The Last Princess Read online

  As I tiptoed along behind the girl with the pink teacup, I felt my hatred of Cornelius Hollister gathering inside me like a knot of barbed wire, cutting me from the inside. The spiral staircase continued up and up, soaring high in the narrow tower. Finally, she came to a stop.

  I crouched on the floor below and waited until I saw the girl come back down the stairs, her tray now empty. I hovered in the shadows until her footsteps echoed several levels below me. Then I turned and made my way up, my heart beating faster with each step, pausing at the cell door.

  Through the narrow gap between the metal bars, I peered inside. Jamie lay on a small cot; Mary sat next to him with her back to me. From behind I wouldn’t have recognized her. It was only when I heard her voice gently encouraging Jamie to eat that I knew I was at the right cell. She looked as thin and bony as an old woman. Her shoulders poked through her threadbare, faded red dress. I realized with a start that it was the same one she’d been wearing at the Roses Ball.

  She rested Jamie’s head in her arm, trying to spoon-feed him. I stood there, blinking back tears, trying to say something, but was unable to make a sound. I glanced around the rest of their cell. There was a small wooden table with a pack of playing cards, a teapot, and a cup. Next to the teapot was a crumpled napkin, stained red.

  I pressed my nose into the small space between the bars, watching Mary turn away from Jamie and cover her mouth with her hand—a deep cough racked her whole body. She gradually pushed herself up to stand, pressing her hand against the wall for balance, her other hand still over her mouth. She was moving the way our grandmother moved before she died.

  She plucked the red-stained napkin from the table and wiped the blood away from her hand. I could see she was trying to hide it from Jamie.

  “Mary, Jamie,” I choked out in a gasp.

  Mary turned her head to look at me, her expression hostile, and I realized that she didn’t recognize me. I suddenly felt so self-conscious, so embarrassed by my branded face, my butchered hair.

  “Mary,” I whispered. “It’s me, Eliza.”

  Her eyes lit up, her face brightening with disbelief. “We thought you were dead,” she said, her voice hoarse as tears began streaming down her cheeks. I reached out to her, trying to fit my fingers in the space between the bars, but all I could manage was my pinky. Mary squeezed it tight and kissed it.

  Jamie came over to the bars, and with the tip of my finger, I managed to touch his cheek. His little body was nothing more than a skeleton. I tried to hide the shock on my face, but I could tell he wasn’t doing well. “Have they been giving him his medicine?”

  Mary shook her head.

  I was surprised he’d lasted this long without it. He stared at me silently, his blue eyes hollow in their sockets.

  I pulled the gun out of my jacket. “Mary,” I said quickly, “take this gun. The next time the guard delivers your food, kill her. Take her clothes and weapon and escape.”

  “Eliza.” Mary shook her head. “That won’t fit through the bars.”

  I realized in horror that she was right. The single opening, the food slot on the door, was bolted shut, and there was no way to get the gun through the thin slits between the bars.

  Mary’s worried face watched me as I frantically tried to fit the gun through the gap, hoping that if I turned it just the right way it would fit. “There’s no way.” She shook her head. “We’ve tried everything.”

  “Someone’s coming,” Jamie said, his eyes wide with worry.

  From below came the sound of footsteps echoing against the steel.

  “Eliza, run! Hide!” Mary whispered, panicked.

  “No! I can’t leave you again.” I turned around, dropping into a defensive stance, and held the gun out in front of me. If I was going to die, I would do it fighting for my siblings’ lives.

  “Eliza!” Mary hissed. “Leave! You won’t solve anything like this. You can kill those guards but we’ll still be trapped in here!”

  I ignored her.

  Mary summoned herself to her full height. She was always authoritative, but she could be particularly fearsome if she wanted to. “As your queen, I command you!”

  I turned to look at her in disbelief. “Mary—” I began.

  “There’s no time, Eliza,” she snapped. “I command you,” she said again. “I can’t watch you die.”

  I nodded, my heart so twisted up with love and sadness that it felt like it would burst, and tucked the gun into my pocket. Just then, the guard reached the top of the stairs.

  I spun on my heel and tore down the hallway.

  “I’ve got her!” he cried as he took off after me. “This way! She’s going this way!”

  I turned again and again, lost in a maze of steel passageways and prison cells, hoping I would lose him, but the heavy footsteps followed me at every turn. Each claustrophobic passage looked the same; the walls reflected my image in a blur as I ran onward. Emaciated prisoners stared out at me with eyes demented by torture and the isolation of their cages. The guards’ voices multiplied behind me, coming from every direction, resounding off the metal passageways.

  And then, the hallway came to a dead end.

  I stopped and looked around frantically. I was trapped. I searched the walls with my hands for any way to escape, when I felt a cold wind on my skin. I looked up to see a narrow trapdoor in the ceiling above. It was high, but I had no other choice. I crouched and sprang upward.

  I managed to grab the edge of the opening with one hand, but the gun fell out of my grip in the process. I cursed myself for not zipping it back into my jacket. I looked down, wondering if I should go back for it, when I heard footsteps at the end of the hallway.

  I swung my other hand up and pulled myself up onto the roof, my arms shaking with the strain. The trapdoor was small, and I barely fit through the opening. One of the steel edges caught my back, scraping through my jacket like a knife. The pain was intense, but I pushed on. If I could barely fit through the opening, it would be too small for a guard to slip through. I had at least a minute until they made it to the roof from the stairs.

  “Eliza?”

  I whirled around.

  Wesley ran to me, holding me close for a moment before pulling back to look in my eyes. How was he here? “I knew you would do something like this. I asked you to promise me.” He looked so sad, I ached at having betrayed his trust. “We don’t have much time. You need to hide, now!”

  I looked around. The rooftop was barren. There was nowhere to hide.

  “Wesley, they’re alive,” I said, my voice breaking. “Please. Help me rescue Mary and Jamie.” I had come so close—I couldn’t give up now. But he wasn’t listening. He was opening the recessed door leading from the floor below to the roof. I heard him shout, “Can’t find her up here! Are you sure she’s not on level fifty-nine?”

  I ducked down, wishing for a crevice or dark corner to hide in, wishing I still had the gun on me. Dozens of guards burst out onto the roof, but my eyes were focused only on one.

  “Why, I do believe she’s right here,” drawled a voice I knew all too well. Cornelius Hollister greeted me with an evil smile, moving toward me with predatory slowness. “Eliza Windsor.”

  I instinctively took a step backward, blinded by a flashlight that had been directed into my eyes.

  “Don’t move!” Portia cried. “Or I’ll shoot you straight between the eyes. And believe me, I’ll enjoy it.”

  I squinted into the glare. Cornelius Hollister stood across from me, Portia by his side, her gun pointed at me. I dared another step back, away from them, away from the gun. The backs of my knees hit hard against something. A railing.

  “Should I kill her?” Portia asked, looking to Hollister.

  “No, Portia!” Wesley walked toward her quickly and reached for her weapon. “She’s more valuable alive,” he continued, his tone rough. “She has secrets we need. Vital information.” I searched Wesley’s face for some kind of emotion, but he was hidden by shadow.

>   “Your brother’s right,” Hollister said. “Thank you for bringing her to me. I would never have recognized her myself, disguised and ugly as she is.” Portia laughed loudly at this. Hollister put his arm around Wesley, ruffling his hair affectionately. I gripped the railing behind me as I realized what I was seeing.

  Cornelius Hollister was Wesley and Portia’s father.

  That was what Wesley had been trying to tell me in the cottage when he said he had no choice but to join the New Guard. Cornelius Hollister was the father who had murdered their mother because she found out the truth about him. Looking at the three of them now, together, I felt sickened.

  I had kissed Wesley. I had trusted him. I might have even, in some deep part of me, felt that I loved him. The son of the man who had killed my parents before my eyes and imprisoned my brother and sister. The enemy.

  I felt the railing behind me. I was at the edge of the roof.

  Hollister’s smile caught the light as he came toward me. From the corner of my eye, I saw the dark water glistening below. I gripped the railing with my right hand, tilting back.

  He stood in front of me. “Finally, I have the last one.”

  His hand reached forward, and I felt his fingertips scrape my skin. I closed my eyes as I jumped backward, hurling myself over the edge.

  21

  CONCRETE OR KNIFE? THOSE WERE THE WORDS THAT FLASHED through my head as I hurtled down toward the water. As Mary and I had gotten older and more daring with our dives, we’d graduated from the tree branch over the loch to the highest cliffs over the water. The amount of pain depended on the way you landed: in like a knife and you were safe. But if you dove the wrong way, the water could feel as hard as concrete.

  I dropped, turning through the air, down the length of the Tower. The water was about ten feet away when I straightened myself out, stretching my arms in front of me, tucking my chin to my neck, bracing myself. But the speed of the fall turned me again, and I landed in the water feet-first, sending me straight to the sludgy bottom of the moat.

  The murky water was pitch-black. I couldn’t see the surface. I panicked, my lungs burning from lack of air. Something that felt like a wet hand brushed past my cheek and I screamed, or tried to scream, as my mouth filled up with the water. Sewer snakes! I kicked my legs, frantically beating my arms in the water to reach the air.

  I gasped as I broke the surface, gulping in breath after breath, like a starving person devouring a plate of food. I swam to the edge of the moat wall, pressing my hands against the stones, feeling for something, anything to hold on to, but the wall was covered in a bright green slime that slipped under my fingers.

  I treaded water, kicking frantically and batting away sewer snakes with my arms. An enormous one darted toward me, nipping at my neck. Sewer snakes feed like leeches, clinging to your skin, sucking out the blood. My scream echoed inside the walls of the moat as I flung the snake away.

  The drawbridge lowered over the moat and soldiers stormed across it, their guns trained on me. I looked around in panic, still fighting off sewer snakes. The only place to hide was beneath the drawbridge, but it would only be a matter of time before they realized where I had gone.

  I would have to give them what they wanted. I flailed my arms, splashing them over my head, and sank down. Then I rose up, gasping for air, then down again. I squeezed my eyes shut as I sank into the muddy bottom and held my breath, waiting. My lungs felt as if they would burst as I let myself drift down toward the bottom, keeping motionless so the surface water would stay still.

  Finally, I began to swim carefully toward the rusted iron railing of the drawbridge cranks. Once I was under the bridge, I could come up for air. Still holding my breath, I rose to the surface.

  I gripped the steel bar, shivering uncontrollably. Luckily the crowd was so loud they couldn’t hear me as I gasped for breath. I was out of sight, safe, but only for a moment. A beam of light crossed the water. The guards’ torches.

  “Where is she?” a voice shouted. “Did she drown?”

  “Crank up the drawbridge!”

  I heard the clank of metal as the wheel began to turn. I barely had time to think. My clothes felt like lead and I was sure I was losing blood from the cuts on my back where the trapdoor had scraped me. I felt more exhausted than I’d ever felt before. I was heartsick as I thought of Wesley standing there next to his evil father, of Mary and Jamie, who would probably be killed now because of me. Part of me just wanted to sink to the bottom of the moat. I imagined how peaceful it would feel, even in the filthy water, to be floating, weightless.

  But then, in a flash of light, I saw a hole under the shadowy edge of the drawbridge. I stretched my hands toward it, but I slipped. The drawbridge began to lift upward—in a moment they would see me. Gathering the last of my strength, I reached up and pulled myself into the tunnel just as the drawbridge rose.

  “Find her! I want her alive!” Hollister’s distinctly sinister voice commanded his guards. “Lower the boats, now!”

  The searchlights flashed across the water as the guards jumped into rowboats. Where did the tunnel lead? Could I make it to the other side without being discovered?

  “She’s not here, sir,” one of the guards called up. “She must have drowned.”

  “Set the moat on fire!” Hollister screamed. “That will drive her out!”

  The guards began pouring gasoline onto the water, where it floated in slick pools, its noxious smell reaching me in the tunnel. Someone, probably Hollister, dropped a blazing torch from above. The gasoline ignited in a burst of flame like a flower, red tongues racing across the water in all directions.

  The tunnel was so narrow that I was forced to inch along on my stomach. The air was thick with smoke. I pulled my shirt up to cover my nose and mouth so I could breathe. I crawled, as fast as I could, away from the smoke and the flames and into the depths of the pitch-black tunnel.

  Finally, the darkness in the tunnel began to lift, and I inched the last few feet to its end. I fell onto the street, scraping my hands on the pavement. The air smelled of smoke and I could still hear the voices of the soldiers cheering. I rested my head against the pavement and lay there, too exhausted to move. My cold, wet clothes clung to my body. A burning sensation spread across the wound in my back, but nothing felt as painful as the fact that I was here without my brother and sister.

  From my left came the clank of a chain and what sounded like a low growl. I jumped, looking around in the darkness. Two large, shining eyes stared back.

  “Caligula?” I asked, unable to believe that she had found me. She nudged me with her nose, hooves pawing the pavement, urging me to get up.

  Slowly, my head throbbing, I rose to my feet. I winced as I climbed onto her unsaddled back. To my surprise, she stayed still underneath me. “Please, Caligula, take me home,” I said in a broken voice. “Take me to Scotland.”

  The sound of her hooves beginning to canter across the pavement comforted me. When I thought we were a safe distance, I looked back over my shoulder. Behind me loomed the Tower, still surrounded by red flames. The screaming crowd of soldiers seemed to glow from the fire rising up from the moat.

  I laid a kiss on my tattered fingertips and blew it to Mary and Jamie. “I’ll be back for you,” I promised, near tears.

  22

  MY WET CLOTHES FROZE AGAINST MY SKIN AND I SHIVERED. MY back throbbed with pain. The street faded in and out of focus. I tried to picture the road map of Scotland that had hung in my father’s study. It had been there my whole life, but all I could remember were winding lines and the ornate brown frame.

  I looked up in the sky for the North Star. There it was, right where it had always been. It was comforting to think that even though the world had changed so much, the stars were still the same. If I used the sky as my guide, hopefully I would find my way to the old motorway and then on to Scotland. “It’s going to be a long ride,” I said to Caligula, patting her neck.

  As we moved through the streets, the win
d blew bits of trash toward us—a broken umbrella spiraling dangerously, dirty scraps of paper. Ash stung my eyes. Caligula charged out of the city on the crumbling, cracking motorways, past the freestanding homes in the London suburbs, the desolate gray shopping malls and parking lots like graveyards filled with rusting cars and their long-dead owners.

  A faded highway sign read SCOTLAND: 380 MILES. Streams of warm tears fell from my eyes and the stars streaked overhead in a blur. I kept replaying the events of the night over and over. I couldn’t believe I had found Mary and Jamie, only to fail them. I couldn’t believe that the man I’d been fantasizing about killing was Wesley’s father. My head swam thinking about it, and I blinked into the cold night as the wind whipped around me.

  The cold set into my bones and I began shaking so violently that I couldn’t keep myself upright. I nudged Caligula toward the forest on the side of the road. I needed to rest.

  My legs were so shaky that when I slid off the tall horse, I collapsed into a heap on the cold ground. Spots danced before my eyes. I couldn’t tell how far we were from the interstate, but said a silent prayer that it was far enough. I curled up in a pile of twigs and mulch, fumbling to pull the frozen New Guard jacket off me. It was so wet that it would do more harm than good. I tried to warm my frozen fingers with my breath. Caligula lowered her front legs and lay down next to me. I nestled into her, grateful for her body heat. Finally, mercifully, I drifted off to sleep.

  My eyes shot open. Something was moving through the branches.

  I listened carefully, suddenly wide awake. I wasn’t sure how long I had slept, but the sky was still black overhead.

  I lay motionless, waiting for whatever it was to take another step. I had spent enough time in the Scottish woods to recognize the sounds of certain creatures. A mouse or squirrel moved quickly, darting from hiding place to hiding place. Once I sat below a tree with Bella and watched a brown bear make its lazy way across the forest floor, its footsteps slow and booming. But these footsteps were not delicate like a fox or lumbering like a bear. They were unmistakably human.