replay Juliet’s screams in my head, the promise I made to come for her already broken.
Finally, my arms are freed, and I collapse to my knees. I cough, and blood sprays the floor.
One of the guards raises a rifle and aims the butt of it at my head.
“You better fucking kill me,” I say, my voice thick and wet. “Otherwise I will be back, and I’ll make every single one of you pay for what you did to your very own princess.”
The guard with the gun laughs in my ruined face and whispers something in my ear. Then the entire world goes dark.
Juliet
Two months later
“Well, well, well,” I mutter to myself. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
Outside the window, the towers and parapets of Edenvale Palace come into view. Across the blue moat rise huge statues of heroes and kings, marbled memories of past glories.
“Sorry, miss. I didn’t catch that.” The driver I hired at the border glances in the rearview mirror, tugging one side of his long, walrus-like mustache. I can tell he recognizes me but that he doesn’t know from where. I have hidden my chocolate-brown waves under an Hermès scarf tied in a jaunty bow at my chin. My beige trench coat is expensive camel hair but unremarkable other than its elegant cut.
“I said, Goodness. Here we are.” I set my hand on the small suitcase on the seat beside me. “Is the servants’ entrance close?”
“Right around the corner, miss,” he says before giving me another searching look. “Who is it you are going to visit again?”
“My cousin Dora,” I lie. “She’s been a maid at the royal court for five years.”
“A Nightgardin maid? Working at the court?” he says, incredulous.
Blast! My accent has betrayed me in ways my hair never would.
I think fast. “Theodora, or Dora as we like to call her, was born in Rosegate.” Rosegate is the disputed city between our two long-feuding kingdoms. “Right next door to me, in fact.”
“Hmm, you’re from Rosegate too, eh?” The driver clicks his tongue. But he hasn’t called me out on the lie. He can’t, because people from both of our kingdoms reside in that ancient town. “Well, miss. I do hope you enjoy your stay at the royal palace. Folks say it’s gone a bit peculiar of late.”
“Oh?” I try to sound interested, but not enough to attract attention. In reality, I am starving for any scrap of information about—
“Damien,” the man says, finishing my thought. “The black sheep prince has returned from his years banished into the wilderness. Everyone is being quite tight-lipped about it. But my sister, Jenny, works in the kitchen, and she says that he has gone mad. I don’t like speaking ill of the Lorentz family, God keep His Majesty, but that youngest boy was born as bad as they come.”
Memories wash over me. Damien’s confident yet gentle hands claiming my body, making me burn, making me his. In our stolen days together, it was as if we were placed in France’s Large Hadron Collider, two particle beams thrust together at the speed of light. Of course the results were volatile. I was naive to have expected anything else. I see that now.
Damien was removed by Nightgardin guards as I was dragged away to my parents.
But...he said he would come for me. Swore it, even. Those were his last words as I was taken away.
He never came.
Perhaps the challenge seemed too great.
Perhaps I wasn’t worth the effort to him.
The king and queen could have hanged me. Instead they hastened plans for the wedding—to tomorrow. So naturally, I ran away. Again. But this time I did not bother with any sort of lie. It wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve been under lock and key ever since that weekend, every meal taken either with the king and queen or alone in my chamber. Each night my governess watched me place a sleeping tablet on my tongue—and each night when she left me, I retrieved the tablet from under my tongue and sent it down the toilet.
Last night when Elsie, the serving girl, brought my teapot, I asked that she join me. And because a servant cannot refuse a royal, Elsie drank a cup, but not before I distracted her and poured in two crushed sleeping tablets.
Soon after, I escaped out the window. No handsome prince climbed my tower and saved me. I did it myself.
My hand settles over my belly, still flat. No sign of the secret inside.
Maybe I fell fast and hard for a prince who fed me nothing but pretty lies full of tenderness and wonder, but now there is no choice. Our time together resulted in unexpected consequences. Ones he needs to answer for. Ones he needs to protect.
“Ah, here we are,” the driver says, pulling up at the guard tower. “They’ll fix you right up and give you palace security clearance.”
“Thanks very much,” I say, and slide out, tugging my suitcase with me.
Once I had a kingdom. Now I own two dresses, four pairs of underwear and a toothbrush.
But I’m free.
At the guard tower, the royal officer barely looks up from his newspaper. “State your business.”
I untie the scarf from my hair and shake out my long locks. “I am Juliet de Estel, Princess of Nightgardin. And I demand an immediate audience with the Edenvale royal family.”
The man’s jaw nearly hits his ample belly. He clears his throat twice, his lips flapping soundlessly before managing to rasp “one moment, ma’am. I mean, miss. I mean, Your Eminence.”
He doesn’t pick up the phone beside him. Instead, he hits a red button on the wall.
“Yes?” A deep masculine voice says in a crisp accent.
“Mister X, sir, you’re going to want to come to the servants’ entrance, right away. There’s a...diplomatic situation unfolding here at the post.”
Two minutes later a dark-haired man in a black suit appears, his eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses. He doesn’t give me more than a passing glance before walking into the guard booth.
“The heir to the Nightgardin throne is at your post,” he says.
“That’s what I was trying to say. But more subtle-like,” the guard replies.
The man removes his sunglasses and regards me with a look of cool appraisal. “Subtle indeed, Bartholomew. This is most unusual protocol for a state visit,” he says.
“I’m a most unusual woman,” I snap, refusing to be intimidated by his hooded gaze.
That earns me a ghost of a smile.
“Indeed.”
“And since you know me, might I have the pleasure of an introduction?”
“I’m called X, Your Highness. Head of Edenvale’s Royal Secret Service.”
“X?” I chuckle. “X what?”
The guard Bartholomew joins in my humor. “That’s what I always say. We have a running bet on what his real name might be.”
“And it pains me to give you nothing but disappointment,” X says wryly before reaching out to take my bag. “Will this be all?”
I nod.
“I need to speak with all members of the royal family... Prince Damien especially.”
Something flickers in his enigmatic eyes. I get the sense that this is a man who has seen it all and then some. I am the daughter of his kingdom’s worst enemies, and he barely batted an eyelid. And yet when I say Damien’s name I get a reaction that I’d almost be tempted to describe as sympathy.
“You’re