The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

The door jingled below. Stellan. He strolled in between the plastic-covered tables. He looked so out of place in the dingy falafel shop that people stopped eating to stare. I wondered again what kind of connection he and Jack had to this place. To each other.

Stellan came up the stairs and pulled out the third chair at our table. “Either you kept your promise to not turn me in to the Order, or they’re even more incompetent than I’d imagined.” He plucked a pita triangle from the basket and dipped it into the hummus on my plate with a half smile.

Jack put a hand on my knee.

“We didn’t turn you in,” I said.

Jack’s fingers tightened. I put a hand over his. “They killed him,” he said through clenched teeth. “He’s dead because we didn’t turn you in.”

Stellan stopped still, pita halfway to his mouth. His face went slack. “What?”

Jack pushed his chair back from the table. He’d been wound tightly all day, and it was like seeing Stellan was about to make him snap. I grabbed his arm.

“Don’t,” I said. “Stop.”

Jack was shaking. “If we’d turned you in—”

I squeezed his arm, trying not to shake myself. “Will you check outside and make sure everything’s okay?” I said quietly. “Please?”

With one last murderous look, Jack stomped down the stairs. I turned back to Stellan. He looked both dazed and furious. It gave a fierce edge to his almost too-pretty face.

“They killed Fitz.” I picked off a flake of the peeling varnish on the table. “They have my mom. They’ll kill her, too, if we don’t give them a name. They’re sure it’s someone in one of the twelve families, so they wouldn’t even believe us if we told them it was you, but they said they have a way of knowing if we’re lying, so we can’t just turn in someone random. I don’t know what that means, and I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m not willing to risk my mom’s life.”

Stellan cleared his throat. “What are you going to do?”

“We are going to use the clues Napoleon left to try to find the tomb.” I traced the edge of my plate. “We’ll either tell the Order about it and let them have the treasure or whatever’s there in exchange for my mom, or if there really is some kind of weapon, we’ll use it against them. If Jack doesn’t find them and kill them all first.” When I said it that way, it sounded almost simple.

Stellan narrowed his eyes. “And you think it’s going to work to use—what did you say you had, that diary and a bracelet?—to track down this tomb the Circle has been trying to find for centuries?”

I pushed away from the table. “Do you have a better idea?”

“For starters, I didn’t let you get away purely out of the goodness of my heart.”

I folded my arms. We were in this together now, and he probably wanted us to do something for his sister, too. That was fine. “What do you want?”

Stellan’s own voice echoed in my head. You wanted a change. A way away from the ache that is your existence, he’d said. Toska. Something is missing, and you ache for it, down to your bones. I understood what that meant now. In so many ways.

He rested his elbows on the table. The last of the afternoon sun slanted through the front windows, casting a band of gold across his forearms. “I’m not sure you’re entirely grasping the situation with the tomb. There’s more to it than the Order and their—” He paused, pressing his lips together. “There are things at stake for you other than saving hostages. The Circle is in decline.”

“I doubt that.” I leaned on the table, too. “They’re the richest, most—”

He held up a hand. “You might not see it from the outside, but haven’t you wondered how they can maintain the kind of power they had centuries ago in modern times? The answer is they can’t. It’s been showing more and more the past few decades—the world is changing faster than ever, and they’re not keeping up with it like they once were. It’s scaring people. Soon they’ll be nothing more than useless rich people whose ancestors were the kings of the world.”

I swallowed.

“Did you see all those people bowing to you at the church?” Stellan went on.

I hadn’t been able to forget. Them or the one who wanted to capture me.

“Yes, they want wealth. Yes, they want whatever magical power they hope to find in the tomb.” He leaned forward until our faces were too close for comfort, but somehow I couldn’t back away. “But they want more than that. The stress of the past decades has caused infighting like they haven’t seen since the early days. They need something—someone—to rally behind. You represent this thing they’ve wanted for so long.” He smiled wryly. “Don’t you see? As much as whatever’s in the tomb, you’re their treasure.”

A sick feeling settled in my stomach. The sound of Jack’s boots came back up the stairs, and I flinched away from Stellan.

“If you want to find the tomb,” Stellan continued, not even acknowledging Jack, “you’re making it much harder than it needs to be.”

My heart tripped irregularly. Jack sat down.

“Think about it. They all want to claim you as their queen. The Dauphins have demonstrated that at least some of them are no longer waiting for confirmation of the One’s identity. If anyone else finds you,” he went on, rolling a piece of napkin between his fingers, “they could snatch you and marry you off before you knew what was happening. Maybe knock you up for good measure so you wouldn’t be able to get out of it.”

I recoiled. Even Jack looked sick. “They wouldn’t—”

“They would. Even before they actually find the tomb, whoever fulfills the union will gain a huge amount of power. Power that people can—and do—kill for.”

I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat. “So?”

“So, we do the only thing that makes sense.” Stellan sat back and propped one ankle on his knee. “You want to find the tomb. You have a great deal of power. You said you’d stand by me as the thirteenth.”

I turned my chair to face him. So did Jack, his hand falling off my knee. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying it’s us, little doll. You might be the treasure, but we’re the answer.” Stellan motioned between us. Beside me, Jack tensed. “I know Napoleon mentioned something being odd about the union, but he doesn’t say the Circle’s interpretation is necessarily wrong. It could still mean you and me together are a veritable treasure map. And even if that’s all made-up nonsense, it’d keep you safe from being taken by one of the others. And it’d give us a good deal of leverage over them, in case we needed it.”