We came apart then, our foreheads and noses touching, as if we couldn’t bear to fully separate. We grinned at each other, both giddy with a sense of release.
“What are we doing?” he panted, happily bewildered.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t want to stop.”
“Sasha,” he breathed. I loved the way he said my name, like an incantation, like a magic word. “What are we going to do? We’re from—”
“I know,” I said, nodding frantically. “I know that this can’t go on forever, but I also know that I’m not ready to lose you, and tonight I don’t care what’s right or what’s not. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said. Then he kissed me again, harder this time, a kiss full of long-suppressed wanting that echoed my own.
In the middle of the night, I awoke to pounding at my door. I rose from a dreamless sleep, untroubled by visions of Juliana, with the imprint of Thomas’s lips on my own. I smiled as I went to the door, knowing that there was only one person who could be on the other side.
But when I opened it, I found myself face to face not with Thomas, but with Callum. He was so excited he couldn’t even stand still.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and dragging me down the hallway. “I have something I want to show you.”
“Callum, it’s almost dawn!” I hissed. “Where are we going?”
“Remember when we were talking about those things your father’s been saying?” Callum said, charging ahead.
“Yeah?” I rubbed my eyes, shaking off his grip. I was trying not to betray my annoyance, but it was proving difficult. “What about them?”
“I’ve been thinking about it ever since, how he kept saying ‘touch and go.’ It sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Then I woke up just now and I remembered.” He stopped suddenly. We were standing in front of a metal door that was out of place in Asthall’s otherwise old-fashioned interiors. It was the entrance to the KES situation room, and unlike every other door at the cottage it had an LCD lock. Callum pointed to it. “Look what’s written there.”
I crouched down and peered at the console. Sure enough, there were three words etched into the metal of the panel’s frame. “No way,” I breathed.
The label read TOUCH AND GO.
“It’s the brand name!” Callum cried, grinning proudly. “These are the same consoles you have at the Castle.”
I squeezed his arm. “Good job, Cal! I can’t believe you even saw that.”
He shrugged happily. “I guess all that paying attention to doors and windows has finally paid off.”
“It sure has. How much do you want to bet that one, one, two, three, five, eight is an access code?”
“Could be,” he said. “At the risk of sounding ridiculous, this is sort of exciting.”
“Although …” I chewed at my lip. “Like you said, all the consoles are the same. So the access code could be for any room in the Castle. There are hundreds of them! What are we going to do, go around to every single one and try it to see if it works?”
“I guess we could,” he said, less enthusiastic now.
“That might take days. And you never know—it could be the code to a room in the Tower, or anywhere in the Citadel for that matter. Someone’s going to wonder what the hell we’re doing long before we get to all of them.”
“Okay,” he conceded. “But don’t you think it’s more likely that the room the code opens has something to do with the king himself? If he’s trying to give you clues, he has to believe that you know which room, or could at least figure it out.”
He was right. The only problem was that I wasn’t Juliana. The king’s real daughter might have known instinctively what he was trying to tell her, but that would’ve been just between the two of them. Even Thomas couldn’t help with this.
“I have no idea,” I said, the thought of Thomas, of the last time I’d seen him, making me woozy. “It’s not the code to his room, and anyway he didn’t move there until after his … accident.”
“The royal bedroom?”
“You mean the one he shared with the queen?” I considered it. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Either way, we need to go back to the Castle,” Callum said. “In the morning, first thing.”
“That would raise an awful lot of eyebrows.” Not to mention that it would attract the General’s attention, which I absolutely did not want. But it didn’t seem like I had a choice. If the king was trying to tell Juliana something, who knew what it could be? What if it was urgent? I’d wasted so much time thinking his exclamations were nonsense. I didn’t have a second to lose.
“Who cares? You’re the princess, you can do whatever you want.”
I gave it some careful thought. “Okay. I’ll tell Gloria we want to go back.”
Callum took my face in the palm of his hands and kissed me deeply. It took all I had in me not to squirm away, my mind full of strong memories of another kiss. “This is so exciting!” he cried when we separated.
“Shhh, keep your voice down.” But I couldn’t help laughing. I’d never seen him this animated, not even earlier by the ocean.
But all I could think of was how much I wanted to tell Thomas.
THOMAS IN THE TOWER / 4
“Do you want to tell me what this is about?” Thomas asked. Captain Fawley shrugged.
“I’m just as in the dark as you are, Mayhew,” Fawley told him. “All I know is that the General isn’t happy. He woke me up in the middle of the night and demanded I get you back to the Citadel as fast as possible.”
“And now he’s just got me sitting here, sweating it out. Wonderful.” Thomas sat back in his chair. To Fawley he might’ve looked calm, but his guts were roiling. What possible reason would the General have had to send for him last night? He and Sasha had spent several more hours together, kissing and talking. He’d felt more like himself than ever. Then he’d noticed her trying to suppress a yawn and he realized how late it was. She hadn’t wanted him to leave, but she needed to sleep. They both did. So he’d seen her to her bed, placing one final kiss on her forehead, and went to his own room, where he found a summons waiting on his mobie. RETURN TO THE CITADEL NOW—DIRECT ORDER FROM HOD. Head of Defense. The General.
It couldn’t be good, whatever it was. “I don’t know why he’s making you babysit me.” They were on opposite sides of a table in one of the interrogation rooms in Subbasement B. Fawley had been tasked with watching Thomas until the General was ready to see him.
“Me neither,” Fawley said. “And I don’t much appreciate it, to be honest.”
“I don’t blame you.”
The door opened and the General strode through. “Get up, Fawley, and get out of here.”
Fawley did as he was told without hesitation. He gave Thomas a look that said good luck, but Thomas knew he’d probably need a great deal more than that.
The General took Fawley’s seat and stared at Thomas. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Thomas shook his head. “They just told me you wanted to see me.”
The General’s expression was blank. “You’re being removed from active duty.”
“What?” Thomas cried. “Why?”