by Melinda Minx
I spread out from him, not taking my eyes off the kitchen, or my hand off Jane’s.
“Front door still secure!” the other guard shouts back.
Fuck. I know there’s a shooter in the kitchen, but I don’t know what’s going on with the bus.
“Can we get out the front?” I shout.
“Not easily, Your Highness,” the guard furthest from me says. “The bus has broken through, but the vehicle is blocking the way out. You’d have to crawl through the length of bus, and―”
I raise a hand, silencing him.
They probably just have one or two men with eyes on the bus. Anyone dumb enough to crawl through the splintered door would be easily picked off.
The cooks and wait staff rush toward the bus anyway, and from this angle I can see it now. The front of the bus was crumpled so bad from the impact that the door is only a few inches wide. They start shouting at each other in panic. Some boost each other up to fiddle with the windows. I see a man grab a wooden chair and smash out a window. It won’t be long before they are climbing up and out into the bus.
I can’t spare any attention to focus on them, not yet. Jane is my only priority, and I know that whoever is opening fire in the kitchen will likely make their move on us soon.
But I’m wrong.
From high above, the sound of shattering glass catches my attention, and I look up to see dozens of stained glass windows shattering apart. The shards of glass rain down in a prism of color dropping at our feet… and then I see the first grenade.
I leap back, grabbing Jane. I fall flat on my back, cushioning her fall, and the moment I make contact with the ground, I roll over and cover her body with mine. I should be able to absorb the brunt of the―
The grenade goes off, and the blast nearly blows my ears out, but I don’t feel any shrapnel hitting my body. There’s a blinding flash, and―
Fuck, a flashbang!
I grab Jane and pull her to her feet. She obviously didn’t shield her eyes properly because she’s squinting and disoriented. I’ve been hit with dozens of flashbangs in training. I know what it means.
I raise my pistol toward the broken windows, as does the guard.
We see at least six men rappelling down from the vaulted and painted ceilings, like black angels.
“Stay down!” I shout to Jane. Can she even hear me? My ears are still ringing. I can’t hear me! Either way, I shove her down under another table. She doesn’t even have to tip it over to be safe now.
I open fire, but the men don’t fire back even as I hit the first one. He loses his grip on his rope and crashes down onto the stone floor, crunching onto the stained glass shards.
Another flashbang hits the ground, clanking and rolling toward us.
Now, I realize, I’m fucked.
If I ignore it, I’ll be too blinded to hit a target. If I take cover, I’ll be a sitting duck.
I open fire, and the guard beside me does as well. If we can hit as many guys as possible before it goes off, maybe we’ll stand a chance.
I hit another terrorist, but then the flash goes off.
27
Siegfried
The kitchen door opens, and Tobias, the guy I paid off, lets me in.
“It’s just you?” he asks. “I thought―”
“Shh,” I say, putting a finger to my mouth. “You don’t need to know the plan.”
“Don’t I get a gun?” he asks.
“Why the fuck would you need a gun?” I hiss. “You got me in, so you can leave now before the fighting starts.”
“I can help you,” he says.
I put my gun down on the counter and lean toward him. I expect him to back down, to cower away, but he meets my eyes defiantly.
I shove him up against the wall, pressing my forearm into his neck. “Just get out. Get the rest of the staff out of here, too. I don’t need all these people in the way, and I don’t need your fucking help.”
I hear the crashing sound of the bus hitting the front entrance. I need to get these people out now.
I remove the pressure off his neck so he can speak. “Get them out! Go!”
“All right,” he croaks, raising his hands in surrender.
He snatches my gun off the counter and rushes forward.
It takes me two or three seconds to react and catch up with him, but the moment he enters the kitchen, he’s already opened fire.
I see his coworkers being cut down. Pots and pans and shellfish are flying up into the air as the bullets cut them apart. The kitchen staff is rushing out into the main space of the cathedral―the wrong fucking way.
An injured woman is crawling out of the kitchen, and someone is trying to slam the door on her. The asshole shoots her right in the back, and then I body slam him before he can get another shot off.
I have a dart gun on my leg, to knock Rikard out, but I pull out my pistol instead and put a bullet in the guy’s brain.
Everyone is going to think I killed these civilians, so what’s one more added to the body count?
I hear the flashbangs go off, and I rush into the cathedral as I draw my dart gun.
My men are already halfway down to the floor from the ceiling when I enter, and Rikard is fully focused on the men above him. Another flashbang goes off, but I’m far enough away from it that it blinds me only momentarily.
When my vision comes back, Rikard’s veins are bulging in his neck, and his gun is wavering around aimlessly pointed toward the ceiling. Princess Jane is hiding under a table, also blind as a bat.
Fuck, this is going to be almost too easy. It’s a good thing I’m not the type of man who lives for a fair and honorable battle. I’m in this to save my own skin at this point, enacting revenge or proving to myself that I’m better than Rikard can fucking wait.
I take aim and fire, and I see the dart hit Rikard squarely in his thick neck.
Machine guns are rattling off from the ceiling, and both royal guards on either side of Rikard crumple to the ground.
Rikard spins toward me and fires, but he can’t actually see me, so he misses. I fire another dart, this one into his chest. Then I fire another, because I don’t want to risk his vision clearing and him putting a bullet into me.
He starts to stumble, barely able to stand. As soon as he collapses, I put a dart into Jane as well. I don’t want to traumatize her any more than I have to, especially if I want to make her my queen.
28
Rikard
I wake up lying in a bed.
Not my bed. It’s harder, and smaller, and―
Jane.
“Where is she!” I shout―or try to shout. It comes out as a croak.
“Jane!” I rasp.
Something beeps louder as my heart thumps in my chest. I realize I’m hooked up to a bunch of IV lines, and I tear them out of my arms.
Blood drips from my arm, as I jump out of the bed.
I stumble back and forth trying to gain my balance with my weakened legs, and my throat feels so dry that I fear it’s going to crack, but I press on and open the door.
“Jane!”
A nurse rushes toward me.
“Your Highness,” she says. “You need to get back in bed.”
“Where’s Jane?” I ask frantically.
She purses her lip and looks toward the bed. “Your Highness, please, you must rest―”
“Where?” I ask, grabbing hold of her. I won’t let go until she tells me.
“Promise me you’ll lie back down…”
She looks behind her searching for help, and three security guards approach.
“Get him to the bed.”
They start to escort me by the arm, gripping me brusquely, and the nurse scurries away.
I fight them, but their grip is strong, and I’m not recovered from whatever those assholes pumped into me. I still feel sluggish, and my insides feel like squishy foam.
They finally get me over to the bed and convince me to lie down.
“Jane,” I say, grabbi
ng one by the arm. “Tell me.”
“We can’t sedate him again,” I hear the nurse say.
Finally, Magnus steps into the room, and one look at his face is all I need to see to know the news isn’t good.
“Is she alive?” I ask. My heart is pounding and I can hardly breathe.
“We haven’t heard from them,” Magnus says. “But they took Jane as a hostage to get across the border.”
I grip the railing on the bed so tightly that the muscles in my arm bulge, but I can’t hold the grip for long. “Fuck!”
Why didn’t that bastard Siegfried take me? He didn’t even kill me, and he could have. Then I realize the answer, and it makes my blood turn cold. He needs me to want Jane badly enough to let him off the hook.
Fucking coward.
I look toward the nurse. “How long until this shit wears off?”
“A few more hours,” she says. “But you should stay overnight for monitoring. You were given way too large of a dose―”
“Fuck that,” I say. “A few hours? I’m out of here. Magnus, let’s get to the war room.”
Everyone eyes each other.
“Magnus!” I shout.
“Step away,” Magnus says to the guards.
The nurse stares daggers at him, but he grabs my hand and pulls me up.
He grins back at the nurse. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t fall on his ass, don’t worry.”
She scoffs, and Magnus and I wobble a lot more slowly than I’d like toward the war room.
When we get there, my father and a number of parliament members are gathered in a circle. They turn toward Magnus and me when we enter the room, and I realize some of them are not happy to see me.
“Save your anger,” I say, stepping toward them and doing my best to not look drugged. “I have plenty for myself. I should have never taken the princess from the palace under these circumstances, ceasefire or not.”
“They’ve violated the ceasefire,” one of the women says. “Now we’re forced to counterattack!”
A man gets in her face and says, “We don’t have to; we should negotiate.”
“Silence!” my father shouts.
Everyone looks to him.
“They were about to hand Siegfried over to us, so we don’t know if he was acting under orders, or alone,” he says. “There’s every possibility they will turn over Princess Jane and Siegfried to meet the terms of our deal.”
“Right,” I add in. “And that all goes out of the window if we attack now.”
The woman from parliament, Janna Windstrom, scoffs. If I recall correctly, she’s one of the more hawkish members of parliament. “Your Highness,” she says to me. “Just a few days ago, you were strongly in favor of counterattacking.”
“A few days changes things,” I say. “Mrs. Windstrom, a few days ago we had them with their tails between their legs and their backs to us. Now they’ve had nearly a week to regroup and strengthen their defenses.”
She gives me a smug smile and says snidely, “And now they have your princess, and your princess must have taken your balls with her―”
I lunge toward her, but Magnus holds me back, and I’m still too drugged to break free.
“How dare you accuse me of―”
My father steps between us. “Rikard, quiet. Don’t make me order you back to the infirmary until you’re well.” He turns toward the parliament members. “The prince is still feeling the effects of the drug he was shot with.”
Windstrom flashes her teeth at me, but I finally force myself to calm down.
Fuck her. It is about my princess. My Jane. I care more about getting her back than I do about getting Sydia back. What’s a kingdom without a princess, and what am I without her?
29
Jane
“You idiot!” the man with the huge moustache says. “What did you do?”
Siegfried puts his hand on my shoulder and gently presses me forward. I stand still, and shove his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“You kidnapped the princess?” Moustache asks incredulously. “How could you―”
“You were going to hand me over to them,” Siegfried says. “You extracted value from me, and I had become useless to you, so I’ve made myself valuable again, General Olmstead.”
Olmstead tugs at his moustache and eyes me cynically. “You could start a war, Siegfried. Your value to us was to kill the others in line in front of you. You failed to do that, so don’t complain to me about whether we were going to hand you over to Nordia or not.”
“Let me go,” I say, forcing myself to demand my release in the most authoritative voice I can manage.
Olmstead snaps at me. “Sydia does not recognize the crown’s authority any longer. Tell me, girl, was the king serious about his deal?”
Girl? He could have called me that a week ago, but I’m a fucking princess now.
“You’ll address me correctly,” I say, “if you wish to speak to me. You may not recognize Nordia’s sovereignty over Sydia, but you’ll treat me with the respect you would give to any foreign leader.”
He starts to laugh, and I expect him to finally treat me with respect when he’s finally done laughing. He’s only laughing because he’s pleasantly surprised by my ability to keep such cool in this stressful situation, right?”
“Ahh,” Olmstead says, panting for breath. “That’s a good one.”
He looks toward Siegfried. “Do you see? This is why we need to separate. Nordia takes this common whore and puts a ring on her finger and crown on her head, and suddenly we have to treat her with respect?” He shakes his head in disgust. “Throw her in the dungeon.”
Siegfried reaches out to protest, but Olmstead backhands him in the face, then kicks him to the ground. “Both of them! They can be neighbors.”
The guards grab hold of me roughly and drag me down the hall, and I decide to walk with them so they stop dragging me. Only two guards restrain me, while at least four wrestle and fight with Siegfried, until one finally slams the butt of his rifle into Siegfried’s head, knocking him out cold. After that, it only takes three of them to haul him down the steps behind me.
We get down the steps, and I realize it is an actual dungeon. It’s a famous one, too, one I was planning on touring during my vacation in Nordia. Never in a million years did I think I’d be locked up in here.
At least I know where I am. This dungeon is located in an old castle―much smaller than the one in the capital―and it’s maybe ten miles south of the defensive line that Nordia has set up for the ceasefire.
“Isn’t having a dungeon, and using it, going to make you guys look like, uh, bad guys? Good guys don’t use dungeons,” I say.
The guard only answers by shoving me into one of the cells. He slams the door shut and locks it.
“Hypocrites!” I shout, but the guards go back up the stairs after they lock Siegfried’s unconscious ass into the cell across from me.
If I recall my history correctly, the entire reason a Nordian prince must marry a commoner was that Sydia suggested it during unification. They feared that a monarchy would become too strong and entrenched, and having commoners become royalty was a way to keep an air of egalitarianism.
I guess they don’t feel that way anymore? Or at least not about me. Maybe they don’t like American commoners becoming princesses.
When I realize that the only “toilet” is a hole dug in the ground, I cringe. I guess I’ll just have to hold it in.
There’s one fluorescent light connected to a loose wire located near the steps, but it’s pretty dark overall. The light only seems bright because it’s the sole source of light in the dungeon. If I do have to make use of that hole in the ground, I’ll want as little light as possible, especially if Siegfried wakes up.
I have to have faith that Rikard can rescue me. Whether he negotiates my release, or bursts in here with guns blazing, I know he’ll do everything in his power to save me.
I lay down on the bed and try my best to clear my he
ad. I might have to do something for myself while I’m here―if there’s any chance to escape or to convince that mustached idiot Olmstead to consider releasing me, I need to jump on it. My best bet is probably to try to sway the negotiations once they start.
I jolt awake, not even remembering falling asleep.
The harsh fluorescent light and my torn dress reminds me where I am, and when I sit up, I see Siegfried standing in his cell, watching me.
“I’ll get us out of here,” he says.
“You’ll...you’ll…” I stammer. “You got us in here!”
He looks down his nose at me, as if I’m just too common of a commoner, a dumb idiot American who can’t understand such complicated things. The facts couldn’t be more simple, however. Siegfried started all of this, and he’s the reason I’m here.
“I’ll take my chances with Olmstead,” I say.
“If negotiations fail,” Siegfried says, “then I’ll be valuable to them once again.”
“How’s that?” I ask. “If you were valuable, you wouldn’t be down here in the dungeon, would you?”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t need to explain myself to you―”
“Why not?” I ask. “It’s not like you have anything better to do. You’re locked up in a cell, with not even a literal bucket to shit in, so it’s not like you can claim you’re too busy to take time explaining it to me. If you want to convince me of anything after kidnapping me, you asshole, then you’ll have to explain a lot.”
He starts pacing back and forth, no longer looking at me.
“If I tell you what I’m thinking,” Siegfried says, “you have to promise not to get emotional on me.”
“You think just because I’m a woman that I’ll get emotional? You sexist asshole.”
“Do you promise?” he asks.
“Sure, why not?”
“You see,” Siegfried says, “if the ceasefire fails and war is declared, we can once again target the line of succession―the original plan. With Rikard and Jannika out of the way, I’m king, and they can control me.”