“We will,” said Manon.
When Beni returned with two cups of coffee and a hot chocolate, he looked less upset.
Scarlett waited for him to sit down and then spoke. “Is there anything else I should know about what happened while we were asleep? Anything Laylani did that you want to get off your chest?” She reached across the table and grabbed Beni’s hand.
“She was… the worst version of herself every day. Instead of being sad, she’s been mean. She kept dragging me out with her and demanding I wear just the right black outfit. No matter what I did, though, she was never happy. I hated it. The idea of being alone with her forever. Having her as my only family.” He shuddered.
Scarlett pushed herself to her feet and opened her arms to him. He stood and let her embrace him.
“I promise you,” she said, “we’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re never left alone with her again.”
Beni sighed in her arms, and she thought maybe some of the tension had left his body.
After a long moment, they sat back down. Beni fell asleep minutes later, but Scarlett wasn’t sleepy. The extra caffeine in the energy drink Beni had given her had to be keeping her up. After weeks of unconsciousness, she hated the idea of sleep and embraced the added buzz from her coffee.
Staring out the window, she didn’t register anything as they moved away from the waterways of Soleil and into the marshes on the outskirts of the city. Only when they passed TornalingNational Cemetery did a stabbing ache pierce through the numbness of their escape. She imagined her dad’s casket in its final resting place next to her mother and her paternal grandparents, and the stabbing ache became sharper. In an attempt to forget about his body lying cold in a field it would never leave, she imagined him alive.
What would Dad say if he could see me now?
She wished he could see her. Although, if he were alive, they wouldn’t be running for their lives.
Scarlett glanced from Beni to Manon. They looked normal. The three of them were running away from Laylani and whoever had abducted them, but to anyone looking at them now, Scarlett and Beni could simply be setting off on a weekend getaway with their grandmother. Their minimal disguises seemed to be working.
Next to her, Manon pored over the newspapers they’d bought. Her grandmother glanced up and caught Scarlett’s attention.
“They still don’t know who shot your father,” she whispered. “All I see in the papers is mention of the ongoing investigation.”
“How is that even possible?” It made Scarlett want to scream.
Manon continued. “There’s nothing at all about our abduction, only some nonsense about you having sleeping sickness.” She snorted. “There’s nothing about me. Guess no one noticed I was gone.”
Scarlett let out a sigh of frustration. “That’s unbelievable. Can I see one of those?”
Manon slid one of the papers to Scarlett. It was theSoleil Times, the favorite paper of anyone who preferred the Cerulean Party’s politics. An op-ed article on the second page caught her eye.
Heroux’s Dreams Deferred
The Cerulean Party is scrambling to reorient themselves after the assassination of Lord JulesHeroux. Some hoped Lady Elestine Spencer would be able to pass the border legislation, but the votes haven’t materialized. The much-anticipated border vote has been delayed indefinitely, or at least until alliances with key members of the Goldenrod Party can be renegotiated.
Soleil was on the cusp of being a global citizen for the first time in two hundred years. Access to magic might have followed after, with all the benefits to health and quality of life that have not been enjoyed in Soleil in our lifetimes, but alas, that is not to be.
How can Lady Spencer wrangle more support? With Lady Scarlett Heroux bedridden with the hereditary sleeping sickness known to plague descendants of Clair de Lune, there’s little hope of her stepping up near term to bridge the gap. That is a shame for the Ceruleans, given she’s known to be of the same liberal stock as her father and has recently completed her first-class degree in politics at the prestigious University of Soleil. In the event of her death, the seat would pass to Beaufort Heroux, who is woefully underage at twelve years old.
The article filled Scarlett with longing to help the Ceruleans. Reading about Lady Spencer made her think of Alastair. She glanced toward Beni. She wanted to ask him if Alastair had come by or offered Beni his assistance while she was asleep, but she didn’t want to wake her exhausted brother.
Brushing thoughts of Alastair aside, she focused instead on Elestine struggling without her father there to help. Elestine was more to Scarlett than just Alastair’s mother; she admired the woman and wanted to see her succeed. She wanted to help Elestine. Was Scarlett’s influence being exaggerated? One more vote wouldn’t be enough, surely. But could public sympathy forher family’s tragedy change things? The public had such a short memory, and her father’s death was weeks ago…
She mentally flicked through her father’s Goldenrod colleagues. Who were the holdouts? They could be peers she knew well. If so, shecouldmake a difference. It made Scarlett want to disembark from the train and go straight to Parliament, demand to take her father’s seat, and resume his work. It broke her heart that everything he’d worked so hard for had fallen apart.
I’m going to fix things. I’ll go back as soon as I’m well and I’ve figured out how to stay safe. I’ll try to help, no matter the cost.
Although, her life was one hell of a price. Even as they sped away from the dangers of Soleil, Scarlett’s death felt near. She’d been abducted, and her father had been shot. Then there was Moira’s threat at the funeral. It was too suspicious of a coincidence that she’d been abducted shortly after and ended up in a medically induced coma under her stepmother’s care. The two points had to be related, and what if it all tied in with her father’s death? Her throat was thick as she flashed back to the last time she’d seen him—as he was wheeled away on a stretcher.
That could be her if she was too bold. Moira had said so herself.
Shaking off that worry, Scarlett returned her attention to the newspaper. An article about her father’s murder caught her eye. The journalist gave the Soleil Bureau a severe dressing down for their failure to pinpoint the shooter. It pleased Scarlett to see someone else was angry about that. The reporter went on to note the popular opinion that magic users from abroad must have done it, perhaps even sanctioned by a foreign government. There was also a conspiracy theory—found only on message boards used by members of Soleil’s magical black market—that the prime minister’s death was an inside job. Intrigued, Scarlett read the article twice. The anonymous posts claimed that a cut ofprofits from the black market was being used to pay out officers as high up as Aaron Fox, who was second-in-command of the Soleil Bureau, and suggested that a stream of substantial income was the reason they’d allowed the prime minister to be shot.
Scarlett set the paper down. The black-market angle was interesting, but she wanted to parse through her immediate experience. “What’s the last thing you remember before we were abducted?” she whispered to her grandmother.
