The Conspiracy of Us (24 page)

I
don't believe it for a second.” Jack paced the room.

At any other time I might have appreciated the irony. I'd spent the last few days learning about a world-controlling secret society, and
he
didn't believe
me
?

Stellan stared at his foot. “After the fire, the doctors called it a miracle I'd lived,” he said slowly. “My sister, too. They'd never seen anything like our scars.”

I thought of something. “Your parents. If it's a bloodline thing, one of your parents would have it. One of them wouldn't have died.”

“My mother died in the fire. My father had died earlier. Car accident,” he said quietly.

“You both seem to be forgetting the laws of reality.” Jack paced back and forth. “How would people from a certain bloodline physically not burn?”

I glanced at Stellan. “I have no idea. Maybe we'll find an explanation in the tomb, if we get a chance to look for it. It seems like that's where Napoleon got his information.”

“Fitz was the one who found me after the fire. He brought me to the Circle,” Stellan said quietly. He touched the scars snaking over his shoulder.

Jack shook his head.

“If it
is
true, and Mr. Emerson knew, why wouldn't he have told you?” I said.

“Sounds like he was looking for more information first. About whether the
rest
of it was true, maybe.” Stellan gave a nod in my direction.

The tension in Jack's shoulders spread through his arms, and he eyed Stellan with an even greater animosity than usual, and all of a sudden, I realized the really important thing I'd overlooked.

“Oh,” I said under my breath.

The girl and the One. The One was supposed to unite with a girl of the bloodline.

Or, in other words, me.

“Napoleon mentioned the union being wrong. It doesn't necessarily mean—” I couldn't say it.

Stellan leaned back against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked from the book still in his hand, to Jack, to me. He frowned.

“Forget it. Let's assume for a second we're right, and there's a conspiracy within a conspiracy going on here. That the One is a thirteenth. Is possibly even Stellan,” I said. “I know it's crazy, but for argument's sake, for
Mr. Emerson's
sake, we have to think about it. What would it mean?”

Stellan didn't say anything, but he closed the book, and his eyes narrowed.

“It would mean Luc's not the One,” Jack said.

“The Dauphins would have to let me go, and then we could contact the Order—” And tell them it was Stellan they were looking for. I met Jack's eyes. We couldn't do that.

I started over again. “It would at least mean they'd have to call off the wedding. We could get out of here in time to tell the Order
something.
”

Stellan stood up abruptly. “Of course it would mean no wedding. Of course that's what it all comes back to.”

“Well, it does—”

“How incredibly convenient,” Stellan said with a sneer. “You even thought you'd get me on your side with this ridiculous thirteenth theory.”

I looked from him to Jack, back again. “What?”

Stellan tugged back on his shoes and socks. “That's enough. I'm not stupid. How long have you two been planning this pathetic charade for when she inevitably got caught?”

“No!” I said. “It's not—”

“I can't believe I let you talk me into playing along for this long. I'm taking you back to your cell.” Stellan shrugged his T-shirt back on, grabbed my arm, and steered me out the door.

•   •   •

“Thank you,” Stellan said, opening the door to my room. “The struggling and crying was a good touch, in case anyone thought I was getting sucked in to your schemes.”

“Arrrrgh!” I threw myself on the hard wooden cot. “It's not a scheme. Yes, I want to get out of this, but we're not lying.”

Stellan stood in the doorway. “Even if this thirteenth thing were true—this whole conspiracy of . . .
us
—” He looked me over with a frown. “Do you think anyone would accept it?”

I sat back against the wall, my bare feet dangling from the edge of the cot. “They'd have to accept it if we had proof. If you don't believe me, maybe I'll tell someone else.”

Stellan crossed his arms. “If Monsieur Dauphin hears about you telling anyone, he'll cut out your tongue so you can't do it again. He's not a nice man.”

I flinched.

“If you tried to spread this story, the Dauphins would destroy your ‘proof' immediately. Then they would kill Jack and me for knowing about it.” He shook his head. “You think you're so smart, but you're completely naive in the ways of this world. These people are playing for a lot more than you can imagine.”

“Then I can run.” Fighting obviously wasn't going to work, so flight was all I had left. “At least let me run. Pretend I got away.”

“No.” He smacked a palm on the doorjamb. “Pay attention. You can't run. If Monsieur Dauphin can't have you, do you think he'll let anyone else have you?”

I swallowed hard.

“And it turns out I don't want to see you get killed,
kuklachka.
So don't do anything stupid.”

My mouth went dry. Stellan turned to go.

“How old is your sister?” I said desperately. I didn't want to admit it, but Stellan was a lot like me. He'd heard us out because he cared about Mr. Emerson. The way to appeal to him was through the people he loved.

Stellan opened the door partway, but hesitated.

“What's her name?” I said.

He stayed at the door. “Anya. She's seven.”

I bit my lip. “What's she like?”

His shoulders rose and fell with one deep breath, and he pushed the door closed again. He pulled a tattered photo out of his wallet. A tiny blond girl with huge blue eyes sat under a tree, laughing. Those same scars-that-weren't-scars covered the whole right side of her face. Seven years old. She must have been a tiny baby when they were in the fire.

“Why don't you leave and be nearer to her?” Hurt flared in his eyes, and I remembered this was why he was trying to transfer to Russia. I handed him the picture, and he gently put it back in his wallet.

“Even if I could get another job that would let me take care of her, you don't just leave the Circle. It's not a job you can quit, if you hadn't noticed.”

I glanced at his neck, where I could see the top of his tattoo.

“Maybe I would have done things differently if I'd known what I was getting into, but I was a child. My parents were dead. It was this and have Anya well taken care of, or have both of us go into the foster system in Russia, which wasn't an option.” He broke a splinter off the wooden doorframe and picked at it. “So I do my best so that I can try to move nearer to her someday. But it means I can't make mistakes. Like letting someone beat me to an American girl I have very specific orders about. ”

He gave me a meaningful look, but the sarcasm had already crept back into his voice, displacing any vulnerability. It didn't matter. Somehow, in the space of thirty seconds, he had managed to make me feel bad that I'd made my own kidnapping and interrogation so difficult.

He cleared his throat. “You'd better put on the dress and get ready. They'll be unhappy if you delay the ceremony.”

My eyes were drawn to his neck again, to the tendrils of scar tissue. “There's a way to see,” I said, suddenly realizing the obvious. “At least about the burns. It won't be fun, but if you have a lighter . . .”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. Realization dawned on his face.

“You know it's not true,” he said, staring at the lighter. “It won't prove anything.”

He flicked the lighter, and an inch-tall blue-and-orange flame sparked from its tip. The second it did, he flinched, such a small movement I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been watching so closely.

He let the flame die, and his Adam's apple bobbed with a hard swallow. Then he scowled and flicked the lighter again, defiantly. We both stared at it for a second, watching the flame dance in the drafty room.

In one quick motion, he brought it to the inside of his forearm and hissed through his teeth. He grimaced, and looked away, but left the flame in place for five incredibly long seconds.

When he started to shake, I batted his hand away. “Stop. Enough.”

Stellan dropped the lighter to the ground and clutched his arm to his chest.

I reached for it, and he rested his forearm in my hands. I looked for the burn.

There was nothing there.

I stared, then grabbed his other arm. He shook his head. “It's this one. Right there.” He pointed to the spot and grimaced. “Hurts like hell.”

I had burned myself with a curling iron a few months earlier. It went bright red immediately, and within a few minutes, it had blistered. I reached my fingers to the back of my neck. Even now, I could still feel the welt, and I'd only touched the iron to my skin for a fraction of a second.

On Stellan's arm, there was no mark at all. I touched the skin carefully with my thumb. It was warm, but no redness, nothing. “Not even like the ones on your back,” I whispered.

“Those burns were much worse.” He sounded as awestruck as I felt. “I got them saving Anya. A burning beam fell on us. It took me a minute to get out from under it, and—”

He looked up, and I could see the doubt shining in his eyes.

I latched on to his uncertainty. “Think about it. If we were right, and you were the One, and if we all got away before the Dauphins could catch us,
and
we have all those other clues to the tomb? We might be able to find the treasure ourselves. You wouldn't have to count on the Circle anymore. You could take Anya and go anywhere you wanted.”

He still didn't look convinced. I caught his hands. “Please,” I said, changing tactics one more time. “Just let me out of here so we have more time to investigate. If you sneak me out before Monsieur Dauphin notices—”

He took his hands back, letting mine fall limply to my sides. “I can't risk—no. I'm sorry,
kuklachka,
but no.”

I closed my eyes, defeated. “Then at least call the Order,” I said.

Stellan ran a hand through his hair. “Do you even have the phone number?”

“I memorized it last night.” I rubbed my eyes. “Give me your phone.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket hesitantly. “If I got caught talking to the Order—”

“Fitz is going to
die
otherwise!” I grabbed the phone and punched the number in. “Tell them we're still trying to find the One. They can't blackmail us unless they keep him alive. I hope.”

Stellan took back his phone. “I'm sorry,” he said again. And he was gone.

W
ithout windows to judge the passing of the day, I wasn't sure how many hours had gone by, but it had to be evening by now, and no one else had come in to see me. Maybe they'd changed their minds and were putting it off. Or maybe it just meant a wedding took more than a couple hours to plan, even for the Circle. I stared at myself in the small, utilitarian mirror. This bathroom was rustic compared with the marble and gold of the one upstairs, and the version of me staring back from the mirror was an entirely different Avery, too.

Even if Stellan had called the Order and gotten a reprieve for Mr. Emerson, it was starting to sink in that I was really about to get
married.
Could they do this without my permission? Would it be legally binding? I'd refuse to sign the papers. I'd run away later.

But if they could track me as a random girl in Istanbul, there was no way I'd be able to escape as a wife.

Wife. The word sent a violent shiver through me.

As if on cue, the door opened and I jumped, flattening myself against the bathroom wall. Elodie came in, along with four other maids who chattered at me in rapid French. So much for putting it off.

“Sit,” Elodie said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She dragged the single chair in the room across to the mirror and pushed me into it, then pulled at a limp strand of my hair. “This is disgusting. Have you even showered today?”

I glared at her. “Silly me. I must have missed the spa in this cell.”

She rolled her eyes and studied me in the mirror, pulling my hair back from my face. This was eerily reminiscent of the plane to Istanbul, when she'd put me in the Herve Leger dress.

“Up,” Elodie said. “We don't have time to wash your hair, so dress first, then I'll see what I can do with . . .” She waved a hand at my head.

I didn't say anything while one of the older maids pulled the wedding dress over my head and adjusted the fitted waist so it flowed in a graceful A-line over my hips. The cap sleeves settled onto my shoulders, and she laced up the corset back so tight, I gasped. She gave it one more pull for good measure, and then Elodie gestured to the chair again. I sat gingerly, my back rod-straight in the corset.

Elodie went to work on my hair.

“Does Luc actually want this?” I remembered him smiling at that boy at the club. For that and plenty of other reasons, I was pretty sure he had no interest in a relationship with me, but the political implications of it were something different entirely. In the mirror, I could see the older women whispering behind me while one pulled a pair of blush-pink heels out of a box.

“I can assure you Luc is just as excited about the nuptials as you are.” Elodie tugged a little harder than necessary on a piece of hair before securing it with a bobby pin.

“Can't we put it off until we can talk about it?”

“No.”

“Because it's
fate
?” I said sarcastically. “Our fates are mapped together, as the mandate says.”

“Do you know what a fate map is in biology?” Elodie twisted half of my hair up and set to curling the other half. “It's a map of which cells in an embryo should develop into which specific adult tissues. But what they
should
develop into isn't necessarily what they actually
do
develop into. They can be manipulated, or change on their own, and end up as something completely different from what they were fated for.”

I turned to stare at her. That was a strange thing to say.

She wrenched my head forward again, her honey-dark eyes still trained on my hair. “I've always loved science,” she said sweetly.

So she was just torturing me. I sat in silence while she finished. Another maid handed her a cascade of white lace, and Elodie draped it over her arm.

“Amazing that you managed to keep your eye color a secret,” she said, smoothing the lace with her fingers. “And now, only the Dauphins and a few of their staff members know. Good thing you have this to cover your eyes.” She affixed the white fabric in my dark hair with a comb. “Your father wouldn't be the only one who was angry if the Dauphins' plan was
unveiled.
If anyone else at the wedding saw your eyes before the union was official . . . it would be a riot.”

I glanced up sharply. That was it.

I watched Elodie, who kept her eyes trained on my hair. Maybe she
wanted
me to make a scene so Monsieur Dauphin would have an excuse to kill me.

Elodie stood me up from my chair. There, staring back at me from the mirror, was a bride.

“Doesn't it seem wrong to you that a girl has this much power but has no say in what happens to her?” I said, still staring at my reflection. This couldn't be where the past few days—really, my whole life—had led. “This is so Middle Ages.”

“Oh,
cherie,
it's much older than that.” Elodie worked her fingers under the veil and to the back of my dress. “Now let's make sure this is tight enough.”

She undid the corset strings and I started to protest, but rather than pulling them tighter, she let them out enough for me to breathe. I looked at her in the mirror again, and she continued to avoid my eyes.

Could she actually be
helping
me? Why?

“There,” she said. “Now don't do anything to muss yourself up before the guards arrive to take you to the church. And take this.” She pressed a large black umbrella into my hand. “It's raining, but don't be sad. Rain on your wedding day's said to be good luck.”