Roads & Royalty (Caprice Chronicles Book 3)

by Selena Page

  Jack walked off the road, heading for the hedgerow. It wouldn't provide all that much cover, but the tangled mass of plants was better than nothing. He heard her car start, the quiet engine idling under the birdsong for a while before it moved away.

  He trudged through the torn-up tire tracks of the country lane and the knee-high weeds, his head up and a smile on his face. He wasn't happy, he was confused, a bit angry, and more than a little worried, with almost no happiness to be seen anywhere in the mix. He wasn't going to show anyone, not even the smug crows in the trees or the laconic cows watching him from over the fence that he wasn't entirely certain he hadn't screwed up.

  Chapter 7

  Amber drove away. She went just under the speed limit, not so slow as to be obvious. She didn't want to draw any attention to herself, especially when she wasn't sure what might be in any police car that pulled her over.

  She didn't want to drive away, but it was nuts not to. Behind her was yet another supernatural boy in over his head. Her father would laugh. Well, on a good day, her father would laugh. On a full moon, her father might snarl and chase Jack across a few fields or maybe a few counties.

  It was a tempting thought, the smooth-tongued High Court boy running for his life from the alpha werewolf.

  Of course, he was already running for his life, wasn't he?

  On foot. Alone. In the middle of farmland, where he would be an obvious target.

  Amber slowed the car down. Her stomach grumbled. She ignored it. Lunch can come later. Worry about the ridiculous fae first.

  He'd asked to get out. He was a grown man, probably quite an old man, guessing by standard High Court ages, who could presumably make his own decisions. He'd told her to stop the car.

  Of course, then he'd kissed her. She scrubbed at her lips with the back of her hand. She hadn't been exaggerating when she said his kiss was god-like. It was amazing and had left her feeling a little drunk and a bit lost.

  High Court could do that, she'd been told. Of course, High Court could do a lot of things.

  He'd survived a fight with the Palace Guard before, and it wasn't like they were trying to kill him, unlike the Skin-donner things.

  She pulled the car over to the side of the road. Slowly, she put the car in park and reflexively looked in her rearview for state troopers. She was alone.

  She'd had her fill of strange and magic. She didn't need another jerk like Jack.

  "He couldn't even be bothered to tell me why he was running until something tried to kill us," she muttered.

  Something was trying to kill him.

  "This is ridiculous." Amber looked at her windshield, not seeing anything. "This is insane."

  She put the car in drive and turned around.

  Chapter 8

  The hayfields were a lot less even than they'd looked. Jack had raised his hand three times to smooth out the dirt, make something more civilized to walk on, but he was fairly certain that would pull the Palace Guard down on his head in a matter of seconds. So he trudged on, making as much speed as he could manage and trying to be unobtrusive.

  The sun was warm but not unpleasant; there was a cool breeze. It would be a nice day for laying someone down in a shaded grassy spot--like that one, right there--or even for wandering downtown, showing someone the sights.

  Someone.

  Right, someone. He'd better put Amber out of his mind. She was safer heading back to her boring, human life, never mind how ridiculous she was to want that.

  Jack plucked at his shirt. It had been an expensive shirt two or three weeks ago. He was going to have to find somewhere to clean up before he tracked down Alicia Blackburn, or she would turn him down at the door. He didn't look like a High Court Prince. He looked like a vagabond. Of course, for all intents and purposes, he was a vagabond.

  He hummed softly under his breath. Singing wasn't technically magic, and even if it was, it wasn't High Court stuff. And what's more, Troubadour wasn't the kind of song anyone would expect out of someone in the High Court, even the Court's most wayward and wander-prone son.

  If he could pull this off--if Blackburn would take him, if the Palace Guard didn't catch him, if Their Majesties accepted his ruse--he wouldn't be a vagabond anymore.

  His feet stilled. He wouldn't be a wanderer anymore.

  That was a ridiculous idea, when he considered it.

  "Small squishy Prince!" The voice came out of nowhere, thundering over the trees, coming from his left.

  "Oh, blasted fields and angry mothers!" Jack was in for it now. He turned around slowly, readying a spell. If he got it off quickly enough and got moving, maybe the Palace Guard wouldn't catch up with him.

  Better taken by the guards than squished. There was a troll standing on the road, tall and green-tinted and roughly the size of a barn.

  In theory. This was the first time Jack had been near barns in a long time. It was smaller than a skyscraper, that was for sure, and rose up against the emptiness of the world around them like a building.

  And it was grinning. "Why do they grin?" he muttered to himself. "It makes the ugly that much worse." The troll had a mouth of yellow and black teeth with the remnants of some meal from last year stuck here and there. It wasn't a good look. Of course, there was no such thing as a good troll look.

  "Aye, noble troll," he called out more loudly. At least there was nobody around to see him making banter with a troll. "That is me, the squishiest of princes, as many other trolls and suchlike can attest."

  "You lie, small squishy Courtling. If any other troll had found you squishy," the troll slammed his fist into his open palm by way of demonstration, "you would not be here to be squished by me, troublesome and difficult small Courtling."

  "I'm troublesome and difficult?" As long as it was talking, it wasn't hitting him. Jack liked that option. It gave him more time to think. He glanced around at the fields, looking for an escape. "Who is finding me troublesome and difficult?"

  "Their Majesties find you vexing," the troll tried.

  "Their Majesties have always found me vexing. It's in my nature to be irritating, annoying, and difficult. Not to mention--although you did mention--troublesome." He took a step forward. "And a pain in the--" he threw a thin, targeted blast of power, aiming for the troll's temple. If he did it right . . .

  The troll grabbed at its head with both hands, swatting at the annoyance. It swayed on its feet but stayed upright.

  "Little princes are not nearly strong enough to take on a troll." The thing laughed. And in laughing, opened its maw wide, showing off sharp black teeth.

  Jack shot a blast of power straight down its throat and danced back as the troll's eyes rolled up in its head. It fell.

  That would hold it for a while, if not permanently. But now he had to run, really run. That sort of blast would have the Palace guard here soon. He didn't have Amber to cart him around making distractions this time.

  A car screeched to a halt nearby. Jack cursed himself. He should know better than to tempt fate like that. He should know better than to even think something like that.

  "Get in, you idiot! Who fights a troll in the middle of a cornfield?"

  Tension fell out of Jack to be replaced with an entirely different sort of distress. "Who drives toward a fight with a troll?" he called back. He couldn't see the car--it had to be on the other side of the fallen troll--but that was Amber. "I mean, I assume you can see the creature for what it is."

  "Hello? Eventually you'll remember that I am not . . . shit." There was a soft sound, like her hitting her head on the dashboard. "That I am not normal," she admitted. If Jack hadn't been listening for it, he wouldn't have heard her. "That I can see the stupid supernatural and everything that goes along with it."

  The troll was breathing. The Palace Guard were on their way. Jack hurried over to the car, and then paused with his hand on the door handle, the door open.

  "You," she complained, "are on the run from the indefatigable Palace Guard, being hunted by skin-donners, a
pparently being tracked by trolls, and you were on foot because, well, I don't know why, but it was stupid. Get in the car before your stupid guard gets here and you have to turn them all white again and embarrass everyone."

  "I . . ." He stared at her. You have no power. I mean, you have a lot of power but you have no magic. Jack swallowed. He was known for doing the impulsive, the strange, the ridiculous. This wasn't any stranger than diving off of Niagara Falls. It wasn't any more dangerous than mouthing off to a troll. It really wasn't any more ridiculous than running away from home for the seventeenth time. "I don't think you're normal, I'm sorry."

  "Jack, can you change the subject later and get in the car now? I don't know what your Palace Guard will do to me, but it's probably going to be unpleasant because, unlike you, they have no reason to keep me alive."

  "Marry me." I really should drop down to one knee for this.

  "What?" She was staring at him. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  "Say you'll marry me," he insisted.

  "If I say yes, will you get in the car?" She was covering her face with her hand. Jack pretended it was a good sign.

  "Yes. I'll get in the car, and we can run off somewhere and bribe a clerk to get the whole thing done very quickly. And then, if you want, we can do it again, properly. I'll even meet your father."

  "Get in the car, Jack. You're a madman, you know that? I mean, for one thing, you hardly know me. For another thing, what happened to A.B.?"

  "Say you'll do it," he pressed. "Just agree to it for a little while, and then we can go from there."

  "Listen, I have some idea about how the High Court works, and there is no such thing as for a little while. I mean, unless you are talking about a human lifespan, which might not be all that long to you, but it's all I've got."

  "Say you'll do it. Just say you'll do it, please?" He glanced at the troll. It was stirring. They had to be out of here before it woke up. They had to be far gone from here before the Palace Guard showed up and had a conversation with the troll.

  "What in living hell are you thinking? Seriously? Just get in the car, Jack."

  "If I get in the car, you'll never say yes."

  "This is blackmail. You're blackmailing me with your life. That's ridiculous. That is, that is not how a good marriage starts out."

  "Yeah, well," he smiled crookedly at her. "I'm a wild card, right? I'm not even a good Prince."

  "You're not selling me on the marriage idea here, bucko. Get in the car, let me save your life, and we can talk about marriage when we're over state lines or at least out of the immediate vicinity."

  "Is that the best I'm going to get?" He was beginning to doubt the idea. If she'd answered right away, maybe, if she'd just said yes, if she'd just agreed, everything else would have gone easily. But this, this was something different.

  "Look, if you don't take it, you're going to get dragged off to Their Majesties, and my refusal of your wedding proposal is going to be an entirely moot point. Get in the car."

  Jack sighed. "It was worth a try." He didn't know why the idea was so terrifying and so frustrating, but he got in the car. "Thank you." He buckled his seatbelt while she spun the car in a tight U and peeled out of there. "I mean it."

  "I'm not talking to you right now," she informed him. Her hands were white on the steering wheel. "And I'm definitely not looking at you. Will you marry me?" She scoffed the words out. "What sort of question is that? You can't marry me. What did you say Their Majesties wanted?" She was speeding up, too, the car hitting the limit and increasing.

  "They want me to marry. Because they think it will settle me down."

  "Clearly, they haven't met you."

  Jack couldn't help but smirk at that. "That's what I said!" He leaned back in his seat. "I told them that I had been born untamable and that nothing was going to change that, and anything they tried to do would lead to more drama and misery, and they did not want that in their court."

  "And what did they do?" He caught her out of the corner of his eye stealing a glance at him.

  He smiled ruefully, mostly for her. "They kicked me out of the court for fifty years, and then called me back in to demand I get married again. I mean, not that I'd been far away."

  "You spend most of your time near the court?" There seemed to be something sitting behind her question, but Jack couldn't quite read her.

  "Near, yeah." He glanced at her. "You're going over ninety. Might be a little fast?"

  "Shit." She let her foot off the gas and eased it back to eighty miles an hour or so. "Look, now that we're in the car, can we agree that this marriage idea is dumb and it's not going to happen? You're going to go off to your A.B. and get married. I'm going to go back to Taylorburg and my quiet archiving and ignoring my family. Everything will be good, and I don't have to worry about my father starting an internecine war because I had a shotgun wedding to a High Court vagabond."

  "Nobody's got a shotgun here." Jack knew it was a weak protestation, but it was the best he had at the moment.

  "Yeah, but trolls-and-blasts-of-magical-power-wedding doesn't have the same ring, does it?" Amber spared him a glance to smirk at him. She was angry, that much was obvious.

  Jack's brain raced. "Well, what if it wasn't shotgun?"

  "Then we'd have a whole bunch of Palace Guard chasing us--you, at least, and by attachment, us--some trolls, some skin-donners, a partridge, a pear tree, and the kitchen sink. While we ordered the flowers and looked for a caterer, and what do High Court weddings even look like?"

  Some women, Jack remembered, liked the ceremony. He swallowed. "Well, let's see. About, well, some years back, my aunt got married, and she's high up in the High Court. As I recall--from having been forced to go, mind you, but I was there--the whole thing started with formal betrothal announcement that involved flowers and a release of doves. That was pretty quiet, all things considered, because the man she was marrying was not High Court." Wait, don't mention the parts that could cause problems. He didn't want her thinking about problems. He didn't want him thinking about problems. He was already third-guessing this enough. "Ahem. So, the ceremony itself started out with a quiet brunch on the top of the Empire State building, which their Majesties own. Then there was a procession downward to the ballroom. The grand stairs are really wide, and the bride and groom greeted people all the way down."

  "Forget that. What about . . ." She trailed off, frowning. "You know, forget the whole thing. It doesn't matter."

  "No, you're not," he protested and held up his hands before she could argue. "Look, you drove into danger. You headed straight for it because, what, a stranger you met a few hours ago might be in trouble? That's not ordinary. It might be a little insane, but it's also pretty amazing. You--"

  "Palace Guard, fuck it, Palace Guard." She pressed down on the gas pedal.

  "You faced down the Guard, too. You faced down skin-donners, and there are High Court people and probably werewolves who can't say that." That was when, well, Jack didn't do love, but if he had, that might have been when it started.

  "No, you idiot, the Guard." She hadn't stopped speeding up. How fast could her little car go, anyway?

  "Shit." Jack looked behind them. There were two large SUVs barreling down on them, clearly with the intent to run them off the road. No matter how fast her ridiculous car could go, those monsters could go faster. "Pull over, you have to." He rolled down his window and readied a spell.

  "Are you insane? We've been running from these assholes for hours, and you want to pull over and hand yourself--ourselves--over to them? No way, buster."

  "You can't outrun them." He leaned out the window and popped off a quick blast of power. It shattered on the hood of the SUV and scattered to the wind. The front vehicle slowed down for a moment. Not enough.

  "I can't?" Amber laughed shortly. "Watch me."

  "You're going to get hurt." He pulled back inside the car as a blast of blue energy like a laser beam sheared past the side of the car. "Yo
u're going to get killed."

  "I'm not that easy to kill. And I did not start this project with the intent of failing, you crazy proposing-on-the-lam-while-running-from-marriage man. Hit their tires," she added, as Jack leaned back out the window. "They're rubber."

  "You're calling me crazy? You're the one driving ninety miles an hour down a road that's more pothole than asphalt. Don't people in Upstate even pave?"

  "Don't go blaming the roads on me, mister. Just shut up and shoot."

  "It's not . . ." Jack shut up and shot.

  The first hit landed, shearing the tire. The SUV skidded, listing heavily to the right, and slowed, but the damn thing kept going. The second hit went wide, striking the mirror and bouncing off to the field. "Shit. Shit, you've got to--" Jack ducked inside again, barely avoiding another long strike of light. The end of it brushed over his knuckles, burning them. "Oh, fuck." He snatched his hand inside and blew on his knuckles. "Shit, with shooting like that, I hope it's not Goldy."

  "Just hold on and keep aiming for tires. And try not to get shot--crap!" She veered sharply to the left, and then quickly back to the right as a slim sports car came barreling toward them. "Oh, God. Oh, God." Blue light exploded over their back window. What protections did she have on this thing?

  "What have you done to this car? That should have blown us up."

  "It's not me!" Amber clutched the steering wheel.

  Jack hadn't thought her car could go any faster, but she edged another couple miles per hour out of it.

  "It's got to be something you did. Maybe your flashy magical presence or something," she said.

  "I do not have a flashy magical--to the left!"

  She swerved, barely missing the pothole, and swerved back into her own lane. Jack swore and pulled magic at the same time. The damaged SUV was not nearly as lucky. Its bent, floppy-tired wheel caught the pothole at the wrong angle, and the whole thing went rolling into the ditch.