“It’s not safe out there,” he says, too close to my ear.
“Yeah, well …” I look up at him. “Maybe it’s not safe in here either.”
Once, when I was little, my mom took me on a tour of the city.
It wasn’t like the tours the real tourists do. No. It was My Mom’s Valancia, and we spent a whole day, just the two of us, eating gelato from her favorite stands and riding bikes down her favorite streets.
We browsed in the store where she bought her first fancy party dress.
We took charcoal and palettes and tried to sketch her favorite view of the city from high up in the hills.
As the sun set that evening, I held my mother’s hand and walked back down Embassy Row, knowing there was no place else in Adria that I ever really needed to visit — that I’d seen everything worth seeing.
I was wrong.
Because now I’m walking into a room that no tourist — no mere mortal — is supposed to ever see.
“Hello, Grace.” Princess Ann stretches her arms out as she greets me. “I was so glad to get your call.”
The man who escorted me up from the private entrance leaves us and closes the big double doors behind him. I’m filled with a kind of nervous energy that I can’t quite hold in.
“I can’t believe the phone number my mom had for you was your actual phone number.”
At this, the princess laughs, and that makes me remember that she really was my mother’s best friend, that once upon a time she was just a regular girl.
Before she married the crown prince of Adria.
Before she gave birth to a future king.
Before my mother died.
Long before I became a killer.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know how I got here exactly, I just … You’re part of it, aren’t you? You’re one of them.”
Princess Ann considers answering, I can tell. But instead she turns toward the staircase that curves along the edge of the great room, lush red carpet running down its center. It’s a staircase meant for a queen.
“Come, Grace, you must be thirsty. I’ve already rung for tea.”
I’m not the kind of girl who has tea parties. Not when I was little. And certainly not now. I was the kind of girl who might set her teacups up along a fence, use them for target practice with her slingshot. But I don’t say any of that to the princess of Adria.
She leads me to the massive staircase, then up and up to the fourth floor of the palace.
These are the family rooms, I can tell. The paintings on the walls are all less than three hundred years old. The cheap ones. And the ceilings are lower than in the grand staterooms and ballrooms below. But when she pushes open a wide set of double doors, the room she leads me into is still maybe the most beautiful that I have ever seen. It’s smaller than the ballroom, less stately than the entrance where just a few weeks ago I curtsied before the king. No, this room isn’t quite that formal, but everything inside it is equally majestic.
Two fireplaces flank it on either end, surrounded by deep chairs covered in soft brown leather. There are plush couches, and tables covered with beautiful pots of orchids and family photos in silver frames. But there is also a soft blanket, an overturned book. Beneath one of the sofas there is a pair of discarded tennis shoes. This isn’t where Princess Ann entertains, I realize. It’s where she lives, and I know it is some great honor just to be here.
But perhaps the most striking thing about this room is the four large windows that dominate the far wall. Black silk curtains run from floor to ceiling and, wordlessly, I’m drawn toward them. When I look outside I see that we are exactly in the palace’s center — the gates are right outside — and I remember standing right there, looking up at this very spot while Ms. Chancellor told me a story.
“Is this …”
“Yes, Grace,” the princess says. “This is where they hung the bodies.”
Behind me, doors open and a maid delivers an elegant tray covered with the things for tea. But even the splendor of this room and all the trappings of the palace can’t keep me from the windows and the scene that is playing out down below.
“They’re setting up for tonight,” the princess says. I hadn’t realized she’d come so close.
“What’s tonight?” I ask.
Princess Ann looks at me, surprise all over her face. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head, stare back at the window. “Mom didn’t like the festival. She always kept us away from it. She said it was dangerous.”
Gently, Ann reaches out and touches the glass. “It is.”
Down below, workers are stringing lights throughout the square and over the sidewalks. Vendors are setting up carts draped with fabrics in white and red. And in the center of it all, the fire still burns.
For the first time, I see it all through the eyes of the woman beside me. When a group of tourists look up at the palace and start taking pictures, I expect her to step away, but she just shakes her head, reading my mind.
“The glass is one-way,” she says. “And bulletproof.”
Every girl thinks about growing up in a palace. Few ever ponder living in a cage.
“What’s tonight?” I ask.
“It’s the fourth night,” Princess Ann tells me. “The Night of a Thousand Amelias.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
She looks at me. “Your mother really never told you?”