Page 13

CHAPTER 13

TRISTAN

It’s Monday, and I’m back in the office after our long weekend away. I wish that Amelia and I could spend unlimited time at the weekend house. To us, it’s home. It’s where we’re happy, where we don’t have the responsibilities of this country weighing down on us. But unfortunately, this is what I’m supposed to do. It’s what I signed up for and what I was born into.

Today there’s a weird kind of heaviness around the office and hallway leading to it. It’s unusual because as an office, we’re typically closer than this. We would normally be asking one another how the long weekend went. Instead, it’s tense. There aren’t any jokes, no smiles and laughs. If someone were to ask me what’s different about this Monday compared to the others, I can’t put my finger on it.

Turning around, I gaze out over the kingdom. What is everyone else doing today? What are their pressing issues? I wish I knew why it’s at the forefront of my mind today. Again, it’s another thing I can’t quite put my finger on.

There’s a knock at the door. The only one who knocks like this is Parker. “Come on in.”

When he crosses the threshold from the hallway into the office, his mouth is set in a firm line.

Immediately, my stomach drops, because he isn’t one to sugarcoat anything. But the way his jaw is set is scaring me.

“I don’t have great news,” he begins, rubbing his palms together.

I’ve been waiting on this, debating what he’s going to say after what he let slip this weekend. None of this feels good. It’s like we’re on the edge of a great cliff, and it’s only going to take a little push for us to fall.

“Okay, okay,” I sigh, ready to hear what he has to say. Delaying it isn’t going to make it much easier. “What is it? We need to know. So just lay it out for me. No matter how bad it is, or if you think it isn’t a credible threat. Now’s the time to work on a plan.”

He opens his mouth to speak, and that’s when the ground beneath us is rocked. I’m shocked. We’re not on a fault line, and there’s no volcano around. Absolutely no reason for the ground to be shaking like this, or the building we’re in to be swaying back and forth. We’ve never had an earthquake in Haldonia before, so I’m confused about what’s happening right now.

When my brain comes back online, I can smell acrid smoke, hear screams that are reverberating off the sides of the rooms, and what sounds like an audible gasp from the kingdom.

“What the fuck happened?” I yell, but my ears are ringing. Parker’s laying over in the corner, blood pouring from a wound on his head, and the only thing I can think about is getting to Amelia. She’s down the hallway in her office.

What in the world just fucking happened?

Scrambling over debris, I pick my way through the rubble, checking on Parker first. “Parker, are you okay? Wake up for me, man.” I slap his face. With the first one, his eyes snap open.

“What happened?”

“That’s what I’m asking myself, but I have to get to Amelia. She was down the hallway whenever this happened. What is it?”

He stays low but raises his head. “It’s a bomb, Tristan.”

A bomb? Someone bombed Haldonia. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The information I had to give you was about this. We’d gotten intel that Crona was going to try and invade Haldonia. I’d gotten it right before I came into your office.” He coughs, the office seeming to fill up with more smoke than before.

These motherfuckers have decided to threaten my country? I still haven’t laid eyes on my wife, and if there’s a hair hurt on her head, I will end them. Before I can do anything, though, we have to get out of this office and into the basement of the castle. Because I know protocol, I look at Parker. “You’re not getting me out of here before we get Lia. You can fucking forget it.”

“King, you know who my vow is to. You’re aware of my job, I know you are.”

But he’s torn. It’s right there in the gleam of his eyes. He wants to go check on her, and we’re both aware that isn’t the way things are supposed to go down. “And I’m telling you, as your king, to go check on my fucking wife.”

“I hear you, but only if you promise to listen to me. If you ignore one of my orders, you’re done.”

At this point I’ll agree to anything he tells me I have to. “Let’s go.”

“Stay behind me.”

I’d prefer to be in front of him, since he’s still bleeding from the head, but since that’s not an option here, I do as he asks. We stay low, and he pulls a gun from his coat that I didn’t even know he carried. There’s probably a bunch of things he has on him that I have no idea about. Stupidly, I never thought about it. My safety and security have always been a little of an afterthought to me. Now? It’s at the forefront of my mind.

He doesn’t say anything, instead he uses hand signals. I know what they look like, because I’ve been taught them once or twice, plus they’re pretty self-explanatory. The closer we get to Lia’s office, the more my heart is pounding. Sweat pours down my back and off my face, and my hands are shaking as I touch his suit jacket to make sure I don’t lose him in the melee of what’s going down. People are running this way and that, some of them have improvised masks, holding them over their faces. None of them are Lia though.

Parker comes to a stop and orders me to do the same behind him. He reaches out to touch the doorknob. I don’t know if he’s testing to see if it’s hot or loose, but apparently he gets what he’s looking for. Turning the knob, he places his gun in front of him. When he’s swept the entrance, he says back to me. “Clear. Come on.”

When we get inside, that’s where I see Amelia. She’s curled up in a ball against the wall and shaking like a leaf. But my girl? She’s holding a letter opener up like she’s willing to fight the entire army to save herself.

Crawling over the carpet, I get to her and take her in my arms. “I’m here. We’re together, and you’re fine.”

She breathes a sigh of relief, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Never let go, Tristan. Never let go.”