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Monsters. A tiny shiver moved up Dea’s spine. What did that say about the men with no faces? What did it mean? If all those pits in the desert were dreams, then what was this place? Could the men with no faces be recruits in the king’s army as well? Had the king somehow pulled them—extracted them—from Connor’s dreams? Was that why Dea’s mom had insisted on precautions for so many years—because they were being pursued?

But that didn’t make any sense. Why would the king care about Dea?

Aeri was right. The guards left them alone, watching them silently with glitter-black or yellow eyes or eyes the raw pink of a new wound, as they moved into a small room with glass doors. Only when the room began to shoot upward, the view rapidly swallowed by a vision of sheer stone walls, did Dea realize that they’d entered an elevator.

“Are you okay?” Aeri said, as the elevator began to slow. It was the first time he’d expressed any concern for her. He was looking at her with the strangest expression—his mouth was all twisted up, as if he wanted to tell her something but was holding the words back by physical force.

Dea nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

The stone walls released them and they floated up through the floor into a beautiful, high-ceilinged atrium. Sunlight poured through enormous skylights set in the domed roof. Through them, Dea saw massive, swooping dark shapes that were not birds, but winged and catlike creatures. The room itself was inlaid with an intricate mosaic pattern made of marble, and decorated gilded columns that appeared to be made of molten gold. As Dea stepped out of the elevator behind Aeri, she felt her knees give momentarily and worried she might fall. Hundreds of those creatures, the king’s monsters, were arrayed in a circle around the room, and a long line of people snaked toward a man sitting on the raised central dais.

And yet somehow, despite the distance between them and the assembled crowd, the king’s eyes went immediately to Dea. She got a sudden electric shock, as if someone had pinched the back of her neck. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but after seeing all the monsters, she’d imagined the king must be a sort of monster himself. Instead he just looked tired. His hair was graying at the temples, his face just softening at the jawline. But he looked like anybody, like any teacher at school, like any father she might have seen in Fielding, loading his kids into an old minivan.

But of course, he wasn’t. With a gesture so subtle Dea nearly missed it, he managed to convey that everyone else should be dismissed from the room. There was a burst of murmuring and protest from the crowd, quickly silenced when dozens of monsters came forward to herd everyone out through a set of double doors at the far end of the room. Dea wished desperately that all the monsters would leave, but half of them remained standing, watching her through faces half-melted, smiling with mouths studded with teeth.

She still hadn’t moved. For a long time, she and the king stared at each other, and she willed herself not to faint or turn around and run.

When the king finally spoke, it was to Aeri. “All those years I was recruiting soldiers, and really I should have just sent a boy to do the work,” he said. Again, Dea was surprised by his voice, which was light, faintly sarcastic, full of humor. “Go on,” he said, inclining his head toward the double doors. “One of my men will see you get paid.”

Dea turned to Aeri as understanding opened like a hand in her chest, leaving her gasping. “Paid?” she repeated. Aeri wouldn’t meet her eyes. At least he looked embarrassed. She turned back to the King. “Paid?” she said again. Her voice was loud in the room, rolling off the marble floors, but she didn’t care. Anger made her feel careless. “He told me you’d have answers for me.”

The king laughed, a sound so rich and warm that Dea felt again uncertain. “You are the answer, Dea,” he said.

Dea took a step backward. Could she escape before she was caught? It was a desperate thought, stupid. She wouldn’t make it even a step before the king’s monsters pounced. “How do you know my name?” she asked, wishing her voice weren’t trembling.

Next to her, Aeri sighed, with a helpless gesture toward the dais, the throne, and the man who sat in it. “Dea,” he said. “Meet your father.”

TWENTY-FIVE

There was a long minute of silence. Dea felt her mind wink on and off, freeze and unfreeze, like malfunctioning software.

“No,” she said at last.

“Yes,” the king said. He stood up. He was dressed in white pants and a buttonless white shirt, like someone playing God in a school production.

“No,” she said again. “Impossible. My father is . . .”

But she broke off. Her father was what? What had her mom said, besides the lies? What had she said when Dea had confronted her about that stupid photograph? Your father is powerful. Your father is complicated.

“What?” the king prompted her. Now he was obviously amused. “What lies did your mother tell you about me? Please, I’ve been desperate to know. She won’t tell me.”

Dea’s heart started hammering again, so hard she brought a hand to her chest instinctively, as if to keep it from leaping through her skin. “My mom,” she said. “Is she—?”

“She’s here,” he said. “And safe,” he added quickly, almost exasperatedly, seeing Dea’s face. “I’m not the monster she’s made me out to be.” When Dea said nothing, he rubbed his forehead. “She didn’t tell you anything, did she?”

Dea shook her head.

The king—Dea’s father—muttered something, rubbing his forehead again. And in that moment he looked so normal, so like any other father, that for the tiniest sliver of a second, Dea had the urge to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to cry and be held and listen to him say her name again: the father she’d never known, the father she’d always desperately wanted.

Then he raised his voice again. “Everyone, leave us,” he said, waving a hand, and her attention was drawn back to the monsters standing in the shadows, and the memory of the men with no faces—how they’d pursued her through the darkness, panting through open mouths, tasting her.

Aeri hesitated. He leaned in as though to whisper something to Dea. She jerked away, glaring at him.

“Sorry, princess,” he said. He touched his fingers to his forehead once, a kind of salute, and then he was gone. But his words had left Dea feeling dizzy again.

Princess. It was true. She was a princess of this city of chasms and levels, of all these people, of the slaves with their poor slender necks, bent under the weight of their chains, and the monsters and the flying beasts and the gutters running with sewage.

She was home.

She turned away, feeling sick, bringing a hand to her mouth. The doors banged shut behind the last retreating monster, leaving a sudden silence. How was it possible? How was any of it possible? She tasted salt before she realized she was crying. After a while, she became aware that her father was standing next to her.

“I’m sorry, Dea,” he said softly. “I know this must be very hard.”

She swiped at her cheeks with a sleeve, furious at herself. Furious at him. “Oh, really?” she said. “Do you?” She whirled around to face him. “I almost died, you know. You almost killed me. Is that what you wanted? Is that what you want now?”

He stared at her. “Of course not,” he said. “You’re my daughter, Dea. I’ve been searching for you your whole life.”

“You haven’t been searching for me. You sent them—those things—to do the work for you.” She took a step toward him, but then stopped, too afraid to go any closer. “How did you find me?”

“You got careless,” he said simply.