“Your Imperial Highness?” says one of the guards. “Are you unwell?”
I’ve stopped in my tracks, one hand over my heart. Through the beaded gauze of my dress I can feel my Firebird. “I’m very well, thank you. We can leave now.”
They shepherd me through a corridor that offers only a glance of the opulent lobby, but I glimpse women in dresses as elaborate as mine, men in tuxedos and the occasional top hat. A rush of whispers trails behind me like smoke. If this dimension’s technology had developed as quickly as our own, paparazzi camera flashes would light up around me. I have to maintain a neutral, pleasant expression even though on the inside I feel like crying.
The car is a low-to-the-ground roadster with running boards and a canvas top, the kind of thing they’d drive on Downton Abbey. Numbly I lean back in my seat and take in the view of this wholly different Paris. A few horse-drawn carts still travel on the streets, most of them apparently bringing in agricultural products from the countryside. I see one stacked with old-fashioned metal milk jars, another laden with enormous wheels of cheese. Stores and shops are smaller and darker, and each one looks individual, with hand-painted signs advertising their wares.
Most people I see on the street aren’t dressed as elegantly as those of us staying in the Ritz, but compared to the fashions I’m used to back home, everyone looks more formal. Every man has a jacket and a necktie, even the ones walking into pubs with their friends. Every woman wears a long skirt, most of them with elaborate hats to match. Nobody eats or sips coffee while they walk; instead of cell phones or plastic shopping bags, they hold walking sticks, or fans.
I expect the car to pull up in front of some mansion or stately apartment building, wherever the mysterious Maxim lives. Instead, we stop at an enormous gaudy neon sign over what looks like the biggest, most bustling restaurant in the city: Maxim’s.
“Your Imperial Highness! Welcome back.” This man in the tuxedo must be the maître’d, or the owner. Whoever he is, he’s really glad to see me. No wonder—having a Russian princess as a regular customer must be great advertising. “Your private room awaits you.”
“Thank you,” I say evenly, trying to disguise my relief. Whoever I’m meeting here, I won’t be able to miss them, and any little mistakes I make won’t be noticed by as many people in a private area. Either way, the delicious smells of beef and bread and cheese make my mouth water; my earlier nausea has given way to intense hunger.
Maxim’s turns out to be almost as lush as the Ritz. Sinuously carved frames surround long oval mirrors that hang throughout the hall. The wood that panels the walls ripples in gold and brown as if it were tortoiseshell. Light shines from flower-shaped lamps held by bronze angels or through the enormous stained glass mural overhead. The other patrons are a blur of fur, satin, jewels, and candlelight.
The doors open to reveal an intimate dining room, complete with bookshelves and a chaise longue. At one end of the small table, rising to greet me, is the last person I expected.
“Your Imperial Highness,” says Theo. “How enchanting to see you again.”
The next brief flurry of activity—accepting menus and the fawning team of waiters—gives me a second to take this in. After leaving Theo in New York, where he was bruised and bloody, just the sight of him alive and well buoys me. And yet he’s not precisely the Theo I know.
His suit is black, cut closer to the body than most men’s seem to be—an avant-garde style, I’d guess. He has facial hair, which I find sort of hilarious even though the mustache and Vandyke beard look good on him. He’s combed his hair back with that oil or pomade or whatever men used for gel back in the day. He speaks French to the waiters but English to me—with a slight Dutch accent. I’ve heard my own voice change accents before, but hearing someone else’s change is even weirder.
Yet the way he smiles, the flourish when he hands the wine list back to the waiter, even the slightly rakish tilt of the deep red scarf knotted around his neck: All of that is very familiar.
I knew Theo lived in Paris; I hadn’t forgotten the letters he sent me while I was in St. Petersburg, talking about the Moulin Rouge. But it hadn’t occurred to me to look Theo up, mostly because I can’t figure out how they would know each other. It’s not like our Russiaverse selves have anything in common. Theo is a leading student of chemistry; I’m a member of royalty from the other side of the continent.
Together we fight crime, I think, and my own stupid joke makes me silly. I muffle my laugh with my lace handkerchief, trying to make it sound like a cough.
“Your Imperial Highness?” Theo asks as the waiters step out of the room, closing the doors behind them. Though my security detail waits just outside, for now Theo and I are alone. “Are you well?”
“Very well, thank you.” How do I put this? “I’m just—I’ve been absentminded lately, and I completely forgot what you and I had intended to talk about—”
His eyes widen. “The amnesia has affected you again?”
“Amnesia?”
Theo nods, like he knows he needs to take this slowly. His voice is patient as he says, “The malady overtook me in December. It was during this time I wrote to you, forging our acquaintance. You contacted me in January with your intriguing ideas about our other selves who knew one another, the shadow worlds—”
She remembered everything. “Shadow worlds,” I repeat.
“If your theory is correct,” Theo says, “it was my shadow-self who inhabited my body last December, acting in my stead. Do you remember none of this?”
Then he sits up straighter, his smile fading. He’s guessed the truth, now; the only way to keep his trust is to admit it.
“As a matter of fact, I’m from one of the—shadow worlds,” I say. “I don’t mean any harm, to the grand duchess or you or anyone.”
Besides Wyatt Conley. But he doesn’t count.
Theo doesn’t know what to make of that, and no wonder. After a moment he says, “Can you explain the scientific principles at work?”
As in my universe, he’s a hipster on the outside, pure science geek on the inside. “Not very well. But I’ll try.” I don’t know what else to say. “Why did the grand duchess contact you?”
“To see if my impressions of December’s events matched her own. She did not share my total amnesia, but as outlandish as her explanation was, I came to believe it.”
In other words, she had to check to make sure she was sane. The letters I exchanged with Theo last December were the only proof she had that the shadow worlds were more than a delusion.
Amazement has animated Theo, turned him into a guy closer to one I know. “Do you perhaps have one of those miraculous devices?”
“A Firebird.” I snag my finger under the chain. It takes him a moment to focus on material from another dimension, but his expression lights up when he does. I add, “If you ever need to check whether someone is native to this dimension, you can look for a Firebird. They’ll almost certainly have it on.”
I tug at his collar, as an example of how to check, but to my shock, I see another Firebird chain.
“Your Imperial Highness?” Theo says, still unaware anything is hanging around his neck.
I snatch up his Firebird, hit the reminder sequence, and—
“Owwww!” Theo pushes back, grabs his chest, and then looks around at our opulent surroundings. “Whoa. Okay, I don’t know where we are, but I like it.”
“What are you doing here?” I demand. “Did you already talk to Conley?”
“Hello to you, too.” When I give him a look, he sighs. “No, I didn’t go to the coordinates you gave me. Instead, I followed you.”
“We were supposed to go to him after we were done!”
“Which we will. He never said we couldn’t take a short detour first.”
Frustration tightens my fist around the lace handkerchief I’m still clutching. “What if Conley thinks we’re skipping out on him? He could splinter Paul into another four pieces—” Or four dozen. Or four million,
so I’d never get him back again.
“Hey,” Theo says sharply. “You’re the one Conley’s after. This train doesn’t move forward unless you’re aboard. Besides, as far as Conley knows, we’ve been good little soldiers so far. He’s not going to break the deal yet.”
He doesn’t know that any more than I do. Still, I sense he’s right—for now. Conley won’t put up with a delay for long. “You understand why I came to this dimension, right?”
Theo nods, but his smile fades. “Yeah, I know. You needed to get your head together. What happened in New York—that was intense.”
“More for you than for me,” I say.
“We can save the Most Traumatized competition for later, all right? Okay, you wanted to rest someplace—luxurious, I guess, someplace where you knew you’d be safe.”
“You think I came here because it was ‘luxurious’?”
Theo holds out his hands in a way that takes in the crystal chandelier above us, the painted murals on the walls, all of it, like, Am I wrong? But he adds, “And you needed to be safe. Right? Otherwise it has to be sad for you, remembering—you know. The other Paul.”
He honestly doesn’t get it. “Theo, I came to this dimension because it’s the only one where I knew I wouldn’t see Paul. I couldn’t even look at him, not after what he did to you.”
Theo winces; he covers one knee with his hand. “That sucked beyond the telling of it. But it’s not like our Paul shot me.”
“The different versions—they’re more alike than unalike. Don’t you see that?”
“What, so, if one Paul did something crappy to me, I should hate every version of Paul from then on?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
The flickering gas lamps on the walls no longer seem to shed enough light. Instead of appearing luxurious, the heavy wood carving and enormous overhead chandelier begin to make me feel claustrophobic. A gilded cage is still a cage.
Slowly I say, “Theo, the first time I came to this world—this is where I began to believe that no matter how different we are in each dimension, something within us is always the same. Call it an eternal soul, or a spirit, but whatever it is, it’s the most important thing about us, and that’s the constant. That’s the part that never changes, no matter what.”
“The soul,” Theo says, in a tone of voice I’ve heard my whole life from my parents and every single one of their grad students; it means, This is not science.
Sometimes they think nothing but hard, empirical fact matters.
Which is total crap.
“Yes,” I shoot back. “The soul. And I thought I knew Paul’s soul even better than I knew my own. But when he shot you, I realized there were ways I don’t know him at all. I’ve seen darkness inside him. True darkness. And I still love him, which is scarier than anything else. But I don’t know what to think or what to do—”
My throat closes up, and I blink back tears. Pregnancy hormones, I think.
Theo doesn’t even know about the baby yet.
I look up at him for comfort, then pull back, because at this moment Theo is furious.
“One eternal soul,” he whispers. The very quietness of his voice cuts me, as it’s meant to. “Only one self, across the countless dimensions of the multiverse, and we all have to answer for each other’s sins. Which means, to you, I’m still the Theo who helped kidnap your dad, and framed Paul for murder. The one who betrayed you. When you look at me, that’s all you see.”
I want to say, No, that’s not true. But I can’t. Still, when I look at Theo, I feel a flicker of doubt.
Only now do I realize that I’m the one who betrayed Theo. By refusing to see him for himself, to respect the choices he’s made and the loyalty he’s shown, I’m betraying him this very second.
“That Paul isn’t our Paul,” Theo says. By now he’s so mad he seems to be staring through me, like I’m beneath even being noticed. “Just like I’m not that Theo. He didn’t blame me for something an entirely different Theo did, and I won’t blame him for what happened in New York. Dammit, Marguerite, I’m the one who got shot! If I can let it go, why can’t you?”
He rises to his feet and shoves his chair to the table. Apparently the grand duchess will dine alone tonight.
Theo continues, “Believe what you want to believe. Doubt me, doubt Paul, hide in fin de siècle Paris if it makes you feel better. But if you won’t save Paul, I will.”
With that, he stalks out of the private dining room.
Now it’s just me and the flickering gaslight. I lost Paul three times over—when Lieutenant Markov died in this dimension, when Wyatt Conley splintered his soul, and when I saw Paul shoot Theo. Now I’ve lost Theo, too.
Never, in any world, have I been so alone.
21
WHEN DAWN BREAKS THE NEXT DAY, I HAVEN’T SLEPT MORE than a few hours. Exhaustion weighs down my body and paints dark circles beneath my eyes.
Partly this is because of my pregnancy. At least I assume that’s why I have to get up to pee about every two hours.
I thought babies only kept you awake after they were born.
Mostly, though, my insomnia comes from guilt. The many reasons boil inside my mind, hot and agitated, and as soon as I’ve set one aside, another bubbles up to take its place.
I got the grand duchess pregnant. The worst thing I’ve ever done. Hopefully the worst thing I’ll ever do. How much worse than that could I even get?
Theo thinks I’ve spent the last three months hating him. I could never hate Theo. Not even after what the other one put me through, with his careful lies, the way he set up my entire family and Paul too, or how he cozied up to me by flirting and leaning close and calling me “Meg.” (Even the thought of that nickname makes my skin crawl.) After the past few days, I know more than ever how much Theo’s done for me, how much more he would give. How could I ever have doubted him because of something that happened to him? He was the main victim of the Triadverse’s Theo—not me, not my mom, not even my kidnapped father.
Theo and I didn’t move on to the home office. Conley probably thinks we’ve abandoned Paul. I haven’t—I never would. Even if I’m not sure how to be with him again, there’s no way I’m not going to bring him home.
I’m letting the actions of another Paul affect my emotions about my Paul, the one I love. After Theo’s blistering lecture last night, I realize how cruel and unjust that is. Yet my heart remembers the homicidal dullness in Paul’s eyes as he shot Theo over and over again.
After what feels like an endless weak sunrise, I finally accept sleep isn’t going to happen. I wrap myself in the velvet robe and wander through the palatial Suite Imperial, wishing for some way to kill time. Sure, there are books on the shelves—histories and encyclopedias of this alternate timeline that would probably fascinate my parents. The kind of thing I ought to take notes on, but I can’t, not with my mind racing like this.
No TV or computer, obviously. Life before Wi-Fi was a barren time.
Finally, I look at the grand duchess’s sketchbook and pastels. I’ve avoided opening the sketchbook, because I’m completely certain Paul’s portrait is on those pages. I’m not ready to see his face looking up at me, not yet. But I remember Lieutenant Markov giving me the box of pastels—the light in his eyes as he realized how much I loved his Christmas gift. Surely I could draw one picture with them, just one.
I pick up the sketchbook, determined to flip through quickly to a blank page so I won’t see anything drawn within. But as soon as I take it from the desk, folded papers fall out onto the floor. As I squint down at them, I see how many of them are letters.
Am I violating the grand duchess’s privacy if I read them? Compared to the fact that I’m walking around in her body, which I also got pregnant, going over the mail doesn’t seem like a big deal. Besides, maybe the letters will tell me what she’s planning—what’s going to become of her.
The first one I open, written in badly blotted ink, is from Katya, the bratty little sister who
might have saved my life during the rebellion by tackling an enemy soldier twice her size:
I told you to be quiet about that “shadow world” stuff, but you never listen to me. Simply tell them it’s all a story you made up, so you can come home. Papa says it’s not proper for me to attend balls while you’re seeing your French doctor, and I’m tired of sitting around every night. Will you at least be home by the time we go to Tsarskoye Selo for the summer? You always enjoy that.
I smile softly; Katya misses me, though she won’t admit it. I’ve missed her too.
But—summertime. I do what the other Marguerite must have done the first time realization set in, counting off weeks and months to late September. How can I possibly hide this pregnancy for so long?
If I could solve these problems for her, I would—but I can’t. I’m not sure anybody can.
The next letter turns out to be more comforting; it’s from my little brother, Peter.
Margarita, I wish you were here. I’m studying hard and Professor Caine is helping me draw a map of Africa. Papa has a lion skin from the time he went shooting in Africa when he was young, but I think it was mean to kill the lion just to take its skin. If I ever go to Africa, I’ll take photographs of the animals, because that way the animals will be happy and I can still look at them forever. Also the lion skin smells nasty now. Please come home from France soon. I love you.
A laugh bubbles up in my chest as I envision Peter’s sweet little face while he labored to write each word. He’s so tiny for his age, or he was; maybe he’s grown since.
I pick up the next letter, relieved and grateful to recognize my father’s handwriting. Though, of course, this letter is signed from my “tutor,” Henry Caine.
Your Imperial Highness,
I’m glad to hear that your time in Paris has proved beneficial, as we discussed. Although the tsar has expressed impatience, I’ve endeavored to convince him that psychotherapy has genuine medical value, and that your convalescence should not be rushed.
As we speculated, the king of England appears to have turned his attentions toward the Rumanian princess for his son’s bride. The tsar feels this keenly, but your health outweighs all other considerations. Besides, now that Vladimir is courting that Polish princess, I suspect Tsar Alexander has matchmaking enough for now.