“What did they give him?” someone demanded. I was speechless—I didn’t even know the answer. He grabbed my fist, wrenching the fingers open; I was still holding the vial. He took it from me and sniffed it, then tasted the rim with the tip of his tongue, before opening up a briefcase filled with medical supplies. He tossed a bag of saline at one of the others, who threaded the IV through the existing tap in Callum’s arm and hung the bag from a makeshift hook on the inside roof of the van. They rifled through the contents of the briefcase before finding an antidote to the poison he’d taken, jamming a hypodermic needle through the fleshy cap of the vial and drawing its contents into the needle. Then he stuck it in Callum’s arm.
“Will that cure him?” I asked. Please don’t die, Cal, I thought desperately. Please, please, please don’t die.
“We’ll know soon,” one of them said. He removed another vial from the briefcase and loaded the liquid into a second hypodermic needle.
“It’s best if you’re not awake for what comes next,” he said. Before I could shrink away, he injected something into my bloodstream.
“What are you doing?” I cried, or attempted to. The sedative overcame me so fast I wasn’t able to get all the words out before sinking into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
THIRTY-SIX
“She’s coming around. Juli! Juli, come on, open your eyes.” Callum! He was alive!
I tried to obey but I couldn’t. It was as if each of my eyelashes weighed a ton. I felt a hand on my cheek. I tried to sit up, but Callum pushed back against my shoulders, urging me to settle down.
“Don’t worry, you’re all right,” he said. “Lie back and relax. We’re here. We’re safe.”
“Where’s here?” I could open my eyes now, but all I could see was his face. He smiled.
“Home,” he said. “Or, at least, my home. Farnham. We’re almost to Adastra Palace.”
“How did we get here?” The last thing I remembered was being in that van, wondering if Callum would recover from whatever poison he’d ingested at the Castle, and now here we were, both awake, both alive, together. A wave of gratitude washed over me.
“We drove to Buffalo and crossed into Canada, then they loaded us on a plane and flew us straight to Adastra City,” Callum explained.
“Those men …” The memory of gunshots echoed through my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase the faces of the medics who might have been hurt or died so we could escape. So that Callum and I could live. Kata to chreon. My debts were piling up, and I was no closer to getting home.
“They work for the Farnham Intelligence Agency,” he said. “Basically our KES.”
“How did they …”
“The ring,” he said, flexing his hand. I ran my fingers over the engraved surface of the bloodred stone, thinking of the one Thomas wore, what it meant to him, and what secrets it might hide. “It’s a panic button. It called the FIA agents to me. They were undercover in Columbia City this whole time.”
“But why?”
“My mother had a feeling something like this was going to happen,” he said darkly. “They were there to extract me in case of emergency. I fought her on it, but I’m glad she insisted.”
“Me too,” I said. I sat up groggily with Callum’s support. We were alone in the back of a stretch limousine.
“She’s never going to let me hear the end of it now,” Callum said. “You should’ve heard her before I left. ‘Don’t trust them, they’ll kill you as soon as look at you.’ I didn’t believe her, and I hate, hate, hate that she was right. But at least I’m alive. And so are you.”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry, Callum.”
“Don’t be,” Callum said. “You’re just as much a victim of all this as I am. And look at me. All better.” He grinned. “Not a scratch. Well, a few puncture marks, but those’ll heal in no time. Girls like scars, right?”
“Sure,” I said with a weak smile. “The tinier, the better.”
“Well, that’s good news, because you can barely even see mine,” he joked. He handed me a glass of water. “Drink this. They tell me you’re likely to be dehydrated.”
I gulped it down. Dehydrated was an understatement. “Why did they knock me out?”
“They’re trained to treat anybody from the UCC as an immediate threat,” Callum explained. “They had to incapacitate you. It’s protocol. Sorry about that.”
“Forget sorry. After what you went through, I think I can handle it.”
He smoothed my hair. “We’re going to be okay.”
“I wish you didn’t have to come back here,” I said. “I know you hate this place.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m just glad we’re both living—right now, I don’t give a damn where.”
Callum put his arms around me. I sank into him, taking comfort in the sturdiness of his body. But now that the sedatives were wearing off, I couldn’t get Thomas out of my mind. I could feel his absence like a yawning chasm in my gut. He’d try to find me, I knew he would, but he didn’t know where I’d gone. Could he guess? Could he find out? Thomas could do a lot of things, but not if he was suspended from the KES and cut off from all their resources. And did I really want him sacrificing the only career he had left going AWOL to find me? My dad had betrayed his assignment to be with my mom, and look what had happened to them. If Thomas died because of me, I would never forgive myself.
I knew one thing for sure—I couldn’t keep leading Callum on. It wasn’t that I didn’t have tender feelings for him, because I did, especially after what we’d just gone through—what he had put himself through partly on my behalf. But there was still Thomas, taking up so much space in my heart, and though in the end I couldn’t be with either of them I couldn’t allow Callum to continue to fall in love with the Juliana I was pretending to be.
But that conversation was for later. At the moment, everything was far too uncertain. I had yet to meet the queen of Farnham, and I was worried. Juliana’s stepmother sounded easy compared to Queen Marian, and I needed to hold my own against her.
The limo pulled over and the door opened. A man who could’ve been a KES agent if it weren’t for the fact that we weren’t in the Commonwealth anymore opened it for us and we climbed out.
I didn’t even get a chance to see the outside of Adastra Palace. The windows of the limo had been tinted so darkly that they only gave a vague idea of what the city looked like, although from what I’d seen I could tell that it was less grand than Columbia City.
The security detail that had met us at the car led us silently through the underground garage. “Her Majesty commands that we take you straight to the throne room, Your Highness,” the guard told Callum. “She wants to see you immediately.”
“I’m sure she does,” Callum muttered, so low that only I could hear.
“Cal!” A boy of about twelve came barreling around a corner and slammed into Callum. Callum wrapped his arms around the boy and gave him a fierce bear hug.
“Mother said you weren’t coming back,” the boy said. “She said you’d gone to live with the enemy forever.”
“They’re not the enemy, Sonny,” Callum said. “Well, not all of them. This is Juliana.”
“Pleased to meet you, Your Highness,” Sonny said, bowing his head a little and reaching out to take my hand. When I gave it to him, he kissed it. “Welcome to Farnham.”
Callum gave me a sideways glance, struggling to keep a straight face. “We’re well trained here.”
“I can see that.” I smiled at Callum’s little brother, impressed by his gallantry. “Hello. It’s lovely to meet you, Your Highness. Can I call you Sonny?”