Page 34 of Redemption of a Prince

“I will. Good night.”

He finished going through the document and sent it back to Gideon, then went to bed himself.

At some point, he woke up to the dark.

And the cold.

What was going on?

He flipped the covers back and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The chill in the air reached through his pyjama pants and sent goosebumps up his body.

His phone was no longer charging, and hadn’t reached full charge. Power outage? An odd thing to happen.

Using the voice command to call the house manager on speaker phone, Zeke pulled a long-sleeved t-shirt on. Where were some socks?

“Yes, sir?” The house manager sounded groggy.

“It seems the power is out.”

“What?” The alarm in his voice told Zeke this was completely unexpected.

“My room is quite chilly, and my phone stopped charging.” He clicked the switch on the lamp. “The light won’t turn on either.”

“Um...” The man seemed to be trying to assimilate this new information. “It appears to be out here, as well.” Most of the staff lived in a nearby building with several flats in it. “I’ll call you back momentarily.”

“No need. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Yes, sir.” The line disconnected.

Zeke sent a text to Nikki so she’d know what was going on and where to meet them if she was too cold to stay in her quarters. He didn’t think it would get cold enough to be dangerous, but if he hadn’t heard from her before long, he’d check on her.

He put on some thick socks then slid his feet into fur-lined slippers. Tying a heavy robe around him, Zeke started for the stairs, trudging down three long flights.

The house manager hurried in a moment after Zeke made it to the small flat with the emergency generator that automatically turned on in the case of power loss. There were other generators, but they took time to get up and running.

“What happened?” Zeke asked.

The man stomped his feet to get the frozen precipitation off his boots. “It looks like we didn’t get snow. We got ice. And a lot of it.”

From the serious look on his face, Zeke knew this wasn’t going to be quick or easy.

And Nikki likely wouldn’t be going anywhere.

* * *

When Nikki woke up,the first thing she noticed was the chill in the air.

The second was that she still sat on the cozy lounge in the turret with a blanket pulled over her.

She shivered as she grabbed her phone and started toward the stairs. Shoot. She hadn’t plugged it in and the battery had died while she slept.

The room was darker than she would have thought and definitely colder. Had someone turned the heater down?

And why wasn’t the light she’d left on still lit? Could the bulb have burned out?

Or...

Her not-quite-awake mind wasn’t keeping up with the sensory input.