Once An Eve Novel

only in the City because of me.”
    “How’d you get out of your suite?” he asked. “Did Beatrice help you?”
    “No—she had no idea,” I said, my palms pressed together. “I figured out the code. A door in the east stairwell was unlocked. I stole the uniform from an apartment in the Outlands.” I thought of the airplane sitting abandoned in the hangar, the blankets crumpled, the lanterns dark. They would change the code now, have soldiers stationed at my door. The Palace would be impossible to leave. This would’ve been unbearable, had Caleb still been in the Outlands. Had I any reason left to escape.
    “Whatever he told you, Genevieve, whatever he said—he is using you. There are hundreds of dissidents in the City. Some of them are working with Strays on the outside. It’s possible he knew you were my daughter before you did.”
    “You don’t know anything about us.” I stepped back, hating how easily all the warnings from School returned, filling my head, coloring everything past and present. Caleb had had that picture of me when we met. He’d stayed with me by the river, helping me hide, even though the troops were close behind us. It wasn’t true, I knew it couldn’t be, but the accusations hung in the air.
    “You’re no longer associated with him,” the King said. “There is no ‘us.’ You are the Princess of The New America. It’s bad enough citizens saw you apprehended outside the Palace the same time he was. He’s committed a crime against the state.”
    “I told you, he didn’t do it,” I said. “He can’t be punished for this.”
    “Two soldiers were killed at a government checkpoint. Someone has to be held responsible,” the King said, his voice flat.
    “I could explain what happened, how it was in self-defense.”
    “These laws exist for a reason—anyone who threatens one New American threatens all.” He looked at me. “You can’t defend him, Genevieve. You are not to speak to anyone about this.”
    “The people don’t have to know,” I tried. “You could release him. What does it matter to you if he’s outside the City? Everyone will believe he’s dead.”
    The King paced the length of the room. I saw his momentary hesitation, the way his brows knitted together, his fingers working at the side of his face. I was still wearing the uniform, the same shirt Caleb had unbuttoned, the vest he’d pulled from my shoulders. I could still feel his hands running over my skin. Nothing had mattered in that moment—the rest of the world so far away, the Teachers’ warnings losing all meaning.
    Now, the rest of my life presented itself to me, an endless succession of days in the Palace, of nights alone in my own bed. The only thing that had carried me through in Califia was the possibility of finding Caleb, of being together again, in some future time and place. “You can’t kill him,” I said, my hands clammy and cold.
    The King started toward the door. “I can’t discuss this anymore,” he said. He reached for the keypad beside it.
    I raced in front of him, my hands on the doorframe. “Don’t do this.” I kept picturing Caleb in some awful room, a soldier striking him with a metal baton. They wouldn’t stop until his face—the face I loved so much—was swollen and bloody. Until his body went horribly still. “You said we were family. That’s what you said. If you care about me at all you won’t do this.”
    The King pried my fingers from the doorframe and held them in his own. “He’ll be tried tomorrow. With the Lieutenant’s testimony it will all be over in three days. I will let you know when it’s done.” He leaned down to meet my gaze. His voice was soft, his hands squeezing mine, as if this small, pathetic offer were some sort of consolation.
    The door opened. He stepped into the quiet hall and said something to the soldier stationed outside. The words seemed far away, somewhere beyond me. I was trapped in my own head, the memories of the morning returning to me. The darkness of the plane, Caleb’s back as we walked through the City. The wind kicking up dust and sand, coating everything with a thin layer of grime.
    It’s over , I thought, the smell of his skin still clinging to my clothes. In three days, Caleb would be dead.

twenty-nine
     
    THE STILLNESS OF THE SUITE WAS INTOLERABLE. LATE THAT night, I sat on the edge of the bed, the minutes passing slowly. The moonlight cast strange shapes on the floor, menacing black shadows that