Burning Kingdoms. Lauren DeStefano

hours I spent shackled in the clock tower while she and her brother brought me grapes like I was a pet, or a game. But it seems so far away now. It happened in a place I can’t even see when I look for it, it’s so cloudy all the time. “I think it was brave of your parents to be a part of that metal bird’s creation,” she says. “I am sorry that they aren’t here. Truly.”

      “Thank you,” I say, for lack of fitting words. My head aches and my mouth feels stuffed with sheep shavings. I am thinking of Pen, inebriated and dancing in the smoke and noise, trying to forget what we’ve had to leave behind. And of the blue bird that sailed over our heads, unaware of its own brilliance, indifferent to whatever silly worries the humans may have.

      “I’m sorry about your brother, too,” I tell Celeste, because it seems like the right thing to say. Even if a part of me thinks he deserved what Pen did to him.

      Celeste smiles mischievously. “He’ll be so jealous when I tell him about this place. We’ve always been rather competitive.”

      “Have you considered the possibility that we won’t make it back?” My question just slips out.

      “Not at all.” The princess doesn’t miss a beat. “Have a little faith.”

      “In what?” I say.

      “Well.” She draws her eyebrows together. “In the way of things, I suppose. And in me.”

      I return her smile. We are all doomed.

      We drive through the streets that Pen, Birdie, and I haunted the night before. We pass women in long coats that are a trove of buttons, hats that look like shells or folded paper, all of them with flowers and big white beads that Birdie calls pearls. They, too, are a treasure of the sea.