“Ignore them,” Alexei says when the door dings and they’re finally gone. “They know nothing.”
It’s true. And, honestly, that’s the hard part. They don’t know what it feels like to watch your brother lie on a table, life flowing out of him like the blood that stains the floor. They don’t know what it means to walk down a dark alley, jumping at shadows, looking for ghosts. They aren’t hunted. They aren’t marked. They can gather their bags and their friends and rush out into the sunlight while I am cursed to live in the shadows. Not just for now, but for always. I’m thousands of miles away, but I’m still locked in the tunnels beneath Adria. I’m still trying to find a door.
“Grace Olivia.” Dominic’s voice brings me back. “We must leave.”
“Jamie needs to rest,” I try one more time, a broken record.
“He can rest in the car,” Dominic says, helping me from the booth.
“Jamie isn’t well,” I tell him, the words automatic now. My body is numb.
“He will be significantly less well if they find him.”
The door dings as Dominic pushes it open.
“Dominic …”
“Yes.”
“The Society—can they help?”
Dominic puts on his dark glasses, donning his mask, and I cannot read his gaze. He doesn’t want to hurt me further, so he doesn’t answer at all.
In total, I have four fake passports. I have almost a thousand US dollars in cash and almost as much in euros. There are two credit cards with fake names and a burner cell phone that has never been used.
Jamie has a packet that’s similar. Alexei does, too. Dominic handed nearly identical envelopes to each of us as soon as it was safe to remove Jamie from the army hospital in Germany. For weeks, mine have been in a pouch that I keep hidden, wrapped around my stomach. Always there, itching and rubbing against me, daring me to run.
So for weeks, I guess, a part of me has known this was coming.
It’s another night and another motel. But this one is two miles from a bus station, and that’s the only distinction that matters.
I’m quiet as I slip on my shoes and pick up my backpack. Jamie’s sleeping fitfully, and I ease toward the door. I can’t risk him waking as I slip outside.
I don’t say good-bye.
There’s nothing but darkness and an empty highway and the narrow beam of my favorite flashlight, which, it turns out, is all you really need to disappear.
I’ve never really liked crowds, but now I truly hate them. I don’t see people. I see threats. Who has a gun, a knife? How many people are standing between me and the nearest exit, blocking my very best chance at retreat?
I’m too exposed here, too open. But Washington, DC, has more surveillance cameras than any city in the world, with the exception of London. And as I sit with the Capitol to my right and the Washington Monument to my left, I know there are probably more cameras here than average. So I keep a ball cap pulled low over my eyes. My hair is loose around my shoulders. A few days ago I was cursing how long it was starting to get, but now I’m grateful for that extra layer between me and any facial recognition software that might be scanning the globe at this moment, trying to find the lost princess of Adria.
“Hello, Ms. Blakely.”
I might not have recognized the woman who stands before me, but by now I’d know her voice anywhere. Gone is her pristine white suit and fluffy fur stole. She’s in a black trench coat today. She wears a black-and-white scarf around her white hair and she holds a small bag of bread crumbs. Without asking for permission she sits beside me on the bench and starts tossing crumbs to pigeons.
No one seems to notice the men in dark suits who stand not far away. Her guards are almost as unobtrusive as she is. None of the joggers or school groups that pass can begin to guess that the old lady feeding pigeons spent her morning with the president. Alexandra Petrovic might be the Prime Minister of Adria, but she’s also a chameleon. It’s one more reason not to trust her.
But I have to trust someone, and right now she’s my only option.
“Some might say you’re foolish for coming here,” she says.
I have to laugh. “It won’t be the first time they’ve said it. Trust me.”
The birds swarm around us, scattering on the ground as she tosses a handful of crumbs onto the grass.
“I was very pleased to hear from you, Grace. Surprised, but pleased.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“I’m glad.”
“I want to stop running.”
“That’s good, Grace. Let us—”
I spin on her. “I want to end it.”
The PM studies me. We’re thousands of miles from Adria, but it feels like we’re right back where we started.
“If the royal family is after me, I want to prove it. I want to …” But I honestly don’t know how that sentence is supposed to end. “I want to end it,” I say again. “And the Society can help me. Or you can get out of my way.”
“I see,” the PM says. I know she knows I’m serious—that I’ll burn them down. All of them. I won’t stop until the wall of Adria is nothing but a pile of smoldering dust.
“Now you can stand with me or you can stand against me, but you should know I have three conditions.”
If PM Petrovic is angry with me, she doesn’t show it. She just gives a little laugh, as if she’d known this moment was coming all along. Her eyes actually twinkle.