"Hello Atlas," my mother said, giving me a warm smile that only added to my anxiety. She looked so familiar, but her smile didn't reach her eyes, making me feel like she was looking at me more with pity than excitement of seeing her daughter again. "I know this is a lot to take in, why don't you-"

She motioned to a chair at the table, but I cut her off. "How are you alive? Where's dad?" I blurted, catching questions randomly out of the whirlwind in my head. I felt faint, but I tried to breathe through it, afraid that they would do something arbitrarily 'bad' to me while I was out.

I didn't believe in an afterlife, but I would still let myself imagine what it would be like to meet her there; there were a lot less hugs and tearful declarations of love that I had previously pictured it. I felt more like a cornered animal, and all my instincts screamed to fight and get out of the building any way I had to.

Everyone in the room stiffened and looked at each other. The men at the back of the room didn't say anything, eerily silent as they watched this reunion. They were unreadable, and I was afraid of them. My mother looked back at them for a moment.

"I'm an adult," I snapped as she clasped her hands together, "Just tell me what's going on."

"The car accident was real, Atlas," she said gravely, "I'm so sorry."

I felt something break in me and tears welling in my eyes at the implication. I had been close to my mother, but I had taken after my father in so many ways that our bond had inherently been much stronger. I had felt my heart swell with hope when I saw her that he would be here too, but with her words they crumbled inside of me.

My breathing came in shallow gasps and I tried to inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth, like I had been taught when I needed to calm down and catch my breath during a cage match. "You. . ." I panted after a moment, recognizing that trying to appear calm in front of these strangers when I was so tired and overwhelmed was futile, "You were alive. You survived the car accident and you've been . . . here? All this time?"

"Your father and I had already joined the northern rebels," she continued, skirting around my question "It was the perfect cover up, we had to take the chance. . . "

"You left," I accused, trying to yell but hearing my voice quiver, "You just – you left without telling me. You let your own children. . . starve? We were kicked out onto the streets! We became eights!! And for what!? What could possibly be more important than your children!?"

"Atlas," she continued evenly, giving me a pitiful look, "I'll explain everything. Let me introduce you to the other generals – "

"I cannot explain to you," I snapped, raising my shaking hands for emphasis, "how much I do not care. We nearly died! Like, a lot of times!! I have permanent damage to my body from malnutrition! I had to drop out of school to take care of Aristotle, and I couldn't even get a normal job because I was an eight!!"

"You two were never truly alone," she explained before I could continue, "we had operatives keeping an eye on you, making sure you wouldn't be charged or arrested for anything, making sure no one would harm you."

"Why!" I sobbed, my entire body shaking and my face contorting as I cried. It was all I could think of saying.

"Baby," she started, her voice softening as she opened her arms to me. I took another step back and wrapped my arms around myself to try and stop them from shaking, turning away from her and giving her an exasperated glare. She straightened again, "Have I ever told you why we named you Atlas?"

I blinked and another set of tears streamed down my face to wrap around my chin. "He was a Greek God," I said with a sneer, wiping my face with a fist, "What of it?"

"The mythology goes, that Atlas held up the sky on his shoulders," she explained almost dreamily, "Atlas Telamon, enduring Atlas. He became the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve."

"I don't want to hear this," I said lowly. She was deflecting again, not answering my questions and only confusing me more. The sadness in my chest starting to be overpowered with an intense anger I didn't realize had started to bloom within me. I turned back to her, letting my hands fall into fists at my sides.

"The Buddhist religions believed that suffering, pain, and misery exist in life, and that to understand the true nature of all things," my mother explained, "one must recognize that suffering comes from desire. It comes from the covet of material wealth, fame, power. . ."

"I don't need a philosophy lecture," I growled, lowering my head to look at her as my eyebrows furrowed downward in anger. My jaw clenched and my voice raised louder again as I yelled, "Nothing you can say will convince me that what you did was justified! You endangered your own flesh and blood, tortured us! If you're saying I'm supposed to suffer for some stupid enlightenment, what about Aristotle?! Why would you bring him into it!?"

"Patience is bitter, but it's fruit is sweet," she replied cryptically again. Her calm composure was making my blood boil and quoting the real Aristotle didn't make me feel any better.

"He's gone! Missing!" I shouted, taking a step forward and straightening, "You got a history lesson for that one!?" She was my mother, and apparently a norther rebel, but all I felt towards her was a hot rage. Any sense of relief and happiness I had felt seeing her was snuffed out as she talked.

My mother sighed. "We couldn't have known Sjin would act out like that," she explained, growing more exasperated as I kept interrupting, "When we told him about our plans, we thought he would. . ."

"Wait," I interrupted again, disinterested in what she had to say as the events of the past few days started to click together in my head, "This is your fault? You're the reason he went crazy and kidnapped my brother?" I had no idea how or why they would have talked to him, but the way he acted, the way he demanded that we go home, was starting to make more sense.

"Your majesty," one of the men behind my mother spoke up quietly, and I whipped my head over to look at him. He was short and bald with small, round glasses, and as he said it, I suddenly remembered Alex. I let him continue, thinking he would tell me where he is. "We have check points set up around the entire city," he explained, pushing up his glasses at the bridge of his nose and glancing downward when he saw the anger flare up in my eyes, "there are hundreds of units out combing the area, and reports have been coming in about sightings of them – "

"SHUT UP!" I snapped, silencing this supposed general immediately. "I don't care what you do. You get my brother back or so help me I will. . ."

I was interrupted by a commotion outside the door and I stepped out of the way quickly as a group of people all burst into the room at once. I recognized the prince, who towered over the other people that had followed him and were trying to hold him back. He flailed his arms around and hurled threats as they all talked at once, saying something about how he wasn't supposed to enter the room without being called in.

"I am the crowned prince," he roared, breaking away from them and tugging his sweatshirt back into place like I had seen him do before with his suit jackets when he was upset. I could tell he was trying to regain his composure, and it seemed to work because the soldiers stopped where they stood as Alex put more distance between them. He straightened, "I can have you hanged for just laying a hand on me!"

I had never been so happy to see him, and I felt myself relax instinctively as I recognized his familiar face. The guards backed up, unsure of what to do and looking towards their commanders, but Alexandre quickly spun around to scan the room, confident that they weren't going to go for him again after his threat.

His eyes lit up as he recognized me and rushed over with his hand outstretched, breathing "Atlas," in a sigh of relief as he went to grab my hand. However, when he saw the concerned look I was wearing, he blinked a few times and seemed to remember where he was, stopping in his tracks to pull his shoulders back and turn to my mother.

"Are you the one in charge?" he demanded, "Where are my guards?" He looked tired and worn down, even though I knew he was trying to keep up the look of kingly authority I've seen him wear before. For both of our sakes, I hoped I was the only one who could recognize how stressed and disheveled he actually was.

"Safe and waiting for you at the train station," she answered passively, not letting her face convey any emotions now that he was here.

Alex opened his mouth to reply, but then snapped it shut as he squinted and furrowed his eyebrows. His head snapped over to look at me, and then back at my mother. I watched his confusion grow as he continued swiveling back and forth, but his face abruptly changed as he realized how similar we looked. I didn't know if he had ever looked at any of the old pictures of her hanging up in my room, but our eyes were so unique and so similar, and my mother and I shared a lot of the same features, that he must have realized we had to be related somehow.

His shoulders drooped and he didn't bother to keep up the intimidation act. "Oh shit," he swore, rolling his head back in exasperation and throwing his arms up.

My mother watched him but didn't say anything and he looked over at me with a look that demanded an explanation. I quickly held my hands up, more worried that he would think I was a part of this instead of just being confused about our blood relationship. "I'm not a part of this," I told him, trying to sound casual enough that he wouldn't think I was lying.

"Prince Alexandre," my mother greeted with only a small bow of her head, regaining our attention, "Let me introduce myself. My name is Marie Avery, leader of the northern rebellion and Altas'. . ."

"Mother," Alex answered with a surprising amount of sarcasm in his voice, confirming that he had recognized that she was an immediate relative, "I got that. What the hell are we doing here, and what do you want?"

"It's time you learn about your role in this war, Atlas," she said, turning back to me and ignoring the prince's questions.

The prince stalked over to me, his face no longer trying to convey confidence, but just annoyed at being ignored. I image he wasn't used to that, but I wasn't about to worry about his arrogance right now. "There is no war, only a feeble attempt at an insurrection," he said defiantly, stopping to stand just behind me. He placed a hand on the small of my back, and though I felt comfort from it, I didn't think it was the best idea and I hoped he was close enough that my mother just wouldn't notice. I didn't want them to assume anything about us; it would only give them more ammunition if they were going to try and threaten us.

"And we're leaving," he added, but didn't make any movements towards the door, and I felt how tense he was where our shoulders touched. It was supposed to be a command, but it was clear he was waiting for her permission.

My mother blinked a few times as she looked us up and down critically, but then her demeanor changed, and she smiled genuinely. "You two seem to have made our plans exponentially easier," she commented, tilting her head slightly as if she were looking at a cute animal instead of the future leader of our country and one of his selected that her people had just kidnapped.

"I'll take the abbreviated version," I said tightly, glaring at her and wanting to leave just as much as Alexandre, "We need to be back at the castle before sunrise or they'll be out looking for us."

"You have suffered greatly Atlas," my mother said grandly, putting her hands behind her back and starting to pace, "but through it, you have learned. You have experienced the cruelty of the caste system and exposed the upper caste to the blatant classism and corruption in our government through The Selection." She didn't look at us, conveying an arrogant confidence that she didn't even need to see our reactions to this news.

"The royal family has deceived the same people they swear to protect," she continued, absently looking at another, smaller map of the region hung on the wall, "and once you rise to the throne, we will dismantle the caste system and usher in a new golden age of peace and prosperity." The generals behind her straightened, giving their silent support. They watched us expectantly, but I ignored them, keeping my eyes trained on my mother.

The explanation was full of platitudes and didn't tell me much of anything, but I at least understood what they wanted from me. It caught me off guard, and the anger I had been feeling was replaced with a feeling of anxiety that made the contents of my stomach turn to water with this realization.

Once again, I felt faint, my breath catching in my throat, and I tried to discretely shift my weight so that I was pressing back into Alex. His hand slid to wrap around my waist, which is exactly what I didn't want him to do, but I welcomed the comfort it brought me as my mother let her words hang in the air as she turned to look at me expectantly.

I didn't know what she was expecting me to say, but there was only one thing I was thinking. "You want me to be . . . queen. . ." I mumbled quietly. I had meant it as a question, but as I said it, I realized that was exactly what they wanted. I remembered that one of the generals had even called me 'your majesty,' and I was thankful that Alex hadn't been here to hear that.

"Atlas, my daughter," my mother said, softening again as she slowly walked back to stand in front of me, "I need you to understand that I love you and your brother with every fiber of my being, and I missed you both every single day. I ached to bring you back to me, and every day I hoped to get more news about you two, but a rebellion is no place for children and I knew you were capable of taking care of Aristotle on your own. . ."

"You're insane." The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them, but I realized that I was telling the truth. Here I was, standing in front of my mother, the same woman I had idolized and pined after all these years. The only pictures I had left of her were worn from my handling because I carried them with me and felt comfort looking at them. I would even talk to her in my head late at night before falling asleep when I was stressed or hurting – my parents were my rock, even after I thought they had died.

But this was not that person.

"Did you ever think to ask me?" I asked accusingly, "I didn't ask to be a mother, that was your choice and yet you shoved it onto me so you could go. . . play soldier!"

"I am truly sorry Atlas, but I promise you will never want for anything again. You will be our beautiful queen and together," she motioned arbitrarily to everyone in the room, "we will bring order to this country."

A thought dawned on me. "That's why I'm in the selection," I muttered, trying to work it out in my head, "You put me there, as a place holder, until the moment you felt like you could gain control. What kind of plan is that? What if I they had realized I was put in there before the announcements? What if I had been sent home?"

"Has your prince explained how the selection process actually works?" she asked, looking over my shoulder.

I didn't turn around to look at him. "It's rigged. I know," I said without missing a beat, "but you just used that to your advantage. What are you trying to prove here?" I wasn't going to let her turn me against the princes, and I felt empowered now that Alex was here to back me up.

"The selection is purely propaganda," my mother continued, "and there are more sinister implications than you realize, Atlas. The next queens have always been chosen from a pool of rich, privileged, and affluent girls, because they would never give up what they have to help others."

"You could have told me," I said lowly, "You didn't have to teach it to me this way."

"But would you have allowed us to help you take over and enact reform once you got a taste of the royal life? We have back up plans, but you've done exactly what we needed to." she asked, trying to sound innocent and nonconfrontational.

"Stop deflecting!" I snapped, "Hypotheticals aren't going to help your case."

"Exactly. So, let's put this conversation to bed and discuss what comes next."

I felt like screaming as she said that, but I tried to stay calm because I needed them to know I wasn't going to be pushed around and used as a puppet. Even if all the pieces of their plan had come together like they were supposed to, I was stopping it here.

"Shut up," Alex snapped, speaking up for the first time to defend himself, "You don't know me, and you don't know my brothers. You talk about propaganda while you fear monger and insight violence, and I won't let you sit here and convince us that your half-baked 'plan' is righteous. Throwing the country into turmoil won't end well – it won't matter who is king and queen if you remove all sense of law and order."

"Your majesty seems to be confusing us with the southern rebellion," she continued, holding Alex's gaze, "We don't wish harm on anyone, even the ruling class. We seek to create a government of, and for, the people, but for that to happen we need to first gain control, and this was the least lethal of our methods."

"What happens to the princes in your plan?" I spoke up, inching further to my left to place myself in front of Alexandre. I was afraid for him, and the thought of Ross being forcibly removed from his throne upset me.

"The princes," she answered, keeping her eyes on me, and talking as if Alex weren't standing right behind me, "will be fine. They won't be hurt, and Prince Alexandre will be allowed to ascend the throne as intended. The other two will be invited to participate in the new." She looked to her left disinterestedly, holding her pose to look at Prince Alexandre with a sideways glance and adding, "Granted they cooperate."

Alex let go of my waist, pushing himself forward. "I'm not doing shit for you lady," he growled, seemingly reinvigorated by anger upon hearing all this. "Atlas will be queen if she wins the selection, and only if she wins through honest means. My brothers and I will rule over our intended precincts like we have already planned, and we will be doing all the reformations by ourselves. This is up to me and my brothers, and I won't let you intimidate me into submission."

"I know who my father is, more than any of you do!" he continued, "But I'm not going to let you, a treasonous group of anarchists, tell me how to run my country when I am king. The best thing you can do for the country is disband and back off. We already have the southern rebellion to deal with, you can only make it harder for us to fix this country if you keep destroying supply lines and riling people up with your protests and marches."

My mother tried to hide her smile and I could hear a discrete chuckle from someone behind her. "You didn't even care what happened outside your castle gates a month ago," my mother antagonized, venom dripping from her voice, "The farmers growing your food, the textile workers making your fancy suits, even the servants waiting on you to wipe your ass when you command it – they're all living ration to ration, and they're living in fear."

"I said, you don't know me. . . and that's not true. . . you're lying!" the prince replied, smaller and with less confidence this time. Unfortunately, my mother seemed to have struck a nerve, and she only seemed to grow haughtier when she realized that.

"It's not?" she scoffed, exaggeratingly rolling her eyes, "Either you're stupider than you make yourself out to be and woefully ignorant or, more likely, you know exactly what's going on but you don't have the spine to acknowledge it - even to yourself! Almost all your people live one catastrophe away from complete squalor, with no social safety nets and under constant threats from a militaristic police-state! They worry that their sons and daughters will be barbarically brutalized by police that your father says is there to protect them!"

I heard Alex take a breath to say something, but she continued on without pause, "And the caste system is a barbaric system that exponentially ruins the lives of anyone under a Three! The rest of this country wonder if they'll be able to keep their homes or feed their families while the ruling class continues to grow their wealth off the backs of the poor! They worry that their children will be thrown out on the streets to fend for themselves if something happened to them –"

"ENOUGH!" I shouted, surprising myself with how powerful and angry I sounded. There was a pause as the word hung in the air, but I was done with the passivity.

"That was not Alex's fault, it was not any of the royal family's fault, and it was not the government's fault." I growled, "It was yours. You were the one that made the decision. You do not speak for him and you sure as hell don't speak for me, regardless of the blood we share. You are not my mother, you are an unhinged lunatic with her head so far up her ass that you think you can stand here and berate the prince as some idiotic plot to what – bring him to your side!? What makes you so confident that you can kidnap us, say all of this, and then expect that we won't expose your group, send an entire army to tear this place to the ground, and ruin this wild 10 year plan you thought was so foolproof that you were willing to risk my life for it!?"

Hot, angry tears ran down my face, but she looked completely unfazed; that part hurt the most. She looked the prince in the eye and said simply, "Because he knows I'm right."

"That's a terrible answer," I shot back, angry but not wanting to seem stupid for being confused.

"And," she added, ignoring me, "If anything were to happen to me, you would be thrown in prison or, even worse, killed for being the daughter of a rebel."

"How dare you use Atlas as some kind of bargaining chip," Alex shot back before I could say anything else, "You can't possibly still call yourself her mother; you're insane! And besides, I would never let something like that happen to any selected!"

"But you'll let it happen to every other citizen? Do you know what the punishment is for petty theft?" she asked. I stiffened, knowing it was a public whipping, but I didn't want to believe that he was in the dark about that. If she had kept tabs on me all these years, she must know that I've had to endure a few of those.

I was going to interrupt her, considering no one knew about that except for my maids who had to work around the scars when designing my dresses. I was planning to at least tell Ross and Beckii about it at some point, but I also didn't want to be outed for it right now, but thankfully the prince spoke up.

"Atlas," Alex said, his voice shaking slightly, "We're leaving." He didn't move after he said it, and I recognized that he was waiting for me to move first.

"You'll take us to the train station," I commanded to my mother.

"You don't have to wait for me to give you permission," she told me, waiving her hand at me dismissively, "There is a car waiting for you upstairs."

I nodded, whirling quickly, and stalking my way towards the door.

"I understand your anger Atlas," she added, making me pause with my hand on the doorknob, "but think about what I've said. When you want to contact us again, you can tell one of our contacts and they'll arrange it."

For a second, I was going to turn around and yell at her again; I wanted to scream at her that I didn't want to see her ever again and that she wasn't my mother anymore, but I knew it wouldn't make any difference. It would just make me look even weaker and by extension, remove even more power from the prince, so I took a deep breath and opened the door without acknowledging her.

We didn't say a single word to each other as we walked out into the hallway. The soldiers outside silently led us through the winding hallways and back outside to the car we had arrived in. Someone handed me back the bag I had dropped back in the basement, and I was reminded that I still had that book of essays my parents wrote. I assumed they had looked through my bag and decided I could keep it, but I realized he hadn't seen me take it and I decided not to tell him about it right now. I knew if I opened my mouth I would burst into tears, so I desperately pushed down my feelings and let them settle into the pit of my stomach as we were driven to the train station.

Prince Alexandre seemed to be doing the same thing, his eyes staring straight ahead. He didn't look at me once, but I wasn't offended and gave him space. Sitting this close to him in the back seat, I could see the tension in his jaw and shoulders and fists, but I couldn't begin to imagine what was going on in his head right now. I tried not to stare and focused on keeping myself calm, knowing we had a three-hour train journey to talk about what happened.

I felt powerless as we pulled up to the platform and the man driving stopped to let us out. I wanted to attack him, or the four other soldiers dressed in civilian clothes standing around Lewis and Simon next to the train, but at this point it wouldn't help anything. The royal guards both looked as terrible as I felt, but relief flooded their face when they noticed us, and they pushed past the norther rebels to run up to us.

They both started talking at the same time, rapidly questioning us about our health and what had happened to us; they were so panicked they didn't even give us time to answer. but Alex only slowed to say, "get in the train," lowly to them before continuing to stride towards the train car that they had been standing in front of. Lewis and Simon looked to me for answers, but I just shook my head slightly and lowered my eyes, quickening my pace to catch up with the prince.

The rebels that had been guarding the train car only watched us warily but said nothing as they stepped aside to let us through. When I entered the train car, I turned to see them start to walk away as Lewis and Simon followed behind me. They bristled, but I could see that there was no bulge on their hip where they had hidden their guns previously, so they just stood at the door, shoulder to shoulder, until they saw the rebels get in the car and leave.

I skirted past Alex, who had just stopped and stood in the middle of the train car with his back to the three of us, and collapsed into the nearest seat. Bringing my knees up to my chest and burying my face into my hands, I finally let myself relax, but no tears came like I expected them to. My entire being just felt 'off,' but I couldn't figure out what I was feeling or even what I wanted to feel, it was just an uncomfortable numbness.

I was so focused on what I was feeling that I didn't think about anything else as I heard Lewis say under his breath, "I'm going to go tell the conductor that we're ready to leave," to Simon. I listened as he tried to quiet and gentle with the inner door to the rest of the train cars in front of us, and as it closed the train filled with a deafening silence. I didn't want to talk to anyone or be the one to break the silence, so I stayed curled up with my forehead resting down on my knees as I started to recount all the events that had just transpired. It felt like it had been years since we left the castle grounds, but it must have still been early morning because the sky was lightening, and I had seen the first signs of the sunrise.

It was a reminder that I had been up all night, and now that the adrenaline was draining out of my system, my muscles ached from the exhaustion and stress. I nearly fell asleep right then, but I roused and looked up once I heard the automatic side doors close with a quiet hiss. The train lurch forward as we pulled out of the station and I saw Lewis return to the train car, locking the door behind him.

I watched Lewis and Simon exchange a glance before Lewis gingerly approached the prince. "Your majesty?" he asked, reaching out to gently touch his shoulder.

From where I was sitting, I couldn't see Alexandre's face, but as soon as Lewis touched him it was like a spell was broken and he crumpled to the floor, falling on his hands and knees. All three of us immediately jumped up to help him, but we froze as sobs started to wrack the prince's body. Lewis and Simon looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then Lewis knelt to touch his shoulder again.

"Don't worry, your majesty," he started to say, but Alex quickly turned and threw himself into his guard's lap, his sobs only growing stronger. Lewis looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then his face softened with pity and he wrapped his arms around the prince.

"You have to tell us what happened," Simon said, also kneeling behind the prince to place a hand on his back.

I motioned for him to stop talking and half whispered, half mouthed, "Not now."

"As soon as we get back to the castle we'll report to the admiral," Lewis continued, seemingly trying to comfort the prince, "We'll contact the local police, organize troops to go back to the city, and –"

Alex cut him off with a sharp "No!" as he pushed himself back up onto his knees. He looked over at Lewis, who looked stunned and confused, and then softly repeated, "no, not yet. I need to figure this out on my own." He supported himself on his knees and let his head hang low

"But, sir. . ." Simon spoke up.

"That's an order!" he shouted, turning his head to the side to look at Simon. He seemed to catch himself again, taking a few deep breaths and whipping his nose on his sleeve.

"I mean, please," he mumbled, breathing ragged as if he had just been running, "I'm asking you not to tell anyone yet. Please, just wait for me to. . . figure something out. . ."

Lewis and Simon turned their heads to look at me. I had been standing there motionless, stunned by how vulnerable Alexandre was being, but they snapped me out of it. I walked over and gently knelt in front of him. "Hey," I said softly, not wanting to set him off again now that he was starting to calm down. He kept his head down, so I added, "Look at me. . ."

I waited a moment, but when he didn't raise his head or respond, I reached for his face slowly and put both my hands onto his cheeks, guiding him upward. "I need you to listen to me," I said as earnestly and as cautiously as I could, "You're overwhelmed, and exhausted. . . we all are. . ."

He looked me in the eye and his bottom lip quivered. I couldn't help but feel pained and saddened for him; he looked exactly like Ari did when he used to cry like this. "We're safe," I said, letting go of his face to glance at Lewis and Simon too, "They're not going to do anything immediate. So, we're going to go back, rest, and eat, and then we can start making decisions."

I let my hands fall into my lap, but I saw Alex furrow his eyebrows and I knew he would start protesting. I grabbed his hands, unconcerned about feeling the wet tears on them, and reiterated, "We are going to figure this out. . .

"Together."