Chapter 26

C HAPTER 26

I land hard on my back, and I can't breathe. I gasp for air, but there is none. Next to me, Comet springs to his feet and whines.

I'm going to die. I can't breathe.

Victoria's ashen face appears above me. "Relax. Breathe slowly. In and out. In and out."

"I can't!" I rasp, barely pushing the words out. I shake my head as tears stream sideways across my cheeks.

She holds my shoulders and moves so her face is the only thing I can see. "Breathe in, one two three, breathe out, one two three." Her eyes mirror my own panic, but her voice is low and calm.

I breathe in time with her until the pressure on my lungs finally eases. She releases my shoulders and sits back on her heels, the handcuffs dragging my wrist with her.

I glance around and see a hollow tunnel made of rough stone walls. The only light is coming from above, where the ground caved in at least ten feet above us. Comet scratches at the wall, his two front paws scrabbling uselessly against stone.

"The ground just fell in. I don't understand what happened," Victoria says.

"Have you felt any earthquakes today?"

"I mean, yeah. Small ones. Do you think an earthquake caused this?"

I press my hands to the cool stone. "If it did, we need to get out of here ASAP. The walls could cave in on us if another one hits."

"Wren! Victoria!" Theo yells from somewhere above us.

"Down here!" we call.

He crouches near the edge of the cave-in, and the unstable ground shifts, sending loose debris cascading into the tunnel.

"Not too close!" Brooke and Henry grab Theo's arms to keep him from sliding in. Dirt falls into my eyes and mouth, and Victoria pulls us away as I have a coughing fit.

"Are you all right?" Theo asks.

The air clears enough for me to crane my neck to see him, bright spots bursting in my vision from the sunlight overhead. "We're okay!"

"No, we're not!" Victoria yells. "We're stuck in this freaking underground tunnel… thing , and we need to get out before it collapses on top of us."

"It looks like a lava tube," Brooke says. "They're formed by flowing lava—"

"No need for a science lesson, Professor!" Victoria snaps.

"Wren, boost Victoria up and we'll reach down and pull her out," Henry says.

Brooke nods in agreement, and I wonder where her democratic ideals are now.

"The princess first? You sure we shouldn't vote on it?" I deadpan.

"Wren." Brooke's voice is exasperated.

"Okay, okay! I'm kidding."

"No you're not," Victoria mutters.

I lace my fingers to boost her up before realizing that the handcuffs are going to make this impossible. I reach into my pocket to get the key, but it's not there. "Hang on." I search my other pocket, but it's also empty. My stomach drops. "Uh-oh."

"Where's the key?"

I comb through each pocket again, and then again. It's not here. I finally meet Victoria's hard glare, alarm blaring in my chest. "I lost it."

"That's not funny."

"What makes you think I'm joking?"

"Theo! Your bloody wife lost the key to the handcuffs!" Victoria yells.

"Did it fall out of your pocket when you fell?" Theo asks.

Victoria and I drop to our knees and frantically search the ground. I run my hands over stone and dirt until my palms are raw.

"Where is it?" she snaps.

"Give me a minute!" I close my eyes and try to recall the last time I definitely had the key. I remember putting it into my pocket with the handcuffs and running after Victoria. When I found her, I gave her some passion fruit, also from my pocket.

Did I feel it then?

I don't know. I realize with a sinking feeling that it could have fallen out just about anywhere.

"I don't think it's down here," I call back, after several tense minutes of guilty silence from me and pointed huffs and puffs from Victoria.

"Do you have an idea where it might be?" Theo asks in a strained voice.

"I might have dropped it where Victoria and I were jumping when the plane flew by."

I hear whispers. They're probably all conferring about what an idiot I am. One by one, their faces disappear, leaving Victoria and me alone and giving her time to probably kill me.

"Should we look again?" I ask.

"All right," she says flatly.

We resume our search, and while it's obvious she wants to pretend I don't exist, it's nearly impossible since we're chained together. Every time I shift to the left, she yanks me hard to the right.

After a long, uncomfortable stretch of silence, she slumps against the wall of the lava tube and lets her head rest on her knees. I lean against the hardened lava and take slow, steadying breaths. Don't panic, don't panic. Comet settles next to me, nuzzling his head under my legs.

"I really am sorry I accused you of selling our marriage certificate to the tabloids," I say quietly. It feels like the others have been gone for an eternity.

She doesn't respond.

"Does Henry really want to be the king, or is it just an act?"

Nothing.

"The two of us could probably lift Comet and sort of toss him up. Do you want to try?"

I might as well be talking to the magma wall. I use my cuffed hand to scratch an itch on my nose, because my left arm is once again throbbing in pain. The red streaks have grown, and pus is oozing from the stitches. If I die chained to Victoria, I wonder how she'll react.

"This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't run off. Twice, " I say.

"Are you joking?" She turns to me with fire in her eyes. "You are a complete blighter! None of this would have bloody well happened if you weren't here! You should have stayed in Chicago where you belong and out. Of. Our. Lives."

I bite back my smile. "And that's how you make a princess talk to you again."

She screams in frustration.

"I'm sorry, okay! I'm sorry about the handcuffs—I'm well aware this is all my fault, trust me. And I'm sorry I ruined your life."

She rolls her eyes with a huff. "Don't be dramatic."

"Sorry."

She drags a hand over her face. "Stop apologizing to me! I'm not the one who needs to hear it."

I jerk my head back. "What does that mean?"

She whirls on me, her eyes blazing. "I don't like you because Theo was utterly gutted when he came home! All I knew was that you spent a week with him, and he had your dog for some reason, and he tried not to talk about you, but he sucked at it, and every time he mentioned your name it was obvious that he's still bloody in love with you, but you were nowhere to be found!"

Defensiveness flares in my chest. "It's not that easy to get in contact with the King."

She looks unimpressed. "You should have tried harder. He was devastated about our mum's death, and what else?" She taps her mouth with her finger. "Oh right! There was this small thing about assuming the throne and planning a coronation he never wanted." She glares daggers at me. "You should have been there."

"How? By scaling the palace gates?" I shout, my annoyance with her reaching a boiling point.

She keeps talking like she didn't even hear me. "And you should have thanked me for taking care of Comet for three months."

"I might have if—"

"And now you and your stupid wedding are going to bring our family an astronomical amount of press at the worst possible moment. The entire world is just waiting for Theo to screw up because he's young, and people are going to use the fact that he married an American stranger as an excuse to call him a nutter, and when you leave, he's going to be heartbroken all over again, and I won't be able to help him!" She furiously blinks away the tears building at the corners of her eyes, and it finally hits me why she's so mad at me.

"I love him too," I say softly.

Her head snaps up. "What?"

"You're worried about him, and you love him. We have that in common."

She crosses her arms, letting my wrist hang painfully in front of her. "We'll see how much you love him when the tabloids are stalking you and printing lies about you and acting like your private life is their public business just because you're with Theo." She quickly swipes away an errant tear. "Mum always said we have to give the press something to talk about, but he'll never give them you, and that's why it won't work out."

"We know what we're up against, and we're not going to fight it."

Her brows knit together suspiciously. "I saw you two tangled up together this morning."

My heart surges, making it painfully obvious to myself how much I wish Theo and I could find a way to make this last. "It's only until we're rescued."

Red splotches appear on her cheeks. "So, you're not even going to try?"

I'm confused by her sudden outrage. "You just said that we're doomed!"

"And you proved me right." She sweeps her eyes over me in a way that makes me feel indescribably small. "He deserves better than you, anyway." She turns away. "And I would never, ever sell him out to the tabloids. If you don't know that, you don't know anything about our family."

I slump against the wall as we lapse into a strained silence. The longer we sit here, the more the walls feel like they're closing in. Victoria leans to the side and dry heaves, and I realize that she needs a distraction as badly as I do. "Will you tell me about your family, then?" I ask.

She throws me a sidelong glance. "What do you want to know?"

"What's Henry's deal?"

"With the monarchy or with Theo?"

"Both. And why has he been flirting with me?"

She sighs in exasperation. "How dense are you? I bet it drove Henry nuts to watch Theo pretend he's not in love with you. That's a major chip on his shoulder."

"What is?"

"The fact that Theo doesn't go after what he wants or appreciate what he has."

"Like what? His title?"

"What else? Mum never gave Henry the attention she gave Theo, so Henry made himself into the perfect little royalist. He learned everything there is to know in every boring English history book. He thought that she'd love him more that way."

"How'd that work out?" I ask, although I can already guess the answer.

Victoria slants me a look. "How do you think? She was a busy monarch and a widow with six kids. She had so little attention to give, and she gave it all to Theo. It didn't matter that she was critical of him most of the time, Henry was still jealous. And now he's frustrated that Theo doesn't even want to be the king. Henry wants him to appreciate it."

"‘It'?"

She waves her unchained hand in the air. "The Crown. The title. The influence. All of it."

"Meanwhile, Theo thinks Henry would make a better king," I say.

"He would think that," she says with an exaggerated eye roll. After a beat, she adds, "They'd both be a lot bloody happier if that was the case."

"Would you want it?" I ask.

She crooks an eyebrow. "Does it matter?"

"I'm curious."

She considers this for a long time. "We're not strangers to the criticisms of the monarchy, and to be honest, I don't think it will last forever. It'd be brilliant to be involved in shaping the future of it, but…" She trails off with a shake of her head. "I don't know why I said that. What I really want is for my family to be happy again."

"I want that too," I say.

We fall into silence again. There must be a timeline out there where Theo and his siblings aren't royalty; where instead of going to state dinners and royal balls, the six of them spend their weekends playing "football" together before Theo bakes them a banoffee pie (football and banoffee pie being the two most British things I can imagine while stuck in a hole in the ground, with an arm throbbing in pain, chained to a princess with a grudge). If Theo and I met in that timeline, I think he'd have brought me home to meet them, and I bet Victoria and I could have been friends. She's pretty funny when she's not trying to make me cry.

"What did you do during Comet Week?" I finally ask.

"The same things as everyone else, probably."

Probably not, considering she had a bunker to hide in while the rest of us only had existential dread. "Humor me. If we're going to die in a freaking lava tube, I'd like to know something about you."

She closes her eyes and takes several shaky breaths. "I'll 127 Hours your hand before I let us die down here."

I grab her hand. "Are you okay?"

She pulls her fingers from mine and opens her eyes. "You went a bit blurry there, but you're back now," she says, and it's obvious that she doesn't want me to press further.

"Okay, so you watch survival movies. That's something I didn't know before."

She sighs and picks at the fraying hem of her skirt. "I run a lot, but I hate it ninety-five percent of the time."

"When do you like it?"

"When I'm the fastest."

"That tracks."

I drum my fingernails against the ground until Victoria glares at me. I shiver and realize I'm covered in goose bumps. "Why is it so cold down here?"

"It's not that cold."

Untrue, but whatever. "Have you ever eaten banoffee pie?"

"Yeah. Theo makes a great one."

I knew it. "What's a banoffee?"

"You're painfully American," she says, but her eye roll is interrupted when the ground and walls begin to shake. I throw my arms over our heads as rocks crash into the lava tube. The sound is deafening. We crouch with our arms around each other and Comet until the earthquake stops.

A hush falls over us after the last rock falls, but I'm too afraid to move.

"I'm all right. Are you?" Victoria asks after an unsettling stretch of silence, her arms still pulling me tightly to her.

"I think so," I say, swallowing a tremor of fear. Now is not the time to be paralyzed. We need to get the hell out of here. "We can't be down here if that happens again. Hand me that rock." I point to a sharp rock by her foot. She releases her white-knuckled grip on my arm and hands it to me. I lift the rock and Victoria cries out.

"Blimey, Wren! I was joking about cutting your hand off."

"Cover your eyes." I hold the rock like a knife and slam it into the chain connecting the handcuffs. It barely leaves a scratch. I do it again. I'm lifting my injured arm to strike the metal a third time when a guttural roar like a jet engine rumbles through the earth beneath us. I freeze with my hand in the air, waiting for the world to fall apart. Comet tucks his head into his paws.

"What the bloody hell was that? Another earthquake?" Victoria asks.

"I don't think so." It felt like something worse.

Something bigger.