The Last Princess (11 page)

Portia dropped her hand from my chin. “Prove it, then.”

I stepped back. “What?”

“Prove it!”

Portia pushed up her right sleeve. On the pale underside of her arm was a tattoo of the crossed sevil and sword.
Before I knew what was happening, Tub and June had me in their arms. June dug her knees in my back. Portia stood next to her, holding
my wrists in her hand, tying them tightly with rope.

They pushed me into the toilets. The tiled floor blurred beneath my feet as Portia took out a long pair of scissors from a shelf.

She grabbed the back of my neck. I didn’t make a sound—I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. I felt the cool blade of the scissors next to my scalp and heard the clipping sound, then saw the strands of my
hair falling like rain around my knees on the bathroom floor.

Portia pushed me in front of the mirror. “What do you think?”

They had sheared it close to my head, so close the skin on my scalp showed through.

Tub and June were bent over laughing, holding their stomachs, their faces bright red.

“Sergeant Wesley certainly won’t be flirting with
you
anymore,” June snickered.

When I looked in
the mirror what struck me most wasn’t the short hair, haphazardly hacked off close to my scalp, but the desolate look in my eyes. I was a shadow of my former self.

“I love it,” I said, turning to Portia and the others. “I’ve been meaning to get a haircut.”

But my sarcasm only enraged her. Her beautiful face became contorted and red.

“I’m not finished yet,” she spat. “June, hold her down.”

June pushed me to the floor, the back of my head slamming against the marble. She pinned my shoulders down and Tub sat on my legs, her tremendous weight impossible to move. I kicked and squirmed wildly but then June pulled out her sevil, placing it above my chest so that if I moved even an inch the blade would cut through my skin. I squeezed my hands in fists at my side.

From the corner of my
eye I watched Portia standing by the cauldron of water that sat over the coals. She held a wire hanger in her hand, untwisting the metal to make it straight. She placed the wire beneath the coals.

“Please let go of me,” I begged, hating the desperate sound of my voice but unable to stop. “Please get off of me.”

“Keep her down!” Portia screamed. She gazed into the red coals with a frightening
intensity. The flames were reflected in the dark pupils of her eyes. She smiled at the flames, relishing the moment.

Not my eyes
, I prayed.
Don’t let her blind me
.

She pulled the blazing red wire from the coals, holding it in front of my face.

“Keep still,” she ordered. “If I mess up I’ll have to do it again.”

Portia lowered herself to her knees beside me, holding the glowing red wire in her
hand.

First I felt the heat, like putting a finger over a flame. Then I felt the searing as she pressed the burning wire against my cheek. I bolted up in pain, writhing to free myself only to have Tub slam my head back against the floor. The burning pain pierced my whole body like nothing I’d ever felt before. Somebody cried out; it must have been me. The room went red and then black. The last
sound I heard was the girls’ echoing laughter.

17

IT WAS THE PAIN THAT WOKE ME
.

Cringing at the feeling of hot needles stabbing into the skin below my right eye, I turned my face to press my cheek against the cold marble floor. But it was hardly a relief. I took deep, shuddering breaths to brace myself, my eyes still shut tight. Unsteadily, I pushed myself up to stand and held myself over the sink.

On my face below my right eye the skin
rose up in blisters, forming a crude image of a crossed sevil and sword.

They had branded me with the symbol of the New Guard.

I touched the raw, burnt skin and bit back a cry of pain.
Even alone in the bathroom I couldn’t let Portia win. I would not show her the weakness she wanted to see in me.

I steadied myself on the sink. I needed to leave, tonight. If I stayed here any longer, trying
to accomplish this hopeless mission, I would be killed. I reached for the door, but it wouldn’t give. I was locked in.

Taking deep breaths to fight my rising panic, I looked around for an escape. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious, but I knew Portia would come back eventually. There was a small round window on the south-facing wall that looked out over the treetops into the still night.
The window was thick glass inlaid with wire mesh. We were on the third floor. If I jumped, I would be lucky to survive the fall.

I lifted the cauldron awkwardly from the coals and smashed it against the glass, wincing and holding my breath at the heavy crash that resounded through the bathroom. When no one came running, I hit at the glass, again and again until the thick pane shattered in pieces
to the floor, leaving just the mesh in place.

I began tearing out the mesh until there was a gap large enough for me to crawl through. On the window ledge I paused, gripping the stone casing with my bare, bleeding hands and staring down at the drop to the ground. The air
was still, the black night spreading out through the sky like a pool of spilled ink, not a star in sight. The only light came
from a row of torches bobbing underneath the window—soldiers on patrol. I leaned back, hiding in the shadows, dizzy and sick from the pain and fear.

The sound of dripping water came from my left. I looked over to see the gleam of a copper drainpipe beneath a heavy growth of vines. The pipes had recently been installed to collect rainwater from the roof for drinking. I doubted it would be strong
enough to hold me, but it was better than nothing. I leaned out until I almost fell over. The vines were just out of reach.

I took a deep breath, trying to calculate the distance. Then all at once I released my grip on the window casing and sprang off the windowsill.

I slid down rapidly, ignoring the pain in my fingers, still studded with glass and bits of mesh, as I grabbed at the vines. My
feet braced against the wall, scrambling to find footing. Finally I found purchase in the rough stones and thick vines. I clung to the vines, willing myself not to scream out in pain.

And so, inch by inch, I slid down the drainpipe like a fire pole, until I finally felt solid ground beneath me.

I pressed my back to the palace wall, glancing in both
directions. The barbed-wire fence rose up out
of the shadows ten feet in front of me. There was no way to climb over the rotating spikes on top without being mangled, and I couldn’t possibly dig my way under. It would have to be the woods. I retied the laces of my boots and took off in a sprint, away from the palace, toward the wall of solid darkness that was the barren trees.

I was almost across the field when a figure materialized before
me, knocking me to the ground.

“Hands behind your back!” a harsh male voice cried out. My throbbing burn pressed painfully into the dirt as the soldier put his foot on my neck, holding me down. Another soldier approached with a burning torch and tied my hands behind my back. I winced at the feel of the rope on my wounded palms, but I tried to stay utterly still.

The first soldier, a sergeant,
turned me roughly around to look at my face. “What’s your name?” he commanded.

“An escapee,” the young guard said as he twisted my wrists at a sharp, painful angle. I said nothing.

“Get up,” the sergeant snapped, pulling me to my feet and shoving me forward.

They prodded me with their sevils, herding me forward across the palace grounds into the stark fields that led to the Death Camps. The
sounds that had haunted me, the
agonizing cries of pain and rattle of chains, grew louder as we marched. As we approached the gate, I saw a long line of people shuffling out into the field, bound at the ankles. A soldier handed each of them a shovel.

Why don’t they use the shovels as weapons?
I thought. But these prisoners were skin and bone, dragging their shovels behind them despondently. There
was no fight left in them.

“Start digging!” a soldier shouted, walking behind them and hitting the slower ones on the head with the flat of his sevil. The sound of the metal against their skulls echoed in the night. I watched in horror as the soldier lined up the prisoners and proceeded to fire at their heads, one after the other. They fell into the shallow holes like human dominoes.

I put my
hand across my mouth as the truth hit me. These men had been forced to dig their own graves. Once I walked through that gate, I would never get out.

Another soldier stood guard at the gate of the Death Camps. I blinked in the sudden light of the coal lantern, certain that my eyes were deceiving me. It was Wesley. He met my gaze, then looked quickly away.

“Barth and Harbor,” he addressed them.
“Aren’t you on front gate duty?”

“We have an escapee,” Sergeant Barth said.

“Hand her over,” Wesley ordered, without so much as looking at me. “And get back to your posts now.”

“Sir!” The two soldiers saluted him and turned to jog back toward the fields.

When they were gone, he loosened his grip on my shoulders and turned me to face him. I stared down at the ground, but I felt his eyes burning
into me like the wire of the clothes hanger. I had never felt so ashamed—of my face, of my decisions, of how stupid I had been to think I could come here and kill Cornelius Hollister. Instead, I had been branded with his symbol.

“Who did this to you?” he asked quietly. “Was it Portia?”

I said nothing. Tears pooled in my eyes, blurring my vision.

“Move quickly and don’t say anything,” Wesley
ordered as he pushed me forward. The steel wire fence of the Death Camps rose up sharply in the light of the moon. I stopped, whirling around to face him.

“How can you live with yourself, working for this army?” I asked in a trembling voice, staring deep into his eyes. “If you’re going to kill me, go ahead and do it now.”

He pushed me forward. “Didn’t you hear me?” he hissed. “I said, don’t
speak. Keep walking.” The moonlight fell
across his angular cheekbones and lit up the dark hollows of his eyes.

We had passed the camps and were now walking down the dark field toward a windowless brick building. “Where are you taking me?” I said through clenched teeth.

He pulled me to a stop and began to untie the rope binding my wrists.

“You’re not taking me to the camps?” My voice was filled
with confusion.

He took a second gun from his uniform and placed it in my palm. “Do you know how to shoot?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a full round in there. Don’t let go of it. If we get separated, if the Roamers get you, just shoot them. Don’t hesitate or they’ll kill you first.”

I nodded mechanically and wrapped my fingers around the grip, wincing at the pain as I placed my finger experimentally on
the trigger.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe, but we have to go through the woods to get there,” Wesley went on. “And we need to be quiet and careful. If I’m caught helping you, we’ll both be killed.”

I raised my eyes to his. I wanted to trust him, but what if
this was just an elaborate trap? “Why are you helping me?” I asked.

He looked toward the Death Camps in the distance. “You’re not the
only person here with something to hide, Eliza.”

18

THE SOUND OF MY REAL NAME MADE ME FREEZE. AN OWL HOOTED
overhead, perched like a statue on the limb of a tree. Everything was in slow motion, as though time had come unhinged.

“You know who I am,” I said, but my voice was scarcely audible. The night air chilled my skin. It was so dark I almost couldn’t see Wesley in front of me.

“Yes.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Not that I know of.”

I stumbled back a step. “How? When…?” I shook my head before asking the question that had plagued me
for weeks. “Why did you let me escape that night in the palace?”

He nodded, as if he had expected this. “I looked in your eyes, and… I just couldn’t do it.” He paused, fumbling for words. “Please trust me.”

I thought about the times he’d been alone with me, with a weapon, when I’d been unarmed.
If he’d wanted to kill me, he would have done it by now. Finally I nodded. “Where are we going?” I asked, still dazed, as we walked together back toward the center of camp.

“You’ll see,” he said somberly.

Inside the windowless cinder-block building, Cornelius Hollister’s warhorses thrashed behind the thick bars of their stalls. They stood at least a full head taller than regular horses, and
their eyes were bloodred and filled with rage. Their steel-shod hooves pawed the ground angrily. They butted their heads against the railings of their stalls, so hard some of them had worn the skin bare, the bone coming through.

Wesley saddled a black-and-white mare while I hid inside the shadow of the doorway, keeping guard. The saddle and reins hung from posts in the wall, so thick and plated
they looked more like armor than riding gear. I thought of Jasper and shivered. These creatures had been bred for war, beaten
since they were born. They were machines of anger and destruction.

I watched Wesley put a spiked bit in the mare’s mouth and stifled a cry of protest. “You can’t use that!” I whispered loudly. “It’ll hurt her!”

“I know.” He nodded sadly. “But they don’t respond to the
regular bits.” He pulled the huge horse out of the stall and into the courtyard, hoisting me up onto the saddle. “Her name’s Caligula,” he said. “She’s one of the fastest.”

He jumped up in front of me, and Caligula took off in a sudden gallop across the fields. I grabbed him tightly around the waist.

As we melted into the woods, Caligula slowed to a canter, gliding easily over root beds and
fallen tree trunks. The sounds of the forest at night filled the silence that fell between us. A family of bats flew past like a small dark storm, screeching as they glided by.

After what seemed like an hour, Caligula finally fell back into a trot, picking her way carefully around the edge of a shiny silver lake. Wesley frowned in confusion. “Strange,” he murmured. “I haven’t seen this water
before.”