Broken Crowns Read Free

eyes are on me, and whether or not he knows it, he still sets my stomach fluttering.
    Another gust of wind comes, and even the fearless Pen hugs her arms across her stomach and shivers.
    Thomas frowns at her. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
    â€œNot all over, clearly, or you’d have found me,” she says.
    He stands at a pace’s distance from her, and I can see the worry in his eyes. I can see that he is trying to get a whiff of tonic on her breath. When he can’t find one, he looks to me, and while Pen isn’t watching I give a slight shake of my head. She’s sober.
    The jet has quit rumbling in the sky; presumably it has landed.
    â€œCome on,” I say to Pen, and hold the door open. “Let’s see if we can find something in the kitchen you’re willing to eat.”
    She follows me into the house, past the smallest Piper children, who are playing a war game in the living room. Annie is a soldier whose legs were blown off in an explosion, and Marjorie is a nurse applying a tourniquet. I have seen them play this game a dozen times, and it is anyone’s guess whether Annie will survive her wounds. Last time, an explosion hit their pretend medical tent and all the nurses and soldiers were killed.
    I hate this game, but I think it makes them feel closer to Riles.
    Up at the top of the stairs, Amy watches them from between the bars of the railing, not quite ready for human interaction. She has been quiet since her grandfather’s death, and she’s added another cloth around her wrist beside the one meant to symbolize her sister.
    â€œLet’s say I lost my arm too,” Annie says.
    â€œWhich one?” Marjorie asks.
    â€œThe left.”
    â€œWould you girls like to help me in the garden?” Alice calls down from the top of the stairs. She cannot bear this game of theirs.
    Annie sits up from her deathbed on the hearth. “Why do you tend to the garden? We have a gardener.”
    â€œIt just makes me happy, I suppose,” Alice says. She reaches the bottom step and holds her hands out to them, and they forget their game and happily follow her outside.
    In the kitchen, Pen and I sit at the small table reserved for the maids, and Pen bites into a raw carrot from the cold box.
    â€œI wish you’d stop looking so worried,” she says.
    â€œI can’t play it as cool as you, I suppose.”
    She stares at me for a long moment, and then she says, “You’re not the only one who has nightmares about what’s happening back home. Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
    â€œI know that you care. That’s what’s so frustrating,” I say. “We’ve hardly spoken in months.”
    â€œWhat are you going on about ‘we’ve hardly spoken’? We share a room. We speak every day. We’re speaking right now.”
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    She takes another bite of the carrot, with a crunch I swear is meant to be pointed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t entirely trust you with my secrets these days.”
    I know just what she means. It has been a source of contention that’s never fully gone away these past several months. She discovered that Internment’s soil contains the very fuel source King Ingram wants for his kingdom, and she confided this secret to me. But after she nearly drowned, I told the princess everything, hoping an alliance could be forged between Internment and Havalais, giving us all a chance to return home.
    Instead, King Ingram used the princess as a hostage and has been depleting Internment of its soil as he pleases.
    I don’t know the enormity of what’s already happened and what’s to come, but even so I wouldn’t take back what I did. I’m still holding out hope that I’ll be able to return Pen home to her family, to the city that she loves so much that she’s been going to