“I never said she was bright—that distinction belongs to her better half.”
“What is going on?” I demanded, coming to my feet.
Elena sighed and waved her hand, and Tabitha’s hand came down on my shoulder, forcing me down with a strong squeeze. Drumming her fingers on the table, Elena eyed me. I glowered back.
She laughed then, a chiming sound that was almost child-like, and leaned forward. “You have been the fly in my ointment, Violet, so I think it’s only right that I share with you a few things… Before I have you executed as an agent of Patrus, who attempted to kill me and several women in an unprovoked attack.”
“What? Why?”
“Honestly, I rarely get the opportunity to be honest with anyone. When Mr. Jenks made me, he made me to be smart. Very smart. By five, I could read as if I were ten or eleven. I was solving algebraic formulas at six. Everyone was so proud. Until they realized the downside of the treatment. Each one of us got our own slew of problems. Tabitha has a short temper and a thirst for violence that I don’t think will ever be sated. Lena can’t be touched. Ever. And I? I’m what you would call a sociopath. Do you know what that is?”
I shook my head and she leaned closer, as if she were telling me some deep dark secret. “It means that I don’t feel things the way you do. Love, happiness, guilt?” She laughed then, that same delighted laugh as before, only it sent shivers down my spine, warning me of impending danger. “I feel none of those. I am… unburdened by them. It gives me clarity of focus.
“When I was twelve, I realized that I was going to be queen. And it made me curious about the queens of the past. So, I studied and read every bit of history and news that I could find about them. And do you know what I found?” She nodded encouragingly at me, her smile bright. I met her gaze and shook my head again. “Nothing worth reading about,” she said, her voice dropping lower.
She stood up and moved back over to the window. “Our ancestors didn’t come here to survive, Violet. They came here to thrive. Every queen, including my mother, was a stopgap. A way of maintaining the status quo. The only interesting thing my mother ever did was make me and those like me. And that was enough for me to formulate the beginnings of a plan.”
Turning back toward me, she leaned against the window sill. “Desmond has always been working for me,” she announced.
Although the truth had begun to dawn on me the moment Desmond had appeared here, as Elena spoke, it felt like all the oxygen had been drained from the room and I was in free fall, about to impact with the ground. My mind rattled with all the implications, sweeping through my memories to find any clue that I had somehow missed in my time around Desmond. I kept returning to one memory – the delayed timer hooked to enough explosive to bury the entire facility. Thomas had mentioned a code... did that mean Desmond had it? Would she have entered it if we’d failed? Then there was the propaganda that Desmond had been feeding the boys. That had been against Matrus as well as Patrus. Why?
The queen chuckled, kicking her feet against her skirts in a childish way. “Worth all the headaches you caused me, to see that expression on your face.”
As I stared back at her in horror, she blew out. “My mother had done a great, yet terrible thing. I knew she would feel guilty eventually, so I started… putting things into motion. First, I had the egg stolen—by Desmond. She handed it over to a Patrian operative, and threw my mother’s operation in jeopardy. My mother tapped you to go get it, but then things went sideways… Clearly, Lee was not as loyal as his mother. Desmond hadn’t believed my doubts about him, but who could blame her—he was her precious son. Still, it was easy enough for me to see, which was why I predicted he would go against orders and kill the queen while leaving King Maxen alive… Of course, he believed that Mother was the queen that Desmond was always talking about. The fool.”
Desmond’s face was stony as Elena moved away from the window and over to the bookcase, where she ran her hand over the books’ spines. “No plan ever survives first contact,” the queen continued, “so a lot of what happened afterward was a bit of a race to get what you possessed, and bring you in for a nice grand public execution. Desmond let me know that you had popped up, and I ordered her to do just that. However, she saw something more in you, a tool that could be used to help us. And you helped us, Violet… You got us the Benuxupane.
“To be honest, I didn’t realize what Maxen intended it for… He is clearly smarter than I’ve given him credit for. But after learning about what it could do for the boys, I knew we needed it. You see… your involvement in the whole affair has forced us to adapt and change our plans. I was hoping to have more time to force the relationship with Patrus to deteriorate, while giving Desmond and her merry band of fools a chance to tame the boys—my thanks to your Mr. Croft for assisting us there.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter though—even though you stopped the bombing today, it still counts as a threat to the queen at one of the most sacred rituals of our people. With the Benuxupane, we have control over the boys and most importantly… we have you and Mr. Croft. The two malicious agents who confessed to being Patrian agents all along, trying to undermine the Matrian way of life.”