A HENRY STORY 3: Covenants Of The Fallen Prince

XXXIX. Revelations

For one moment, Gregor stared into the darkness. Then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes—he could do this. It was possible. He clicked his tongue, recalling Henry and doing his best to empty his mind like he had told him, focusing only on the sensory input. The sound.

Click. Click.

"There is some trick to make it more complicated. Some sort of substitution."

Gregor frowned when his ears picked up the voice from outside the little, separated area designated for humans in the code room.

"Found it not, have we, found it not," replied a different voice.

Gregor sighed. The problem with focusing on sensory input only was that he got sensory input he didn't want. Irritated, he opened his eyes again. There was really no quiet place in this entire palace anymore, was there? For a moment, Gregor contemplated asking Ripred if he knew one, then decided he didn't really want to ask Ripred anything to do with echolocation anymore. The rat would just mock him for "coming crawling back" or something.

At least Gregor thought Lizzie seemed to be doing well. Yesterday, when Ripred had addressed her as "Princess" for the first time, the entire code team had rejoiced. They had instantly accepted her into their rows, and although Gregor had been apprehensive about the idea of her staying here at first . . . her being the princess from the prophecy just made so much more sense than it being Boots. If anyone in his family might be destined to break some code, it would definitely be her.

And yet, Gregor had still tossed and turned last night, wrestling with his own feelings about this whole thing—on the one hand, he was still gripped by anxiety for Lizzie. He feared that they might pressure her too much or overwhelm her. Once they had hammered it into her head that she had to break this code, she would stress herself over it, fearing to disappoint. But on the other hand . . . Ripred's tender look flashed before his inner eye, and then the grateful, appreciative gazes of the code team. Ironic as it was, he had never seen Lizzie, who liked staying by herself and became overwhelmed when she was forced to be around others for too long, enjoy the company of others as much as she did here. And . . . it was what she wanted.

I'm not leaving. He pressed his lips together. They need me. They actually need me, Gregor. But she hadn't looked at him like it was the bad kind of "needing". The kind in which a sick parent needed their child to care for them, or the necessity of doing chores or fulfilling obligations. No—her eyes had practically been shining. This "needing" was actually "appreciating", and Gregor would be caught dead before he'd take a good feeling like that away from her.

A sense of . . . belonging, it briefly flashed in his mind. Was that what she already felt here? Here, where she had previously sworn to never come?

Gregor pondered the grave implications of that for a moment, then he shoved it aside. As happy as he inherently was that Lizzie had found somewhere she could feel appreciated down here—if his entire family was staying anyway—there was still the issue that she had indeed attached herself far too quickly to this new task. So much so that she had not left the code room since. Even when he had offered to take her back to the hospital with their parents and Boots for the night, she had refused.

And so, Gregor had declared that he'd stay with her. He knew he couldn't just leave her alone to sleep here, not even with Ripred—his parents would definitely freak out if he left his not-even-nine-year-old sister with a giant rat for a babysitter.

Nerissa had been kind enough to inform his parents where Lizzie and Gregor would be staying. To his surprise, Gregor had found that would be less of a problem than he had originally thought. The room was equipped to accommodate code team members of all species, including humans. It even had little separate bedroom coves for everyone, so he and Lizzie had occupied the one for humans.