Rise

twelve

THE NEXT MORNING I LAY IN BED FOR A LONG WHILE, MY EYES closed, studying the silence. My body felt heavy, my limbs weighed down by exhaustion. I sucked in air, trying to steady my breathing, as I'd done so many times in the past weeks. It took me a moment to register what I was responding to. The nausea had returned. The dense, heady feeling spread out behind my nose. My hand dropped to the soft flesh of my stomach, the gentle roundness hidden beneath my nightgown.

I smiled, allowing myself that simple, momentary happiness. Everything was all right. She was still here, with me, now. I wasn't alone.

Down the hall, I could hear the faint clanking of pots as the cook prepared our breakfast. The room was otherwise quiet. The gunfire had stopped. There were no more explosions in the Outlands, only the sound of the government Jeeps, a horn blasting every now and then as one flew past the Palace. I lay there with my eyes closed, curled in on myself, trying to fend off the nausea.

"Are you sleeping?" Charles whispered from somewhere beyond me. He did that at times-it was one of the most normal things about him. Are you sleeping? he'd ask, after the lights had been turned off and we were suspended in the dark. If I were, how could I possibly answer?

I rolled onto my side, watching him at the window. The light was dulled by clouds. He held the curtain, working at the fabric with his thumb. "What is it?" I asked. He was already dressed, his tie hanging around his neck.

"Something's going on outside." He didn't look at me as he said it. He leaned forward, his face an inch from the glass.

"It's over, isn't it?" I asked. "The gunfire stopped sometime this morning."

He shook his head. He looked strange, his brows knitted together, as though trying to puzzle something out. "I think it's just beginning."

His voice caught in the back of his throat. I went to the window, looking down at the City below. The crowd had spread out on the main road, a dense mass squeezed between buildings, just as they had been for the parades. But there was no waving of flags, no cheers or yells joining together, heard like a static hum from above. Instead they were clustered around the front of the Palace, right beyond the fountains, barely moving as the sun warmed the sky.

"What are they doing here?" I asked. "What's going on?"

"They're waiting," he said. "I don't know for what." He pointed to the northern edge of the road, where a Jeep worked its way through the crowd, the mass of people parting, then swallowing it whole. A platform had been set up at the front of the Palace. The short, square block was visible from above.

"You haven't heard anything about this?" I asked.

Charles raised his hand to his temple, as though his head hurt. "I've been here all night," he said. "Why would I know anything more than you do?"

"Because you work for my father," I said quickly, pulling a sweater and pants from the closet.

Charles followed me as I crossed the room to my dresser. He looped his tie around his neck, throwing one end over the other, moving his hands quickly until he slid the knot to his throat. "I'm running the construction sites. I'm not fighting a war against the rebels. I'm like everyone else inside this City, doing the best I can with what I've been given."

"That's not good enough," I shot back. This wasn't his fault, I knew that, and yet he was here. He was the only person within range.

Charles stepped away from me, his eyes small and narrow. He hated it when I did this, placed him on the side of the King, held him accountable for what my father had done. But he had been there, hadn't he? If he'd argued for improved conditions at the camps, as he said he had, then why had things continued as they were? Why didn't he, of all people, put a stop to it?