“You’re my child,” she shouts, her famous calm completely gone now. “And I can forbid you, or anyone else in Alciel, from doing anything I like. Your grandfather is the king, North, and heir or not, you’re his subject. You’ll do exactly as you’re told.”
There’s a beat of silence as I try to absorb this, my heart thumping and stuttering. I knew there was a chance they wouldn’t listen. I knew there was a chance it would go wrong. But now that I’m here, watching my dream crumble, I don’t know what to say.
Into that silence, my chrono buzzes with a soft message notification, and Anasta’s gaze drops to fix on it.
“Oh,” she says softly. “Oh, I see now. You didn’t do this alone, did you? Your friends helped.”
“Which friends?” Beatrin demands.
“The tutor’s son,” Anasta murmurs. Saelis. “And the chancellor’s daughter.” Miri.
“Leave them out of this,” I say, just as soft. “Anasta, don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she says simply. “But it has to stop. This infatuation with them has gone too far, North. One day your grandfather will be scattered to the clouds, and your mother will be queen—and when she follows him in her turn, you’ll be king. A king cannot be a part of a three. That’s where this is heading, isn’t it? That’s why they were willing to help you do something so incredibly stupid—that’s why you started doing it to begin with. You think they love you—and you’re showing off for them.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about right now,” I tell her, trying to ignore the burning in my cheeks, because I am not discussing my love life with my mothers, and especially not today. “And when it is something I’m deciding, I’ll be doing it myself. Without consulting ancient traditions and conservative crap.”
Beatrin opens her mouth, and then bites off her words when Anasta shakes her head. My heartmother always gets the job of delivering the news I don’t want to hear.
“This isn’t about us,” she says, “or what we believe. The monarch makes a pair, because to add a third person would be to add hopeless complexity to the archipelago’s politics, North. Just look at what’s happened with Talamar.”
“What about him? He was elected to the council by his island.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “But only after the journos outed him as your bio-donor. He was chosen for that role specifically because he was of no importance politically, and had no influence to wield for or against the throne. Now he has a seat on the council, because his island hopes his connection to you will bring them favor. And worse, perhaps it will.”
“I can keep my personal relationships separate from politics,” I snap, trying to ignore the fact that I’m in the middle of a political argument with my own mothers right now.
“You can’t control gossip,” Beatrin says, her tone harsh. “The preservation of the royal bloodline is our most important task, North. And what Anasta’s too sweet to say is that if you make a three that includes the tutor’s son, then there’ll always be doubt about who fathered your heir, no matter what proof you provide.”
“Why does that matter for us, when it doesn’t matter for anyone else in the archipelago?” I demand. “If the owner of one of the big tech companies makes a three, nobody asks who fathered his heir. The children are raised, and they inherit.”
“The royal family is not a tech company,” Beatrin snaps. “The rules are different for us, because we are different.”
I want to fight her, but I don’t know how. On top of everything that just happened in the council room, the blows are piling up, threatening to bring me to my knees.
“This has gone so far beyond the edge, I don’t even know where to start,” she continues. “To suggest that you, of all people, could go Below—nobody has ever returned from there, North, because that way lies death. You’ll turn in your glider, and you won’t see those two friends of yours again, is that clear?”
The air goes out of me, and I’m left staring at her. “You’re joking,” I say weakly. Of all the things I thought I was risking, Miri and Saelis were never on the list. They’re my best friends. Until today, I’d hoped they might be more. And even if that’s impossible, I never want to lose them.
“I’m deadly serious,” she says quietly. “Now we’re going to go back to that table and try to salvage something from this fiasco. Clear?”
“Clear,” I murmur, my thoughts fritzing like there’s a bad connection in my head. “I, um—just give me a moment. I’ll use the restroom.”
“North,” she begins, but Anasta lays a gentle hand on her arm again.
“We’ll see you in there in just a minute, North,” my heartmother says.
I nod, and watch as the two of them disappear back through the door, the noise of the argument beyond it welling up, then shutting off as it slides closed.
I’m left staring at the emblem painted onto it—my family’s crest. It’s a stylized sky-island, borne aloft by a pair of wings. The underside of the island is smooth, the top a jagged line to represent the buildings.
In this moment, that island looks impossibly small.
I take Anasta’s place, leaning against the sun-warmed duraglass of the window, hands shaking as I try to understand what’s just happened. In a quarter hour, I’ve lost my glider, my best friends, and my freedom.
Then I feel the faint dragging sensation that comes with the train dropping from high velocity to regular speed, which means we’re approaching Port Camo. Last stop before the palace.
Before I can think about it, I’m hustling down the hallway, past windows that now look out onto the sporting district on one side, and a mural on the opposite wall. It features a parade of fantastical birds and animals, supposedly from the time before. We no longer have names for most of them—and quite a few look so stupid that I’m certain the artist made them up entirely.
I press my thumb against the SmartLock beside the door to the royal quarters. My skin tingles as the microneedles connect, and then the sensation passes. The lock is coded to just three people’s DNA—my mothers’ and mine—and even our attendants don’t have a way inside. Beatrin says she’d rather make her own bed than give up her privacy. Today, that’ll buy me time.
My fingers fumble as I unbutton my soy-silk shirt, then use it to scrub away the gold dots painted along my cheekbones. I dump it in a gold-trimmed puddle on the ground and strip down to my bamboo undershirt as I drop to my knees beside our luggage where it’s piled in the corner, ready to be off-loaded.
Everything I own has gold thread woven through it, so it’s impossible to pretend I’m anyone else for even a moment in my own clothes. But I press my thumb to the lock on the suitcase I took down to Port Picard for our overnight trip, and when the case opens soundlessly, I dig madly through the jumble of stuff I shoved inside this morning. At the bottom, I find one of Saelis’s plain blue shirts—I try to have something with me for moments like this—and I button it up as fast as I can.
I roll back the rug to reveal the maintenance hatch and grab hold of the ring to flip it open. The track flies by beneath the carriage as I crouch and wait, swiping my fingers across my chrono’s display to dictate a message to the others. “Meet me at the hangar.”