Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix Read Free Book Online Page B

impostor taking even my name. But somehow, even though I never would have remembered the moment myself, I wish that my parents had lived long enoughfor my christening ceremony, long enough to show me off to the world, to claim me as their own.
    “But where did Desmia come from?” Harper said. “You can’t just pick up a spare baby in the marketplace—‘Hey, just need a loaner for a while. We’ll bring her back when we’re done.’” He makes a disgusted face.
    “Desmia was just an ordinary orphan. She had no family, no one to care what happened to her,” I say softly. Maybe it’s the word “orphan,” but I can’t look straight at Harper while I say this.
    “So because she’s an orphan and nobody cared, it’s okay to just let her die?” Harper asks in a harsh voice.
    I glance up at him in surprise.
    “No, no, Sir Stephen never said she’d die,” I say.
    “Sir Stephen—that’s the guy who always comes to visit your nanny?”
    “He’s visiting me, not Nanny. He teaches me about being royal. He’s a knight.”
    “A knight, huh? And he’s really told you that Desmia won’t die?”
    “Well, no,” I admit slowly. “He hasn’t said that she won’t die. But he’s never said that she
will.
There are guards and everything in the castle. I’m sure they’re trying to keep her as safe as possible.” I feel like my tongue is getting all knotted up, trying to explain. I can tell that it’s the middle of the night and I’ve had no sleep, because I’m having trouble thinking clearly. I resort to using thesame explanation Sir Stephen has always used with me. “When . . . when the dark forces come back, they’ll be revealed if they even try to attack Desmia, and then they’ll be vanquished. And then I can take my throne, and Desmia can go . . . live her own life.”
    Harper has one eyebrow raised.
    “So the castle guards can protect Desmia, but they wouldn’t be able to protect you? They can make sure that she’s not killed, but they can’t make the same promise about you if you were living in the castle with that royal princess life you’re supposed to have?”
    There’s a bitter twist to his words that I don’t quite understand. Then I get it. I see that Harper, who’s had barely any education except harp lessons, is trying to trap me. This is like the logic proofs Sir Stephen has only begun to teach me: If A, then B; if B, then C; If A, then . . .
    “I think,” I say starchily, “that it’s a matter of odds.” Sir Stephen has taught me about odds and probability, too. “The
odds
are that Desmia will be safe—that I might have been safe too—in the castle, living openly as the princess. But no one wants to take any chances with my life, since I’m the last in the royal line, my parents’ only heir.”
    “But it’s okay to take chances with another girl’s life?” Harper asks. “Someone who doesn’t even have a stake in the outcome? If she dies in your place—oh well, too bad. She was only an orphan, anyhow.”
    I start to remind Harper that Desmia’s getting a muchbetter life out of all of this—the silk dresses, the satin sheets, the sumptuous feasts—everything that ought to have been mine. Then I see the glint in his eye. It’s not fury he’s working from. It’s pain.
    “This is about your father, isn’t it?” I say. “Your father, who died for another man’s cause . . .”
    Harper is nodding, violently.
    “My father died for the
king’s
cause. If you’re the princess, my father died because
your
father sent him off to war!”
    I gape at Harper in the candlelight. I have honestly never put that together before. In the village people talk about the king and the war and everything else about the outside world like it’s all so distant and far away. When I picture my father the king, I imagine a stately man in royal robes hugging close his beloved child (me). I have never once pictured him sending soldiers off to war, off to certain death.
    But I know he did