Chapter 29

Flora

“You did finish off the kilt-wearing gorilla, didn’t you?”

The gruff voice startles me awake.

The air is musty and smells like earth. I want to sneeze but a sense of danger has me holding it in.

I absolutely hate to stifle a sneeze.

Where am I? Where is my phone?

It’s completely dark. I trace my hands over the ground where I lie. Dirt and rock and not much else. Slowly and quietly, I sit up. Wooziness overtakes me, and I fall to the side, leaning against a damp rock wall.

This isn’t good. This will certainly ruin my coronation outfit.

Wait.

Coronation outfit.

I smooth my hand over my bodice, and the intricate beadwork tells me I’m still in the custom-made dress. Sable will kill me for ruining it.

A second person answers the question from the first disembodied voice. “I did. I sank his own knife right into his carotid artery. Blood everywhere.”

They killed someone in a kilt who carried a big knife.

My stomach churns. Uther. It can be no one else that they speak of. They killed our best bodyguard. And he has my phone. What the hell do I do now?

I bite back the urge to scream because I have to find my bearings and get the hell out of here before they kill me, too.

My memory is fuzzy but I have to try to remember what happened. Uther was escorting me to the chapel for my coronation. Shortly before that, I was having a moment with Callum. I touch my dirty fingers to my lips, feeling the heat fill my face at what we did there in the dressing suite. Well, if I’m about to die, I’m glad I spent one last delicious moment with my sweet Callum. My forever person.

Callum. Oh gods, please don’t let him be dead, too. Uther’s bad enough. I don’t know how I’ll break the news to Sable. The two of them hadn’t officially announced their engagement yet. I had urged them to, but they insisted on waiting until after Callum and I were married. “I don’t want to steal your thunder,” Uther said.

“As if anyone could,” Sable had retorted.

I’d always thought it was strange that my stylist lusted after the head of security, tailing him everywhere under the ruse of needing his measurements to make a new uniform or something. But now that they’re together, they absolutely make sense.

Or, they did. Until my captors—whoever they are—murdered him and spirited me away.

Focus, Flora. You always lose track of what’s important, as Mother always says.

I left the room where Callum and I were, and Uther escorted me. We were close to the entrance of the chapel…and then everything went black.

Gods, I don’t remember anything.

Was I hit on the head?

My fingers find no goose eggs on my head, no signs of injury. However, my stomach feels ready to heave all its contents.

A match scrapes against a surface, followed by the brief smell of sulfur. A pale orange light fills a low-ceilinged cellar.

“Ah, Her Majesty awakens!”

In the circle of light, I make out the form of a man in his mid-30s wearing a balaclava and olive green clothing. His blue eyes, shaped by the ski mask, are terrifying.

“Where am I?”

The man in the mask laughs. “I’ll tell you that if you tell me where the treasure map is.”

Treasure map?

Have I been captured by a crazy person?

“What treasure map? Treasure map to what? Where?”

The one who sounds smaller snipes, “Don’t play dumb with me, Princess. We know the royal family has been keeping the ancient treasure under wraps.”

Oh gods. They cannot be serious.

I may not know who my captors are, but I have an idea where I am.

And I’m not going to stand for it.

So I start to scream.

“You’d better shut her up!” the smaller one hollers.

The gruff one holds a lantern and stalks over to the smaller one. A loud smack echoes off the walls. “And you’d better shut your trap before she figures out her location!”

Okay. Clearly, I’m not dealing with evil masterminds here.

I should be able to escape without too much strategizing on my part.

I’m not much for strategy, but what am I good at?

Silently, I make a list of everything I’m good at. Gossip. Chatting about celebrity fashion with Sable. I’m great at taking a spa day every now and then when I need one. Okay, once a week.

And in my panicked state, that’s about the end of the list.

Come on, Flora. Think.

You’re smarter than your captors. You can at least try.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

The gruff man’s masked face appears, and his smell precedes him. Like sour cream and onion chips gone bad. Ugh.

“Sure you do, sweetheart,” he laughs.

“I mean it. You want me to make a puddle in the middle of your hideout?”

The smaller one pipes up. “One of us can escort her to the restroom.”

“Clive!” shouts the smelly one. “Find Her Highness a toilet. And make it quick, Princess.”

“There you go, Alan, giving away my name,” grumbles Clive.

“Idiot!” Alan shouts.

The man called Clive steps forward. He is a spindly, twitchy dude who carries an automatic weapon that appears to weigh more than him. He wears a grocery bag over his head with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth, significantly reducing intimidation. His eyes shift a lot, like a person with trust issues.

Maybe I can use that to my advantage.

I’ll try conspiratorially getting him on my side. “Clive,” I whisper as he escorts me down a dark hallway. “Do you have any idea what Alan’s talking about? What’s all this about a treasure map?”

He snorts derisively. Obviously, I’m not playing it well enough.

“You’re a pretty good liar, Your Highness.”

We come to the end of a long hallway, where we enter a chamber that resembles a dormitory. Along the wall, rows of abandoned beds are still as tidy as the day they were abandoned.

And suddenly, I know where I am.

I’m in the old monastery!

I remember when Callum and I broke in here, looking for discarded bottles from when the monks used to brew beer.

Clive guides me through the room, but I know exactly where we’re going—to the toilet room off the back of the dormitory. Still, it’s better if I play dumb.

“There,” he says, shoving me into the restroom, but not with much oomph behind it. “And hurry up. Don’t want to keep the boss waiting.”

I go extra slowly, examining my surroundings. I remember this place, but not well enough. I remember thinking how sad it would be to be a monk in such a sparse place. I remember thinking how drab it is. Where would the entrance to the catacombs be? We’d only found the entrance from the cave side, but we never traveled all the way through to the other side.

I wash my hands at the sink, thinking it’s a miracle that water still runs here. The big masculine ring on my left hand glints.

“Callum, I wish you were here.”

Courage surges through me when I stare at the ring and wonder what he would do.

He must know I’ve gone missing by now. Indeed, everyone in the kingdom must be looking for me, and Callum is surely incandescent with rage.

He will find me.

But I can’t sit here and wait for him. I have to try as well.

The stained-glass window above the sink bank is painted shut. However, I can reach it if I climb up on the countertop. With a little effort, I hoist myself up onto the ledge.

“Let’s get a move on, Your Highness!” Clive calls from just outside the door.

“Be right with you! I’m looking for a tampon!”

That’ll buy me some time. I press on the glass, and though it’s been painted shut, the glass is hundreds of years old and not well maintained. I should be able to punch through it. But how do I cover up the noise?

The twitchy man is smarter than I gave him credit for. “Your Highness, where do you think you’ll find a fucking tampon in a men’s monastery?”

I did say I was good at playing dumb. “That’s quite a binary view of the world, isn’t it?”

“A what?”

“Love, do you think you could procure me a tampon or a sanitary napkin.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Indeed. Terrible, terrible cramps. And I can’t move off this toilet until I find something. It’s an awful mess.”

I wait until I hear his footsteps disappear.

I close my eyes and picture Callum saying, “You can do anything, Flora. I believe in you.”

Right. I brace myself, draw back my elbow, and smash it through the glass, averting my face. That’s all I need is shards of glass in my eyes.

It takes two or three punches to remove all the glass, until the window is safe for me to exit without ripping my dress.

Carefully, I climb out of the window and onto the ledge. And here’s another challenge—I forgot that the dormitory tower is three stories up, and I’m at the very top.

The sheer drop to the forest floor is uninterrupted—nothing to break my fall. Gee, some overgrown shrubbery would be super convenient right now. Or some ivy and other invasive vines climbing the walls like a proper abandoned building. Monks must not know how to properly abandon a building, do they?

I look down, then scan the ledge to assess my surroundings. The twitchy fellow will be back soon, probably with the other one in tow, to say to hell with my woman problems, and I’ll have to make do.

Now, how do I get from here all the way down there?

I never was much for climbing without Callum’s help.

I rub my hands down the front of my pretty beaded bodice and over the silk skirt. There are so many layers of draping silk and crinoline, and it took me so many hours of labor to make this creation, custom-designed by my best friend.

There’s only one answer, isn’t there?

I whisper, “Forgive me, Sable,” as I rip this gorgeous dress to shreds.