I was going to kill every last rebel I could get my hands on. Those bastards were going to feel my retribution.
13
BRYCE
I couldn’t believe I kissed the king.
I looked at myself in my bathroom mirror, my mind reeling. We got back to the castle not too long ago, and although I could tell something had happened, nobody was telling me what was going on. It was probably some obscure Starklandian crisis I wouldn’t care about, but still.
I couldn’t believe I kissed Trip. I kept telling myself over and over that I wasn’t going to fall for his shit, but the second he actually pulled me against him, I couldn’t resist. I should have known better than to put myself in that position at all, but I couldn’t help myself.
I was beginning to see more in Trip than just a bad boy king. He wasn’t just a player and a partier. He seemed to genuinely care about his subjects, and I was impressed with their social welfare programs. We didn’t care that much about people back in America.
Then there was that fountain. Of everything Trip had shown me so far, that was the most real. Not just because it was rundown, but that helped. No, it was because of how small it was and how out of the way it was. I believed him when he said that he used to spend a lot of time there.
I couldn’t begin to fully understand Trip. His experience of the world was so different than mine. Everything he said and did held a weight I couldn’t exactly fathom, completely unlike everything I did.
But he was also a regular guy, too. He was a normal person who liked fountains and had simple taste for his personal life. Sure, he was a king, an asshole, but I was beginning to see past that.
And those lips. My god, the way he kissed me sent chills down my spine just thinking about it. I’d been ready to strip my clothes off right there and let him take me. I’d been out of my mind.
I quickly left the bathroom and got into bed, pulling my laptop onto my stomach.
I did a quick news search for Stehen, and the first result surprised me. Apparently there had been a big attack on the main rail station in the city, and the body count was up to five people, with many more wounded.
And it had happened recently. The attack must have been the reason why Trip had had to get back to the castle, and why he’d seemed so serious. For a brief moment, I wondered if we were safe.
But of course we were. We were inside a giant castle with hundreds of guards all over the place. I should have been more worried about the people out in the city who didn’t have the king’s immediate protection. Nothing bad was going to happen to me, not while Trip was around. I didn’t know why I believed that, but I did.
I continued reading more about the war with the rebels in the south. There were a lot of articles in Starklandian and very few in English, but what I could find was surprising.
The fighting had been going on since the old King had died, which I’d known about. The rebels wanted democracy, and the Royal Army was fighting back.
But I didn’t know about the reports of abuses on both sides. I knew the rebels were brutal, but so was the Royal Army. Apparently hundreds of civilians had died already, with thousands more injured or displaced. Many of them reported horrible things done by the Royal Army.
I sat back, biting my lip. That only made me so much more confused. On the one hand, I was convinced that Trip genuinely cared about his people and went out of his way to provide much-needed services to them. But on the other, Starkland was a lot more complicated than I had realized. There were ministers all with their own power bases and land holdings, and they all were fighting with each other all the time. The king had to try to keep the peace between them, but that was a pretty impossible task.
Then you throw this rebellion into the mix and things were only muddied and horrible.
And Trip wanted to get me involved in all of this. He wanted to make me his queen, which meant I would have a political position in this country. I was a total outsider, and I knew absolutely nothing about any of it.
And yet the way he touched me sent thrills through me. I didn’t want to be queen, but I was starting to realize that I wanted the king anyway.
There was a knock at my door not long later. I got out of bed and answered, assuming it would be my father.
Instead, it was Trip.
“Trip. Hey,” I said.
“Bryce. You okay?”
I nodded. “Come on in.”
I stepped aside and he came in. He glanced back at the security detail and they hung back as he closed the door.
“Sorry about earlier,” he said. “Something fucked up happened.”
“I know; I read.”
“Those bastards.” He walked over to my little side table and took a glass decanter full of some brown liquid. I hadn’t bothered with that stuff, but he poured himself a drink and knocked it back. “Those sick bastards. They bombed a train station full of innocent people.”