Long Live Queen Perry: Contemporary Reverse Harem (Kingdom of Veronia Book 3)

by Serena Akeroyd

  But mostly she just missed her men.

  She missed Edward with a depth that bewildered her. How could he be so close and yet so far away?

  She missed George, who had taken up Edward’s pastime of riding and would head out for hours on end.

  She desperately craved time with Xavier, but as security had only recently come out of utter lockdown, visiting his estate had been a no-no.

  This visit was the start of the family’s life returning to some semblance of normalcy—as normal as it could be in the three-ring circus that was life at court after an assassination had just robbed the nation of its incumbent sovereigns.

  In the future, when she had time, she could visit Xavier. But her other men were still AWOL. And who could blame them?

  They hadn’t only lost a queen, but a mother, too. Their pain was something she wished they’d share with her, but instead, they’d left her emotionally, if not physically. And even then, the latter was almost true. They were in Masonbrook after all, but not with her.

  Edward barely slept, and if he came to bed, she didn’t know it.

  George was like a ghost, too. Only Xavier had taken time to visit her, but even then, she felt like he was restraining himself—not wanting his visits to the palace to seem too bizarre to the retainers.

  She felt…

  Lonely.

  Jesus. She did.

  Surrounded by people, drowning in more humanity than she’d been around all her life, Perry felt isolated and alone.

  She bit her bottom lip to stop the quiver. Feeling like a little girl for wanting to cry, she shook herself.

  Veronia, God help it, needed Perry. Her people needed their Queen, and she had to make sure that she did Marianne proud.

  Marianne hadn’t questioned Perry’s engagement to Edward. She had only had one small blip when she and Philippe had tried to sneak some clauses into the prenup…but aside from that, they’d both been as supportive as could be.

  She would not let their faith in her down.

  Girding her loins, she braced herself by pasting on a serene expression when Jasper finally drew to a halt. As the car’s engine quieted, a member of staff from the rehab center appeared from the front entrance and approached.

  Perry smiled when he opened the door, and found herself shaken from her nerves by the expression on his face. His utter delight in seeing her, on being close to her, could only be described as “starstruck.”

  For her.

  Well, you are the queen now, Perry, she told herself wryly.

  She wasn’t a nobody anymore.

  She was, quite definitely, a somebody.

  The door pulled wide and before she could step out, the man bowed low. “Your Highness,” he declared, his English accent rocky.

  Though it was their main language for governmental purposes, today, she was in the Sosan province, where the Veronian tongue was the primary dialect. They could speak English, as it was taught in schools, but it did, she’d been warned, come with varying strengths of accents.

  “Thank you for opening the door,” she murmured nervously, even though she was only supposed to nod at him.

  That whole emoji smiley with the heart-eyes thing? Yeah, he totally shone one her way.

  Definitely starstruck, she thought, amused now.

  The man was fifty if he’d seen a day, and he was big and brawny—even in his neat suit, and shoes so polished she could see her face in them as she lifted herself out of the vehicle.

  When she straightened, she sucked in a deep breath before turning to face the crowd. Her throat felt thick as she lifted a hand and waved at the thousands of people.

  The cheer that roared up at the gesture sent the hairs at the back of her neck jerking to attention. Shivers washed down her spine at the public’s reaction to her. She felt their support, felt their love for the DeSauviers, and was touched and honored to be the recipient of such heartfelt emotion.

  She turned her head and saw Cass and Murielle Harlington hovering by their car, and a team of twelve security guards, each with earpieces, each talking into their mics as they monitored the crowd.

  Perry saw the door ahead. It was another monstrosity of modernness, contrasted with a desire to blend into the woods behind the center. She was supposed to walk toward the wooden and glass creation, someone would open it, and she’d step inside.

  Easy, right?

  But all those people…

  They’d come here for her.

  No, more than that. They’d come here to support the DeSauviers. To declare to one and all that the UnReals, those cowardly fuckers, had been acting of their own accord.

  It was a spontaneous reaction, and she knew Drake, their head of security, would want to ream her a new one later on, but she couldn’t just wave and walk on.

  She couldn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  Perry stepped aside, headed away from the front entrance, and toward the crowd.

  She felt the confusion behind her. Sensed her guards’ dismay, then their irritation. Knowing she was inches away from being hauled back toward the facility, she sped up. Walked swiftly toward the people who were corralled in by metal fencing.

  Little boys and girls held flowers, carried signs and pictures they’d painted themselves. Men and women stood there waving, watching her eagerly as she approached them.

  Nerves hit her as she met the eye of an obviously pregnant woman, and she smiled hesitantly. The beaming one she received blasted those initial nerves away. She held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she told the stranger. “When’s the due date?”

  Blushing and stuttering, the woman replied, “In three months, your Highness.”

  “Congratulations!” Perry froze when someone grabbed her elbow, but she knew it was a guard so she jerked her arm back and up to liberate herself from his grip. “Thank you so much for coming today.”

  “I had to,” the lady told her, tone fervent. “What happened was such a tragedy. We all feel for his Highness and Prince George. Yourself as well, of course, your Majesty.”

  Touched, Perry felt tears prick her eyes at the woman’s obvious grief. The subsequent outpouring of emotion that the crowd sent her way as she walked down the line of fencing almost overwhelmed her. She shook hands and smiled and patted the kids’ heads. Accepting flowers with warm grins before passing them onto a dour-faced Murielle and a cheerful Cass—a reminder to change her damn Guardians to women who belonged in this century, not the last.

  As she made her way back toward the entrance, her impromptu meet-and-greet over, she reached out to hold the hands that shot out to grip hers. Taken aback by the people’s love for her family, the guards and her ladies-in-waiting might as well not have existed for all she noticed them.

  Perry, for the first time since entering this dream world of hers, was finally lost in it. Embraced and comforted out of the bewildering sense that this wasn’t her place, the Veronian people made her realize it very much was.

  The nerves in her belly had completely disappeared by the time she was about twenty feet away from the front entrance. An hour had to have passed as she begun to enjoy herself and felt calm for the first time in an age.

  As she stepped toward the graveled path that cut through the manicured lawn, her guards suddenly turtled around her. Shouts came, screams followed.

  Men were everywhere.

  She went from walking singly to being covered by them, like a living, breathing shield.

  She heard them yell, but a nasty hiss and a sharp bang drowned it out.

  A single scream sounded, impossibly louder than the rest, sharp and high pitched.

  Another bang.

  Another deafening scream.

  The tension among the men shielding her grew, then the tortoiseshell of protection caved in as one of them stumbled, falling toward her.

  Panicking, she stepped forward, tried to keep him upright, but he was heavy.

  Too heavy.

  She absorbed his weight, fell
backwards into the guard behind her, thanking God that he helped her stand.

  What the fuck’s happening? The internal scream reverberated in her head.

  There was a shooter. Of that there was no doubt. But had one of her men been shot?

  Arms and legs were everywhere in the shelter of protection her guards offered her. Hands moved and bustled, elbows jabbed and stabbed as they tried to move forward, take her out of the danger zone.

  Another staccato burst came, another yell, and the light suddenly caved in as pain blossomed and spread in her chest. A heavy weight blanketed her. Suffocating her, stealing the breath from her lungs.

  The cacophony of sound grew, soaring to fever pitch, deafening her until seeing, hearing, and feeling hurt too much to remain conscious. Then, there was nothing, and Perry was glad of that.

  Panic.

  He thought he’d felt it when he’d seen his cousin being declared King that final day of their honeymoon.

  He thought it had crept up on him throughout the nightmare that had been his tanta Marianne’s funeral procession; it had certainly started to suffocate him when his cousin and the woman he considered his wife—in all but law—had been crowned as the new rulers of his wonderful country.

  But it was nothing to what he felt at the text alert he had just received from Drake.

  Perry, suspected GSW. En route to hospital. Will advise when I have further information.

  It was nothing to the madcap twenty minutes he spent waiting to know which fucking hospital Perry was being airlifted to, and it was nothing to the drive to said hospital.

  Edward, at his side in the limo and pastier than Xavier had seen him since the coronation, was silent. George’s face was in a grimace of agonized terror. And Xavier knew how he felt.

  There was no point in asking the hospital staff for updates.

  If the goddamn King of Veronia wasn’t being told how his Queen was faring after yet another fucking assassination attempt, then there was no new information to be had.

  “We brought her into this,” Xavier said woodenly, the words spilling from him like poison. He knew, wherever they touched, they’d turn necrotic.

  “I brought her into this,” George snarled, his cheeks hectic with color.

  They’d been in a meeting when they heard the news. They’d been trying to ascertain what the three of them could do to lighten Edward’s load and become a more cohesive unit.

  It had been sheer good fortune that they’d been together. Good fortune or fate, he didn’t know. Because it seemed like the same divinations, fortune and fate, were taking Perry from them. When they’d only just found her, only just started to process having her in their lives, she was being stolen away…

  A gunshot wound. Perry had been shot.

  A tremor whispered through him at the idea that at that very moment, Perry might be dying. His thoughts were shattered like a stone through a window when Edward’s words, low and seething, were gritted out, “Now isn’t the time for recriminations. We get there. We see what’s happening. We assess and we act.” His jaw was like granite. “And by tomorrow, if Drake hasn’t found the bastard behind the shooting, he’s out. And I don’t give a fuck which country we have to beggar ourselves to, I want the best goddamn security consultancies on the fucking case.”

  His voice was bitter, furious. But it gave out by the end.

  “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” George whispered, staring blindly ahead at the other side of the limo.

  Though there were windows, there was nothing to see. The vehicle was surrounded by police and protective armed units, and an officer on a bike was riding just a few feet down. Traffic had stopped on the opposite side of the road as the people watched the limo shoot down a stretch of highway at speeds that bordered on the insane, never mind illegal.

  “Two shootings in the space of two months is…” Edward slammed his fist into the cushion at his side. “Reckless. There’s no other word for it, dammit. What the fuck are the UnReals even doing, for God’s sake? They want the Royals gone, I get that. But literally? Picking us off one by one?”

  “They’re trying to annihilate us,” George said coldly, closing his eyes and turning his head away from them.

  “Bullshit. They’re trying to scare us,” Xavier countered. “And it’s working. We’ve hunkered down since the attack, and we’re only going to keep on doing that if they keep on targeting us every time we make it outside the walls of Masonbrook.”

  “So, what are you suggesting? That if Perry somehow manages to survive her first assassination attempt on her first official goddamn visit, I should keep throwing her out there for them to hurt again?” Edward snarled.

  Xavier closed his eyes. “No. Of course not. I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” he admitted, rubbing his eyes. Jesus, he felt frantic and exhausted, and the combination was sapping his energy reserves.

  “The only thing we can do is clamp down on known associates,” George inserted.

  “That makes us look like we’re starting a purge,” Edward remarked. “I threatened Branche with it, but it was only words. I have no intention of…”

  “Of what? Keeping Perry safe? Maybe I should just take her back to the US. It’s Thanksgiving in a few weeks’ time. Drake said she couldn’t go—that we had some diplomatic meetings around the holiday, and security would already be stretched without her disappearing overseas. But if we can’t protect her here, then I think I should take her.”

  “My wife stays with me,” Edward snarled.

  “It would be the first time you’ve treated her like your damn wife,” George spat. “You’ve been as absent as I have.” His words were choked, laced with his guilt.

  Xavier could feel the tension bloom in his cousin so he rested a restraining hand on Edward’s arm. “He’s scared. We all are,” he said softly.

  “Yeah. We are.” Edward reached around to massage his neck. “This feels like a nightmare that’s only just started.”

  “Because it has. Our hands are tied. If we implement extra security measures then we’re going to look like we’re starting a fucking dictatorship. The family is in good stead at the moment because of Uncle Philippe’s reign, but if we veer off that… you know how easily public opinion sways.”

  “And what? That matters more than Perry’s safety?”

  George’s bitter words stung. “You think it doesn’t matter to me? Goddammit, George, I love her too. You think I want her to be in danger? You think I want or asked for any of this? Fuck you. You don’t own the rights to grief and worry.”

  Silence fell at his words, and Xavier was glad of it. They weren’t going to get anywhere until they laid their eyes on Perry. Until they knew she was safe. And dear God, how he hoped she was safe.

  Stomach clenching at the thought, he tried to shift his focus onto the situation at hand.

  The UnReals had never been this active. Never been so aggressive, not since Edward and George’s kidnapping when they were kids. Before then, there had been bombings and the like. But assassinations? It was a distinct change of pace, one that didn’t make sense.

  The terrorists had made their statement. Marianne was dead. Philippe, in his last moments of lucidity, had started the motions of his abdication before he’d headed in for the surgery that had put him in the coma he didn’t seem to be coming out of. A new King and Queen were ruling Veronia, and the way in which the UnReals had triggered that had caused dissension in the public the likes of which had never been seen. Even the people’s response to Edward and George’s abduction as children hadn’t been as large a catalyst as this one.

  If the UnReals been trying to swerve favor toward them, they’d failed utterly.

  And today’s act? It had been suicide for the UnReals…

  Dammit! It didn’t make sense.

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Edward’s words mirrored his thoughts just as the country beside the highway veered off into cityscape. Perry had been taken to the cap
ital’s best hospital, and even though they were traveling above and beyond the speed limit, they couldn’t get there fast enough for his liking.

  Xavier murmured, “No, it doesn’t.”

  “As a group, they’re never going to get public support. Not unless they want to use it to make me invoke articles in the constitution that will protect us but severely hamper and limit liberty.”

  George released a breath that was more of a hiss. “Does any of this matter? We’re talking politics when Perry could be bleeding out in some fucking OR.”

  “Of course it matters,” Edward snarled. “If we can’t figure out why the fuck they’re doing what they’re doing, how are we going to stop them? The end game is vital, George.”

  “You know that, George. You’re a goddamn banker. And you’re as much a strategist as Edward is,” Xavier said, his tone grim. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and help us figure out what the fuck is going on.”

  For a second, Xavier saw fire flash in George’s eyes as he stared at him. The rage he saw within, however, was nothing more than what he himself was feeling. He bore the brunt of that wall of fury until George simmered down. Then, though his voice was choked, he murmured, “It feels like there are two different endgames happening here, not just the one.”

  Edward frowned. “Explain.”

  “The UnReals have always wanted to unseat the Royal family—ever since the DeSauviers arranged that massacre in Helstern.”

  “We don’t need a history lesson, George,” Xavier said.

  “I know. But you want my input, then fucking listen. You said it yourself, we won’t get anywhere without figuring out their motives.” George continued, his mouth curled in a snarl, “So, let’s face it. They’ve always wanted Veronia to be a republic, not a constitutional monarchy. They don’t have to murder us to make that happen. After the kidnapping, they went black, didn’t they? Disappeared practically.”

  “For the most part,” Edward said. “Father told me there were small gatherings. Nothing major. Drake didn’t quash them, but he kept an eye on them.”