Broken Crowns - Lauren DeStefano

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all this wondering and fear.

      I don’t know what sort of mood Lex will be in when I reach the top of the stairs, but he’s been especially sour lately. He’s running low on paper for his transcriber, and soon he will no longer be able to spend his days hiding in his fictional worlds.

      I knock when I reach his door.

      “Alice?” he says.

      “No, it’s me.” Back home he always knew when I was the one approaching him, but something about this house and its noises disorients him. “I’ve brought some tea.”

      “Oh,” he says, rather unenthusiastically. “Come in.”

      He’s sitting in a wing chair near the open window, and the worry on his face mirrors my own from earlier. He doesn’t care for the wind; perhaps it reminds him too much of the edge. “The weather down here takes some getting used to,” I say. I press the teacup into his hand, not letting go until I’m sure he’s got a grip on it.

      “I have a bad feeling,” he says.

      “Me too.”

      I hesitate, standing before him, debating with myself whether to tell him what I saw in the sky.

      But in the end I’m not given a choice. Even without his sight, Lex is clever at sensing when anything is wrong. “What is it, Little Sister? What’s happened?”

      I wring my skirt in my hands. “We saw the jet about an hour ago. Pen, Basil, Thomas, and I. We’ve been waiting for someone to come home and tell us what it means.”

      Lex is silent for a long moment. “I heard.” He takes a sip of his tea and then with minimal fumbling he sets it on the window ledge. “So it begins,” he says.

      “There’s no need to be so theatrical,” I say. “It may be good news.”

      “A greedy king in a wasteland of wealth holds a princess hostage so that he may invade a tiny floating city, and you still think he may return with good news. My sister the optimist.”

      I am tired of being called an optimist as though it were a bad thing. Pen has used this word against me as well. “I’m merely trying not to panic, Lex.” I hold myself back from saying anything too combative. I don’t want to fight, and it has taken me so long to stop hating my brother for lying to me about our father being dead. I would like for us to be reasonable with each other.

      “Where is Alice?” he asks. Maybe he wants to avoid an argument too.

      “She’s in the garden.”

      “And she knows about the jet?”

      “I told her when we came back inside. We’re all waiting now. Drink your tea, all right? Alice will be up to check on you in a bit.”

      As I cross the threshold, he says, “Morgan?”

      I turn.

      “Be careful.”

      “I’m only going downstairs.”

      “I never know what mad and wild adventures you’ll get off to on a whim.”

      I can’t help but smile at the thought. Mad and wild adventures. It’s not something he ever would have accused me of back home, when I was tucked safely in our little floating world.

       2

      They never exhale, the trees. It was the same on Internment; on a very windy day, the trees rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something were trying to strangle the life from them. The dark sky watches on, filled with anticipation, wondering if this will be a great night, or a horrible night, or the last night of the world.

      “Morgan.” Basil’s voice pulls me out of my trance. He joins me at the window, and when his arm brushes mine, my skin swells with tiny bumps. “You’ve been standing here for an hour.”

      My body releases some of its tension and I lean my head toward his. “I have a bad feeling. Lex does too. Like something big is about to happen.”

      “Suppose something is about to happen,” he says. “Then what?”

      I shake my head. “I’m tired of being driven mad by the ‘what if’ game. I just want to know. I want King Ingram to come back and tell us what’s happening. Good or bad. So all the wondering can stop.”

      Basil is quiet for a few seconds, and then with some difficulty he says, “I’ve been playing that same game, wondering about my parents and Leland.”

      I look at him.

      “I think they must be okay,” he says, and nods straight ahead at the sky, where our floating city is hiding somewhere in that darkness beyond our sullen reflections. “They would follow the king’s orders. They’ve always been smart about that.”

      “Which king’s orders?” I say.

      “Whichever king is in charge these days,” he says.

      “Maybe King Ingram and King Furlow really are forming some sort of alliance,” I say. “Maybe there will be good news.”

      He glances sidelong at me, and a smile comes to his lips. “I’ve always loved your optimistic side.”

      “You’re the only one. Everyone else seems to think I’m foolish for harboring it.”

      He puts his arm around my back, and the last of the tension in me dies. I rest my temple against his shoulder. “I’m tired, Basil. And so worried that the decisions I’ve made were the wrong ones.”

      “The wrong decisions have been made by these kings,” he says. “And for what it’s worth, I would have done the same thing you did. If I’d known about the phosane, I would have told.”

      “Really?”

      “If what’s happening to Pen had been happening to you, if I’d thought this world were killing you, yes. I’d do anything it took to bring you back home.”

      “You’ve always understood me, Basil.”

      His arm tightens around me and I close my eyes. The anxiety feels so distant when he’s around. Farther away and smaller in the sky than our long-lost floating city.

      Then I hear the front door open, and my stomach drops.

      The younger Pipers have long since gone to bed, and everyone else has been in the lobby for hours, waiting for word. All eyes are at the front door when Nimble steps inside, his shoulders dropped, his eyes weary. He is always the first to run to the tarmac when the jet returns, hoping for word about Celeste. And he is always heartsick when no word comes.

      We all wait in silence. Nim raises his head and looks at each of us, settling on me. “King Ingram has returned. My father is with him now. I don’t know what any of this means yet. I’m sorry.”

      He moves toward his bedroom, and by the heaviness of his steps I can suspect what the answer will be. But still I have to ask, “Was Celeste with him?”

      He pauses, his back to me. “No,” he says. “My father told me only that the king has brought a special visitor, but it isn’t her.” He takes a deep breath, and his voice is so tight, I think he may be fighting tears. “I doubt my father will be back tonight. You might as well all go to bed.”

      He can’t get away from us fast enough.

      Pen is standing by the couch, Thomas at her side. She’s staring worriedly after Nimble, though, and she doesn’t hear Thomas until the third or fourth time he’s said her name. “Pen.” She flinches, startled.

      “We’ll know more tomorrow, surely,” Basil says.

      The hotel falls into its nightly silence. I soak in the tub long after

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