steps were slow, cautious by necessity, not preference. Mud oozed between her heels and her slippers while the coarse sand clung to her pajamas, saturating both her tank top and bottoms. The cotton—useless against the cold edge of the tunnel’s draft—adhered to her skin like a moist, sticky cocoon.
Her only warmth came from the baby snuggled low in a sling against her belly. Prince Rashid Al Asadi.
There had been no time to change clothes. No time to prepare. Al Asheera had laid siege too quickly.
Using her hand, she guided herself through the pitch-black, sliding her palm over the wall’s damp, jagged grooves, which cut and tore at her fingers.
The carrier acted more as a small hammock swaying with the cadence of her body. The material looped around one shoulder, then down Anna’s back to her waist, allowing the baby to hang semi-curled against her body.
Her free hand tightened protectively over the wide strip of woven linen. The baby lay quiet in his sling. There had been no whimper, no movement for over two hours. Alma, his nanny, had warned her he’d possibly go six. Anna frowned. He’d been drugged for his own protection and hers, long before Alma had found her. Still, Anna slipped her hand between, felt the soft beat of his heart beneath her fingers.
“Not much longer, little man,” she murmured, knowing the words were more of a hope than a pledge. Alma’s instructions had been desperate but insistent. Hide the baby until his father, King Jarek, or Anna’s father somehow rescued them.
Then Alma had shoved a knife into her hand. “Protect His Highness,” she had whispered, and was gone.
No problem, Anna thought derisively. All she needed to do was find her way out of this underground maze, slip past the soldiers, over the wall, then through the Al Asheera–occupied city.
The scent of stale earth and decayed rodent slapped at her, enough to make bile rise in her throat. Her heart pounded in fear. Another dead end?
She continued along the passageway, cursing herself and the darkness. She’d made so many missteps already—wrong turns, impasses. Still, she couldn’t turn back until she was sure.
A little boy—only months under ten, blond and slightly built—flashed across her mind. Her brother, Bobby, with his blue eyes wide with trust, his face pale with fear.
“I love you, Anna,” he whispered against her ear, tears he’d bravely held back getting the best of him, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.” Anna pushed the memories away. But the echoes of his voice remained, riding a familiar wave of anxiety that rolled deeply within her.
She had left him. And her brother had died.
Cautiously, she shifted her foot forward, searching for the dead end with her toes. Anna stopped, steadying herself. The air had turned, sending a faint breeze skittering across her ankles.
A mist—more fog than light—crept across her path.
Blinking hard, she forced her eyes to adjust in the semidarkness, then used the soft haze to guide her.
At the base of the stone, no more than two feet square, lay a vent, its opening blocked by a wrought-iron grate.
Anna braced her back against the wall and slid downward, ignoring the burn of the sandstone against her bare shoulders. “Don’t worry, Rashid, we’re going to make it.” Or die trying, Anna added silently. She looked down at the baby, using his warmth to ease the knots in her stomach.
With a free hand, she tugged on the grate. “Looks like they sealed it with cement,” she murmured. After sitting back on her calves, she nestled the baby across her thighs. “I’m going to need both hands, handsome, so we’re going to have to make you comfortable.”
Outside, bushes flanked the vent, but nothing blocked the hole itself. Anna exhaled, not realizing until then that she’d held her breath.
She pulled Alma’s knife from her back waistband, noting how the cold steel felt foreign beneath her fingertips.
“Here we go.” After stretching across Rashid, Anna set her shoulders and began to scrape between cement and iron. Her movements were awkward and slow as she tried to keep the baby protected from bits of flying mortar. “If we’re lucky, this stuff has been decaying for a hundred years.” She dragged the knife around the four edges, applying pressure until her arms shook, her muscles ached.
As the daughter of the United States president, Anna had been around politics her whole life. At twenty-seven, she understood that greed undermined the rebels’ strike on the royal family. Al Asheera would fail. She had to believe that.
But not before hundreds more died.
At every pass, she dug the blade farther in, scraping and jabbing, trying to separate the grate from cement. The wind picked up, drying the film of perspiration into a tight mask, making her skin itch.
A chunk of cement fell from the top of the grate. With a small cry, she dropped the knife, wedged her fingers between the metal and wall, uncaring when her nails broke. She tugged at the metal until, noiselessly, the grate fell into her hands.
Trembling, she tossed the grate to the side.
“Okay, sweetie, time to run.”
Chapter Two
Arimand was dying.
Before he reached the tree, Quamar had seen the flash of the blade as the insurgent slid it below Arimand’s ribs.
The rage came to Quamar, savage and swift. But death would take its time with the old man. Slow and agonizing. Just as the rebel soldier had intended.
Most of the Al Asheera drifted away, not interested in the ragged breaths of a dying man. But one remained, the one whose knife still dripped with Arimand’s blood.
The guard’s eyes skimmed the darkness while his feet shuffled. From cold or fear, Quamar did not know. Nor did he care. The rebel had sealed his fate the moment he had slid his blade into the old man.
Quamar shifted his weight back, his shoulders forward, while his knife’s blade lay balanced between his fingers. He waited. The ache in his head had morphed into a battery of hammers beating a cadence on his temples. Having lived with the pain for many months, Quamar pushed it away, knowing from experience he had limited time before the pounding increased.
But by then, his objective would be completed.
The guard strapped his machine gun over his shoulder and with long, thin fingers reached for a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
Quamar let loose the blade, heard the familiar thunk as steel impaled skull. He spared no more than a glance when the body crumpled to the ground.
After snagging the guard’s machine gun, he pulled his knife free. He wiped the blade on the dead man and slipped into the darkness. Scanning the courtyard, Quamar noted that the killing had gone unnoticed. Instead, all stood watching the pillar of flames lick at the midnight sky.
“Arimand.” For safety, he covered the older man’s mouth with gentle fingers. The papery skin flexed beneath. “Be silent, and I will cut you down.”
Arimand shook his head, forcing Quamar to release his mouth. “No, leave me. I am well beyond help now,” the old guard rasped, pain etched in all the grooves of his face. “Anna Cambridge, the prince. Find them. Save them.”
“Anna Cambridge?” He pictured her long, blond hair, her depthless blue eyes. It was not hard—for months the woman had haunted his dreams. “If she is here, she is dead,” he said flatly. Another life to avenge.
“No. Hassan leads the Al Asheera.” The dark eyes bore into Quamar. “He ordered them to hunt her down. Go now, find her and the child. Take them to your father.” Arimand inhaled sharply. “Promise me,” he said after a moment, his voice harsh, unyielding.
“I promise you.”
Arimand