Annika
As a military fighter pilot, I knew about the attack before anyone else.
Apart from, of course, the happy couple. Janus and Adrianna.
Alarms started blaring a full ten seconds after I removed my high heels in order to run better. Being pretty smart, Sammie Wagner, Imogen Freyland and Janie Freedmen soon followed suit. I had a feeling that Janie would've taken off her heels anyway, but that's irrelevant.
Once the alarms went off, groups of us were herded like sheep into an underground safe room, where Princess Bellona, Queen Eadlyn and Crown Prince Kile were.
No Janus.
No Adrianna.
No Cassia.
No Mirabelle.
I scanned the room for the other Selected. I recognised Eleanor Wilkins being wheeled in from the sickbay, alongside the other poisoned-ahem, sick-girls. Estelle looked terrified, as if searching for an explanation.
And then I remembered.
She's deaf. She doesn't know what's going on.
"Estelle, can you read my lips?" I asked, after I sat down next to her on a cot. After a second, she nodded.
"What's happening?" she asked, her voice almost drowned out by the nervous chatter and occasional hysterics.
"It's a rebel alarm that's going off. The rebels have infiltrated the palace. We're in a safe room." Estelle's eyes widened after my explanation. She look vulnerable as anything, her eyes darting between the door and the ceiling. I realised that all she'd ever known was silence, indescribable silence, the kind that makes little children burst into tears after a while. I'd take the blaring alarms over that any day.
People watching isn't as fun when you know there are people missing.
Ten minutes passed, and no sign of Mirabelle, Adrianna, Cassia or Janus were to be seen.
Five more minutes, and Cassia and Mirabelle arrived, looking shaken but fine.
Until Cassia's blood dripped on the floor, a perfect circle, and she passed flat out, her head cradled by cold, cold stone.
No Janus. No Adrianna.
Just twenty six girls watching number twenty seven turn an indigo sleeve bright red.
Janus
I should've known better.
Adrianna was shot at some point; where exactly I didn't know. But I did know that her blood was drip, drip, dripping onto the soft earth, and that her face was contorted with pain.
Guards, some of them barely sixteen, fired shots and fell from the shots fired by the rebels, their helmets clattering uselessly against the ground.
After five or so minutes, the guards seemed to remember that Adrianna and I were there.
Four guards dragged us into an unidentified safe room and ran off into the night, their guns trembling in the increasingly strong wind. The stone seemed to be radiating coldness, and Adrianna shivered before promptly passing out.
That sucked. Not as much as being ambushed by the Italia Militia, but it still sucked.
I realised quite quickly that I was alone with a bleeding, passed out girl with no real first aid training. I figured that there would be some bandages or blankets or something, so I ran my hands against the wall, hoping to hit a shelf.
"Shit!" I cussed, as I bumped my wrist-the one that had been stitched up after I fell on a stack of glass plates-on a wooden shelf. I reached my hand a little higher, coming in contact with a smooth candlestick and a box full of matches. I grabbed them, and continued feeling my way along the shelf, until...bingo. I found a roll of soft material, and a folded square of more material.
I knelt down, and lit the candle, praying to every deity I knew of that I wouldn't burn myself. I even found myself praying to Erebus, god of darkness, the guy my brother was named after. It seemed to work, and I balanced the candle on the floor, so that it cast a dim glow around the room. Adrianna's huddled form was in the corner, blood making her light brown hair sticky. The shelf I found was piled high with bandages, antiseptic and blankets, and I saw another dozen candles and matches. There was another shelf behind me, holding bottles of water and a few loaves of bread. Shaking slightly, I made my way over to Adrianna, grabbing a bottle of antiseptic and a pair of tweezers on the way. Slowly, I moved her hair to find a bullet lodged in her arm. I grabbed the tweezers, and attempted to extract the silver cylinder.
Wait.
Most bullets aren't silver.
This is a message. They shot her deliberately.
But that seems awfully risky, for a message. But then again, nobody else would study the bullets of the rebels. For all the doctors knew, they had just changed ammo.
But they aren't going to be the next king. Lucky for them.
Gripping the tweezers harder, I quickly pulled the bullet out, wincing as Adrianna's arms tensed with pain. I wiped it on my jacket, and nearly dropped it on the floor.
La potenza della libertà*.
The power of freedom.
Italian. On a bullet. With the Italian coat of arms inscribed below.
But the Italians are our allies. Right?
But then a memory surfaced; slightly faded but definitely there.
It was my grandmother's funeral and I was thirteen years old, dressed in a suit too big for me. And old queen Nicoletta sat in the royal box, weeping as her children held her. There were other foreign dignitaries there, too, but none of them were weeping like her. And I saw the look she gave my mother-you will never, ever replace Queen America in my eyes. Not in a million years.
I felt dizzy and lightheaded. Queen Nicoletta had died two years ago, but her children, and her children's children were still on the throne.
They're not waging war on Illéa. They're waging war on mom, for not being half the queen my grandmother was.
Just my luck, huh?
I sighed, and began to unpeeled the silver coating on the bullet. Underneath, someone had written, in crude English,
Mother's son.
Oh, God.
Woo! I'm alive!
*-From Google Translate. Sorry.
So, I'm sorry, Roses323, for shooting Adrianna. But it's all in the name of plot, kay?