Burning Kingdoms Read online

  “I did it for a lot of reasons,” I say.

  “Thomas is an idiot,” she says. “He had no business blaming you for anything I’ve done.”

  “You want to go home, Pen. You can’t tell me otherwise. And so do I.” Even if there’s no home left for me to return to.

  “I’m still mad at you,” she says, pinning down the end of the gauze. “But I didn’t mean what I said about not knowing who you are. I know who you are.” She gathers the soiled bandages, and she kisses my forehead before she leaves.

  I close my eyes. Riles is waiting for me with a fistful of dirt; the dead are patient and will wait for us to sleep so they can speak to us.

  “We have to bury them,” he says. The harbor is burning behind him. I want to take him away from it, but he does not have the luxury of waking. He is all out of mornings.

  I let him lead me into the smoke of this dream. I keep him company for a while, though I’m frightened. It is the very least I can do for him.

  19

  After I’ve followed him through paces of smoky rubble, Riles disappears, and I’m staring at the ceiling light. The crickets outside have turned to the sound of rain. It rains all spring. Birdie told me that.

  “She’s burning up. I’m going to get Lex,” Pen says. I heard her voice calling me as I dreamed.

  Basil is sitting over me with a damp towel. “Morgan?”

  “Don’t get Lex,” I croak.

  “We have to. He’ll know what to do for your fever.”

  “I don’t want him,” I say. “I don’t want him near me. Get Alice instead.”

  “I’m here,” Alice says, moving through the doorway. “What’s going on, love? Not feeling well?”

  “Pen says she’s been crying out in her sleep,” Basil says.

  Pen is wringing her hands anxiously.

  “I just can’t get a proper rest,” I say. “Every time I close my eyes, I relive moments. I see the dead.”

  Alice brushes her fingers across my forehead.

  “That’s to be expected,” she says, and frowns. “You’ve been sufficiently traumatized.”

  I close my eyes, and Birdie is smiling at me an instant before the explosion comes.

  “Morgan?” Alice says. I already know what she’s going to say. “I think you should let Lex help you. He won’t talk to you if you don’t want him to. I’ll tell him.”

  “I’d rather die,” I say.

  “Oh, stop it,” Pen says. “Whatever he did couldn’t have been as bad as all that.”

  There’s a part of Pen that is still on Internment, where fights and squabbles can last only so long before all is forgiven. I wish I could still hold on to this way of thinking. But my brother has betrayed me in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. He has shown me that we no longer belong to that world we left behind.

  Alice pats my cheek. “He’ll only be a minute.” She leaves the room and returns moments later, Lex in tow. He doesn’t utter so much as a word. I stare out the window. The curtains are parted and I can see the rain streaking the glass.

  He feels the sides of my neck, along my jaw, and touches my forehead. He’s being especially gentle.

  He asks Alice to unwrap my leg and describe the wound to him. “Have you been dressing it yourself?” Alice asks me.

  I shake my head. “Pen.”

  “You’ve done a great job,” Alice tells her. “Expert, even.”

  Pen gives a small smile.

  “There aren’t any pink lines or sores,” Alice says. “But it’s a little bit swollen.”

  “It’s better than it was this afternoon,” Pen offers.

  “Good. That’s good.”

  Alice, under Lex’s direction, applies the medication that sizzles and burns, and wraps my leg. “From what you describe, it sounds like it isn’t infected,” Lex says, talking to her, not to me. “Tell my sister that she needs to stop hobbling about so much. The hospital let her go only because it was overcrowded; that doesn’t mean she’s better. She needs to sleep as much as she can.”

  Alice looks at me. “Got that?”

  I nod. Lex pats my good ankle. He’s still here for me, he’s saying, and he knows I’ll come around, even if right now I’m tempted to kick him.

  Alice leads Lex away. Pen follows after them. I hope she’s going to find more of that sleeping aid Nimble gave us last night. From the hallway, I hear Lex asking about her arm, Pen saying it’s nothing. They say more to each other, but their voices are too soft for me to understand.

  It’s just Basil and me. Celeste’s bed is empty, though the clock tells me it’s well after midnight. Perhaps she and Nim are together somewhere.

  “Do you know what I think?” Basil says.

  “What?”

  “I think you are utterly unbreakable.”

  “I can’t imagine what has given you that impression.”

  “As long as you’re still alive, I’m right,” he says.

  I laugh. I don’t know how in the world he has managed to make me laugh, but he revels in it. I see the triumph in his quirked lip.

  Basil.

  I look at him now and do not see the boy I’m to marry, but rather the boy who will always belong to me, just as I’ll always belong to him. Maybe the decision makers were wrong when they paired us together, because we are not ever going to be like Alice and Lex, or Judas and Daphne. There is a plan for us, but it isn’t what anyone thought.

  He pulls the covers up to my chin. “You know what I think? I think you’re making yourself sick because you feel guilty that you made it out of the explosions when Riles and Birdie didn’t.”

  Sounds about right.

  “You’re loved, Morgan,” he says. “A lot of people would be broken if you hadn’t come back from that night. I would be broken.”

  “A lot of people are broken because a lot of people are gone,” I say. I want to say more, but he puts his finger to my lips.

  “You’re here,” he says. “And you still have kingdoms to conquer and wonders to see.”

  I smooth my hands over his collar. “I’ve never fancied you a poet,” I say.

  He taps his knuckle against my cheek. “Get some sleep,” he says.

  “You’ll be nearby?” I ask.

  “Always,” he says.

  20

  Rain turns to sun turns to rain. I barely get out of bed for days. Loath as I am to admit it, Lex was right. My leg has begun to heal now that I’m resting. I’m able to walk without the crutches as long as I move slowly.

  In tandem with a clap of thunder, Pen sets the transistor radio on my night table and plugs it in. She sits cross-legged on my bed and looks at me as the voice comes through the static.

  “—society inhabiting the floating island has offered their support. The king is to send representatives sometime this week. The details of the floating island’s support have yet to be decided. More details as they come.”

  The announcer’s voice turns into the burst of trumpet music that is the kingdom’s anthem. Pen turns the radio off.

  “I think Internment is officially at war,” she says.

  “Has there been any mention of us?” I ask.

  “No,” Pen says. “I’m a little surprised they aren’t using us as proof that Internment is a real city. I thought they’d be making us sing and dance about now.”

  “People wouldn’t buy that,” Nimble says from the doorframe. “You know how many people have donned a phony accent and pretended to be from the floating island or from outer space? Thousands. King Ingram would look like some kind of weirdo if he tried to pass you guys off as proof.”

  “What’s to happen to us, then?” Pen says.

  “Anyone’s guess,” Nimble says. “I don’t think my father even knows. That is, if it’s even been decided. The point of this broadcast was just to tease the kingdom enough to have faith that our fine king will ride in on a white horse and save us.”

  His arm is out of its sling, and all that remains of his injury is some gauze
around his wrist. I wonder how long I’ve been in bed.

  “Isn’t it dangerous to announce that he’s going to Internment?” Pen says. “Won’t King Erasmus hear the broadcast?”

  “He will,” Nimble says. “But Internment is in Havalais’s airspace. There’s nothing King Erasmus can do, unless he means to invade our territory completely, and his kingdom doesn’t have the resources to do that. Right about now he’s probably dismissing this as lunacy and hoping that’s all it is.” He shifts his weight. I don’t think he came here to discuss politics. It must be awful and lonely for him, trying to hold his family together without his sister.

  “You can come in, you know,” I say.

  He sits on the end of Celeste’s perfectly made bed. “Thanks.”

  “Are you all right?” Pen asks.

  “Yes— I— Maybe.” He stares at his bandaged wrist. The last of his outward scars are fleeting. “They were allowing visitors at the hospital today. I got to see her.”

  “Is there any change?” Pen asks.

  “A little, maybe. Some of the burns seem to be healing, and they’ve cleaned her up a bit. It’s a wonder how much that can do. She looks more like herself. But that’s all. She hasn’t come out of it.”

  He looks so exhausted.

  “She’s going to get better,” Pen says. It’s a risky promise. “She’s got a lot of fight. After the first explosion, Morgan and I tried to hold her back, and she overpowered us both.” I envy Pen’s confidence. I thought that looking at Birdie in that hospital bed was like looking at death itself.

  “Has your father been to see her?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s probably best if he doesn’t. It’ll only make him angry.”

  “Angry?” Pen says. “He should be angry. We’re all angry. Look at what’s happening to your kingdom, and what’s about to happen to mine.”

  “I didn’t mean that he’d be angry about that,” Nimble says. “It’s just, she reminds him so much of . . .” He struggles and can’t say the word, but I understand.

  “That woman I saw in the trees at the cemetery is your mother,” I say, “isn’t she?”

  “Not so much these days,” he says. “But yes. And our father’s great fear was that Birdie would leave the way that our mother left. I don’t know what it would do to him if he saw Birdie now. He might do something desperate—take her to a fancy clinic overseas, try some radical surgery that’d sooner kill her than cure her. He wouldn’t be able to accept that she’s gone.”

  “She isn’t gone,” Pen says.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “No,” Pen says. “Listen to me. I wouldn’t tell you that she’s going to pull through if I didn’t believe it. And you have to believe it, too, because she can surely feel all this negativity right now, and she needs for us to have faith in her.”

  Nimble looks at her. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “I really do. And right now, it doesn’t matter to her that there’s a war going on. She doesn’t care about how high the jets can fly, or what’s going to happen to the magical floating island. She can’t be troubled with where her mother is, or how her father feels about it. All that she can do is try to survive. She needs you to go in and talk to her, even if she doesn’t always hear all the words you say. She needs us to believe in her.”

  She stares Nimble down the same way she stared the ocean down before and after it tried to drown her. Unafraid. There she is, the Pen I thought I’d lost to this place. I’ve missed her desperately.

  Nimble is looking at her, and he surprises me with a smile.

  “I’m glad we saved your life, kid,” he says.

  “I’m not all evil,” Pen says. “No matter what the princess tells you.”

  Nim gives a weak smile, but it’s short-lived. “Did Birdie . . . Did she say anything before she ran off?”

  Pen and I hesitate. Because we don’t want to relive our failure to keep her safe. Because the memory of her running beyond our reach is too much to stand.

  “Please,” Nimble says. “I want to know. I have to know.”

  “She called out to you just before the second explosion,” I blurt. “Pen told her that no one was there, but she was certain she saw you. She said something was wrong with Riles.”

  “We couldn’t stop her,” Pen says. “I’m sorry.”

  “She did see us then,” Nimble says. “I was trying to carry Riles to the harbor. After the first explosion, I knew he was hurt, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I just knew we had to get away from there.”

  I don’t want to hear this, but I let him speak. We may be the only ones who will listen. His sisters are too small, his father too unreachable. Celeste has been pleading for him to speak, but he loves her, and he can’t put these ugly images in her head.

  “There was blood coming—coming out of his stomach, and the harbor was in sight, but I stopped running when I realized he wasn’t crying out anymore. People were pushing around me, and there was life and death everywhere. And I knew that Riles was gone. There wasn’t even a proper moment to react. Another explosion came, and I thought—I hoped—that it would just be the end of the world. It felt like it was.

  “That’s the illusion of war,” he says. “You think the world is over when your city comes down. But then you realize that you’re just one city on a planet the size of ten million cities.”

  He’s the only living son of a corrupt politician, but he is soft-spoken and kind. And I see what Celeste, the only daughter of a broken king, loves him for; they both want peace in their worlds. It breaks every rule, but they’re meant to be together.

  “I found Birdie a few yards away. I was afraid to turn her over. I thought for sure she was gone. But there was a little bit left in her, wasn’t there? Just enough.”

  “I thought my brother was going to die once,” I say. “I don’t know if he held on because he wanted to, or because the doctors made him. At the time, I thought it was hopeless. But he got better. He’s still here to drive me absolutely mad. Birdie can get better, too.”

  “Was there an accident?” Nim asks.

  “You could say that.”

  “Did it ever go back to the way it was before?” he says.

  “Well, no,” I say. “But that didn’t matter. When someone you care about is suffering, you don’t care if the whole world burns down around them, or they’re covered in scars, or blind. You just want them back. And you’ll accept whatever conditions come along with it.”

  I think of Birdie’s smile in the glow of a streetlamp the night we came out of the brass club; the streetlamp and the brass club are gone, but still I hope Birdie can be that girl when she comes back. If she comes back.

  “You seem young to speak with such certainty,” Nimble says.

  I don’t point out that he’s only two years older than me. If I’m too young to have such experience with grief, so is he.

  The trilling of a bell downstairs makes me jump. I’ve heard it a few times, but I cannot get used to there being a call box in a house.

  Nimble looks worriedly at the door. His father’s voice answers. I can’t make out any of the words; Pen and Nimble are straining to hear him too. Minutes pass before there’s the click of the receiver.

  “How often are there calls?” Pen asks.

  “Before the tourism season? Almost never.” All the color has drained from Nimble’s face. It could have been about his sister, or the war, or anything at all, but chances are that it wasn’t anything good.

  We don’t talk. And, several minutes later, when footsteps start climbing toward us, I can hear my heart pounding.

  Celeste stands in the doorway, her hands folded in front of her. She takes one look at the three of us, and breaks into tears.

  Nim runs to her. “What is it?” he says. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s now,” she says. “I’m leaving tonight.”

  “Leaving?” Pen stands. “As in, going home?”


  Celeste rubs at her eyes, nods. “King Ingram is sending his men around to collect me, and we’re going straight to his jet.”

  “I’m confused,” Pen says. “What are you crying about? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Everything is going wrong,” Celeste says. “King Ingram has been planning to use me as a bargaining chip this whole time. My father will do anything King Ingram says as long as I’m his hostage.”

  “You aren’t a hostage,” Nim says, but I can hear in his voice that he knows she’s right.

  Celeste looks at him. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I don’t know if I’ll be back.”

  “Of course you’ll be back,” I say. “King Ingram wants an alliance between our kingdoms. There will be a lot of traveling back and forth.” There has to be. I still have to get Pen home, and I still have to find my father.

  But if Celeste hears me, she doesn’t acknowledge it. “I don’t even know if King Ingram will help my mother,” she says miserably. “If my mother is still alive.”

  Nim holds her shoulders, but he has no words of comfort. He has already lost too much, and he’s about to lose her, too. He rests his chin on the top of her head, amid her hair that’s braided into a crown; she wraps her arms around him and whispers through her sobs, something about a last-resort plan. He shushes her, sways with her.

  “Why wouldn’t her mother be alive?” Pen asks me. I take her wrist and pull her from the room.

  “We should leave them alone,” I say.

  “So, this is it?” Pen says, as we walk down the stairs. “She goes home and we all get left behind?”

  “She’s being used as a bargaining tool,” I say. “It isn’t what she wanted, and it isn’t something we should envy.”

  Pen glances sideways at me. “I suspect we’ll be used as well,” she says. “Once it’s proven that King Furlow really exists and is going to help Havalais in the war effort, we’ll be a commodity.” She sweeps her arms out theatrically. “The residents of the magical floating island. Get a glimpse for a penny, snap an image for a nickel.”