Broken Crowns. Lauren DeStefano

hope you’re not expecting us to curtsy,” Pen says.

      “Pen!” I whisper.

      Prince Azure chuckles, but even with that cocky grin he’s wearing, I can see how tired he seems, how frightened. I am sure he wasn’t brought here of his own will. King Furlow would not have happily relinquished another of his children to this place.

      “Don’t curtsy, don’t bow,” he says. “I think we’re well past formalities now.” He turns to Nim. “Don’t let these girls fool you, what with their dresses and this one’s curls. They tried to kill me.”

      “You were holding us hostage,” Pen says through gritted teeth. “Your insane sister kidnapped my betrothed, held a knife to his throat—”

      The prince puts his fingers to her lips. “Shh.”

      Pen’s face goes red with rage and I can hear the crack of her knuckles. I put my hand over her fist, a silent plea for her to be calm. She can hit him with another rock some other time. There are more pressing matters to attend to now.

      I am trying not to stare at Prince Azure, but I’m so taken aback by the sight of him. When I saw him last, he was limp and lifeless, bleeding from the head and being carried up the stairs by medics. And before that he had been a maniacal, childish young prince scheming with his sister to pry out of Pen and me information about the metal bird that would bring us to the ground.

      But like his sister, he has grown since then. “Your Highness,” I begin cautiously. “You’ve surely noticed by now that Internment is in trouble, and we’d like to do what we can to help.”

      Prince Azure looks to Basil. “It’s unfair to be male, isn’t it? We’re betrothed to these unreasonable things, and for what? Just for being born.”

      Basil swallows whatever unkind response he’d like to give to that, and instead he says, “Morgan and Pen have some information about Internment that I think you’d be interested in. Perhaps you should ask them what it is.”

      “They have information about Internment?” Prince Azure says, sneering. “From all the way down here? That’s a laugh. I’m the one who’s been made to watch as foreigners fly up onto my kingdom in a metal beast of a machine, terrorizing everyone, stealing our soil. I haven’t been down here very long”—he looks up at the sky and then sharply back at us—“but the view from down here hardly seems accurate.”

      Pen is steeling herself beside me, and I fear what she may say next, so I speak first. “Be that as it may, Your Highness”—the honorific is sour on my tongue—“from down here we’ve been able to see that Internment is sinking.”

      At that, the prince regards me as though I may be of some use to him after all. “How?” he says. “How can you see that?”

      “It was Pen who made the calculations. She was able to compare its location in the sky against the sun. It began sinking bit by bit when the jet started to make its comings and goings.”

      I don’t think I am doing the explanation any justice. I lack Pen’s finesse. But the prince seems to believe me. He advances on Pen and says, “How much has it sunk?”

      “Not terribly much,” she says with surprising civility. “Equal to about an arm’s length, which isn’t enough to disrupt things. But if the jet keeps passing through the wind surrounding the city, I believe it will weaken the current that helps hold Internment in place. It may continue to sink bit by bit over time, or it may come crashing down all at once. I don’t know.”

      I always thought the prince to be a fool, but he’s smart enough to be troubled by all this. He paces with the lantern in his hands. His shadow dances in the fragile light.

      “We have to stop the jet,” he says. “I already knew that. King Ingram’s arrival has brought nothing but chaos to Internment, but if what you say is true, we will have to stop him soon.”

      Pen looks startled by this. “You believe me?” she says.

      The prince stops pacing and looks at her. “By the time I woke up, after you’d hit me, you were long gone. My sister had disappeared, too, and I knew that she had found her way to that contraption of yours that was headed for the ground. I was alone, bedridden, with nothing but free time. I wanted to know everything I could about the girls who’d tried to kill me. The girls my sister had followed to the ground.” He waves his hand at me. “You were boring, Stockhour. Yes, your brother was a jumper, but you were as dull as dirt. A nobody.”

      I know it isn’t meant to be a compliment, but somehow I am flattered that my attempts to blend in and hide my daydreams convinced someone up there.

      The prince turns on Pen. “But you, Atmus. The daughter of the top engineer at the glasslands. A perfect student. You have the lights on up in your head, don’t you? You’re just like your father. A budding engineer.”

      “I’m not like him,” she says feebly. “Having a brain in my head doesn’t make me like him.”

      He narrows his eyes at her. “But you know things. You figure them out. Who else in this bloody world down here would have thought to calculate Internment’s position in the sky? Nobody but you.”

      Pen has nothing to say to this. People who figure things out on Internment are likely to end up dead for treason. If her father knows as much as she does, he’s not foolish enough to say it aloud while he’s in the city.

      The other man clears his throat. “Your Highness, we should be getting back before King Ingram notices that you’re gone.”

      “We want to go back to Internment,” I say. “The three of us. We want King Ingram to send us under the pretense of helping his cause, and then we want to help your father overthrow King Ingram’s men however we can.”

      The prince gives a sad smile. “You want to help my father? Our world is being drilled apart, bled dry, and my father has been reduced to nothing. He cannot save us.”

      “So who can save us, then?” I say. “You?”

      “No,” he says softly. “Not me.”

      He allows the other man to lead him back toward the castle. Down here, he is not a prince, but a prisoner.

      “Wait!” Nim calls after him. “Your sister, Celeste, is she all right? Is she alive?”

      The prince stops but doesn’t turn to face us. “Celeste is a silly princess with silly ideas that she can think the way a king thinks. She fancies herself the political sort. But she only ever makes things worse. You would be wise to forget about her.”

      Nim’s shoulders sag with what may be despair or relief, or both. The prince spoke of Celeste as though she were still alive and well, and that’s something.

      “I can’t stand that little nit,” Pen mutters.

      “But he listened,” I remind her.

      Nim is staring off into the darkness. The lantern has been blown out, and the prince and his escort have disappeared from view. Even in the frail bits of moonlight, I can see the pain in Nim’s eyes.

      “Are they twins?” he asks. “Celeste and her brother.”

      “No,” Pen says. “But they are equally annoying.”

      “Stop,” I whisper to her.

      She softens. “Don’t let what he said get to you,” Pen says to Nim. “You’ll see her again. You can try to come back to Internment with us.”

      Nim shakes his head. “I can’t leave Havalais. Someone will have to keep an eye on things here once you’ve gone. I don’t trust my father, or the king.”

      Two kings who can’t be trusted. What a fabulous predicament we’re all in now.

      We walk back to the hotel, all of us silent, knowing there are no words that could reassure any of us.