Broken Crowns. Lauren DeStefano

      “Really?”

      “Really,” Nim says. “That might work.” The hope in his eyes is too much to take. I don’t tell him that if the people of Internment are as stubborn as we’re hoping, King Ingram may have gotten desperate and gone for the jugular. And there are only two things on Internment that could be taken from King Furlow that are of any value: his children. Prince Azure, and Princess Celeste. They may already be dead.

       3

      Pen is not ready to divulge her findings to Thomas or the others, but she understands when I insist on telling Basil. If I’m going to attempt to return to Internment, he deserves to know.

      In the morning I meet him in his room as everyone else is going to breakfast. I close the door behind me. We sit on his bed and I tell him everything in a hushed tone. Through it all, he doesn’t say a word, listening patiently to my eager, harried rambling.

      When I get to the end, it takes all my willpower not to look away from him when I say, “And Pen and I want to convince King Ingram to send us back. If we make him think we’re on his side, and that we want to try to talk the engineers back home into helping him, we’re hoping he’ll go along with it.”

      He is the first to break our gaze. He looks down at my hand as he covers it with his own and then he looks back at me. “When we were back home, your mind wandered toward the ground. But now that we’re on the ground, your mind wanders back home. Sometimes I think what you want is to be away from wherever it is you’re standing.”

      “Maybe there’s some truth to that,” I admit.

      “I think about home, too.” He speaks with great caution. “Not just my parents and Leland, but the life I had there. The sounds. The future I might have had.” He shakes his head. “It was enough for me, staying there. I didn’t mind it. But for as long as I can remember, there has been this current leading me away. You,” he says.

      “I tried, Basil. I tried to stay within the train tracks, to do what was expected of me.”

      “I know you did. I was there with you.”

      I stare down at our hands. “I didn’t want to be the current pulling you away from all the things that you loved.”

      “Morgan,” he says, in that practical way of his. “You were the thing I loved.”

      The words feel both wonderful and painful at the same time. “The truth is that I had to pull you along with me,” I say. “I couldn’t untangle myself from you if I tried. We’ve always just sort’ve gone together. It’s as though someone mixed us up until we were a secondary color, and there’s no way to tell which one of us started out which color.”

      I am terrible with words. My brother’s the writer. I’m only clumsily trying to come up with words for things I’ll never have the skill to say.

      Basil laughs, but he isn’t making fun of me. I know he understands.

      “I am going to live my life worrying about you,” he says. “But I do think you’re right that there is unrest on Internment. It’s a peaceful city. It has nothing to protect itself against a kingdom like Havalais, much less the ground itself. If nothing is done, and Pen’s calculations are correct, Internment will crash-land on the ground before King Ingram ever has a way to refine his phosane.”

      “A lose-lose,” I say.

      “If you were to go back home, you would need something that would give Internment a fighting chance against King Ingram. Do you have anything like that?”

      “Nim thinks he can get us some allies on the ground. A lot of King Ingram’s men are disgruntled after the bombing. And on Internment we’ll have an ally in Princess Celeste. If she’s still alive.”

      “She’ll be alive,” Basil assures me. “If King Ingram wants something from Internment, he won’t go killing King Furlow’s children before he has it.”

      “I hope you’re right.”

      “What if I go with you?” Basil says. “No matter what information or power you may be able to gather, the fact remains that both Havalais and Internment are patriarchies.”

      Pen would hate him for saying it, but I know that he’s right. Kings are more reasonable with men than they are with girls. King Ingram is more likely to believe that Basil could influence the engineers.

      “But is that what you want?” I say.

      “I could never sit idly by while you disappear into the clouds, leaving me to wonder if you’re alive each day,” he says, and despite everything, I can’t help but indulge in that beautiful thing he’s just said to me. He goes on, “I also don’t want Internment to come crashing down on our heads, killing us all and my family too.”

      “Nim is hoping to get an audience with the king this afternoon,” I say. “Let’s hope he can come through. Oh, and, Basil, about all this. Pen doesn’t want Thomas to know about it.”

      He frowns. “It isn’t our business to get involved, then. But I do wish she’d be more forthright about things. It would be healthier for her.”

      “You and me both,” I say. “But for now I think it’s best we keep this to ourselves until we know more.”

      “Agreed,” he says.

      Nim is gone after lunchtime, off to King Ingram’s castle to play the good son to Jack Piper for once, in an attempt to stay in his graces.

      Pen and Thomas are playing a board game. They’re leaning toward each other on opposing sides of the coffee table, the crowns of their blond heads almost touching.

      It’s a beautiful day, and Alice has taken Amy and the youngest Pipers outside. Through an open window I can hear them laughing in the garden. This Havalais air has had a positive effect on Amy; she hasn’t had one of her fits in months.

      Basil is trying to engage me in a game of cards. The decks they use on the ground are similar to our own, and with a bit of compromise we can duplicate most of the games we played back home. But I am having the hardest time sitting still. My leg shakes anxiously. My mind is spinning out dozens of scenarios about Nim’s efforts at the castle.

      Should I tell Judas and Amy any of this?

      The thought of Judas brings a rush of heat to my cheeks. We’ve barely spoken in weeks, and I don’t see him anywhere now, but somehow I feel his presence hiding nearby, as always, just out of frame. We have scarcely spoken since our kiss, save for a few benign polite exchanges—good morning; yes, please; thank you—but time has done nothing to extinguish my curiosity about him. Time has not assuaged my guilt, and the sight of him still confuses me. I do not know what it will take to rid myself of that kiss, but I would pay any price to undo it. I would pay any price to stop wanting another.

      Basil lays his stack of cards on the table and then gently takes the cards from my hands too. I blink dumbly at him.

      “Would a walk help take your mind off it?” he says.

      I shake my head. “I don’t want to be gone when Nim gets back.”

      “We won’t go far,” he says. “Come on. The air will do you some good.”

      He’s right. As soon as we’ve stepped outside, I feel less anxious. There’s some comfort in hearing the living things in the grass and in the sky. A blue bird shoots from one tree to the next, and I wish I could capture a perfect image of him to take back home. There are no birds on Internment, only speculation as to what they must be like.

      Basil and I walk a lap around the hotel, past the charred altar where Nim burnt his beloved car in offering so that his sister might live. Whether or not it was an answered prayer, Birdie did pull through. It makes me wonder if their god is