Broken Crowns (18 page)

Celeste is surprisingly sympathetic
when I tell her about the wedding. She tells me that I can pick any of her long season dresses and the seamstress will alter it to fit me. She can't allow me into her family's private apartment upstairs, but she sends the seamstress down with armfuls of dresses for me to choose from. Celeste shoos Basil from the room and sends him down to the garden with a patrolman.

“This is girl stuff,” she tells him. “It wouldn't interest you.”

He gives me a worried look but I nod, and he allows the patrolman to lead him away.

I drop onto the stool by the bed, deflated.

“He really is a sweet boy,” Celeste tells me. “You should see the mess that I'm betrothed to. He has an unusual nose, you know, and I didn't quite know how to describe it until we got to the ground and I saw all those birds up close. Wouldn't you know it, his nose is exactly like a beak.”

Despite everything, I laugh. “Now you sound like Pen,” I say. “She's always saying things like that about Thomas, even if none of them are true.”

“Oh, believe me, it's true,” Celeste says, and holds up a paisley pink dress that only a girl with her confidence could ever pull off. “Not that his nose is the real problem. It's who he is. He's truly one of the most awful people I've ever encountered. Cocky, self-serving, and the way he looks at me—like I'm a buffet. Just the thought of being married to him makes me shudder.”

“What does your father say?”

“Papa adores him,” Celeste says. “His mother and father are both doctors, very motivated. Apparently they were both at the top of their class as students. And Papa was so impressed with the pair of them that he selected them from dozens of other couples in the queue to birth my future husband. It was sealed before the boy was even conceived, and months before I was born.”

She holds up a bright green dress the color of grass. “Here, try this one on.” As I move to the changing screen, she goes on. “I guess it went to his head, knowing that his sole purpose in the world was to marry the princess of Internment. Maybe he would have grown up to be a decent person if he hadn't had his destiny sealed, but I doubt it. And anyway, who cares? I'm not going to marry him now.”

“What's to stop your father from claiming the baby is your betrothed's?” I say.

“He won't do that,” Celeste says. “I won't let him. He won't have his way, not about this. Oh! Come into the sunlight. That looks so pretty on you. But it clashes with your eyes. I'm sure I have something with more blue in this pile somewhere. . . .”

“Do you have anything white?” I say.

“Lots of white. And pure white, too. Not that cream or beige stuff everyone else wears.”

“Birdie told me that people wear white when they get married on the ground,” I say.

Celeste begins plucking choice dresses from her collection and making a separate pile. There are a dozen of them, at least. Some with fake feathers, others with fluffy petticoats, others simple with straight hems. “I think a ground wedding would be nice,” Celeste says. “Nim says that when we get married, we won't have to go to a church. That's what's popular down there—churches. But he says we can get married in a garden if I like, or on the ferry.”

“Celeste.” I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the fabric of all the dresses. “Be honest with me for a minute. Are we really going to make it back to the ground? Can you say that with any certainty?”

“Not with any certainty,” Celeste says. “One can never promise that. There could be a fatal virus pandemic tomorrow. Internment could fall out of the sky. The sun could explode. Nothing is certain.”

“Is it probable, then?”

She heaves a deep breath, lays her dress down, and looks at me. “Here is what I believe. You will marry Basil in a few days, and maybe it will be sooner than both of you expected, but you'll treat each other well, and you'll be happy. Nim will find a way to”—she lowers her voice to a whisper—“kill that awful king of his.” She clears her throat. “And then he will find his way back to me. He'll supersede his father and take over as the new king of Havalais; believe me, nobody wants his father in charge. They blame him for all of King Ingram's bad decisions.”

“What happens then?” I ask. I'm trying to make her see that it may not be as easy as she believes, but she's determined not to.

“Then this baby is born and we all live happily ever after. The end.”

“What about your father?”

“He'll see that it's for the best, once this all plays out.”

She truly believes what she's saying, or at least she's trying hard to believe it. What I see is a big mess that's going to end with all of us dead and Internment a big scorch mark in the sky.

“Try this dress,” she says, and hands me a simple white gown with billowing lace sleeves. “I wore it only once, to some ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new hospital wing or some such.”

A year ago I would have been over the moon—marrying my betrothed and wearing one of the princess's dresses. A white dress, at that. Usually they are worn only by members of the royal family. If all this were happening under normal circumstances, I would be happy. Basil would be happy, too.

Instead, both of us are fumbling around trying to make this work somehow.

I try on the dress and then I stand before the small mirror on the dressing table. Celeste stands beside me, her stomach so swollen, it's surreal. “I love this one,” she says. “What do you think?”

“I'm frightened I'll dirty it,” I say. “I've never worn white before.”

“It's only for one afternoon,” Celeste says. “Just gather the skirts if you go into any high grasses.”

“It'll do,” I say. “Thank you.”

“ ‘It'll do'?” She pinches my cheek. “Come on. You can give me something better than that.”

I smile. My reflection in the mirror seems strange. I've never seen myself in all white before, and I don't know who this girl is, about to get married when she ought to be at the academy learning about why the god in the sky loves her so much. “Do you think Basil will like it?” I ask.

“If he doesn't, he's an idiot,” Celeste says with confidence. “If you were wearing this, I'd marry you.”

I stare at my collarbone, framed with lace. So much like a woman, my mother told me several months back, before all this. She knew then what I didn't know. She knew all about the metal bird hiding in the soil below our feet, and she knew that something big was coming. I don't believe she asked for any of it. All she wanted was for her children to be safe, and to hang on to some semblance of the life she and my father had built for us.

But if she were alive, even with our world in ruins, she would want to be here for this. She would want to see me get married.

Celeste frowns at my reflection. “You look as though you're about to cry,” she says. “Oh, Morgan, don't. It won't be such a terrible thing. You're marrying someone you're truly in love with.”

“It isn't that,” I say. I take a deep breath, straighten my back, and steady myself. “If I have to be married at all, I'm glad it's to Basil. I was only thinking that I wish my family could be here.” I look at Celeste. “I don't suppose you were able to find out what's become of my father.”

She purses her lips together and then says, “I wish I had been able to find out. If Papa knows, he won't tell me. I did plead a case on your behalf. I told him all you had done for me, and that if he knew where your father was, and if your father were alive, to spare him. But that's all I was able to do. I'm sorry.”

This news just gets absorbed into the existing numbness I've felt since my return. I nod.

“Here.” Celeste pulls the stool up to the mirror and guides me to sit. “Let's work on hairstyles, shall we?”

In the week leading up to the wedding, the only time that Basil and I get alone is in the evening after dinner. The king has made a point to keep us busy, sending us to talk to the miners and the hospitals like we've done something that's made us famous.

The hospital is the worst of it. We're brought to see only the newborns, but the sterile smell is the same in every room.

When we at last step outside, I feel as though I can breathe again.

“Are you all right?” Basil asks me as we walk for the shuttle. My legs are trembling.

There are guards ahead of us and patrolmen behind us, and I keep my voice low, but I don't really care if they hear me anymore. “That place always makes me think of Lex. I hate it. I hate it, and I miss him, even though he infuriates me most of the time.”

“He's okay,” Basil reminds me. “He's with Alice, and he's infuriating her for the time being, until you get to see him again.” He forces a smile, and for his sake I return it.

“Wherever he is now, I'm sure that's just what he's doing,” I say.

“He's with the Pipers and Alice,” Basil reassures me. “He's safe.”

I know he's trying to console me, but I suddenly wish he would stop talking. His parents and brother are here in the city, and he'll see them at our wedding. I don't know if Lex or my father are truly safe. I don't know if I'll ever see them again.

We sit across from each other on the shuttle, and I'm filled with so much jealousy that I can only stare out the window. It's so strong that I'm certain he can sense it.

He reaches out and puts his hand over mine.

We ride back to the clock tower in silence.

The night before the wedding, I can't sleep. The clock tower strikes midnight and I can feel its chime rattling the walls. I stare at a patch of stone ceiling that's illuminated by starlight.

Basil stirs beside me. It's been nearly a week since our fight about Judas, and even though we've made amends, we haven't gotten very close to each other since then. I can still feel that argument hovering in the air around us, filled with the things we wish we hadn't said, and the things we wish we had.

“Can't sleep?” he says.

I shake my head against the pillow. “I'm thinking about the city lights in Havalais. If I looked out my bedroom window at night, I would see them in the distance, and sometimes I wouldn't be able to tell which lights were stars. It was strange at first, but after a while it was comforting to know that someone else was always awake, going about their business somewhere out there. But here there's just insects and stars.”

He turns so that he's facing me. “Those lights are still on. We just can't see them.”

After a long pause, he says, “When you think about Havalais, are you thinking about Judas, too?”

I turn my head to look at him.

“It's all right if you are. I'd rather the truth than have you try to spare my feelings.”

“Yes, but not in the way you might think,” I say. “I think about what it must be like for him to be living in a world Daphne wanted so badly to be a part of. I wonder if he's thinking about her, what those thoughts are. And I think that they'll always belong to each other, and how painful that must be, to have the other half of your destiny murdered.”

In the starlight I can make out Basil's face, but not clearly. All I can really see are his dark eyes watching me as he listens.

“And then I think that if you had been murdered in that way, I would walk around every day feeling like I was half-dead. I would be just like him, in a way. I would look for you in other people, knowing the whole time I'd never find you. Or even anyone like you.

“He says otherwise, but that's why he kissed me. He was just looking for Daphne. And in a way, I was looking for you. I was thinking about you.”

After a long silence he says, “If I ever lost you, I would be lost, too.” He puts his hand on my cheek, and his thumb brushes over my lips.

My lips part, and I can taste his skin on the tip of my tongue. “It's you,” I murmur. “It was always going to be you. I don't know how you could think it would be anyone else.”