Broken Crowns. Lauren DeStefano

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with some difficulty he says, “I’ve been playing that same game, wondering about my parents and Leland.”

      I look at him.

      “I think they must be okay,” he says, and nods straight ahead at the sky, where our floating city is hiding somewhere in that darkness beyond our sullen reflections. “They would follow the king’s orders. They’ve always been smart about that.”

      “Which king’s orders?” I say.

      “Whichever king is in charge these days,” he says.

      “Maybe King Ingram and King Furlow really are forming some sort of alliance,” I say. “Maybe there will be good news.”

      He glances sidelong at me, and a smile comes to his lips. “I’ve always loved your optimistic side.”

      “You’re the only one. Everyone else seems to think I’m foolish for harboring it.”

      He puts his arm around my back, and the last of the tension in me dies. I rest my temple against his shoulder. “I’m tired, Basil. And so worried that the decisions I’ve made were the wrong ones.”

      “The wrong decisions have been made by these kings,” he says. “And for what it’s worth, I would have done the same thing you did. If I’d known about the phosane, I would have told.”

      “Really?”

      “If what’s happening to Pen had been happening to you, if I’d thought this world were killing you, yes. I’d do anything it took to bring you back home.”

      “You’ve always understood me, Basil.”

      His arm tightens around me and I close my eyes. The anxiety feels so distant when he’s around. Farther away and smaller in the sky than our long-lost floating city.

      Then I hear the front door open, and my stomach drops.

      The younger Pipers have long since gone to bed, and everyone else has been in the lobby for hours, waiting for word. All eyes are at the front door when Nimble steps inside, his shoulders dropped, his eyes weary. He is always the first to run to the tarmac when the jet returns, hoping for word about Celeste. And he is always heartsick when no word comes.

      We all wait in silence. Nim raises his head and looks at each of us, settling on me. “King Ingram has returned. My father is with him now. I don’t know what any of this means yet. I’m sorry.”

      He moves toward his bedroom, and by the heaviness of his steps I can suspect what the answer will be. But still I have to ask, “Was Celeste with him?”

      He pauses, his back to me. “No,” he says. “My father told me only that the king has brought a special visitor, but it isn’t her.” He takes a deep breath, and his voice is so tight, I think he may be fighting tears. “I doubt my father will be back tonight. You might as well all go to bed.”

      He can’t get away from us fast enough.

      Pen is standing by the couch, Thomas at her side. She’s staring worriedly after Nimble, though, and she doesn’t hear Thomas until the third or fourth time he’s said her name. “Pen.” She flinches, startled.

      “We’ll know more tomorrow, surely,” Basil says.

      The hotel falls into its nightly silence. I soak in the tub long after everyone else has gone to bed. The mornings in this place can be so noisy, with the Piper children running about, shrieking with laughter as they play their games, most of which involve explosions. And footsteps going this way and that, and voices, and silverware on plates.

      But the nights are still. I can feel everyone’s silence just as surely as I can hear their voices during the day.

      Someone knocks at the door. “Morgan?” Pen’s voice. “Are you all right? You’ve been in there forever.”

      “I thought you were in bed,” I say.

      “I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t drowned.”

      “I’ll be out in a minute.” The water’s gone cold anyway. I wring out my wet hair, dry off, and slip into my nightgown.

      When I open the door, Pen is waiting in the hallway, holding a lantern. Its orange glow picks up the bags under her eyes, and I can see all at once how troubled she’s been, despite her best efforts to conceal it.

      “I’m not tired,” she whispers. “Are you?”

      “No,” I say, although it’s a lie. I will stay awake all night if there’s a chance she’ll finally be honest with me. She is much more likely to reveal her secrets at night, when the sleeping world will be undisturbed by her whispering voice.

      She smiles. “Do you want to go for a midnight walk?”

      We don’t bother with our shoes. We tiptoe barefoot down the steps and through the front door.

      Unlike earlier, the night’s wind is mellow and warm. The moon outshines our lantern, nearly full and bright white.

      As soon as we’ve stepped into the grass, I can feel the cool earth under my feet, astoundingly like the ground back home. Pen moves forward, and when I don’t follow, she turns to face me. “Aren’t you coming?”

      I wriggle my bare toes in the grass and stare down at it. I have never seen the heaps of soil being flown down from Internment. I’ve only heard about it from Nim. I imagine Internment filled with craters so wide that you could look through them and see the ground below.

      “I was just thinking about home,” I say. “About what King Ingram is going to tell us, if he plans to tell us anything at all.”

      Pen takes my hand, leads me away from the hotel. “Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”

      She leads me to the amusement park, and I climb the fence after her without question, happy to see whatever it is she wants to show me. Maybe it will be something other than tonic this time. Maybe it will give me some insight into this distance she’s built between herself and everyone else in this world.

      I expect her to lead me to the telescopes. That’s where I find her sometimes. But instead she leads me to the giant teacups, sitting inanimate in the moonlight. She is still clutching the lantern when she kneels beside one of the saucers—chipped but still bright green—and reaches beneath it, somewhere in the mechanism that would cause it to spin.

      Eventually she finds what she was looking for: several pieces of paper folded together. Whatever is on those pages must be important, if she would keep them all the way out here.

      Is this because I discovered her request paper all those months ago? Does she think I’ll go rifling through her things when she’s not in our room? I haven’t. I would never. But sometimes, when I hear her tossing and turning, muttering through her nightmares about the harbor, I would do anything to know what is happening in her mind.

      “Here.” She hands me the lantern, and then she swings one leg over the teacup’s rim, then the other. She takes the lantern back so I can climb in after her.

      Inside the teacup is a metal wraparound bench, and

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