Her eyes adjust to the low light, and she gets a look at the riot of papers around me. “Oh no.” She falls to her hands and knees in a rush and gathers them against her chest.
“It’s no use. I’ve already seen them.” My voice sounds far away. I can hardly hear anything over my heart pounding in my ears.
“It’s not what you think,” she says softly.
“I have absolutely no idea what to think.”
She flops down in the middle of the drawings. Her exhausted hands push through them, like she’s a child making a snow angel. “I’ve been having these dreams ever since I returned.”
“Dreams?”
She picks up one of the drawings gingerly, a close-up of Bram’s face, and runs her pointer finger along the line of his pointed ear. The paper crinkles under the pressure of her fingertip. “His face is the only thing I remember.”
“You said they were dreams. That’s not the same thing as a memory.” Maybe she truly has lost it—whatever fragile thing was holding her together has finally snapped.
She drops her eyes, too embarrassed to look at me. “I know.”
I peer up at my sister in the moonlight, her face so much like mine. “I’m sure they’re just dreams,” I say. Bram’s face is in newspapers and statues and public houses all over this city.
“Why are you home?” she asks, as if the strangeness of my presence here has only just hit her.
“I’m running away with Bram. We’re eloping.”
“Oh,” she says weakly. “Are you happy?”
“I will be,” I answer hopefully.
She looks to my open valise and starts helping me pack, throwingin chemises, my worn old cloak, the pearls I wore the day of the Pact Parade.
“Are you safe?” she asks, worried.
“Probably not,” I answer honestly. “But this is my only option.”
She pulls me into a tight hug.
“I love you,” I whisper. “You know that, right?”
“It’s just about the only thing I do know.”
The first light of dawn has begun to leak through the windows, painting my room a pale shade of pearly gray.
A banging at the front door startles us both. I snatch my valise from the bed and latch it as quickly as I can. I pull on my boots next. “Tell Mama and Papa I’ll send word soon. Don’t worry, everything will be all right.”
I sprint down the stairs and throw open the front doors, expecting to see Bram but instead find a footman in familiar Kensington Palace blue livery.
“Her Majesty requests an audience.”
My blood turns cold. We must have been found out. She’s going to kill me for this, the same way she killed Greer.
“No.” I try to slam the door, but the footman blocks it with the toe of his polished boot.
“Ivy?” Lydia calls from the top of the stairs, but she’s not fast enough.
“Lydia!” I scream. “Tell Emmett—”
The footman’s arms encircle me like a vise, and he picks me up and carries me to the carriage.
Lydia chases us out the front door, but she’s left choking on the dust of the carriage as we pull away.
