Asteria In Love with the Prince (38 page)

The radio strapped to one of the soldiers suddenly blared. He talked into it, at first dismissive and then with growing panic. “We have to go!” he told the white-haired man. “Now! We’re under attack!”

The white-haired man let out something like a snarl, but released my collar and stood. The soldiers closed in around him and the crowd moved quickly aside to let them pass. As I scrabbled on the floor for my clothes, the man looked back over his shoulder and blew me a kiss.

Alvek waited until I had my bra and panties on before he stepped out of the shadows. “I had people outside,” he told me. “When I saw him hang up the phone….” He trailed off. “I didn’t want to wait any longer. Did you get what you need?”

I nodded quickly. “They’re moving him to the palace. Tomorrow at four, in SUVs.” Speaking felt odd, after so long spent mute.

He squeezed my shoulder. “You did well, Exkella. Let’s get you out of here, before they realize it’s just a couple of men taking potshots at their cars.”

***

When I’d shed the mask and collar and dressed, I met Alvek outside. He had a car with him – an old, battered saloon. It felt strange to be in a normal car again, with its mess and lived-in feel, after weeks of spotless limos.

“So who are you?” I asked.

“I was with the army, until all this happened. Most of us were.” He was silent for a second. “Exkella, most of the soldiers involved in the coup…they’re not bad men. Their leaders have told them that the military’s in control, and they point their guns where they’re ordered.” His fingers tightened on the wheel. “Even at rioters.”

“But you?”

“I met the Prince a few times. I was liaison to the palace for a little while. I know what kind of man he is.” That certainty, again, in his eyes. “It’s not his fault things aren’t perfect.”

“Can we win, though? Can we get the kingdom back?”

He shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t know. Ask someone who’s planned a revolution before. But I know it starts with getting the royals to safety. If they’re executed, those bastards can re-write history any way they want.”

***

He took me to a hotel, a once-grand place now slowly fading and rotting. It was out-of-the-way enough to be private, and the owner was a friend who’d closed down “for refurbishment’ so Alvek’s men could use it as a base. When we arrived, Alvek ordered everyone into the lobby and introduced me.

There were just thirty of them. Some were little more than teenagers, armed with handguns.

I pulled Alvek to one side. “You can’t be serious! You’re facing an army!”

“When you’re facing an army, a thousand men won’t make a difference. This is about hearts and minds: we need the public to support us, and the army to switch sides. They have to get behind the royals. We need Prince Jagor.”

I thought back to all Jagor’s doubts about his popularity. He already blamed himself for everything that was wrong in Asteria.
I
believed in him…but would everyone else?

“How will you do it?” I asked, still looking at his ragtag band of men.

“We’ll ambush them on the way to the palace. And
you
will stay here. Before you argue, this is far too dangerous, Exkella.”

I hesitated, but nodded. I’d never shot a gun in my life: the club had been terrifying enough.

“I’ll bring him back to you. In the meantime, you should rest.”

***

There was almost a full day before the rescue. I got one of Alvek’s men to get a message to Telessa at the other hotel, to tell her I was safe and to stay put. After that, there was nothing to do but wait, sleep and eat. The hotel owner had kept the chef on, and at mealtimes I ate downstairs with Alvek’s men. The first time I did it, they all went silent as soon as I walked in.

For a moment, the fear took hold. I thought they’d heard bad news about Jagor and didn’t want to tell me. Then one of them nervously pulled my chair out for me – the one at the head of the table.

I’d got so used to life on the run, I’d forgotten that I was still royalty, or close to it. One of the soldiers – Dagus, a skinny kid who couldn’t have been more than nineteen – asked me to sign his rifle. I laughed, and then realized he was serious: he had a silver Sharpie ready for me to sign the stock. I scrawled my signature and wrote “Be Safe’ underneath.

***

The next afternoon, Alvek and almost all of the men left on the rescue mission. I’d never known what it was to wait before. No phone calls, no updates, no rolling news coverage I could obsess over. Just an empty hotel room and a well-meaning rebel soldier who kept knocking and asking if I wanted anything.

I sat there going quietly crazy. Four O’clock came and went. By ten past, I was pacing the room. By half past, I was pacing the hotel.

Five O’clock came. Then six. Even the men they’d left to guard me were getting nervous. I was standing in the lobby, fingers knotted in my hair, unbidden thoughts oozing into my mind. Things had clearly gone wrong – maybe very badly wrong. Alvek and Jagor were dead; probably the others, too. Had it been a trap? Had the white-haired man recognized me after all, fed me false information?
Was it all my fault?

Jagor burst through the door, not six feet from me. There was a single second of stunned silence where we both just looked at each other
.
Then I was in his arms and kissing him.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” I said seriously, when we came up for air. I was crying. When had I started crying?

“I won’t,” he told me, clutching me close.

We hugged for a few silent, glorious moments. Alvek’s men came trooping in, grinning at us, and I realized guiltily that I should have asked something first. “Is everything alright? Is everyone—”

“We’re fine,” said Alvek. He was clutching a hand to his arm, and I saw that he was bleeding.

“Alvek was shot in the arm,” Jagor told me. “I’m in his debt. We both are.”

“I know,” I said, and wiped my tears away. “We have to get you to a hospital,” I told Alvek.

He shook his head. “It’s a through and through,” he told me. I nodded, as if I knew what that meant. “I know a doctor who can patch it up. One of the men can take me: if you two are okay without me?”

Jagor pulled me close. “We’ll be fine.”

Alvek gave us a number we could reach him on. A landline number: the coup leaders still had the cell network shut down, except for the numbers they reserved for themselves. I’d started to appreciate, in the last few days, how reliant we’d been on technology. By taking away the cell network, the military had made it next to impossible for anyone to organize a protest, a riot…or a revolution.

Just before he left, Alvek bowed low to both of us. “Your Highness. Exkella.” Those blue eyes again, full of respect, full of
belief
in us. I’ve never felt so unworthy.

***

Upstairs, we fell onto the bed and just held each other, as if making sure the other one was real.

Eventually I said, “I’m worried. About Alvek and his men. If they go up against the army, they’ll be slaughtered.” I bit my lip. “What are you going to do?”

He sighed. “I can’t leave my parents here.”

“You have to – do what we talked about. Leave with me, come back when it’s safer.”

“When will that be?” I had no answer to that. He sat up. “Lucy, I’ve had time to think about this. I don’t think I can run anymore. I know I can’t convince you to leave on your own – if you want to stay with me, stay. But my people need me.”

I was silent for a moment. “You’ve never called them that before.”

“What?”

“’My people.’”

I was so proud of him – he was getting ready to lead, however much he secretly feared he wasn’t the man for the job. But I couldn’t see any way he could win. “They have an army, Jagor,” I whispered.

“I know.” That Asterian stubbornness again. He’d die before he’d give up.

I knelt beside him on the bed and wrapped my arms around him protectively. “Those men downstairs will follow you into battle. Even if they can’t win.”

“
I know!”
he shouted, jumping to his feet. “But what else can I do? I don’t
have
an army, I don’t
have
an air force, I can’t just call up an air strike.…”

Something darted across my mind. A business card being handed to me, in Paris.

He saw me frowning and thought it was him. “Lucy, I’m sorry: I’m just—”

“What if you could just call up an air strike?”

“What?”

“What if we called in outside help?”

He shook his head. “Lucy, we don’t have treaties with anyone yet – certainly not with the US.”

“Not the US: the French! You have all sorts of deals happening with them, right?”

He sat down on the bed uncertainly. “Lucy, they want to deal with Asteria, the country. They have no loyalty to me. They may just decide to talk to the new rulers.”

“But the country’s in disarray. You’re still the Prince of Asteria.” I handed him the hotel phone. “Only one way to find out. Call them. Call them and tell them we need their help.”

He stared at me. “We’ve ruled our own affairs for hundreds of years. If I bring in the French to win back the country for me, there’ll be consequences. It’ll color how people see me. And the French will expect something in return.”

“Do you want your country back with strings attached…or to leave it in the hands of those bastards?”

A long, long moment. Then, “Give me the phone.”

I passed it to him and left the room. Some things you need support for; some you need to do on your own.

***

An hour later, he found me down in the lobby. I’d tied my hair back and was trying to clear the place up a little – the hotel owner had only kept a skeleton staff on and thirty men make a lot of mess. Medenko probably would have said it was unseemly, or inappropriate for the Exkella, but I figured it was the least I could do. Dagus, the skinny kid, was helping: seeing me taking out the trash didn’t seem to have done anything to diminish my mystique: he was still following me around like a love-struck puppy.

I knew it was done as soon as I saw Jagor’s face. He looked tired, in a way I’d never seen before. I followed him quickly back to the room.

“They’re coming,” he said as soon as we were inside. “Troops, and tanks, and whatever we need. Air strikes, if it comes to that.”

I felt the lurch of doubt inside. What had I started? But Jagor came closer and pulled me into his arms.

“It’s over,” he told me. “The Asterian army’s no match for the French. They know that. They’ll back down. We may even be able to settle this without any more bloodshed.”

“And the cost?” I asked quietly.

He pressed his lips together. “Bearable. I’m going to talk with them again in a few hours: they want us to sit tight until then.” He sighed, and then smiled. “Stuck in a hotel room with my exkella.”

And I felt the first slow, dark hint of desire spiral into life inside me. I felt like I was coming out of hibernation, out of the survival mode I’d been in for the last few days.

“I hear,” he said in a serious tone, “that you went to Hendel’s club.” I nodded, and he shook his head minutely in disbelief. “Every time I think I know you, you amaze me again.”

I looked at the floor, embarrassed by the praise.

“I also hear,” he told me, “that you got very friendly with Alvek.”

Oh.
How had he found that out? Alvek had probably spilled it – it’d be just like him to be overcome with guilt, on coming face-to-face with the man he held in such high regard. “Yes,” I said carefully. “But—”

“It was essential, as part of your cover?”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“It was horrible, and you find him disgusting?”

I flushed and squirmed.

“You quite liked it?”

I looked up at him at last, red to my roots even though he was just teasing.

He kissed me. “Lucy, it’s okay. Now if I thought you actually had feelings for him—”

“I don’t!” I said quickly.

He grinned. “I know you don’t. That’s why I don’t mind.”

“I’ll never cheat on you.”

“I know. I do have to discipline you, though.” When I looked up in shock, he continued, “I ordered you to run for the border.”

The twist of heat inside me was building. “What did you have in mind?”

He looked towards the bathroom. “How about a shower?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

***

I helped him off with his clothes. When I saw what they’d done to him, I wanted both to weep and to break the necks of the white-haired man and his cronies.

The skin over his ribs and kidneys had blossomed yellow and black, and one spot on the right made him wince when I as much as touched it. “They gave me a kicking,” he said, “after I gave myself up.”

I stripped off, and he stood there watching me. Somehow, doing it for him, watching his reaction as each part of me was revealed, purged the memories of doing it in the club. By the time we were both nude, I was breathing fast.

And then the shower. That first one, in the other hotel, I’d barely felt: I’d been missing him too much. I Now, though…now I was naked with my man, his strong hands running up my legs and over my ass, soaping me down; cleansing me, in a way that went beyond my body. I washed him, too, rubbing shower gel into his muscles until I felt the hard knots start to loosen, skirting over the bruises and down his legs. I saw him thicken and harden and I knelt, the water beating down on my back, and took the head of him in my mouth. I felt him swell as I used my tongue, my hands gripping the tight cheeks of his ass.

When he hauled me to my feet, I thought we were going to get out and move to the bedroom. But he pushed me back against the tiled wall, the water pounding on my breasts. He eased my legs apart and plunged his fingers into me, my head going forward to gasp against his shoulder as his other hand skated over my wet nipples. I panted and moaned, helpless, lightly biting at his shoulder as he pushed me closer and closer to the edge, until at last I threw back my head and yelled, loud enough for Dagus to hear me two floors below, as the orgasm ripped through me.