The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)
I wondered what it would have been like if Jack had been a normal transfer student and there was no Circle, and no Order, and no Saxons, and no fate dictated by the mandate.
Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that never actually happened? If it was, it was a shade of toska. A craving for something you couldn’t possibly understand. A craving I was finally letting myself feel, only to wish I hadn’t.
Jack turned his back to me. He straightened his shirt, put on the blazer I shoved back at him. He was so achingly beautiful with his hair mussed up from having my fingers tangled in it that I could barely breathe.
As if he’d read my mind, he smoothed his hair back into place.
I stared at him for a beat more, sure he could feel the longing pulsing out of me—and then I deflated. My heart slammed shut so hard, I shuddered.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, as blandly as I could muster. “That was obviously a mistake.”
He turned around. His eyes didn’t say it had been a mistake. “I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he said. “You know that, right?”
Of course I did. Whatever else I felt, I knew he always tried to do the right thing. I turned away, pulling my hair back into a ponytail. “How do you know what the right thing is?” I whispered.
“That’s the problem, then, isn’t it? I don’t anymore. The thing that feels right . . .” He shifted his eyes to me, and back away just as quickly. He paced to the bottom of the ramp. “The only thing that feels right is as wrong as it can get.”
CHAPTER 29
We skirted the back side of the museum, past a sidewalk vendor slathering chocolate onto a sizzling circle of crepe batter. Jack led us down a set of stone steps to the bank of the Seine.
The only thing that feels right, he’d said. What felt right to him was me.
He wasn’t allowed to say things like that.
The sun was straight overhead now as we walked under a bridge and down the river, past dozens of Sunday brunch picnickers. All around us was the hum of traffic and the laughter of kids chasing each other and the ding of bike bells, but the silence between us was starting to get too loud. “What’s with all the padlocks?” I finally asked, pointing to a bridge with thousands of glimmering locks attached to its railings.
Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “That’s the love locks bridge. If a couple puts a lock on it and throws the key into the river, they’ll be together forever. Supposedly.”
“They’ve never heard of bolt cutters?” I said. Jack glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.
I saw a bench in the shade and headed toward it, brushing off a dusting of pale pink petals from the tree overhead before I sat down.
Jack sat about a foot away, which was too close. I shifted a few more inches.
Kissing had made things worse.
I pulled the leather pouch out of my bag like it was the only thing on my mind. At least I was good at lying.
Inside was a very old, leather-bound book. I felt Jack looking over my shoulder as I slid it out. The cover shed flakes of faded black onto my white dress. I set it gingerly on my knees and paused, feeling the weight of it in my hands, the weight of things far more important than boy drama.
Mr. Emerson was way more important. This—whatever history I held here in my hands—was way more important.
“If this says who the One is, and we tell the Order, we’ll be handing that person a death sentence,” I said. It could be somebody my age—somebody like Luc. Or even a little kid.
“If we don’t, we’ll be handing Fitz a death sentence.” Jack shrugged out of his blazer and rolled the sleeves of his shirt. It had gotten a lot warmer since early this morning. “And the Order’s killing people who they think might be the One anyway. Having it all end with one person dying will actually save lives.”
I couldn’t believe I was in a place where that was up to us to decide.
The sun glinted off the river as a line of baby ducks followed their mother in a neat row. Two little blond girls threw them pieces of a baguette.
“We’d also be stopping the mandate from being fulfilled,” I said. “The Circle would never find the tomb, if it does turn out that the mandate is necessary for that.”
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. That part had to be killing him.
“And Mr. Emerson said tell no one,” I went on. “He could have texted you where he’d hidden this stuff, or just left it in his safe, but he really, really didn’t want anyone but us to see it.”
Jack rested his chin in his hand and looked at me. “Are you saying you don’t think we should turn over the One to save Fitz?”
The breeze stirred the strands of dark hair that had already escaped my ponytail. “Do you think they’ll actually kill him? They said they would at the Hagia Sophia and didn’t. Wouldn’t it be smarter to keep him alive for information until they get what they want?”
“Are we willing to risk it?”
I deflated. “No, I guess not.” At the end of the day, I’d do whatever I had to for Mr. Emerson, even if the thought of deciding someone’s fate made me sick. “I just really don’t like it.”
“I don’t either.” Jack sat with his elbows on his knees, his shoulders hunched. “But being part of the Circle, you learn that what’s right isn’t usually what’s pleasant.”
I looked down at the sun-dappled book and opened the front cover. A diary, it looked like. In French.
Jack reached out a hand. “May I?”
I watched as he scanned pages. “A lot of it’s about battles.” He turned to a later spot. “And then it seems like the writer got sick.”
Nothing that sounded useful to us. I watched the stream of people go by on the ornate bridge overhead and hoped the Order wouldn’t think to look down here.
Jack squinted at a page. “A lot of these battles are Napoleon’s.” He flipped another page, and another, running his index finger down each one. “At first I thought this was one of his soldiers writing, but the way he’s talking . . . this might actually be Napoleon’s diary.”
I suppose that made sense after the “coronation site” clue.
Jack turned a few more pages and drew a sharp breath. I sat up straight, and he pointed.
The Celtic knot symbol from my locket was penciled onto the back endpaper.