Captive. Aimee Carter
Читать онлайн книгу.
both of us would wind up dead, and that, above all else, spurred me down the hallway toward my suite.
I opened the door and burst inside, only to stop short. My living room was an exact replica of Knox’s, except instead of navy and wood, mine was made entirely of white. The carpet had been replaced since Augusta had died in front of the fireplace, but I still couldn’t stomach looking at that spot. Unfortunately, right now, someone else was standing only inches away, staring directly at it.
“Greyson,” I said, surprised. I closed the door. “What’s going on?”
Greyson, Daxton’s son and Lila’s cousin, stood on the shag carpet in front of the fireplace, his hands tucked loosely in his pockets. He was tall, but the way he slouched made him look several inches shorter than he was, and his shaggy blond hair fell into his eyes. They were dark, like his father’s, and even though he was almost nineteen, he looked younger than me. If he hadn’t been my almost cousin, I would have thought he was cute, but I was too entrenched in Lila’s head to even think about that now.
“Sorry for intruding,” he said. “I tried knocking, but you weren’t here, so I thought I’d leave it, but then I got distracted, and...”
He trailed off. He didn’t have to say anything else. Other than Celia and Lila, who were now safely hidden in the Blackcoat bunker, Augusta had been the only real family Greyson had left. And I’d been the one to kill her.
“You got me something?” I said. The last time he’d brought me a gift, he’d done so thinking I was Lila. She had been his best friend, and it had taken him all of ten seconds to realize I wasn’t really her. His quiet acceptance, as if her supposed death had been inevitable, had nearly broken my heart. Worse, the perpetual haunted look in Greyson’s eyes never let me forget that I was one more constant reminder of his string of painful losses.
I touched the silver disk hanging from a chain around my neck, the same one he’d still given me even after figuring out I wasn’t Lila. It looked like nothing more than a pretty charm, but when pulled apart the right way, it was a lock pick that could open virtually any lock—including an electronic one. I should have given it to Lila when I found out she was still alive, but selfishly I’d hung on to it.
Greyson nodded, and from behind his back, he produced a small box wrapped in silver paper. “Happy Birthday.”
“You know it’s not really my birthday, right?” I said with a small smile. He shrugged, and my smile faded. Gift or not, he still hadn’t forgiven me for killing Augusta. I crossed the carpet and accepted the present. Unwrapping it carefully, mindful of the beautiful swirling paper, I cracked open the black box underneath, and my eyes widened.
Inside the box lay a gold picture frame with a labyrinth pattern carved into the edges. It wasn’t the frame that surprised me, though—it was the picture of Lila and Greyson inside. They sat together in the library buried in the heart of Somerset, and though Greyson held a book, he watched Lila out of the corner of his eye, a secret smile playing on his lips as he tried to see what she was drawing on her sketch pad.
No, not Lila’s sketch pad, I realized with a jolt. Mine. That girl wasn’t Lila—she was me.
I studied the look on Greyson’s face in the picture. He looked relaxed and happy—the kind of happy you couldn’t fake. “When...?”
“While Daxton was unconscious,” said Greyson. He cleared his throat, and his cheeks flushed. “Right before you saved my life.”
“I didn’t save your life,” I said. “It was never in any danger in the first place.”
He shrugged again. “I was going to tell Grandmother I didn’t want to be Prime Minister. I think she knew, but if I outright refused...” His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his eyes turned red. “Do you think she would have replaced me, too?”
Forgetting for a moment all that had happened and every reason he had for not wanting me anywhere near him, I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around him. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I do know she loved you more than anything, though.”
At first he didn’t move, but after several seconds, he finally returned my embrace, hugging me tight enough to bruise. “Because of who I am,” he managed, his voice breaking, “or because of who I was supposed to be once she decided to get rid of the impostor and make me Prime Minister instead?”
I couldn’t answer that. Maybe that was all Augusta had ever been—the kind of person who had no problem saying goodbye to the people she loved if it brought her more power. Or maybe that had been the armor she’d worn to protect her deepest vulnerabilities. I’d only ever seen the bad in her; it was Greyson who had seen the good, if there’d been any to begin with. “It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Remember her the way you want, and try to forget the rest.”
His shoulders shook, and he clung to me the way I clung to Benjy in my worst moments. He had no one. His parents and older brother were dead; the man pretending to be his father was really a Masked stranger; Lila had disappeared underground; and Knox was so busy trying to change the world that half the time he didn’t have a second to spare for me, let alone Greyson. I was it, and whether or not he’d forgiven me for what I’d done to the last family he had left, his face in the picture had said it all. And I was going to walk away from him to save my own skin.
No, he would have Lila once the rebellion was over. She and Celia would return, and Greyson would have his family again. He wouldn’t have to be Prime Minister if he didn’t want to be, and in the end, everything would work out for him. If I wasn’t there to make sure of it, Knox would.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, pulling away after nearly a minute had passed. I started to tell him he had nothing to be sorry for, but he took the picture frame from me and fiddled with something on the back. “Here. This is what I wanted to show you.”
I took the frame back and blinked. Instead of Greyson and I sitting together in the library, it now held a picture of Benjy with his arms around a girl with a round face, dirty blond hair, and bright blue eyes.
My mouth dropped open. Once again, that girl was me—actually me, Kitty Doe, before I’d been Masked as Lila. Benjy’s shock of red hair was as vivid as ever, and he bent his head to kiss my cheek as I grinned ear to ear. Unlike the picture with Greyson, I remembered the moment this had been taken, almost a year ago. The brand-new sweater I wore gave it away. It had been our last Christmas together in the group home—the last one our matron, Nina, had seen before Daxton had hunted and killed her in the vast forests of Elsewhere.
I traced my old face over the glass. Everything about it was different now, and I would never look in the mirror and see Kitty Doe again. I almost hadn’t recognized myself, and seeing this picture now—the only one I had from before I’d been Masked as Lila—made my insides knot together. I’d had nothing then, only Benjy and the hope of a better future. That better future had turned into a III and a job cleaning sewers, and only the strange color of my eyes had saved me from a short, brutal life underground. If I forgot my own face so quickly, then what hope did I have of anyone else remembering it? I had been a nobody. I still was a nobody, but at least now I was a nobody who might be able to make a difference in the lives of the IIs and IIIs who hadn’t been lucky enough to have the same eye color as Lila Hart.
And here I was, about to run away from the only thing that made my life worth anything at all.
More than my guilt over leaving Greyson, more than my trepidation over dragging Benjy underground, that was what cracked my resolve. I would still leave—I had to, to save Benjy’s life, to save my own, and to give Knox a chance at seeing his plans through without me getting in the way. But I’d be damned if I wasted this chance to make the difference I’d risked my life for in the first place.
“How did you find this?” I said, still staring at the photograph. It had been less than a year since that moment, but it felt like another lifetime. Nothing was the same anymore, and nothing would be ever again.
Greyson shrugged. “I found it in Grandmother’s