if I did have you on my side,” he continued, “if I was bound to the girl they believe to be their savior? The Circle might not have a single leader, but the closest to it is you. And if we were together, us. Then I could sleep at night no more worried someone was going to kill me than I am right now. That’s why I want to do it.”
Somehow, through all of this, I hadn’t thought of it that way. The leader of the Circle? I twisted a pushpin deeper into the wall. “You think someone’s planning to kill you?”
Stellan sank back into the stiff green couch, and it creaked in the quiet. “In this world, there’s always someone planning to kill you.”
At that, we both glanced out the window, then at the door. “And besides,” he said, “how do you know the union is not marriage?”
“Napoleon’s diary—”
“Didn’t say specifically that it’s not.”
“I know what the Circle believes, but why would Napoleon have left clues if marrying two people created some kind of North Star that pointed the way?” I repeated, gesturing to the wall.