by Ember Casey
Something tells me I’ve been duped—Andrew made me think he had some big secret to tell, when in actuality, he just wants damage control done to repair the embarrassment he must be feeling at having his brother about to marry before he does. That has to be it—there’s no way Andrew could have ever allowed himself to do anything that would require damage control, anyway—he’s so damned uptight, I doubt he’s ever allowed himself to do anything that might get him into the slightest bit of trouble. This has to be an attempt to make him look good to the public—to somehow get him in line to take Leo’s place as the new sexy prince or something.
My jaw tightens as I watch him return with another armful of branches. I might have offered to help, but now… Knowing he almost got me killed to do some vanity piece makes me want to strangle him.
He places a few more branches on the fire and sits down beside me. “I think this should last us the night, not that we’ll need the fire that long.”
I nod, wrapping my arms a little tighter around my legs.
We sit in silence for a few moments before he speaks again. “So…”
I don’t even look over at him; I just stare into the fire. “So?”
“I’m curious where you learned to make a fire like that, Victoria.”
I turn my head, resting my cheek on my knees for a moment to look at him before I turn my gaze back to the orange flames. “I was a Girl Scout for seven years. They actually teach useful things to young girls, believe it or not.”
“You surprised me.” He pauses. “Not many people have done that. Not in a positive way, at least.”
“Glad to be of service, Your Highness. Keeping the Crown Prince of Montovia warm and all.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t have expected a woman from Los Angeles to—”
“I’m not from Los Angeles, Your Highness.” I turn to face him, glaring. “I’m from Oregon and I went to college in Illinois. Not that you care, but I’m definitely not from L.A.”
“I see.” He’s silent for a moment. “But you did choose to live there—to perform your…job.” The way he says the word job makes it sound like I do something vile for a living, like cleaning the guts out of fish or something.
“Try not to gag, Your Highness.” I roll my eyes. “You know, I didn’t choose to write about celebrities—I wanted to work for a newspaper. But the job at the tabloid was the only one I could get. You’ve heard of the Internet, right? You have to know that news jobs aren’t exactly plentiful these days. You have to take what you can get and try to always be moving toward something better. Not all of us are born with a crown on our heads, you know.”
“I…know.” He rubs his jaw for a moment. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
I sit upright, turning toward him. “Didn’t you? You’re all high and mighty, all I’m going to be king someday and I want my public to love me. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” I motion between us. “You brought me here—tried to take me to Montovia—to fix your image. Because you’ll never land a wife if people think you’re King Asshole, and you can’t have poor Leo thinking he actually has a chance at landing that title, right? King Asshole has to be all yours.”
“That is not why I needed you…” His jaw clenches and he turns away. “Never mind. This was all a mistake. I should have listened to my own instincts, hired a real journalist—”
“Fuck. You.” I stand up, brushing the dirt off my ass before I fold my arms over my chest. “I am a real journalist, asshole. I graduated at the top of my class. I’ve written several articles that have been nominated for awards—”
“Awards for celebrity reporting? Ha.” He almost snorts before he stands up, facing me. “You’ve spent more time in the last five years chasing my brother than you have actually writing. As though the reporting of my brother’s escapades with every female celebrity and royal, eligible or not, is somehow news. As if—”
“Go to hell. I did what I had to do to put food on my table. To pay my rent and my student loans and…” I shake my head. “You know what? Never mind. It isn’t as though you of all people could ever understand what it’s like to be desperate.”
“I understand precisely what it’s like to be desperate. Why do you think I hired you?”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“You seem to have a very narrow vocabulary, Ms. Simpson. It’s a pity, really, considering this is one of the more stimulating conversations I’ve had with a woman in some time.”
“I…” Something about the tone of his voice makes me stop, reconsidering the anger—almost hatred—I’ve felt toward him since the first time we spoke at the state dinner a few weeks ago. There’s something almost sad about him, almost broken. I’m not sure what it is, but the bubbling rage that had been in my chest a second ago is replaced with a prickle of curiosity almost as quickly.
But he interrupts that curiosity before I can say another word. “You’re cold.”
“And you’re an…” I stop myself from saying the word asshole again when I realize my hands are rubbing the tops of my bare arms and I’m almost shivering—he means I’m literally cold. Not cold-hearted, though he may well think both for all I know.
“We should go back by the fire. I’m sure we won’t be out here too much longer.”
I try to ignore the hesitation in his voice when he says it this time—that we won’t be out here much longer. That he’s so sure someone is on the way to rescue us. It’s been a while now—a lot longer than it should have been.
But I follow him back to the fire, sitting as far away from him as I can while staying away from the smoke that’s now blowing out toward the water from the breeze that’s picked up.
I alternate holding my hands out to the fire with rubbing them across my upper arms. I glance over at Andrew after a while—he’s at least fully clothed, still wearing his now wrinkled long-sleeved dress shirt and slacks, but he doesn’t seem to be much warmer than I am.
“What if…?” I press my lips together, not really wanting to ask the question. But I know he must be thinking it, too—and maybe he has an answer I haven’t thought of. “What if they don’t come tonight? I mean, I know we have the fire, and they can probably see that from the air, right?”
He nods. “They’ll come tonight.”
“And if they don’t?”
I can see him frowning, even in the dim light of the crackling fire. “I saw a cabin on our way down. It’s several kilometers from here—on the other side of that clearing.” He nods toward the now dark meadow. “If we’re forced to remain here after tonight, we’ll make our way there in the morning.”
Andrew
Someone should have been here by now.
Even if air traffic control can’t locate us, we can’t be far from actual civilization—though I’ll admit I was too distracted when we were going down to look for any nearby towns or cities. It’s pure luck I noticed that cabin. But this isn’t some barren wilderness. This country has over 300 million people—surely a handful of them are close enough to have seen Atalanta go down.
But perhaps that is a vain hope—after all, despite the size of its population, there are still huge stretches of protected, untamed wilderness here in the United States. I pray we didn’t land in the middle of one. If I had to guess where we are based on the information I had before we went down, I’d guess we’re somewhere in the American state of Nebraska—though I’ll admit I don’t know enough about American geography to say whether this was a good or bad place for us to land.
Land is, perhaps, too generous a word for it. We crashed. I crashed. And now Atalanta has gone to a watery grave.
Farewell, girl, I think, looking out over the dark stretch of water beside us. You did well. You got us here alive. I turn away from the lake. It’s ridiculous, that I should actually be feeling something like sadness over a plane. But she was a fine craft, and the loss of her affects me more than it should.
But there will be time to mourn her later. Right now, I need to focus on survivi
ng the night—and finding some way of communicating with Montovia as soon as possible. If they think I’m dead, even for an instant…well, things could get complicated. Fast
I wish I knew enough about American plants and fungi to forage for something to eat, but I’m really only familiar with European plants, and I don’t trust myself not to poison us. We should make it for a night without food—although water might be a different story. We won’t want to drink the lake water without boiling it—unless we want to spend the next several days sick with horrible stomach cramps—but though we have a fire, we don’t have anything to hold any water. It might end up being a very long, very thirsty night.
But it seems our bad luck is only beginning.
As I sit there, trying to figure out the best course of action, I hear a soft but unmistakable rumble in the distance.
Victoria looks up. “That was thunder, wasn’t it?”
Shit. “Unfortunately, I think so.”
I follow her example and look up at the sky. When we first landed, there were only a handful of clouds in the sky, but now it looks like some more rolled in while we were building up the fire. I can’t see the moon overhead at all, and the only stars I spot are down along the horizon—everything above us is lost behind the clouds.
This might not be good for us.
Almost in response to my words, lightning flashes across the sky, followed by another roll of thunder.
“We might need to find better shelter,” Victoria says.
And sure enough, not a handful of seconds later, I feel a fat drop of rain on my arm. Then another. Then another.
The fire hisses and dances as raindrops splatter down on the burning wood. This storm is coming on fast.
“Let’s go beneath the trees,” I say. “See if we can find some cover under there.”
She nods. Another streak of lighting splits the sky, followed by another deep rumble. We’ve hardly turned our backs on the fire before the scattered rain starts to come down harder. Within a minute, it’s a complete downpour, falling down on us in sheets as we run across the field to the nearest trees.
There go our chances of being rescued tonight, I think. Even if people are already looking for us, they’ll have a hard time finding us in weather like this. When we reach the cover of the trees, I turn back and look at our fire. It’s still bravely fighting to stay lit, but I’ve no doubt the rain will drown it soon enough.
Water is trickling down through the trees onto our heads. And the wind has picked up, too, blowing the rain across the field.
“I think we need to go deeper,” I shout over the noise of wind and rain. “We’ll just continue to get drenched here.” Not that we both aren’t already soaked to the skin—and not even half an hour after my clothes finally dried from our swim in the lake.
Victoria, to her credit, doesn’t complain as we trek through the thick woods, though she’s probably as wet and uncomfortable as I am. Perhaps her training in these Girl Scouts she mentions will continue to serve us well—between her experience and mine, perhaps we might manage to make it through the night without catching our deaths.
Another crack of thunder sounds overhead. The trees and brush get thicker the deeper we go into the woods, but at least that means less of the rain makes it through the branches down on top of us.
“Over there,” I say, gesturing toward a darker shape about fifty meters ahead. “Are those some boulders?”
“Might be,” Victoria says.
Together, we head in that direction. Sure enough, we’ve stumbled across a mound of some very large rocks.
Victoria takes one direction and I take the other, circling around the boulders.
“Over here!” she calls to me a moment later. I jog around to where she is, and I find her crouching in front of a space created between a couple of boulders. Judging by the size and shape of the darkness within it, the opening is probably just large enough for two people. It’s hard to tell without any light, but Victoria appears to be sweeping a stick back and forth across the ground inside.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“Making sure there aren’t any snakes in there,” she says. “They’re probably trying to get out of this storm, too.”
Her stick doesn’t seem to disturb anything, though, so a moment later she tosses it aside. The wind has started to pick up again, and it whips my damp clothes against my skin and sends a fresh wave of rain down through the branches overhead.
“Ladies first,” I say, looking up at the trees. Several of them are swaying pretty violently in the strong gusts of the storm, and the thunder is louder and closer. The storm is only getting worse.
Victoria crouches and crawls into the opening, and then I bend and go in behind her.
Our shelter is smaller than I first imagined. We’re practically on top of each other. I finally manage to get myself into a seated position with one of the boulders right up against my right side and Victoria pressed up against the left. We’re out of the storm, though, which is the most important thing.
For a moment, neither of us moves or says anything. Though it’s clear Victoria has little respect for me, she seems to have resigned herself to the fact we’re in this together, at least until the storm passes.
And the storm, strangely enough, has provided a solution to at least one of our problems. I lean forward and pull off my shoe, then push it out of our little shelter and into the rain.
When I lean back again, Victoria also appears to be messing with her foot. My eyes haven’t quite adjusted to the darkness yet, but she seems to have crossed her legs and brought her foot up into her lap.
“Is everything all right?” I ask her.
“Yeah. I just lost my shoe back there when we were running across the field.”
“You lost your shoe? Why didn’t you say something?”
“It was already broken. It was just going to slow me down again.”
“You mean you’ve been barefoot all this time we’ve been walking through the woods?”
“Just one foot. And I think I’m okay.”
Stubborn girl. If I’d known she was missing a shoe, I would have slowed my pace.
“Are you bleeding?” I ask her.
“It’s not bad,” she replies.
“That’s not what I asked.” Unfortunately, even if she has cut herself, there’s little I can do. I don’t have any bandages on hand.
I do, however, have a shirt. It might be sopping wet, but at least it will offer some protection.
“Here,” I say, starting to undo the buttons down my chest.
“Oh, no—keep your shirt on,” she says quickly. “It’s fine, really.”
“My shirt’s already ruined,” I tell her. “And it’s the best we can do for bandages until we get help. Especially if we might have to walk to that cabin in the morning.”
“I really just think we should keep our clothes on for now.”
My shirt is already off my shoulders, but I pause, confused.
“If you think this simply an attempt to take off my clothes in front of you, then you are mistaken, Ms. Simpson. First of all, I’m still wearing an undershirt. And secondly, I’d ask you to remind yourself I am not my brother. I don’t make it my goal to seduce every woman I meet. And I certainly have no intention of engaging in any sexual misconduct with a member of the press. I assure you, I have far better judgment than that.” I pull my shirt off the rest of the way and hold it out to her. “Take it if you like. Or throw it out in the rain. I don’t care. I am simply trying to do you a favor.”
For a moment, I think she might actually toss it out into the storm. After a second’s hesitation, though, she takes the shirt without a word.
While she’s busy tying the shirt around her foot, I lean forward again and grab my shoe. It’s been soaked through, but a fair amount of water has already collected inside. I pull it back into our little shelter and lift it toward her.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Wat
er.”
“It looks like your shoe.” She pauses. “You want us to drink out of your shoe?”
“Unless you have a canteen hidden on your person, I don’t see any other options.”
“Our clothes are soaked. We could wring out the water into our mouths.”
Frankly, I’m impressed by her ingenuity.
“That’s certainly another solution,” I say. “Of course, that would also require one or both of us to remove more clothes, and I suspect you aren’t keen to be parted from your shirt or pants.”
She’s silent.
“I’m happy to remove my undershirt,” I say. “But first I want to assure you again I have no designs on your body, now or ever. Just in case you fear otherwise.”
“I think I’ll take my chances with the shoe, thanks,” she says, taking it from my hand. She holds it up to her mouth, takes a long drink, and then holds it out to me. “We really are going to have to work on that, though.”
I take the shoe. “Work on what?”
“On you not being such a jerk,” she says. “I’m stranded alone in the wilderness with a guy I hardly know. Of course I’m going to be wary. You don’t have to be such a dick about it.”
I blink. I can’t remember the last time someone called me a dick. Most people don’t dare to insult the royal heir right to his face.
But whether or not she feels justified in her feelings, I have no intention of apologizing to her for her assumptions. I apologize to no one—least of all when I’ve done nothing wrong.
“If you need the world to sympathize with you, you need to stop being so condescending to everyone all the time.”
“So now it’s condescension to tell the truth?”
“There are plenty of ways to tell the truth without talking down to other people.” She shifts beside me. “And you’re welcome to ignore my advice, but it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to make you come out on top in this story if the rest of the world thinks you’re some sort of pompous asshole.”
Pompous asshole. That’s a new one, too.
Still, I’m not entirely sure what she wants me to do about this now. At present, the most important thing to do is make it through tonight, and frankly, I don’t care what she thinks of me for trying to help her. My duty is to get her through this unharmed, not make her my friend.