The Ends of the World Read online

  Apparently none of that mattered.

  All this time, I’d been telling him I was okay with him leaving me behind. That he should. And I was right. I glanced over at Anya again, the scars crossing her delicate face a testament to how hard a life she’d lived already. She didn’t deserve to be forced into the world of the Circle now.

  I knew then that I couldn’t tell Stellan how I felt. Take care of each other. Take care of each other. It echoed in my head. It wasn’t like I thought he was in love with me, too, but I knew he did care about me. Anything I told him would just make him feel even more guilty about leaving when the time came. Better to let him believe I was happy with our temporary “hobby.”

  My phone rang. I forced my attention back to the present. “Hi, Lydia,” I said, unsurprised.

  “I have your blood.” I wasn’t sure whether I should be more worried or less at how calm she sounded. “Plenty of it.”

  “The Circle knows what you did,” I countered, unable to keep the triumph out of my voice.

  “And some of them even believe it,” Lydia said.

  “We’ve won, Lydia,” Stellan cut in. “We’ll make the rest of the Circle believe us now that we have you on tape. They will no longer let you get away with this.” I hoped that was true.

  “Hello, Avery’s fake husband—but maybe real boyfriend?” Lydia mused. “There has to be some reason you’d risk your life for his sister. Poor Jack. How does he feel about being relegated to third wheel?”

  “What do you want, Lydia?” I said, avoiding Stellan’s gaze. We drove over the river. The Paris streets were even more empty than yesterday, only a scattering of people waiting to cross at the light in front of Notre-Dame.

  “You’re welcome for not hurting your sister, Avery’s boyfriend. I’m not the monster my sister says I am.”

  I don’t know what I’d expected Stellan to say, but it wasn’t a quiet “Thank you.”

  “So I’m calling to tell you,” Lydia said, “that this is your fault. Things were going to be fine, but by turning the Circle on us, you’ve ruined everything. Now I have to clean it up, and that annoys me. I hate having to resort to threats. It’s so crass.”

  “Threats?” I said. Anya whimpered and pulled her hand away. Stellan must have squeezed it.

  Lydia sighed. “The only way to ensure our family’s safety—and therefore the whole Circle’s, like I tried to tell you—is to have the Circle behind us. They were getting there rather well on their own, but now that’s changed and we’ve got to give it a push. Since we know this virus infects anyone with a trace of Circle blood, we could wipe out half a city with a snap of our fingers. And the Circle knows it. So now, if they don’t cooperate, their people pay.”

  Stellan made a strangled noise. “Lydia—” I said.

  “The Circle will see eventually that this was the only way. They’ll thank us. But until then, you’ve made us be the bad guys, and I really wish you hadn’t.”

  “Lydia! You don’t have to—”

  “Good-bye, Avery.”

  • • •

  “How are they doing it?” I said the second we reunited with Jack and Elodie. I tossed my bag onto the table in the Dauphins’ sitting room and threw myself into a chair.

  The Saxons had made their threat to the Circle. Bow to their authority, or have your territory obliterated by the virus. So much as a hint of interference from us or anyone else and they’d pull the trigger immediately.

  “I suppose they’ll make up some kind of treaty that everyone will have to sign, giving them full control over the Circle. They’ve called a meeting for tomorrow evening, giving the families a day to get everything together. They haven’t said where the meeting is yet, except that it’s somewhere in Europe,” Elodie finished before I could ask.

  “There’s no way the Circle will sign that,” I said. The Circle only cared about the Circle. About their own family, in particular, and their power. They wouldn’t give it up to save the lives of regular civilians.

  No one argued with me.

  I squinted at the morning sun through the window. We’d been in Russia and flying all through the night. At least we’d gotten a few hours of sleep on the plane. I rubbed my forehead. I couldn’t stop thinking about talking to Lydia. How does a girl—someone so much like me—turn into this?

  Stellan came back into the room. The Dauphins’ nanny was still here, caring for Luc’s orphaned baby brother, and Stellan had taken a few minutes to get his sister set up in another one of the rooms in the nursery.

  “So if we can’t stop the release of the virus,” I said, “we’ll have to stop the virus from killing people. We have the vaccine. How fast can we get it out?”

  While we were in Russia, the science team had confirmed that the theory about my blood being a vaccine was true.

  “The problem is scale,” Elodie said. “Because of its regenerative properties, a single drop of the virus diluted in millions of gallons of liquid would still be lethal.”

  “Like if they were to put it in a city’s water supply,” I said.

  Elodie nodded. “Or aerosolize it. For the vaccine, though? It takes a drop of your blood per person. Even if we drained you dry, it wouldn’t be enough to vaccinate a single Paris neighborhood, much less the whole world.”

  I pushed up my sleeves. It suddenly felt way too hot in here.

  “Um, excuse me.” We turned to find Nisha standing in the doorway. She and the entire science team had been based at the Order headquarters here in Paris, but while Stellan and I were gone, Elodie had moved them to the Dauphins’ so we’d all be in one place. “I’m sorry to interrupt. We have an idea.”

  • • •

  The lab tables and microscopes looked out of place in the Dauphins’ ornate dining rooms. On one of the tables, Nisha and the rest of the scientists were crowded around a Plexiglas box with a tiny white mouse sniffing at its corners. I leaned down and touched my finger to the glass. The little mouse nosed at it.

  “As you know, we had been attempting to deactivate the virus,” Nisha said in her soft accent as we gathered around, “but that has proved impossible so far—and now that the Saxons have your blood, that avenue is closed for the moment anyway. When we learned the cure was really a vaccine, though, we wondered whether we could use the same mechanism of the Great modification in Mr. Korolev’s blood to make the vaccine more effective. It looks promising.”

  Elodie twisted one of her small gold earrings. “Promising how?”

  “We are using the Great modification in a specific way to make only the right parts of the mouse’s cells replicate quickly.”

  Elodie was the first to understand. “I thought you were experimenting with altering Avery’s blood. Like, in a vial.”

  “Unfortunately,” Nisha said steadily, “it would be impossible to modify the blood once it’s already outside the body.”

  All the curtains were drawn, and it was dim enough that it could have been any time of day as we looked at each other over the makeshift chemistry lab. “I don’t understand,” Stellan said. “You said my blood takes the tiny bit of virus in her blood and multiplies it so fast it becomes deadly. Wouldn’t this just trigger that same process inside her?”

  “We’d be using what we’ve learned about the modification, not necessarily your blood, as it were. And we are attempting to isolate certain parts of the cells. Small distinctions, but important. The hope is that it will affect only the amount of vaccine in the blood, and not turn into the virus and kill . . . the mouse.”

  I felt everyone’s gaze on me.

  “No.” Stellan stepped in front of me like he might block me from what they were thinking. “You’re not using me to try to turn her into a walking vaccination clinic. Not using what we think might be some science from thousands of years ago and that we’ve studied for a few days.”

  I glanced out th
e window to an eerily empty Louvre courtyard. “The vaccine’s the only chance we have left, isn’t it?”

  No one answered.

  “The serum is ready,” said another of the scientists, approaching the box with a full syringe. I’d seen her at the Order meeting. Half of the Order crew we’d seen at the meeting was here, in fact.

  “This is a trial to see whether this mouse can get the vaccine in its blood?” I said.

  “Not exactly. The science is complicated. You would be the only one able to grow the vaccine in your blood, but these trials give us a better idea of whether the virus will take hold instead. If you wanted to go through with this, we would do trials until we found a version of the serum that did not kill the mouse, and then . . .”

  Then try it on me. And either it would work and we’d have a way to distribute the vaccine—or it wouldn’t and I’d die of the virus myself.

  “Show me,” I said.

  Nisha nodded. “Subject T-twenty-three. Commencing trial of substance two-point-six,” she said into a handheld recorder. She picked up the mouse and injected it with the syringe’s contents.

  Stellan gripped the Plexiglas. Across from us, Jack and Elodie peered in, too.

  When Nisha set it back down, the mouse shook itself, then darted across the box. Darted back. After a couple of minutes, Nisha dropped in a lettuce leaf, and the mouse ran to it, nibbling at the edge. “If it’s feeling well enough to eat, that’s a good sign,” she whispered excitedly.

  “How long would it take for it to get infected?” Stellan asked.

  “It happens quickly in the mice. We’ll have to watch it for a few hours, but this is very promising—”

  A bump on the side of the box drew everyone’s attention back down. The mouse was stumbling. There was a bead of blood coming out of its ear, bright against its white fur. The other two scientists hurried over. As we watched, the mouse fell on its side, hemorrhaging and convulsing, blood trickling from its mouth. It didn’t move again.

  Everyone’s eyes flicked to me.

  “I’m sorry,” Nisha said. “We thought we had it.”

  I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, snapping a few strands of hair caught in one of the new bandages. “Do you need more of my blood for the experiments?” I said, forcing a smile.

  • • •

  We gathered in the parlor again.

  “No,” Jack said without preamble. “Absolutely not.”

  It felt like the moments right before a plane took off. You’re hurtling along the ground faster and faster, so fast you can feel what has to happen next. Things were careening toward an end.

  “Even if they find something that doesn’t kill the mouse, we can’t inject you until it’s been thoroughly evaluated,” Stellan added. “Any drug goes through years of trials before it’s tested on humans.”

  Jack nodded. For once, the two of them were in agreement.

  I watched the dust swirling in the morning light through the window. The curtains in here were wide open. “We’ve followed the clues for a long time, and this is where they’ve led. If we were supposed to go to a new place, or solve a new puzzle, we’d do it.”

  “But this is not—” Jack started.

  I cut him off. “I could have taken myself out of the equation to stop this earlier, and now the whole world is in danger. It might not be my fault, but it’s my blood. I have to seriously consider it.”

  “And if it doesn’t work, it’s my blood that could—” Stellan couldn’t seem to say the words.

  Luc had gone to make some calls, and now he came back into the room, Rocco on his heels. As soon as we’d left Russia, we’d given word to Rocco that his undercover days in the Saxon household were over. Lydia would know Omar hadn’t worked alone. “There may be another factor to consider,” Luc said. “I just heard that over half the families have accepted the terms and plan to sign the treaty.”

  “What?” We seemed to all say it at once.

  “I was surprised as well,” Luc said. “It’s not all of the families yet, but many of them are giving up their power for their people’s lives.”

  That was something I hadn’t expected.

  “That’s it, then,” Stellan said. “If the whole world isn’t going to die, we let the Circle fend for themselves. We could leave some of your blood with the scientists, and eventually they may develop a viable vaccine. Or not, and the Saxons run out of the virus at some point. And we wash our hands of it. We leave. We go to some secluded island and—” He met my eyes. “We go to two different secluded islands. On opposite sides of the world so even if they find one of us, they won’t be able to weaponize us. And that’s it. That’s the end.”

  “But if they sign the treaty and give all that power to the Saxons . . .” I said.

  “The Saxons, for lack of a better term, rule the world,” Jack finished.

  I twisted my locket. “If we had a vaccine, we might be able to get it out before they sign. Keep half the world from dying and keep the Saxons from becoming dictators.”

  “The Circle aren’t that weak,” Stellan argued. “They’ll fight back, eventually. Diadochi wars were happening even in Alexander’s time. Clashes between Circle families aren’t new.”

  “But what if—” I started.

  Stellan turned to me. “What if this kills you?”

  We all fell quiet.

  Elodie sighed. “Until they have something that works on the mice, it’s irrelevant. What’s not irrelevant is our Monsieur Dauphin here.” She ruffled Luc’s hair with a sad smile. “We’re supposed to be there in an hour, so while we keep praying for a miracle, we’d better get going.”

  • • •

  There was a ceremony for when the head of a Circle family died, to pass leadership to the next generation and honor the dead. It was supposed to be performed within a day of the death. Even after Lydia’s declaration of war, we carried on with Luc’s.

  In a normal situation the whole Circle would be invited, but technically, only one family had to be present as witness. Stellan and I sat in the front pew in black clothes we’d gotten from the Dauphins’ well-stocked closets. We hadn’t talked to each other since the conversation about the vaccine experiment. It hadn’t exactly been an argument, but it had felt like it. I pushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I had it pinned up, hiding as much of the pink as I could, to look sedate enough for a funeral.

  But nothing about this church was sedate.

  “This is my favorite church in Paris,” Luc had said as we followed him inside Saint-Chapelle. Every wall was stained glass. The late-morning sun turned the cathedral’s cool interior into an impressionist painting, blues and pinks and greens dancing over our skin.

  Luc stood at the altar with Colette—the only other Dauphin family member we trusted—behind him. He looked so strong this morning. I wondered whether it came from Luc’s natural optimism, or whether death was so much a part of life in the Circle that it was always taken in stride like this.

  I felt the tension in the inches of church pew between Stellan and me growing as the ceremony played out: Luc chanting low over a book with the Dauphin sun on the cover, pricking his own thumb and tracing the same sun on a blank page on the inside. Tearing out the page with what must be his father’s blood on it from this same ceremony, lighting a corner with a candle, and letting it crumble to ash.

  At the appointed time, Stellan and I stepped to the front of the church. Colors played over his face like magic, just as they had in my hallucination. I couldn’t help but picture him holding my heart in his hands.

  He looked up, his blue eyes as big and troubled as his little sister’s had been earlier. Without really thinking about it, I took his hand. He squeezed it hard, and guided me through the words I had to repeat as a witness to a new generation of the Circle.

  I wondered if we’d ever do one of these an
cient rituals again.

  If we left, I knew what would happen. Being on the run was a state I understood well. Except now, it looked like I’d be doing it alone. But what if we stayed, and what if I lived? What if this worked? Would they even accept me—us, if Stellan stayed, too? The Circle had never liked me much besides the color of my eyes. And even if they did, would it just be a life of being a symbol and living by a Circle code I didn’t entirely agree with? Was I crazy to think it could be more?

  • • •

  Despite everything else—or maybe because of everything else—I’d known since our talk with Fitz that there was something else I needed to do in Paris. After Luc’s ceremony, we all assembled again at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Luc had pulled some strings.

  Fitz was waiting for us at the gates. We wound our way through the city of crypts, and there, under a tree off a cobblestone path on a sunny afternoon in Paris, we buried my mother.

  Her grave was beautiful. I knew she wouldn’t want to be buried in a Circle plot, or an Order one. We’d lived so many places, none of them felt right, so I chose Paris. My adopted home for now, and the center of all we’d been through. And she’d love the flowers.

  It was the only concession I made to an over-the-top memorial. The hundreds of flowers were all yellow, her favorite color. Daffodils and tulips and roses and daisies. Calla lilies and hibiscus and freesia, scenting the air with a perfume so heady, it made me dizzy. My mom would have thought it was ridiculous, and perfect. We threw handfuls of the flowers in after the casket, and left the rest piled around the headstone and surrounding the gravesite like a celebration.

  Afterward, everyone else waited a short distance away while Fitz and I looked down at the flowers. For the first time since my mom’s death, I really let myself know, deep down, that she wasn’t coming back. And she would forever be someone who had had her life cut short trying to do the right thing. And though I’d grown up believing I was a girl without a dad, now I was truly, forever, a girl without a mom.