We follow a veritable maze of hallways, and I’m once again struck by how massive this level is. Obviously it’s a mirror of the palace layout above, but without the cavernous salons and ballrooms, it seems they can fit hundreds of tiny cubicles and storage rooms down here, and I can’t help but wonder what secrets they hold.
“This one.” Lord Aaron points at a door with a large window in it, then opens it for me with a graceful swing of his arm—all smiles and tittering laughter.
The room that greets us is small and stark, with one heavy door and a single counter in front of a desk, where a man in a black uniform sits. My stomach quivers when I see a gun at his belt. I’ve rarely seen such a weapon, and never this close.
“Visiting pass,” Lord Aaron says, holding up his tablet with a document on it that looks much like the one the security guard showed me yesterday when he searched us.
Forgery? Well, Lord Aaron’s talents do astound.
I expect the man to be stern and demand…something more from us, but he merely shrugs, then rises and comes around the desk to the heavy door. He slides an ID card and holds still for a retinal scan before a loud clank sounds—presumably, the release of the internal locking mechanisms. My stomach writhes within me at the twin fears of being caught and seeing Saber again. We hardly parted on good terms.
The guard pauses with the door open a crack. “I’ll be watching you on the monitor out here,” he says, attempting to sound reassuring. “But if you need me to intervene at any point, you can just give a yell.”
I raise my nose into the air. “I’m in no danger from that person. He’s my former secretary, and I simply need some details regarding plans for my wedding.”
The guard gives a shrug. He’s not dressed in the manner of Sonoman-Versailles, and I find myself wondering if he has any idea what’s happening in our glimmering world ten meters overhead. “I’ll lock you in now, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Definitely not court.
“Ten minutes. I open the door again, you’re done.”
I nod curtly, every nerve within me dancing.
When I step through the doorway, Saber’s eyes widen when he sees me, and though he maintains a calm expression, he bounces on his toes in impatience. I swallow hard and tears sting my eyes at the sight of him behind bars, but I force myself to remain still until the door closes behind me. As soon as the locks clang back into place, I rush forward. “Saber!”
His arms reach for me through the bars, and I don’t even care that I hit my cheekbone against the cold metal in my haste. His lips are warm and desperate on mine. Delving, then moving to my forehead, my cheeks, back to my mouth. Laughter bubbles up, and it seems impossible that it’s only been a day since we last spoke.
“I’m so sorry I yelled,” he whispers.
“I don’t care.”
“I love that you tried.”
“I love you.” The words are out without preamble, and I smile at the rightness of them.
Saber doesn’t answer in words, but his lips, hungry on mine, are response enough. Minutes fly by, and I know we should be speaking, but I can’t break away.
“Why are you here?” he murmurs against my mouth, then covers it before I can answer.
“I had one chance to see you,” I gasp when he lets me breathe. “I couldn’t resist.” My arms are through the bars now too, clinging to him. I should care that some random guard—not to mention Lord Aaron—is watching this entire exchange on the monitor, but I can no longer afford pride. I can’t even bring myself to care that M.A.R.I.E. is certainly monitoring. By tomorrow it won’t matter. “What’s going to happen to you?” I ask in the softest whisper I can manage, hoping any microphones down here will pick up only muffled words.
A grimace crosses his face. “Reginald will get me out. When he feels like it.” He draws me close, his mouth brushing my ear. “Don’t worry about me. Reginald’s incredibly powerful.”
“But if he doesn’t—”
“Then I’m dead.” Saber shrugs. “The chip is always counting down, and whether or not I get an extension has always been Reginald’s decision, not mine.”
A whimper escapes my mouth, and Saber sighs.
“Sorry if that sounds macabre, but when death lives on your shoulder, you get pretty used to it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been in worse scrapes. Don’t underestimate Reginald.”
“So he could have had you out already?” I grumble.
“Yes. But that kind of interference might have put…the other in jeopardy. He’ll wait until it’s done.” He kisses the rim of my ear, and shivers ripple down my spine. “But that power goes both ways. He can do what he said for you. You can be sure of that.” He pulls back now to look me in the face. “I want you to promise me you’ll do what you planned and won’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not certain I will be,” I admit, tears spilling over.
He wipes them away with his thumbs, his hands cradling my face. “Promise me you’ll be happy.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Promise me you’ll try.”
More tears, but I can’t speak. I simply nod and lean forward to kiss him again, knowing this will be the last time.
I start to panic when the door opens behind me. But when Saber takes my hands in his, pulls me to my feet through the bars, and raises my fingers to his lips, I manage a brave smile. Somehow I force my feet to turn, and somehow, somehow, I walk away and leave him behind.
“Here,” Lord Aaron says, handing me a handkerchief. “I’m afraid we’ve got to be quick again. Getting in here undetected was only half the battle.”
I dab at my face as we near-jog, trying to blot away the tears without smearing my makeup. I take deep breaths, but it feels like trying to blow back the ocean with a hand-fan.
“Splendid,” Lord Aaron whispers as we come around the corner to find the lift still on the bottom floor, its doors open and waiting. “Still jammed.”
The keypad is out of his pocket again, and soon we’re on our way up.
“Let me help,” Lord Aaron says, taking the handkerchief from me and swiping at a spot beneath my right eye.
“Thank you,” I say, and even that tiny phrase makes my eyes mist again, and I pull out my fan and flutter it at my face. If I’m not entirely ready when the lift doors open on the top floor, at least I’m presentable.
Though His Majesty is the last person I expected to be waiting for me.
He stands there with one eyebrow raised, staring at us as if we’re children with our hands in the cookie jar. “Couldn’t resist, could you, darling?”
The blood in my cheeks is simmering and my feet feel nailed to the floor.
He takes me in from slippers to pompadour. “You’re a bit mussed. That won’t do for the gala. Much of the press is already here, and I want you looking perfect.” He extends his gloved hand, and I know I have no choice but to take it. He pulls me from the lift and looks down his nose at Lord Aaron.
“Lord Aaron? Really? I wouldn’t have suspected such a frivolous dandy had the know-how to pull this off. My compliments.”
“Received,” Lord Aaron says flatly.
“Nonetheless, you can’t imagine I’m genuinely pleased. Off with you now. Your privileges are revoked.” The King starts to turn and then stops, looking back over his shoulder at Lord Aaron. “All of them. Confined to quarters. M.A.R.I.E., see to it.” He peers down at me, looking maddeningly unruffled. “Gads, love, your friends are all getting into such trouble.”
I OPEN MY eyes on the morning of my wedding with the dismal thought that I might actually end this day a married woman.
After escorting me from the lift, His Highness wouldn’t let me escape his grasp, and that phraseology is in no way metaphorical. My fingertips remain clamped in his gloved hand the entire night. He fairly flaunted me before the attending press, and there was nothing I could do but smile.
Afterward, I was escorted to my rooms, a
nd the watchers placed at every exit made no effort to conceal themselves from me. Apparently His Majesty decided that M.A.R.I.E.’s eyes were insufficiently all-seeing.
This morning I was sent a com from the medical center informing me that my father is still ill and receiving both fluids and medication intravenously. There’s mention of multiple seizures, and a declaration that the cause is still unknown despite tests. I’m relieved he survived the night. I’ve no idea how drastic withdrawal can be, and there certainly isn’t anyone left for me to ask. Still, as long as he’s alive and a patient in the Marie-Antoinette Medical Clinic, he’s essentially a hostage.
Lord Aaron is out of reach to me. Though his house arrest gives him a damned good alibi, it cripples my ability to get away. It’s possible I could hack my way out on my own, but not while being watched so closely.
Waking up this morning was like a Wednesday lever, except that all of the ladies were hired by the King and none of them was my friend. The wedding is in two hours, and I’ve yet to be permitted to leave the room. I’m fully decked out in my wedding gown of outrageous width and weight, and my hair is piled so high I feel a bit off-balance. I have no doubt I look exquisite, and take absolutely no pleasure in that fact.
I’ve seen what feels like thousands of one-line coms pop up on my Lens wishing me good fortune on my big day, but with Molli and Mother dead, Father indisposed, Lord Aaron under full lockdown, and Saber imprisoned, every well-wishing feels hollow. How have I come to this place where thousands of people are at my beck and call and yet I’ve not a true friend or family member left to hear from? Both Lady Mei and Lady Nuala sent rather long, rambling coms that looked both friendly and intimate, but my relationship with them is as much a lie as my romance with the King.
I managed to slip into my dressing room alone for all of two minutes and shoved the nearly one million euros into my panniers in a lingerie sack. I was forced to rip out the bottoms of the tiny pockets in this wedding gown, as I certainly couldn’t have requested such a thing when it was being sewn. Even though I can’t fathom a way in which I can escape, I need to stay prepared.
There’s a light knock on my door, and an unfamiliar woman flanked by four security guards appears. “I’ve been asked to escort you to a small salon just off the Royal Chapel,” she says dully. “We need you in place before the press are let in, a quarter of an hour hence.”
The blood drains from my face. The moment has arrived.
“Your Grace,” the woman prompts with more than a hint of impatience.
My fingers are shaking, and I fleetingly wish I’d made my dressers tighten my corset a bit more.
The woman gestures for me to follow her, and as I do, the guards fall into place: two just in front of me and two behind. I imagine Marie-Antoinette herself was led very much this way to the guillotine where she lost her life. Today feels no less dire to me. Though the press is still being kept out, the velvet ropes that we normally use on Wednesdays are up, and a few court members are rushing about, straightening flowers, checking displays, adjusting seating. As we pass through the chambers that overlook the Marble Courtyard, I shudder at the buzz of the crowd waiting there—I don’t dare look. As it is, I’m barely keeping tears at bay.
The woman leads me to the north wing and past the still-closed entrance to the Royal Chapel. “You’ll wait in here until Duke Florentine comes for you,” she says, leaning over to input a code on the keypad at the door.
So I’m to be given away by the King’s CFO. How fitting.
“There’s a light luncheon inside, as well as a retiring room. I’m afraid you’ll have to sit tight for a little over an hour. But it’s for your safety,” she adds with an encouraging smile.
My safety. Of course that’s what His Highness would tell them.
After a quick retinal scan, the door opens and the woman walks into the room. I take a step forward to follow her, but one of the guards places a hand on my shoulder. Even as I look back to question him, I hear a thud from inside the room, and then the door clicks closed as a man with a huge bouquet of white lilies steps into view.
“Calm yourself,” Reginald says from behind the flowers when I gasp, scarcely looking at me as he takes the place of the now-unconscious woman he just left lying on the floor behind that closed door. “We’re walking calmly to the end of the wing, carrying flowers, that’s all.”
My heart jolts as despair is replaced by hope so quickly my brain struggles to adjust. My guards don’t so much as twitch, and remembering the restraining hand on my shoulder, I realize they’re not palace guards at all—or if they are, they take their pay from more than one employer. Saber told me Reginald had power.
We continue down the hallway at such a leisurely pace I want to scream. But when we approach a window at the end of the hall, I see Reginald’s hand thrust forward with some kind of remote in it, and a green light flashes from the window sash. Still not slowing our steps, we all stride toward the window, and Reginald sets the huge mass of flowers down and tosses back the drapes.
The window is open and, if I’m lucky, just wide enough for my gown to fit through. Reginald steps over the sash as though it were nothing more than a crack in the floor, and the two guards in front of me do the same. When my turn comes, I hardly know where to start. I duck my tall hair under the window frame and lift my silk skirts to thrust one high-heeled shoe out and over the window ledge, where Reginald grasps me just above the knee and pulls at the front of my gown. Not my most graceful moment.
I feel utterly ridiculous as I practically dive through and fall into the waiting arms of one of the guards, but I defy anyone in meter-wide skirts to do better. Two seconds later the guards behind me step through the window, Reginald raises his remote again, the window closes, and I’m outside the palace!
I have little enough time to enjoy my escape, as Reginald immediately—and none too gently—shoves me into a waiting SUV. But escaping maidens in distress can hardly be choosy. Ten more seconds and the door of the vehicle closes, and we’re gliding around the side of the palace and down a narrow lane. The cars and crowds of wedding traffic are all relegated to the other side, so there’s no one here to see us or impede our progress.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” I say, turning in my seat to see the Palace of Versailles receding from view as we traverse the small, barely paved service road.
“I want my five million euros,” Reginald replies in his typical gauche fashion. “Where is it?”
“At the dance studio where we usually meet.”
“As I suspected,” he grumbles, but he leans forward to whisper directions to his driver. When we arrive at Giovanni’s ten minutes later, the car pulls right up to the stoop, so it’s difficult for anyone to see me as I slide from the vehicle and through the front door.
“We’ll have to hurry,” Reginald warns as I stand next to Giovanni, grasping his hand and whispering. “I’ll take you somewhere to change clothes after this, but right now I need to get as much distance between us and Sonoman-Versailles as possible.”
“It’s upstairs,” Giovanni says, finding his voice after I’ve given him the barest of bare-bones explanations. “In duffels. Prepacked. Everything ready to go.”
Once Reginald has headed upstairs with his cronies, I spin and say to Giovanni, “Help me.” I lift my unwieldy skirts and gesture for him to hold them as I dig out the sack of euros from my panniers to make up what’s missing from the closet. I don’t want Reginald to see how much I have left over. Just in case. I also don’t want him to know I have the ten vials of pure Glitter he gave me two days ago. I just can’t bring myself to put them back into his hands.
In less than a minute the guards clomp down the stairs, each carrying a black duffel. “This is the rest,” I say when Reginald descends with a sour look on his face. I proffer a large stack of euros and the expression disappears.
“We don’t have a problem, then. Let’s be on our way.”
I spin to Giovanni, tears sprin
ging to my eyes. He looks pained—he wants to say something, to ask questions, to interfere. Loyal to the last, he refrains. “Thank you so much,” I say, squeezing him tight. “You made this possible.”
He smiles and wipes a tear from my cheek. “I hope you’re making the right choice, chouchou,” he says simply, and my heart seems to drop within my chest.
“It’s a little late for that,” I say, choking on a building sob.
“Be happy, then.”
I can hardly bear hearing Saber’s words in Giovanni’s mouth, so I hide my face and hug him instead, and then Reginald is pulling me away.
“Hurry,” he snaps. “We don’t have time for this.” I wave once more as he bodily sweeps me out the door.
I sit facing Reginald in the black SUV and finally breathe a sigh and let all of the muscles in my body relax. How long have they been clenched? Weeks?
“Did you know my father’s in the clinic?” I ask softly, my eyes closed as I lean my head back against the seat.
“Withdrawal?” Reginald asks.
“Saber was carrying the patches when we were searched.”
“My mistake,” Reginald says genially. “I should have handed them to you. You were always safer.”
“Perhaps.” I open my eyes and meet his gaze. “But will you…will you watch out for him?”
Reginald waves his hand. “He’ll be okay. Withdrawal is a bitch, but your father’s in better physical shape than he appears.”
“And…” I lower my lashes. “And Saber?”
“Don’t you worry about him, either. I’m not going to let him languish in prison.”
“I wish you’d recon—”
“Don’t even start, Highness. You’ve paid your fee; don’t push me.” He sits a little straighter. “Speaking of your fee, there are a few specifics we haven’t discussed yet.”
“In my defense, you didn’t believe I could do it.”
“No, no, I didn’t.” He grins. “But as it’s going to make me a hefty profit, I was rooting for you.”
“I’m delighted,” I say dryly.