Page 27 of Xantera
“What happened a month ago?”
“Our daughter quit coming to the balcony.” Belinda’s voice breaks with pain on the last word, and my chest lurches with a sense of familiarity. There are whispers of Chosen Ones who stop coming out to wave at their friends and family after they’ve been in the palace for a certain length of time. I’ve always thought they must get so enamored by the palace life that they forget about their previous one, but what if…
“The sentries searched Diggory’s room?”
My head is reeling, thoughts spinning faster than I can catch them, but we can’t keep whispering beneath this table forever. I don’t have time to think right now. I can think later.
“Yes,” Belinda whispers. “They searched his room, and mine, and our joint one.”
There seems to be a space at the end of her words, an inhalation as if she doesn’t even dare say what she wants to beneath the table. I stare into her eyes and think about the first answer she gave me.Diggory told me he slipped in the shower.
Slipped in the shower.
The shower.
I stand up, holding wads of soaked towel, and hand them to Belinda. “Do you mind if I use your restroom before I leave?” I ask.
Relief and warning seem to flicker in her gaze simultaneously.
“Of course. Mind your step, though. Some of the tiles are loose in there.”
I nod and scurry off to the bathroom situated in the same corner as it is in my own housing unit. Clicking the door shut behind me, I let my attention sweep the tiny box of a room, from the crimson curtain hanging from the shower rod to the sparkling clean toilet bowl to the sink with the curled stainless-steel faucet and drain. There is a single cup with two toothbrushes next to a single bottle of issued hand soap. No drawers. The sentries probably didn’t even think to searchherefor anything, knowing that every bathroom is the same and there are no hiding places for other potential forbidden items.
One of the downsides of trying to force everyone to be identical: you miss the loose tiles.
Sweeping aside the curtain, I crouch down once again to run my fingers along the shower floor. Most of them are firmly set in place, but one of them is slightly tilted diagonally, the grout around its far end deeper than the others.
Sliding my fingernails into the crack, I heave, tug, and—pop!—the entire tile comes loose.
I stifle a gasp in my throat, forgetting, for a second, that there are no cameras in bathrooms. What I’m doing feels so wrong, so forbidden, that it takes me a second of deep breathing before I carefully lean forward and peer into the dark, empty space beneath the missing tile.
Not empty, actually. Squinting, I can make out several objects that wink back at me. More necklaces? More ways to speak to the Monster? If I touch these things to examine them more closely, will his taunting voice infiltrate my head again?
No. When I dip my hand into the hole and my fingertips graze the object on top, no electricity fills my veins. I grasp it and pull it out into the light, a frown forming on my lips.
It’s a dense, round object with a small handle poking from the top. An ornate design wraps around the center, where several numbers form a circle and three long, thin slivers tick round and round at different speeds. I watch the fastest one, mesmerized, until it’s ticked itself all the way around before I reach back into the hole for another object.
This one is also round, but much smaller and daintier with a clear-cut jewel that sits on top. Without even thinking, I slip it onto one of my fingers before sliding it back off again just as quickly. Another piece of jewelry, if I had to guess. But one that doesn’t connect the wearer to the mind of the Monster… simply meant for wearing and looking pretty.
One by one, I pull out the rest of Diggory’s forbidden objects and examine them each with a breath that seems to stick to my lungs like a cold sweat.
There’s a long, thin cylinder of wax with a blackened wick sticking from the top. A piece of ribbon so much smoother and silkier than anything I’m issued to tie my hair up with. A box that snaps open to reveal a little figurine in the center, though I don’t dare touch the miniature handcrank that juts out from the side.
Finally, there are only two objects left, both of which glint back at me when I peer down at them.
The first has my eyes widening so fast, I swear they’re going to pop out of my head. I only know what this is because we’re taught from a young schooling age that the Blood Moon Palace is always locked outside of the Choosing. It’s a key—silver but tarnished.
And the next object… my fingers seem to know what this is before I even bring it out into the stuttering electric light of the bathroom. My hands begin to quiver as they close around the handle, and I only allow myself half a glance at the clear, reflective surface before I shut my eyes and stuff the thing into the inside pocket of my cloak alongside the necklace.
A mirror.
Something creaks outside the bathroom door, and I jump. Probably just Belinda getting herself another cup of tea, but I have a feeling that my time is up anyhow.
Willing my hands to calm down, I pretend I’m doing something as methodical as stitching up a cut as I place each of the objects back into the hole beneath the missing tile. If I could, I would take them all, just so Belinda doesn’t have any incriminating evidence to deal with, but I doubt everything could fit in my pockets without creating a noticeable bulge.
Just as I’m about to put that tarnished key back into its hiding place, however, I pause to stare at it.
Could it be a copy of the key to the Blood Moon Palace? Or to a passageway that leadsintothe palace? If Diggory was as obsessed with breaking into there as Belinda claims, then I’m pretty sure it’s safe to guess where all of these objects came from: the Guardians themselves.
