Queen. Aimee Carter

terrible and hurtful accusations from someone they had treated like family. It was easy to sniff out the real story when I already knew it, and I waited for another to come on.

      “How did you get started with the Blackcoats, anyway?” I said. “I know you knew Celia through Lila, but—what, did the three of you have dinner one day and decide to start a revolution? How did that happen?”

      “Something like that,” he muttered. “Celia’s never been particularly subtle about her political ideology. I sought her out, and the rest fell into place.”

      “Wait—was your relationship with Lila an arrangement, then?” I said as a piece of the puzzle clicked into place. It made sense—Lila and Knox had never seemed to get along. “Was it a way to spend time together without being discovered?”

      “Yes,” said Knox, his tone growing shorter. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m not in the mood for conversation right now.”

      It wasn’t all the same to me. I still had a million questions to ask, ones I’d gathered every minute of every day we’d been forced to play pretend. But tensions were high enough right now, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to try to kick me out.

      So for the rest of the night, as the hours dragged by, I kept quiet. Sometimes Knox would make a comment about a story, and I would chime in with a response, but he never elaborated further than that. Those occasional remarks grew less and less frequent as midnight came and went, and sometime around one in the morning, I said hopefully, “Maybe Sampson talked her out of it.”

      Knox’s jaw tightened. I set my hand over his clenched fist, and only then did he relax marginally. “If we haven’t heard anything by dawn, I’ll believe it.”

      Sometime around two, I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to—I’d promised I’d stay up with Knox, and I wanted to. But my ribs ached, the couch was warm, and the lull of voices was too much to resist. I rested my head against the armrest, promising myself I’d only close my eyes. Within seconds, I was fast asleep.

      The sound of sirens jolted me awake, and I sat up, my head spinning. “What—?”

      Beside me, Knox’s expression was impassive, but his fingers were digging into his thighs. The sirens weren’t coming from Elsewhere. They were coming from the televisions.

      Every news network had a different view of the same scene: an image of the front gate of Somerset. Lights from emergency vehicles flashed across the brick wall, and a camera zoomed in on a team of Shields climbing over onto the property.

      My heart sank. “They raided Somerset after all. Is Daxton...?”

      “I don’t know,” said Knox. “If Celia had the chance, she took it. I guarantee you.”

      Wide-awake now, I leaned forward and watched the images unfolding on the screens. It was the middle of the night in D.C., too, but light flooded Somerset like it was midday. Gunshots sounded in the distance, and I briefly closed my eyes, trying not to imagine where those bullets might wind up. I may not have known the other Blackcoats well, but we were still on the same side.

      Someone knocked on the door, and I jumped. Strand poked his head inside, first glancing at Knox and me, then the televisions. “You’re watching this?”

      Knox nodded. “Call a meeting for dawn. However this turns out, we should know by then.”

      Thirty seconds after Strand left, one of the feeds cut to a reporter whose face was mostly obscured by a thick scarf. She didn’t seem to care, however, as she excitedly rambled into the microphone. “We are receiving reports now that Prime Minister Daxton Hart’s body has been spotted near the front of the Hart family home. Do we have visu—”

      Suddenly an image of Somerset appeared. Normally it was a beautiful sight, and no matter how many times I’d been down the drive heading toward it, I’d always been captivated by the high windows into the atrium, the opulent balconies, the shining white exterior that reflected a shimmer of rainbow in the sunlight. But this time, I had to swallow a gag.

      Daxton’s body hung from the front door, held up by a chain wrapped around his neck. A hunting knife was buried to the hilt above his heart, and a big red X glistened across his chest. I doubted it was paint.

      “Oh my God,” I whispered, clasping my hand over my mouth. Beside me, Knox remained silent, but out of the corner of my eye, I watched his expression go from painfully neutral to barely suppressed rage.

      “That’s it,” he said tightly. “It’s over. We’ve lost the war.”

V The American Dream

      The camera lingered on Daxton’s body for far longer than anyone decent ever would have looked. I turned away after I inspected the portion of his face I could see for any sign it wasn’t him, but every detail matched. Even his dark eyes, which stared blankly out into the night.

      Knox buried his face in his hands and didn’t move for nearly an hour. I didn’t know what to say to him—there was nothing to say, nothing that would make any of this any better. I couldn’t apologize for revealing Daxton’s real identity that morning, but that was the root of it. It was my fault Celia had done this, and it was my fault Daxton was dead. I didn’t mourn him, but I did mourn our chances at a fair fight. Already the news networks were showing highlights from the late Prime Minister’s life—mostly from before Victor Mercer had been Masked, which was almost amusing, considering the real Daxton Hart had died over a year ago. Better late than never, I supposed.

      None of them even hinted toward the atrocities Daxton had committed in his lifetime. There wasn’t a single word about the facts I’d laid bare in my speech. Just as Knox had predicted, Daxton was celebrated as a hero and a martyr who had died protecting his family and his country from a violent fringe group bent on terrorizing honest and decent American citizens. Any ground we might have gained that morning had disappeared beneath our feet, and already we’d begun to fall.

      “We need to tell the others,” said Knox roughly, once he finally came up for air. It was nearly dawn by now, and through the window I could see a pink stain on the edge of the horizon. “We need to prepare them for—”

      He stopped, but he didn’t need to finish. They needed to prepare to either spend the rest of their lives on the run as traitors, or they needed to prepare to be executed. We needed to prepare.

      Benjy. Knox. Me. We weren’t just enemies of the state anymore—we were enemies of the entire country. And no speech could change that now.

      I stood. “I need to find Benjy.” We needed to figure out what we were going to do, and fast. Benjy would be able to hide in plain sight, but everyone in the country knew my face. I would have to spend the rest of my life underground.

      I was halfway to the door when the networks all crackled at once—the same sound I’d heard on the radio the night before. But this time it wasn’t Lila’s voice on the other end.

      “I see you have once again tried to murder me, and once again, you have failed.”

      I whirled around, my heart in my throat. Seated behind a desk in a room I didn’t recognize was Daxton Hart. “What—?”

      Knox leaped to his feet and hushed me, his eyes glued to the screen.

      “A knife to the heart and a chain around the neck. Not terribly symbolic, dear sister, but I suppose it gets the job done.” Daxton leered at the camera, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes. Like this was a game to him, and he’d just outsmarted us. “Only problem is, it wasn’t me.”

      At this, he seemed to sober up. He folded his hands and furrowed his brow in his best impression of someone deeply troubled, but I knew him well enough to see the grin desperate to emerge.

      “You and your band of terrorists didn’t kill me, Celia. You killed a father of two who bravely volunteered to serve as my double at Somerset while I took refuge in