Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)

by Abigail Graham

  I must have said the last part aloud.

  “What are you saying, whore?”

  “Nothing.”

  It’s the woman who hits me. Not a slap, a punch. It knocks me off the seat onto the floor and my mouth wells up with blood, throbbing. The world spins, poked through with bright pinpricks of light. She drags me up by the arms and punches me in the stomach, and I double over in agony, spitting blood on the inside of the black sack they’ve put over my head.

  “I take it back,” I growl, “I can’t wait for him to find you.”

  I’m a teacher. Not a saint.

  “You say that as if he’d harm me,” she says, her trilling accented voice like honey. “He had his chance.”

  My head pops up. Bloody cloth clings to my lips. “Good God, you’re her, aren’t you? You’re Cassandra.”

  “No. I am,” a third voice intones. She must have been waiting in the van.

  “I first thought to take you when we drew him away from the castle a few days ago, but there are too many loyalists, we never would have made it past the inner courtyard. Even in the hell he’s built there are still some fiercely loyal to him.”

  “He told me about you. Don’t try to play a man-of-the-people card with me. You made him kill his brother.”

  “A pity. I thought my Kristien would rule after Kristoff’s untimely death, but like a romantic idiot he insisted on dueling his brother for the crown and my hand. My hand, can you imagine something so foolish? Of course you can, look how you’ve taken to those ludicrous dresses.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Yes, I am. Intimately and slowly. I will do things to you that your pretty little mind cannot even imagine. That carnival-show torture chamber in the castle will seem like a dream to you. You’ll beg me to take you there.”

  I take a deep breath, coughing from the stink of my own blood in my face. “Why? Because he loves me and not you?”

  She sighs. I hear the swish of fabric as she crosses her legs. “Are you such a romantic fool as to think that matters? Of course there is an element of quid pro quo at play here. He questioned my lover, so I will show his the same courtesy. I hope he’s gotten a whelp on you. I’ll keep you alive long enough to carve it out and make you eat it.”

  I blink a few times. “Your lover, what?”

  It hits me. Of course. “Brad.”

  “That is not his name. I admit I have a certain fondness for the idiot, he has a nice prick. He thinks he is using me and like all men he thinks the gash between our legs means our brains have leaked out. He relates to me all sorts of plans, all sorts of information. I use him. I reached out to the authorities, and I offered them something they could not refuse in return for backing my insurgency.”

  “The armor,” I breathe. “You want the armor.”

  “I have a suit of my own. That pretty cut on your beloved’s chest, do you think his brother gave him that? Kristien didn’t last thirty seconds against him. I put that scar there, and he gave me none in return. I would have had him, had the Phoenix Guard not run me off. What I need is the advanced prototype, the one he wears, and you will bring it to me.”

  “Me?”

  She laughs. “Yes, you. Oh, believe me, nothing would please me more than to let him think you’ve abandoned him. Six months or a year, I think, after he’s fully vented his rage on your precious people… Then I would send him the tape, show him what I have done to you. Let him see that your love was true and you begged for him to the end. Oh, and you will beg. I will have to satisfy myself with eviscerating you after I’ve killed him and pried that damned armor off his corpse.”

  I press my throbbing lips shut.

  She keeps talking.

  “Once he’s gone and I have the suit, the Americans think it will be theirs… And I will give them one, an older model, while I ramp up the production line under the mountain. With both brothers dead and the suit under my control, the castle will be mine. My resistance will don those suits and spread out in every direction like a steel tide, rolling over every foe. Solkovia will be first. I will put every man and woman and child to the sword, for your sake. I will kill the girl children first. I think this will please you.”

  “You’re insane.”

  She laughs softly, and mirthlessly, to herself. “So you think, I am sure. What is insane is to wield power such as that and not use it. Dear Kristoff argued with me for hours and hours, oh no we mustn’t, oh one man cannot rule all the world, oh if we try we will be utterly destroyed and my people will suffer for it. He has a kind heart, in his way. It’s a shame that defect did not pass over the heir and to the second son. Had Kristien been born first, the world would bow under a black iron yoke and I would be its queen. I will finish what their fathers started. I will ensure you are alive to see it before you beg me for death.”

  Oh my God.

  She’s fucking nuts.

  I can hear the seat creak as she sits back. “We need only to make the proper arrangements.”

  I swallow. “Arrangements?”

  “You’ll see. I have something very, very special in mind for you. A prince needs a grand exit from the stage, don’t you think?”

  She turns and barks an order in Kosztylan.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m not a spy or a secret agent. Maybe I should be paying attention to the turns or trying to count the stoplights, get some handle on where I am.

  Not that it would help. I’ve been here exactly once and we didn’t get out of the car. Manhattan is not, as they say, my jam.

  Oh God, I’m going to die.

  Painfully, apparently.

  The best thing I can do for now is sit quietly, I think. Listen, think, and pray. I pray hard, as if it’ll do me any good. I pinch my eyes shut and plead.

  The ride takes a long time. An hour, more. When we finally stop and the van door slides open (my spy skills have improved to the point where I can tell it’s a van, because it has a sliding door), the smell of rust and stale air rushes through the burlap, flavored by the crusty iron stink of blood. I’m not sure if it’s soaked into the sack, or just in the air.

  “Don’t move, or we’ll break your arms,” she says, standing in front of me. “That will make this vastly more unpleasant for you.”

  I go halfway limp, sagging a little as they unbind my arms, only to close handcuffs around my wrists…and force them over my head. I hear a metallic scraping sound, and then a great mechanical noise, some kind of engine revving up.

  Oh God.

  Something pulls at the chain binding my wrists, and the cuffs click tighter, cutting off circulation to my hands. My fingers begin to tingle as my toes come up off the floor. I hang there and she gives me a little push, amusing herself by swinging me forward and back.

  Then it lifts me up. The cuffs dig into the flesh of my wrists, and I have no choice but to hang there and whimper as the pain grows, and grows, and grows. I feel the world swinging past under my feet, until I finally come to a stop, instinctively trying to put my feet down.

  She’s behind me, I can feel her.

  The sack comes off. She yanked it over my head. I’m hanging over a void between two ends of a retracted walkway, something beneath me. There’s a camera aimed at me, held by one of her men.

  “Look down,” she says.

  I glance back. Cassandra bears a faint resemblance to the blonde-haired guard. They might be kin. She’s taller and leaner, her hair knotted back severely behind her head. Her eyes are green and hard.

  I swallow, hard, and tilt my head down. It’s agony with my arms forced over my head. It feels like they’re going to pull out of their sockets.

  When my gaze falls to the floor beneath I see… a machine. Rows and rows of wheels, with big studs jutting out that form interlocking metal teeth.

  “It’s an industrial shredder,” Cassandra says, stroking my hair. “The shape of the blades gives it an amusing nickname: They call it the muffin monster.”

  “W-what—”

>   “I told you I was going to kill you slowly. On that count I was truthful. It will probably take at least a minute for you to die, though I doubt you will make it much past the machine shredding your feet and calves; when it grips your femurs and tears your legs off and breaks your cuffs or sucks you in, death will come mercifully quick. Or it would, should I say, except that I will slow the machine to its lowest setting so it takes minutes to devour you alive, ripping you into pieces no bigger than my finger. I want you alive long enough to feel it rip out your entrails before you finally die.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  She shrugs. “You stole my place. Turn it on! Let’s see if her prince can find her in time to say good-bye before he has to pick her teeth out of the machine!”

  Beneath me, the shredder churns to life. It sounds low and throaty at first but quickly picks up the pace, spinning faster and faster until the blades become a blur. My shoe slips off my foot and tumbles into space, hits the blades with a small whump, and vanishes in a puff of fabric slivers and stuffing.

  God, if you’re going to lead him to me like I asked, now would be a very good time.

  Cassandra descends a gantry to the factory floor, checking her watch, and with no more concern than turning on the lights, pushes the button that starts lowering me from the crane and feeding me into the machine. At the rate I’m going it’ll be about a minute before my feet touch the blades. I have to save my strength, hold them up.

  I turn to my side and watch her draw a drop cloth off a crate.

  Inside is one of those damned armor suits. She taps something on the side and it unfolds with a mechanical sound, and she backs up to it, stepping one foot and then the other into stirrups before pushing herself into it. The plates fold around her and close with a hiss of air and she steps forward, massive boots thudding on the ground.

  Her armor is white. It would be, wouldn’t it.

  She unsheathes one of those massive swords and she waits.

  “He probably won’t make it in time,” her voice booms across the floor. “He’s going to find a pile of ground meat before I gut him.”

  As I grow closer to the machine I can feel the air from the moving blades and start jerking my legs up. I cry out when I feel my wrist slip. Too much movement and the hook will give and I’ll just fall in and be torn apart all at once. I wonder if that’s the last thing I’ll feel, being ripped to shreds by this machine. The blades spin hungrily, almost like they’re reaching for me, eager for blood.

  “You’re not the first one to experience this,” Cassandra says, “it’s quite an effective interrogation tactic. A man will tell me anything when I hang his wife above the machine. He will tell me what I want to know when he sees the first blade tear off her toes. I like to suspend them together so he can see her drop first and be splashed with her blood before he dies.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “If I push this button, you drop,” she says, hefting the remote.

  I press my lips shut and lift my feet higher, away from the blades. My muscles are starting to ache. Every sway jerks at the cuffs; I might just fall in no matter what I do.

  I last until it catches my dress and rips off my skirt. When I see it torn up in the blades, I start to scream.

  “Damn it, where is he? I really wanted him to arrive when she was about halfway in,” Cassandra says to no one in particular.

  I’m curling up in a ball, the blades reaching up at me. I close my eyes and pray it will be over quick. I wonder if I should make one great twist and jerk myself free of the hook, drop in so it will end quickly, but I have a feeling as soon as I touch the metal teeth she’ll turn the speed down and watch me ripped apart slowly.

  I open my eyes when something streaks past the windows.

  “He’s here,” she says, her voice dripping with almost sexual excitement.

  She slows the machine, and the cable. I hang on for dear life. Any moment the strength in my belly and back will give, my feet will drop, and it will have me.

  Then the world goes bright as the sun and I press my eyes shut, blinded. There is a great crash and the roof caves in from above, slabs of concrete spiked through with rebar falling like rain in the corner, followed by a thunderous crashing sound as the armor suit lands on the ground in a crouch.

  In the middle of all this madness, I’m back at Bible camp. I remember the voice of old Reverend Abernathy reading from Revelations: and I heard as he cried with a great voice as the lion roars, and seven thunders uttered their voices.

  Kristoff’s wordless bellow, half a roar and half a scream, echoes through the chamber. He swings his four-foot-long sword through the air and it clashes in a blue arc of sizzling electricity.

  The cable stops, and I hang inches above a brutal death.

  “Take off the armor,” she says. “Get out of it now.”

  “Don’t,” I scream. “Don’t do it! You can’t let her have it!”

  “Do it or she dies, my prince. You’re fast, but not fast enough,” Cassandra snarls.

  “Release her, free from harm, and you can have the armor,” he says, without missing a beat.

  “No!”

  “Shut up,” Cassandra barks. “You step out of it first. Lay down the sword and open the armor, get on your knees, and await my mercy.”

  “I should have killed you before.”

  “You can’t. Can’t hurt a woman, as if I am some lesser creature unworthy of the same consideration you gave your brother. How did that feel, I wonder? Did you enjoy it when that blade of yours bit through his belly?”

  “Enough. Take the armor, let the girl go free.”

  “I see you have sense enough not to plead for your own worthless life. Very well. Get out of the suit.”

  No, no, don’t.

  I stare at him, pleading. It’s not worth it, I want to tell him. My life is a small thing, not worth all this. She can’t have that power. No one should. It has to be destroyed, all of it. I’d rather die than let her have a weapon like that. It’s madness.

  His armor unfolds and breaks open, spreading apart around him. He steps down, disengaging his feet from the stirrups before he falls into a kneeling position before it.

  “The advanced prototype,” Cassandra murmurs, her lusty whisper amplified to a shout by her armor. “Mine now. Give it to me.”

  “You shall have it,” Kristoff says, looking at the floor.

  “You should have known I wouldn’t let her live.”

  Cassandra pushes the button. I fall.

  It happens so fast I can barely register it. The tension of the cable holding me up disappears a fraction of a second after the press of the button, and I can feel the blades rushing up to meet my waiting flesh. I close my eyes, telling myself it won’t hurt too long, trying to think of something happy as I descend toward my hateful end.

  Behind Kristoff, the armor suit cracks apart into pieces, falling like a marionette with the strings cut, and the individual parts rocket across the room in a cloud.

  The first, biggest part, the back, hits me and knocks me away from the machine. As I fall, the other plates close around my arms and legs, locking in place, ratcheting as they adjust themselves to my body. The helmet slams closed over my head and I land in a roll on the concrete floor.

  I get up on my knees as a screen blinks to life in front of my eyes. Little icons whir along the bottom, and I wave my hands at nothing, trying to shield myself from the spinning blips on the screen.

  Surging to my feet, I stumble.

  This feels incredible. It moves with me… No, it moves before I do, like it’s reading my mind. I stumble back and watch in horror as Cassandra comes charging at me in her gleaming white suit, sword raised high, and brings it down to cleave me in half.

  It… It moves. It yanks me out of the way.

  “Stay back!” Kristoff roars.

  The world goes crazy. A second suit follows the first through the gap in the roof and he jumps, enveloped in it in a single motion, ro
lls, and snatches the sword from the floor. It arcs to life, buzzing with furious energy as he awkwardly swats away her swing, and their blades lock, moving so fast I can barely see.

  I edge back, stumbling as I try to plant my feet, and put big cracks in the floor. It’s a struggle until I realize the suit will balance itself, all I need to do is let it. My heart pounds in my chest as I watch them duel.

  My God, it hits me like a train.

  He could kill her anytime he feels like it. She’s not very good with the sword.

  He could bat her blade aside and run her through or slice off a limb, but he won’t, he keeps stopping himself, and every time he commits to a blow and pulls back, she lands one, raking the blade along the surface of his armor. Within a minute his suit is chipped and dented in a dozen places and his left knee sticks, making him limp.

  “You pathetic, romantic fool,” she laughs, charging at him. “I hope you die knowing that you could have beaten me but your silly morals wouldn’t—”

  “Shut up,” he roars, swinging at her.

  She blocks the blow and edges out of the way. I knew she would, he aimed his cut at her sword, not her.

  “Persephone go, now!”

  My voice echoes across the room. “I won’t leave you!”

  “Leave, or she’ll kill us both!”

  “You force me to damage the damned suit,” Cassandra snarls, “but with two of them I can piece together what I need. Die.”

  He’s losing. She’s going to kill him. I have to do something, but what can I…

  Penny, you idiot, you’re wearing a seven-foot-tall tank suit.

  “Hey!” I bellow, charging at her.

  It’s just appropriate, really.

  “Get away from him, you bitch!”

  She swings at me, and Kristoff parries the blow, turning her sword aside. When the flat of her blade hits my arm guard, the screen flashes and a red mark appears on a little stickman in the bottom corner. She damaged my suit.

  That makes me irrationally mad, so I punch her in the face. My fist rings with the impact, and it sends her reeling. She swings her blade again but I’m inside her arms, and and catch her in a bear hug.

  I don’t know how this thing works, so I just run straight into the wall with her. The concrete buckles and cracks in a spiderweb from the impact, and then she pummels the side of my head with her fist.