Royal Rock:A Bad Boy Royal Romance(22)

"There's a small army here. I can't imagine they'd be safer anywhere else."

"I'm sorry, Bryce, but it's a security thing also."

"You've had plenty of time to clear any security risks with them."







"Maybe, but it's not so simple. We're not clearing anyone of suspicion yet."

"Am I a suspect then?" I asked angrily, crossing my arms.

"No," he said softly. "You're the only person I fully trust."

"Then trust me when I say that my father and Lucy aren't a threat and that they should be here."

"I can't do that," he said again.

"Then take me back to the castle."

He sighed. "I can't do that either."

"You're the king," I said, getting heated. "You can do whatever you want. Remember?"

"Not exactly."

"Then what good are you?"

"Sometimes I wonder that myself," he said, his face cold and firm.

I hated the twist this conversation had taken, but I needed to stand up  for this. I couldn't let Trip just do whatever he wanted to whoever he  wanted like everyone else did. I knew my father and Lucy should be at  the country estate, not still in Stehen with the assassins. They needed  to be safe and protected.

Trip stood up. "I'll come back later," he said.

"Don't bother," I answered, looking back out the window, "unless you change your mind."

He started to say something, stopped himself, and then left the room.

I sat back, feeling stupid and frustrated. Why had I picked that fight  with him after things were going so well? It just wasn't necessary, but  it had happened anyway. I hadn't been able to stop myself even when I'd  realized I was making a mistake.

I wanted my family with me, but I knew Trip had other responsibilities.  He was giving me way more attention than I deserved already as it was. I  shouldn't make my problems so important when really they were minor  compared to what he was dealing with.

I sighed, staring back out the window. What a vacation this had been so far.





22





TRIP





General Hardcourt paced across the front of the room, a long pointing  stick in his hand. He gestured at the map in front of him and I  suppressed a yawn.

I checked my watch. It was early the next morning. I'd gotten maybe  three hours of sleep the night before, since it was one emergency after  the next as my advisors began to figure out what our response should be.

I knew what our response should be. We needed to destroy the rebels and  restore order to the country for the sake of my people. Enough was  enough.

"And so, Your Highness, if we place fifty tanks here and here, we can choke them off and they'll starve before winter."

The room looked at me. I nodded and pretended like I was listening. "Yes, very good. Go ahead."

He nodded, pleased. It was always the same thing with the generals. They  came up with some great strategy that would win the war, and then they  were always wrong for some reason. Sometimes it was troop shortages,  sometimes it was not enough equipment, and sometimes it was bad luck.  But it was always something.

Starkland used to be a great warrior nation. We'd conquered neighbors  and carved out a tiny empire in the midst of Europe. When all the great  European countries were rising up and destroying each other, we  persevered. We survived world wars and worse. Other monarchies toppled,  but Starkland solidered on, day after day, its people flourishing.

But we hadn't been at war in a very long time. We didn't have a large  military and had never really needed or wanted one. We had no interest  in getting involved in foreign affairs and had never needed to fight our  own people before.

And so the war was dragging on. It wasn't such a simple thing to destroy  a group of your own people. My brother had tried and failed, and he was  supposed to be some great Starkish savior.

Well, I wasn't any better. I almost got my ass murdered in my own palace.

I glanced over at the window, and for a second, I thought I saw Bryce. I  thought I saw her wearing a light green dress, the skirt blowing in the  wind, her hair loose and free in the breeze. But no. It was nothing,  just a figment of my imagination.

Damn my fucking pride. I couldn't have just listened to her and brought  her parents to the country estate? I knew it wasn't that big of a deal.  My ministers and advisors would all get over it. Sure, there might be  some minor little media scandal, but who fucking cared about that? We  were in a war, and someone had nearly killed me in my own bedroom. That  was bad. Some shitty news story in a tabloid was nothing compared to  that.

But I'd pushed back, and I'd pushed her too hard, all because I was an  asshole who couldn't listen. I was supposed to be a king. I was supposed  to know what to do and what to say.

When it came to Bryce, I felt like I knew what to do and what to say,  but somehow something came around to fuck it all up. First it was that  slap, and then it was the assassin, and now it was my own foolish pride.







General Hardcourt finished his presentation, and some other minor  general got up to speak. He went on and on about water movements in the  western regions, and as much as I wanted to give a fuck, I just  couldn't.

The meeting dragged on, speaker after speaker, their presentations  getting more and more obscure and useless. I gave my assent to almost  all of their requests since they were of nearly no consequence at all.

Finally, we came to the break. I stood and the room followed. They  bowed, said "Long live the King of Starkland," and then I left. It was  all ceremonial and symbolic, but the stuffy ministers needed their  tradition to stay relevant.

Meanwhile, I had nearly no patience for any of it. I found myself  walking through the halls without much thought at all about where I was  going.

I used to wander these halls when I was a child. We'd summer in the  estates when Father was too busy with work. Mother would bring Leo and  me out to the country, probably just to give us something to do and to  keep us from annoying our dad too much. I'd spent a lot of time in this  house, a lot of formative time.

As I walked, I realized where I was gradually. I was one hall down from Bryce's room.

I made up my mind in that instant. I went to her door and knocked.

"Yes?" she called out.

"It's me," I said.

There was a pause. "Come in."

I opened the door. "I was wondering if you'd like to go for a little walk with me," I said.

She was sitting on the couch watching television, her legs up on the  coffee table. She glanced down at herself and then nodded. "Okay," she  said. "Give me a second."

I leaned up against the doorway. "Take your time."

"Trip," she said, "out."

I grinned. "I'm the king. I give the commands."

"Trip." She stood up.

I laughed and held up my hands. "Okay. I'll be right out there. But if you take too long, I'm coming in and getting you."

"I won't be long."

I stepped out and shut the door. I leaned up against the wall, smiling to myself.

Not five minutes later, she stepped out the door. Her hair was braided  down over one shoulder, and she was wearing a navy blue dress with tall  hiking boots.

"You look good," I said, "but I wish you'd taken longer. I was itching to kick down that door."

"Come on," she said. "We'll find some other doors for you to kick down."

I grinned and led the way. I headed back down the hall, down the main staircase, and out the back door.

"I love this place," I said to her as we headed down the back path between the stables.

"It's beautiful," she said. "I bet it's nicer without all the men holding guns."

"I don't know. I like the guns."

"I bet you do. They make me nervous."

"They should have the opposite effect."

Al and his team were trailing us from a distance. She didn't mention it, but I knew she could tell we were being watched.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I haven't decided."

"Did you spend a lot of time here when you were a kid?"

"I did, actually," I said. "My father was busy in the summer, so my mother would bring me and my brother here."

"That's lucky. The only place we ever went in the summer was to the Jersey Shore."

I cocked my head. "Where's that?"

"New Jersey. It's a state."

"Oh, that's right. They say it's the armpit of America. Is that right?"

She laughed loudly at that, and I grinned. I'd heard that in some movie  once, though I couldn't place where. I was glad it delighted her.

"Some people say that, sure," she said. "It's not that bad."

"Well, this place isn't bad at all. I used to chase the horses when I  was barely old enough to walk. In retrospect, that seems crazy."

"Horses could crush a little kid," she said, smiling.

"Definitely could. But little princes were not to be coddled, at least not in Starkland."

"Must have been so hard, you poor guy."

"Being royalty is tough."

She laughed as we made our way from the stables down toward the woods  and the stream. I glanced back at Al and gestured for them to back off.  He frowned but obeyed, moving farther back. Bryce pretended like she  didn't see.