“Why you and Grant? Why me and … her? What connects us to our analogs?”
What I really wanted to ask was “Why can I see Juliana’s life in my dreams?” It couldn’t have been normal, otherwise he would know I could do it, and I was pretty sure he didn’t suspect anything of the sort. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t trust him, and I wasn’t ready to hear the answer.
Thomas shrugged. “Nobody knows. Not for sure, anyway. Until about thirty years ago, all this was completely theoretical—in your world it still is.”
“Tell me about her.” Though I’d been glimpsing Juliana’s life in my dreams ever since I could remember, I didn’t know much about her, but I wanted to.
“Juliana?” I nodded. “Well, she’s … she’s tough. The way she was raised, it seems like a fairy tale, but it hasn’t been, at least not for a long time. Life’s been cruel to her, especially recently.”
“You mean the wedding?” I couldn’t imagine being forced to marry someone I didn’t know just to satisfy someone else’s political agenda. And if the General’s explanation had been anything to go by, Juliana’s fiancé was practically her enemy, the prince of a country that had been at war with her own since before she was alive.
Thomas bit back a bitter laugh. “Actually, that’s the least of it.”
“What’s the worst?”
“A couple of months ago, her father, the king, was shot during a public event,” Thomas told me. “By Libertas,” he added.
I felt as though I’d swallowed a stone; a great heaviness settled in my stomach, the echoes of a grief I knew all too well. It must’ve shown on my face, what I was thinking, because Thomas rushed to assure me that the king hadn’t died. “Although some people might think it would’ve been better if he had.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he’s not himself anymore. The bullet lodged in his brain, and while it didn’t kill him, the surgeons couldn’t remove it. He’s in this strange sort of in-between state. Not a coma, really, because sometimes he’s awake, but he’s pretty incoherent most of the time. He doesn’t talk much, and he definitely can’t rule.”
“So who’s leading the country?”
“His wife, the queen regent. She’s Juliana’s stepmother, the king’s second wife. Not a lot of love lost between Juliana and the queen. You’ll have to watch out for her; she and Juliana have never gotten along, even before everything happened with the king, and she can be spiteful.”
I closed my eyes as the enormity of my task threatened to overwhelm me. “I don’t see how you and the General expect me to do this. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Thomas pressed his lips together. “You won’t be doing it alone. I’m going to help you.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m not just a transporter,” Thomas said. It was incredible how steady he could keep his voice, how calm he was in this very strange situation. I resented his perfect composure. It made me feel wild and untethered, entirely at the mercy of something besides my own rational mind, which wasn’t like me at all. It was also not the way to be if I wanted to go home again. I had to be just like Thomas. I had to push my feelings way, way down so that they couldn’t rise up and defeat me. I wouldn’t let him be stronger than me.
“Then what are you?”
“I’m Juliana’s lead bodyguard,” Thomas said. “I know her pretty well. We’ve spent a lot of time together, and I can coach you through the next six days, if you’ll let me.”
“And if I won’t?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you’ll do just fine.”
He nodded to me as if to say goodbye and stepped back from the window, making his way toward the door. When he reached the middle of the room, he stopped and turned; I swiveled my head and our eyes locked. The room was dark, but I could still see his face, illuminated by the aurora and the moon that shone through the window like a spotlight.
“Of course,” he said with a casual lift of his eyebrows, “it’s not going to be easy, considering you’ve never met her.”
I stared at him. “Where are your parents?”
The question surprised him. I felt a thrill at having caught him off guard. “My parents?”
“Yeah. If you’re Grant’s analog, then you’re probably the same age,” I said. “Right?” He nodded. “Which means you’re, what, eighteen? Most of the guys I know are picking out colleges, not serving as bodyguards to a princess or running covert operations in parallel universes and kidnapping girls. Your parents just let you do this?”
“My parents are dead,” he told me coldly. “I’m pretty sure they’re beyond caring what I do.”
“Oh.” For a moment I felt bad, but my parents were dead, too, and I led a normal life. Well, I had up until recently, anyway. “I’m sorry. What … happened?”
“What always happens here,” Thomas told me. “War with Farnham. My parents were both in the military, and we were stationed on a base near St. Louis, right along the border between Farnham and the Commonwealth. It’s a heavily disputed territory, even now. They’d called a ceasefire, so things were supposed to be relatively safe, but Farnham launched a sneak attack and bombed the hell out of the base one morning. The death count was … substantial. Both of my parents died instantly.” He closed his eyes for a second, as if experiencing a wave of intense emotion, which of course made sense, and came as a welcome relief to me. He could feel things. Some things, anyway.
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
We both fell silent. Finally, Thomas spoke. “I didn’t tell you that story to make you feel sorry for me. You can still hate me all you want, I don’t care. But I hope it gives you a sense of how important this treaty with Farnham—and Juliana’s marriage to the prince—is to this world. We wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of bringing you here if we didn’t have a very good reason.” He shook his head, a bit sadly, I thought. “I don’t know about you, but preserving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides is a damn good reason to me. I’m not going to insult you with apologies, because I’m not sorry I did what I did. Sorry it had to come to this, maybe, but that’s it.”
I didn’t know what to do with his speech. He sounded so self-assured, and yet so conflicted. Thomas confused me. One moment he was cold and unfeeling, the next he was passionate and insistent. Much as I hated to admit it, I found him interesting. I didn’t trust or like him, but I felt for him. I knew what it was like to lose your parents. I knew it was something you never got over, even though your life carried on without them. I’d been lucky; I had Granddad, who’d taken me in when I was alone, who’d made me feel loved and safe. I couldn’t know for sure, but I suspected that Thomas had not been so fortunate.
“What happened to you?” We needed a different topic, and I’d noticed he was holding his hand strangely, as if it hurt. The moonlight filtering in through the window was strong and bright, and I could see that purplish bruises had started to form at the base of his thumb.
“Oh.” He gave me a sheepish smile. “Well, you fell on me.”
“What?”
“When we entered Aurora,” he explained. “Passing through the tandem always causes a disruption—” I scrunched up my face in confusion. “It’s like a ripple effect, a by-product of the energy it takes to move between universes. When we landed in Aurora, there was a small tremor, and I lost my grip on you. We fell, and … you landed funny. On my hand.”
Part of me wished I’d broken it. “Well, sorry.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t do myself any favors by punching out those Libertas guys.” He shrugged. “One of the perks of being KES. It’d take me a week to list all the injuries I’ve sustained doing this job, so I’m used to it. It’ll heal up quick.”