“I suspected as much,” Laila said. “Ana’s guard Tess took it off a wolf she killed. It’s further evidence that the wolves are being helped by a witch.”
“Princess Ana was there during the attack?” I asked. Surely that made her and her witch look guilty.
“She was on a date with Jacen—the two of them went to the market,” Laila said. “His idea, apparently. If Jacen and the guards hadn’t been there, the attack would have been much worse than it was.”
“I should go to the attack site,” I told her. “See if I can find any more clues.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” Laila’s voice was sharp, and I sat back in surprise. “Until we find proof that Princess Ana is working with the wolves, you’re still one of the suspects. You’ll remain in your quarters until this problem is resolved.”
“You’re putting me under house arrest?” I looked at her, stunned. I already wasn’t permitted to leave the Vale, since they needed me here to maintain the boundary. Now she was keeping me in my quarters?
She raised an eyebrow. “Would you prefer the dungeons?”
“Of course not.” I shuddered at the suggestion.
Then I forced myself to get ahold of myself. Because there was still one place where I had the upper hand.
“What about when I go to the fae?” I asked.
“I hadn’t realized you’d decided to seek out the fae.” Laila smiled, clearly pleased with my decision.
“They’re the only creatures who will know where Geneva’s ring is and how I can get it,” I said, since it was true. The fae were more similar to gods than to what mortals traditionally thought of as faeries. They ruled from the Otherworld—rarely ever crossing over to our world—but they knew everything that was happening on Earth. If anyone had the answers I needed, it was the fae. “But I’ll only go to them if you make a blood oath with me that you’ll turn me into a vampire princess after I hand over the ring.”
“Deal,” Laila said, and I sat back, surprised by how easy that had been. “Now, you already know you must wait for the full moon for your upcoming journey. Let me tell you exactly what you need to do when the night comes and it’s time for you to call upon the fae…”
She gave me the instructions, and once the explanation was complete, we sealed the blood oath.
Annika
I’d been in my quarters for nearly three days—the only times the door ever opened was when the guards delivered my meals or books. Geneva and I spent a good amount of the time creating the details of the imaginary Seventh Kingdom. I liked what we’d created—it seemed like we’d thought of something that would be near impossible for Queen Laila to disprove. I still wanted to avoid giving out too much information, but at least I now had something to tell Jacen if it seemed like he was considering eliminating me from his selection again.
I hated lying, but it had already gotten me this far. What was one more major lie on top of everything else?
Eventually, someone knocked on the door at a time not designated for meals. I hadn’t requested a new round of books, so my breath caught at the possibility that it might be Jacen coming to update me on what was going on in the kingdom.
I glanced in the mirror, quickly running a brush through my hair, and hurried to answer the door.
It wasn’t Jacen waiting on the other side—it was Tess.
“Don’t look too excited to see me,” she joked with a small smile. Ever since we’d worked together in the square to save the humans, the relationship between us had lightened greatly. I trusted Tess, and I was glad she’d been assigned to be my guard.
“Sorry,” I said, forcing a smile on my face as well. “I’d just been hoping…” I trailed off, not wanting to say it out loud.
“You were hoping I would be the prince?” she finished my thought.
“Yes.” I straightened, pushing the notion away. “But of course I’m happy to see you. Has there been any news since the attack?”
“Nothing I’m at liberty to say,” she said “But I’ve been asked to inform you that Prince Jacen requests the presence of all the foreign princesses in the throne room immediately.”
“Immediately?” I looked down at my pajamas in horror. I’d been spending most of the day reading and hadn’t even showered yet. “Do we at least have five minutes to freshen up?”
“Five minutes,” she agreed. “If you’re not ready by then, I’ll come in there and drag you to the throne room myself.”
Annika
I was ready quickly enough that no dragging of any sort was necessary.
Tess led me to the throne room, where all the other princesses were already waiting. They all looked perfect and pristine.
Apparently, they’d all been ready to see the prince at a moment’s notice.
Jacen sat on the throne, wearing all black. The throne next to him was empty. He was the only royal member of the Vale in the room—both Queen Laila and Camelia were absent.
His gaze locked on mine, and he looked at me as if I were the only other person in the room. It was like time stood still, and I couldn’t move, speak, or breathe. All I could do was look right back at him, and I was sure I looked just as star struck as he.
Eventually, he broke his gaze with mine. “Now that everyone’s here, we can begin,” he said, strong and in command.
I looked around the room once more, surprised that no other royals from the Vale were there. So far, Queen Laila had been present at every important moment of Jacen’s selection process. There were only two reasons why I could think she wasn’t here now. Either this wasn’t an important moment, or she had more pressing matters to attend to.
Given the recent attack, I assumed the latter.
“Firstly, I want to thank all of you for coming to the Vale to meet me and be a part of my marriage selection process.” Jacen stood up from his throne, and gazed around at each of us. “However, as you’re well aware by now, we recently suffered an attack from the wolves that live outside of our boundary. The attack resulted in multiple casualties. The queen has had the kingdom thoroughly investigated, and we’ve concluded that there are no more wolves within our walls. But we’ve taken the attack as a declaration of war, and acknowledge that by you all staying in our palace, your lives are at risk.”
I swallowed, bracing myself for what was coming next. He was clearly about to hold an elimination. And from the way he was talking, it sounded like he was going to ask us all to return home.
If he did that, everything I’d been through since coming to the palace would have been for nothing.
“You’re all wonderful women, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know you,” he said. “But by this point, I’ve had one on one time with each of you and it’s become clear which of you I could see myself spending my life with, and which of you I couldn’t.”
Eve brought her hair over her shoulders and smiled seductively at the prince, clearly confident about which category she fell under.
Jacen barely looked at her, stone cold as he continued. “I have no desire to lead any of you on,” he said. “But more so, I have no desire to put you in unnecessary danger. Especially because at this point, there are only two princesses I want to continue to pursue.” He paused, and I could barely breathe as I waited for him to name the two. “Princess Karina and Princess Ana.”
“What?” Eve shrieked, looking lost and stranded as she pouted up at the prince.
For the first time, I felt sorry for her.
But then I remembered the way she’d cornered me and bullied me in the library, and any sympathy I’d felt for her vanished.
“Princess Karina and Princess Ana are the only two princesses who will remain in the palace, and thus, they are the only two princesses eligible for my hand in marriage.” Jacen stared at Eve as he spoke, and she narrowed her eyes in anger. He looked away from her and continued, “I’ll have a date with Princess Karina tomorrow night, and a date with Princess Ana the night after. The rest of you are to return to your quarters, pack your ba
gs, and return to your kingdoms at once.”
“The vampires of Utopia are correct about men.” Margaret—the other princess from Utopia—took Eve’s hand, glaring at Jacen. “You’re selfish and cruel to take advantage of my sister the way you did.”
“If any of you feel like you were put into any situation while in this kingdom without your consent, please speak now.” Jacen was calm as he replied to Margaret, and Eve turned her eyes down, unwilling to look at him. He gave us a few moments to reply. When no one did, he continued, “As I thought. Now, I need to return to strategizing our retaliation against the wolves. I expect all of you except for Princess Karina and Princess Ana to be gone from the Vale by the next sunset.”
He left the room via a side door without glancing back at any of us.
I watched him leave, stunned.
This selection process was supposed to have lasted much, much longer. Weeks, or even months. Geneva and I had discussed my trying to become Jacen’s bride, but I hadn’t actually thought he might choose me. I’d thought I would stay in the palace for as long as possible, and during that time Geneva and I would be brainstorming a way to kill Queen Laila undetected before Jacen eliminated me.
Now, for reasons I didn’t understand, I had a fifty percent chance of marrying Jacen and becoming a princess of the Vale.
I still wanted Laila dead, but I also couldn’t ignore the feeling that something wasn’t adding up about Jacen’s motives, and that until I could pinpoint exactly what was going on with him, I might not be able to betray him.
Jacen
Laila flung my double doors open with so much force that they slammed into the walls behind them.
“All of the princesses?!” She barged inside, her hair and dress flying behind her as she stomped toward where I sat at my desk. “You just eliminated all of the princesses?!” She banged her fists onto the desk, seething as she stared down at me.
Her guards took the liberty of closing my doors and leaving my room.
“You’ve heard incorrectly,” I said calmly, leaning back into my chair. “I didn’t eliminate all of the princesses. Karina and Ana still remain.”
“Oh, I did hear correctly.” She sneered. “That pretender Ana was never in the running, and you and I both know that. You will rescind your decision immediately and the other princesses will remain in the palace.”
“I will do no such thing,” I told her. “A betrayer is in our midst, and the princesses are the main suspects. You’ve told me yourself that you trust the Carpathian Kingdom, and you agreed with me that Princess Ana was best kept here, where we can keep an eye on her. By eliminating the others, I was sending home potential enemies, and thus, doing the Vale a favor.”
“You deliberately overstepped my authority,” she said. “I should have had Stephenie make this alliance, not you.”
“Except that Stephenie isn’t here,” I reminded her. “I am. And if Stephenie even managed to stop partying for long enough to get married, she would go live with her husband. With the strength of the wolves rising, we needed to do this now—you had no time to successfully turn another prince and for him to learn to control his bloodlust. I was the only option you had.”
“You overstep your place here, Jacen.” She zipped around the desk, yanked out a stake that had been strapped to her thigh, and rammed it into my stomach.
I gasped as the pain overtook my body, another crippling wave of it wracking through me as the tip of the weapon scratched my heart. One move forward and I would be dead.
Attempt to fight her and I would surely be dead, too.
“I created you.” Laila twisted the stake and smiled, clearly enjoying my grunts of pain. “I can destroy you, too.”
“Do it,” I dared her, forcing myself to speak through the agony. “It’s what you should have done last year when I killed all those humans in the village.”
“Oh, I never said I was going to kill you.” She yanked out the stake, and I pressed my hands to my stomach as my body started to heal. “There are many, many other ways a person can be destroyed. I’ve been around for long enough to know these things. Going against me was a mistake, Jacen.” She twirled the stake around and licked the tip of it, relishing in the taste of my blood before placing it down on the desk in front of me.
If I wanted to, I could grab it and attack.
But that was what Laila expected me to do.
Instead, I lifted the stake and handed it to her. “I didn’t go against you,” I said, but she just stared at the weapon, not moving toward it. “I promised I wouldn’t eliminate Princess Karina without consulting you first, and I stuck to my word. In fact, I plan on proposing to her.”
It was a lie, of course. Once I saw Ana risk herself to save those humans during the attack, I knew I was going to choose her. She’d put the lives of a few humans above her own. She was the princess I needed by my side to bring true change to the Vale.
I’d also known after kissing her that I was falling in love with her. Her kiss was so familiar… almost as if we’d kissed before.
Kissing her was like coming home.
But Laila was right—I may have grown overly confident on what I could get away with. Once I’d decided on proposing to Princess Ana, keeping the other princesses in the Vale had seemed pointless. I’d meant it when I’d told them I had no desire to keep them in harm’s way or to lead them on. I didn’t regret my decision. After all, Princess Ana could have been killed during the attack. If the worst happened, and one of the other princesses died on my watch when I could have easily sent them home to safety, I’d have to live with the guilt of their death forever.
I had enough death to live with without adding theirs on top of it.
I should have sent Ana home, too. Wherever the Seventh Kingdom was, she would be safer there than here.
But if I sent her home, I might never see her again. And I couldn’t lose her. Not now, when I was just getting to know her.
I also had another reason for wanting to keep her. Because in the square, the wolf had run at Ana, ready to kill. Then he’d stopped.
The wolves had killed all the other vampires with reckless abandon.
What made Princess Ana so different?
I’d been thinking on it for the past few days, and one answer kept coming to me—she was working with the wolves.
The wolf hadn’t attacked her because they were fighting on the same side.
If I could gain her trust and get her to admit that to me, perhaps I could join her and the wolves in their war against the Vale. It would be the perfect opportunity to bring down this kingdom once and for all.
But having the queen so livid at me would get me nowhere. And Laila had been pushing me to make an alliance with the Carpathian Kingdom from the get-go. Telling her that I intended to marry Princess Karina struck me as the perfect way to end this fight and convince the queen that I was still under her thumb, just like she wanted.
“You’ve come to a decision so soon?” Laila reached for the stake and shoved it back into the holster around her thigh, still looking down at me suspiciously.
I stood, since remaining seated while the queen was standing was defiant against her authority. “I have.” I nodded. “Princess Karina has opened up to me in a way that none of the other princesses have,” I said, since it was the truth. Karina had told me all about her lost love, Peter, even though doing so had made her vulnerable. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since we danced on the night of the ball.” A lie—I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Ana since her gymnastics performance on the night of the ball—but right now, the lie was necessary. “The reason why I so easily agreed to not eliminate Karina without your consent was because by then, I already knew I wanted her.”
“So why not say so then?” she asked.
“Because at that point, we’d talked up the competition for my hand so much that the citizens of the Vale would have been disappointed if we hadn’t given them the show we’d promised,” I said
simply. “I saw no point in committing to anything at that point in time. But the recent attack changed everything. We can’t risk the other princesses remaining in our kingdom. If any of them were killed while under our protection, it would mean not just war with the wolves, but potential war with their kingdom as well. Best not to ruffle any feathers, don’t you agree?”
“I do.” She nodded, although she still looked at me like she wasn’t convinced. “You would have discovered as much if you hadn’t circumvented my authority and had come to me with all of this before announcing your decision to the princesses, but that’s not important right now. Because there’s one big thing that isn’t adding up.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Princess Ana,” she said. “Why keep her around when you’ve already decided to propose to Princess Karina?”
“Because she’s most likely the one who’s been working with the wolves,” I said simply. “Why send her away when we can keep her here of her own free will and catch her in the act?”
“You’ve kept her here so we can spy on her?” Laila arched an eyebrow.
“Yes,” I said, although if I found any evidence of her working with the wolves, I was damned well going to cover it up and keep her safe. And if I was going to propose to her—which I fully intended on doing—I needed to prove her innocence. To do that, I needed time. “We couldn’t keep her prisoner without evidence, and setting her loose would be foolish. Keeping here her under her own free will seemed the best course of action.”
“It is logical,” Laila agreed. “But in the future, you’ll come to me—your queen—before making another major decision like that. I took it easy on you with that stake. It’s best you not forget that there are other ways I can break you. For instance, you remember that human blood slave Annika, don’t you? How I killed her?”
I nodded, tensing at the mention of Annika. What did she have to do with any of this?
I thought Laila had forgotten about her by now.
The Vampire Trick (Dark World: The Vampire Wish Book 3) Page 7