Queen

“Don’t they know they don’t have to do this anymore?” I said as we reached the exit.

“We can’t all sit around and think all day. This needs to be a functioning community,” said Rivers. “Don’t worry—they’re here because they want to be, not because anyone is pointing a gun at their heads.”

“They’re here to avoid having someone point a gun at their heads,” I pointed out. “There’s no safe place for them outside Elsewhere.”

“That’ll change,” said Rivers with such offhanded assuredness that, had he been able to bottle it, I would have given anything I owned for just a taste. “We’ll start mapping out the tunnels tomorrow, once you’ve had a chance to rest.”

“We’ll start on it after dinner,” I corrected. “Once I’ve had time to take some painkillers.”

We argued all the way back to Mercer Manor, where Rivers reluctantly agreed to meet me that evening—but only to draw a guide to the tunnels he was already familiar with. It wasn’t the exploration I’d had in mind, but at least we were doing something.

I refused to let the doctor examine me, instead choosing to lie down upstairs in the bedroom Benjy and I now shared. We’d spent three days trapped together in that room while the Battle of Elsewhere raged outside, but I didn’t see it as a prison. Not anymore. Instead, it was a refuge from whatever storm Knox and the Blackcoats were brewing downstairs, the one place I could be me without having to worry about being silenced or ignored. Or mistaken for someone I wasn’t—though now that the entire country knew who I was, with any luck, those instances would become few and far between.

I turned on the radio and listened to the soft music, trying to lose myself in it and forget the rest of the world for a little while. But as soon as I closed my eyes, someone knocked softly on the door.

“This better be good,” I called, turning my face from the pillow enough to watch the door. Benjy slipped inside and offered me a smile.

“Heard what happened,” he said. “Rivers said you wouldn’t see a doctor.”

“I’m fine,” I muttered. “Breathing hurts, that’s all.”

“Oh, that’s all?” He rubbed his hands together, warming them up. “If you won’t let them take a look at you, then at least let me check to see if anything’s broken. You could puncture a lung and die, and then where would we be?”

“You’d be fine,” I said. “Knox would be adrift. He just wouldn’t realize it for a while.”

He smiled, but it resembled a grimace far too closely for it to be genuine. “I’m sure Knox will be pleased to know you’re so concerned about him, but I wouldn’t be fine without you, either. Let me take a look.”

I immediately regretted bringing Knox up at all, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Reluctantly I tugged up my shirt and let him take a look at the angry purple bruise already forming on my side. Benjy gently began to examine my ribs.

“You shouldn’t go down there alone anymore,” he said. I frowned.

“Why are we doing any of this if we’re too scared to talk to them? They have a point, you know. We’re up here, getting the best food and the best medical care—”

“We eat the same things they eat,” he said. “And they have constant access to doctors and nurses.”

“We still live in this house while they live in bunks,” I said. “That kind of difference might not seem like much, but to them, we might as well be poking them in the eye with our superiority.”

“We need space to meet and plan.”

“We could use the dining hall for space,” I countered. “This manor is where the Mercers lived for years. Staying here, while nothing’s changed for the rest of them—it isn’t doing us any good.”

“What would you prefer we do? Let everyone crowd in here?” said Benjy. His fingers pressed against a particularly tender spot, and I hissed. “No matter what kind of equality we want, there will always be leaders, and those leaders will always have some kind of marginal privilege.”

“Then what’s the difference between us and the Harts?” I said. “What makes us any better?”

“We won’t abuse our privileges. We won’t take and take and take and give nothing in return.” He pulled my shirt back down and gently draped a blanket over me. “We’re doing everything we can to make them as comfortable and happy as possible. The bunks aren’t bad at all. They have heat. We’re giving them fresh mattresses and clothes. We can’t do it all immediately, Kitty, not when we’re barely keeping our heads above water. But the sacrifices they’re making right now—if we win, they’ll be worth it. They know that. It’s just a little hard to remember right now.”

“It’s a little hard to remember a lot of things,” I mumbled, and he sat down on the bed beside me, running his fingers through my hair.

“Like what?”

I gave him a look. “You’re patronizing me.”

“No, I’m serious,” he said. “Talk to me, Kitty. Let me help.”

There was nothing he could do, not really—but he’d always been a salve to the terrible circumstances of our lives before. Taking a deep breath, I finally said, “I think I’ve forgotten what I really look like.”

His hand stilled. “I haven’t.”

“How? I’ve looked like this—like Lila—for months,” I said. “How could you possibly still look at me and see Kitty Doe?”

Benjy shifted so we were face-to-face, and he touched the curve of my jaw. Lila’s jaw. “It isn’t about what you look like. It never has been. It’s about what’s underneath, and that hasn’t changed.”

He was trying to be kind—he was being kind, like always. But I could see the way he looked at me sometimes, especially when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. I tried to imagine what it would be like if Benjy were Masked into someone else—Knox, or Greyson, or Strand—and part of me knew that no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn’t be able to separate them completely. He would always be somewhat changed. Maybe Benjy was better at this than I would be—maybe he still saw the real me underneath. But I wasn’t the same anymore. The past four months had changed me irrevocably, and sometimes I wondered if he knew that. Or if he wanted to pretend as badly as I did.

“Yeah, but—” I hesitated, not knowing how to put the knot of frustration in my throat into words. “It’s not just that. I don’t know where I belong anymore. I’m a Hart. I’m a former prisoner. I’m a Blackcoat. But I’m not really any of those things, either. And I’m not who I look like. I’m not anything except that speech. And even that wasn’t good enough for Knox, not really.”

Benjy’s hand resumed running through my hair, and he toyed with the ends. “Forget Knox. He’s under so much pressure right now that nothing is going to make him happy, so you might as well focus on making yourself happy instead.”

I frowned. Happy had become such a foreign concept to me that I wasn’t sure I remembered what it felt like. “I don’t know how to do that anymore.”

“Sure you do.” He smiled, but it faded quickly. “This isn’t forever, Kitty. And when we’ve won, there will be a place for you in our new world, and a place for everyone who doesn’t feel like they belong.”

I wanted to believe him, but there was no good place in the world for me after the war was over. I would never be me anymore. I would always be Lila’s double. And while others—smarter than me, most likely—would know how to use that to give them the life they wanted, I didn’t.

At the rate I was going, as lost and confused as I was, I would always be someone else’s idea of who I should be. And I hated that thought nearly as much as I hated the man known as Daxton Hart.

The radio crackled, the music replaced by white noise. I muttered a curse and reached over to turn it off.

“Wait, keep it on,” said Benjy, and I frowned. But before I could ask when he’d gained an appreciation for static, a voice began to speak—one as familiar to me as my own.

“My apologies for interrupting your evening,” said Lila Hart, though she didn’t sound very sorry at all. “This will be brief. Earlier today, a girl by the name of Kitty Doe, who was hired to impersonate me at public events for my own safety, made several claims against my uncle, Prime Minister Daxton Hart. I am here of my own free will to tell you all that every word out of her mouth is a profound, grievous, and traitorous lie. The man who is your Prime Minister is and always has been my biological uncle, and the United States government will take every measure not only to prove this, but also to show you how deep into the well of lies the entire Blackcoat rhetoric goes.”

I stared at Benjy, my stomach constricting painfully. He shook his head in resignation. “We knew this was coming,” he murmured. “There was never any question how they were going to counter.”

“But—” My mouth went dry. No matter how stupid it was, part of me had thought offering Lila a lifeline would change something. But of course it hadn’t. She was still under Daxton’s thumb, and she would be until one of them was dead.

I almost couldn’t bear to listen to the rest of it as, one by one, Lila recounted my claims and insisted they were false. No matter how many holes she alleged were in my full story, she returned to Daxton’s true identity over and over again. But while I dug my nails so deep into my palms I was sure they’d start bleeding, Benjy smirked.

“Do you hear that?” he said, and I shook my head. “‘The lady doth protest too much.’”

“I have no idea what that means,” I said miserably. “Can we please turn it off?”

Benjy switched off the radio, and merciful silence filled the room. Or mostly silence, anyway—from somewhere in the manor, I could hear Lila’s voice filtering up toward us, her words muffled. But that was infinitely better than having her blasted in my ear.

“It means there’s a very thin line between rightfully protesting, and protesting so much that it becomes clear you’re trying to hide something,” said Benjy. “Anyone with half a brain can tell she took a flying leap over the line.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Do you think she’s doing it on purpose?”