The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

He gave me a meaningful look, but the sarcasm had already crept back into his voice, displacing any vulnerability. It didn’t matter. Somehow, in the space of thirty seconds, he had managed to make me feel bad that I’d made my own kidnapping and interrogation so difficult.

He cleared his throat. “You’d better put on the dress and get ready. They’ll be unhappy if you delay the ceremony.”

My eyes were drawn to his neck again, to the tendrils of scar tissue. “There’s a way to see,” I said, suddenly realizing the obvious. “At least about the burns. It won’t be fun, but if you have a lighter . . .”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. Realization dawned on his face.

“You know it’s not true,” he said, staring at the lighter. “It won’t prove anything.”

He flicked the lighter, and an inch-tall blue-and-orange flame sparked from its tip. The second it did, he flinched, such a small movement I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching so closely.

He let the flame die, and his Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. Then he scowled and flicked the lighter again, defiantly. We both stared at it for a second, watching the flame dance in the drafty room.

In one quick motion, he brought it to the inside of his forearm and hissed through his teeth. He grimaced, and looked away, but left the flame in place for five incredibly long seconds.

When he started to shake, I batted his hand away. “Stop. Enough.”

Stellan dropped the lighter to the ground and clutched his arm to his chest.

I reached for it, and he rested his forearm in my hands. I looked for the burn.

There was nothing there.

I stared, then grabbed his other arm. He shook his head. “It’s this one. Right there.” He pointed to the spot and grimaced. “Hurts like hell.”

I had burned myself with a curling iron a few months earlier. It went bright red immediately, and within a few minutes, it had blistered. I reached my fingers to the back of my neck. Even now, I could still feel the welt, and I’d only touched the iron to my skin for a fraction of a second.

On Stellan’s arm, there was no mark at all. I touched the skin carefully with my thumb. It was warm, but no redness, nothing. “Not even like the ones on your back,” I whispered.

“Those burns were much worse.” He sounded as awestruck as I felt. “I got them saving Anya. A burning beam fell on us. It took me a minute to get out from under it, and—”

He looked up, and I could see the doubt shining in his eyes.

I latched on to his uncertainty. “Think about it. If we were right, and you were the One, and if we all got away before the Dauphins could catch us, and we have all those other clues to the tomb? We might be able to find the treasure ourselves. You wouldn’t have to count on the Circle anymore. You could take Anya and go anywhere you wanted.”

He still didn’t look convinced. I caught his hands. “Please,” I said, changing tactics one more time. “Just let me out of here so we have more time to investigate. If you sneak me out before Monsieur Dauphin notices—”

He took his hands back, letting mine fall limply to my sides. “I can’t risk—no. I’m sorry, kuklachka, but no.”

I closed my eyes, defeated. “Then at least call the Order,” I said.

Stellan ran a hand through his hair. “Do you even have the phone number?”

“I memorized it last night.” I rubbed my eyes. “Give me your phone.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket hesitantly. “If I got caught talking to the Order—”

“Fitz is going to die otherwise!” I grabbed the phone and punched the number in. “Tell them we’re still trying to find the One. They can’t blackmail us unless they keep him alive. I hope.”

Stellan took back his phone. “I’m sorry,” he said again. And he was gone.

CHAPTER 39

Without windows to judge the passing of the day, I wasn’t sure how many hours had gone by, but it had to be evening by now, and no one else had come in to see me. Maybe they’d changed their minds and were putting it off. Or maybe it just meant a wedding took more than a couple hours to plan, even for the Circle. I stared at myself in the small, utilitarian mirror. This bathroom was rustic compared with the marble and gold of the one upstairs, and the version of me staring back from the mirror was an entirely different Avery, too.

Even if Stellan had called the Order and gotten a reprieve for Mr. Emerson, it was starting to sink in that I was really about to get married. Could they do this without my permission? Would it be legally binding? I’d refuse to sign the papers. I’d run away later.

But if they could track me as a random girl in Istanbul, there was no way I’d be able to escape as a wife.

Wife. The word sent a violent shiver through me.

As if on cue, the door opened and I jumped, flattening myself against the bathroom wall. Elodie came in, along with four other maids who chattered at me in rapid French. So much for putting it off.

“Sit,” Elodie said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She dragged the single chair in the room across to the mirror and pushed me into it, then pulled at a limp strand of my hair. “This is disgusting. Have you even showered today?”

I glared at her. “Silly me. I must have missed the spa in this cell.”

She rolled her eyes and studied me in the mirror, pulling my hair back from my face. This was eerily reminiscent of the plane to Istanbul, when she’d put me in the Herve Leger dress.

“Up,” Elodie said. “We don’t have time to wash your hair, so dress first, then I’ll see what I can do with . . .” She waved a hand at my head.

I didn’t say anything while one of the older maids pulled the wedding dress over my head and adjusted the fitted waist so it flowed in a graceful A-line over my hips. The cap sleeves settled onto my shoulders, and she laced up the corset back so tight, I gasped. She gave it one more pull for good measure, and then Elodie gestured to the chair again. I sat gingerly, my back rod-straight in the corset.

Elodie went to work on my hair.

“Does Luc actually want this?” I remembered him smiling at that boy at the club. For that and plenty of other reasons, I was pretty sure he had no interest in a relationship with me, but the political implications of it were something different entirely. In the mirror, I could see the older women whispering behind me while one pulled a pair of blush-pink heels out of a box.