“Nothing,” he says.
“Did someone see us?” Katarina whispers, her voice shaking.
I swallow and stand, taking her in my arms.
“I’m sure it was just the wind,” I say.
Chapter Nineteen
Katarina
I’m a nervous wreck for the rest of the day. Even though I want to think that it was just the wind, or just the palace settling or something, I don’t.
I think someone saw me with Bruno and Dom at the same time.
And I don’t think that’s going to turn out well. At the very least, I’ll probably be blackmailed, and probably worse.
What if my father found out? I keep thinking.
Or worse, what if the gossip press found out? They love salacious stories about royals.
I’ve just finished a round table on economic policy when I’m staring out a window on the second floor of the palace, worrying about all this. There’s nothing I can do right now — it’s not like I can go around to everyone present at the Council and say, hey, did you happen to see me fucking two men at once behind the throne room? I was giving one a blowjob and fucking the other. No? Okay, thanks.
But then, there was the revelation that they love me. I don’t know why I’m surprised. It seems fast, but I think that deep down, I already knew — and after all, love is love. It doesn’t have to take a long time.
“What a lovely view,” Sven’s voice says behind me.
I roll my eyes quickly, arrange my face into a smile, and turn, fully aware that he’s trying to be clever by saying I’m the lovely view.
From him, it’s just gross.
“Yes, I’m lucky to live in a beautiful country,” I say, more ice in my voice than there should be.
“I didn’t mean the view out the window,” he says, and smirks.
I know, I think, but I force myself not to roll my eyes.
“I was wondering whether you’d do me the favor of taking a walk with me,” he asks. “I’ve got something very important to discuss with you.”
He smiles a greasy smile and offers me his arm. My stomach sinks like it’s filled with lead, but I take it.
You can say no, I remind myself. Your father will be furious, but he can’t force you.
“You know, Norograv is home to many legendary kings of great lineage,” Sven says, leading me along the hall. “My six-times-great-grandfather was Turgev the Solid, and I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of...”
I tune him out as we wind through the halls, and go back to worrying about my current problems. I wonder if I should just tell my father that I’m not marrying Sven under any circumstances, and then he’ll stop bothering me like this.
We stroll into the portrait gallery, the door closing behind us. But even though we’re alone, I’m not really threatened. Even if he’s big, Sven doesn’t really seem like he could do much harm.
“Ah yes, Erzebet the Merciful,” he says, looking at a giant portrait of some ancestor of mine in a corner of the room. “Ironically named, of course.”
“She was relatively merciful,” I point out. “Compared to—”
The portrait swings open, an inky blackness opening up behind it, and I stop short.
Hands reach out, Sven grabs my arm and pushes, and then I’m inside the tunnel, mouth covered, hands held behind my back, ropes tightening, and then the portrait swings shut.
It took seconds.
I try to scream, but my mouth is taped shut and the sound is muffled.
I struggle, but it’s useless. I’m surrounded by God knows how many men — Sven’s guards? — and they’re holding me so tightly that it feels as if they’re breaking all my bones.
In the darkness, a flashlight clicks on, then shines directly into my eyes. I can’t see anything, but I can sense someone’s face getting close to mine.
“We’ve got some important things to discuss, Princess,” Sven says, his nasal voice quiet. “Item one: I won’t have my future wife polluting herself by fucking other people.”
My eyes go wide, and even though I hold my breath, I can feel the tears building behind them.
Don’t cry, I think. You’re the Crown Princess, you’ll get out of this.
Just don’t give him the goddamn satisfaction of seeing you cry.
Chapter Twenty
Dominic
The King never deigns to see us, at least not that afternoon. That means Bruno and I waste an entire afternoon, sitting around, waiting for an audience with him that doesn’t come.
It’s obvious we’re going to need another strategy. We tried to do this the right way — well, sort of — but the right way just isn’t going to work.
Time to get creative.
When we arrive at dinner, the Princess isn’t there, and then the meal begins without her. She doesn’t even have a place set, which is strange, to say the least.
I look around the enormous formal dining room, and something dawns on me: Sven’s not there either.
Alarm bells scream in my head. I turn to Bruno, ready to point out the two missing people, but he nods like he already knows.
There are plenty of reasons that two people could be absent from a meal, but I have a bad, bad feeling about this.
I clear my throat and address the King.
“Your Majesty,” I start. “Is the Crown Princess not joining us tonight?”
He gives me a long, slow, considering look. Katarina definitely has his eyes.
“My daughter is dining with Prince Sven of Norograv,” he says. “They have a private matter to discuss.”
I nod once, the only polite thing I can manage to do, because I feel like I might throw up.
Katarina. Our princess, alone with him.
It isn’t that I don’t trust her. I trust her completely.
Him, on the other hand? Fuck no.
“I don’t like this,” Bruno murmurs to me.
“I don’t either,” I respond.
We eat as fast as we can and excuse ourselves. We don’t know where we’re going, only that we’re looking for Katarina and Sven. I don’t know that she’s in danger, but the unsettling feeling I have won’t go away, the feeling that something bad is happening, and it’s up to us to protect her.
That’s what we’re supposed to do. Protect her, the woman we both love.
And I think we might be failing. The thought is sickening, and we tear through the palace at a run, looking everywhere we can think of, but there’s no sign of either of them.
“If we were Sven, where would be take Katarina?” Bruno asks.
I exhale, pacing in a tight circle. Our search so far as has been completely useless.
“We don’t know that he’s doing something wrong,” I point out. “They could be having dinner together, somewhere perfectly innocent...”
“Do you really think that?” Bruno asks quietly.
“No,” I admit.
“This really bugs me out,” he admits.
That just makes me feel worse. Since being in the military for years, he’s got a pretty good sense about these things — when there’s danger, when there’s not. And if Bruno thinks she’s in danger...
“He wouldn’t take her back to Norograv, would he?” I ask. “If he could get the Princess out of the country, it would be a lot harder for anyone to rescue her.”
Bruno considers this, but shakes his head.
“If he did, he’d be caught at the border,” he says. “And he’d have taken her during full daylight, which is pretty hard. No, I think they’re still here, somewhere.”
I sigh again, pushing one hand through my hair, the way I do when I’m stressed, anxious, or angry, or when I’m all three, like I am right now.
“Okay,” I say. “If I were at home, at the palace in San Javier, where would I take a girl I wanted to...”
I swallow.
“...Hide?” I finish.
Bruno looks at the ground, thinking.
“That might be the wrong question,” he says.
I look up at him, raising my eyebrows.
“Your palace is on a sea cliff, so it hasn’t got a proper basement,” he says. “But in Materbourg, we’re very proud of our dungeons.”
Of course. Of fucking course. The dungeons in pretty much every palace are long out of use, a spooky place that mostly stores old furniture and gardening equipment.
It’s a great place to hide someone you don’t want found.
“Come on,” Bruno says, already speed-walking. “They showed us the door the first day of the Council.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bruno
We race down the big stone hallway and through the labyrinthine palace. We get turned around once or twice, but finally, on the first floor, we see it: a huge wooden door, bars across its one tiny window, and we heave it open, descending the stone stairs into the chilly damp.
I hate dungeons. They just feel unpleasant, and this one’s no exception. It’s been wired for electricity sometime in the past hundred years, but it’s lit by dim bare bulbs hung every ten feet or something, which just adds to the creepy feeling.
It’s also eerily silent, which isn’t surprising.
At the bottom of the stairs, Dom and I hold our breath and listen. I’m praying that we’re not wrong about this. It feels like we’re on the right track, but God knows I’ve been wrong before.
And if we’re wrong, then Sven is racing out of the country with Katarina right now, and her chances of coming back to us lessen with every second.