61. Kristina

61

KRISTINA

The dawn woke me. I came awake slowly at first, wincing as I moved, stiff and aching from having slept on the hard floor. Then I remembered Garrett and grabbed for him, trying to shake him awake. Maybe now, after he’d had time to recover….

No. Nothing. He was breathing, but he was a limp weight in my arms: he wouldn’t wake. My stomach twisted. I tried to shut out words like brain hemorrhage and intracranial pressure.

I stumbled over to the window and looked out. In the distance, I could just make out the palace’s turrets. I almost started crying again. My whole life, everything I’d known, was there and now it was just... gone, closed off from me.

I suddenly drew in my breath. My parents! They were still in the palace, with Aleksander and General Novak! If my father ever woke from his coma, he’d try to retake the throne: the traitors wouldn’t allow that. And my mother: she’d never stand for me being branded a traitor. She’d try to tell the media the truth. They’d have to kill her, too.

I had to save them. I had to get both of them the hell out of the palace... if it wasn’t already too late.

I looked at Garrett, still unconscious. I had to do it on my own.

I hunted around and found a pair of dirty gray overalls and some work boots. With a lot of rolling up of sleeves and cuffs, I just about got them to fit. There was a baseball cap, too, with the name of the shop on it, and I jammed that on my head, stuffing my hair up under it. There was a cell phone on charge and I pocketed that. In the garage attached to the shop, I found the van the repairman used when he made house calls, and after a lot of searching I found the keys in a drawer. I wrote Garrett a note, folded it into his hand and closed his fingers around it. Then I kissed him gently on the lips and left, before I chickened out.

Driving was harder than I remembered it. Garrett had taught me on an empty highway and that was nothing like the twisting, narrow streets of the city. I kept stalling and had more near misses than I could count. But at last, the palace came into view.

There were even more troops stationed around it than I remembered, and General Novak had added armored personnel carriers and tanks, too. He’d turned the beautiful palace into a fortress. And the royal colors were no longer flying from the turrets. The bastard had taken them down.

I pulled over just before I reached the security checkpoint and dialed my mother. No reply. My stomach twisted. Had they just taken her phone off her, or….

I tried Emerik. No answer. Maybe they’d locked him up, since he’d be loyal to me.

Jakov. No answer there either. Please! I needed someone inside!

I called Caroline. It rang and rang and then, just as I was about to give up hope, she answered. She had to whisper down the phone to me. “There are soldiers everywhere! Everyone’s looking for you! They’re calling you a traitor!”

I calmed her and asked about my parents. My father was still in a coma in the medical facility. My mother was with him: they’d taken her phone and she wasn’t allowed to leave his bedside.

I had to get them out. It was only a matter of time before General Novak quietly disposed of both of them. But how? I wasn’t a soldier, like Garrett!

But I had to try. I’d lost my country, and there was no way I could stop the war. I couldn’t let them take my parents from me, as well.

“Okay,” I told Caroline. “Here’s what I need you to do.”