The Royal Affair

by Barrett, Gail

  Maya plodded behind Deven through the darkness, barely able to stand upright in the narrow space, the earthy air thick in her lungs. They’d inched along for nearly an hour, working their way down a slick, sloping passage, chiseled into the rocks.

  Her exhausted legs trembled. Her lower back screamed with pain. She struggled not to think about the damp walls pressing in from every side, the total darkness beyond Deven’s dwindling light. Her own flashlight had died long ago.

  Deven’s machine gun clanked against the wall. His shoes thudded rhythmically against the stones. The faint beam from his flashlight bounced off the rough-hewn rocks, cutting through a silence so profound that it roared.

  “Watch out for this step,” he called back.

  Bracing her hand on the wall, she stopped and saw that the tunnel made another sudden drop. Who knew that walking downhill could be so much work? It took all her concentration to keep from sliding on the angled rocks.

  “You all right?” Deven called back.

  “Just…catching…my breath.” She sucked in the fetid air, realizing she was near collapse—and not just physically. The stress of being on the run for days, the guilt over the abbot’s attack, hearing those poor monks scream…She shivered, trying to stifle the lingering fear.

  She didn’t know what to think about her medallion. In fact, she didn’t want to think at all. She wanted to curl into a ball and succumb to the oblivion of sleep.

  But she’d never shrunk from her problems before, and she wouldn’t do it now—no matter how depleted she felt.

  “I can hear the river.” Deven’s deep voice echoed in the gloom. “We’re almost there. We’ll rest when we get to the end.”

  She tipped her head, made out a faint rushing sound above her pounding pulse. Galvanized now that they were close, she maneuvered the step down, then trudged behind Deven again. Water seeped from the ceiling and dripped onto her scalp. The dank odor permeated the air. Her medallion swung against her chest, the solid weight familiar, comforting, as she followed Deven’s bobbing light through the dark.

  “I still can’t believe my medallion is a thousand years old,” she said. “It should be in a museum.”

  “The date’s interesting.”

  “The eleventh century?” She splashed through a ribbon of water and tried to remember Romanistan’s medieval history. The Muslims had invaded, of course, just as the abbot had said, and during the ensuing war, the Roma had either fled their homeland or died.

  She shuddered at the thought of the slaughter, the dying people’s screams…Like the poor monks they’d just left behind.

  “What bothers you about it?” she asked, not wanting to think about the monks.

  “The abbot said the king commissioned the medallion.”

  “So?”

  Deven’s gun chinked against the stones. “During a war? Doesn’t that seem like an odd time to commission a medallion, especially when they’d lost?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it before.” She continued following Deven, mulling over his words. But then the sound of running water grew louder, drawing her attention to the passage ahead. The tunnel began to widen. Seconds later, it opened into a chamber, high enough to stand in, big enough to move comfortably around. A pile of rocks blocked the exit. Water rushed past on the other side.

  The river. They’d reached the Forbidden Valley. She stumbled to a halt in relief.

  Deven set down the basket of supplies and removed his weapons, then stretched his back and groaned. “We might as well spend the night in here. It’s too late to hike through the valley now.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She massaged her pulsing forehead, her knees so wobbly she nearly collapsed.

  Deven dropped to one knee, pulled a blanket from the basket and tossed it to her. She spread it out, eased herself down and stretched out on the rocky floor.

  Her thigh muscles quivered with spasms. Her back and shoulders throbbed. Every inch of her body ached, revealing muscles she never knew she had. And the rock slab felt like heaven. She wanted to roll over and sleep for months.

  Unable to move, she rubbed her gritty eyes and watched Deven dig through their supplies. He pulled out a plastic bottle of water and held it up, but she shook her head. He tilted his head back and drank deeply, his Adam’s apple dipping in his throat.

  And the force of his sexual appeal jolted through her again—the strong, virile lines of his face, the black beard stubble coating his jaw, the sexy hollow at the base of his throat. Her gaze drifted lower, lingering on the dark hair dusting his arms, his lean belly outlined by the cotton shirt, then down to his muscled thighs.

  Knowing she was treading on dangerous ground, she turned her mind to the reason they were here—her medallion. “So why would a medieval king commission a medallion?”

  Deven screwed the cap on the bottle and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Lots of reasons. It could be a medal for bravery in battle. Or something to commemorate an event—a birth, marriage, a battle they’d won.”

  “But they lost that war…. I doubt they would commemorate that.”

  Grunting his agreement, he handed her another blanket from the basket, and she spread it over her legs. He propped his flashlight on the ground, and the faint light threw the angles of his face into harsh relief.

  She frowned into the gloom beyond the puddle of light, fingered the medallion lying beneath the necklace against her chest. “I don’t think this is a medal, either. The abbot said they’d passed on some kind of knowledge. So the medallion must mean something. Something important.”

  But what? What information would a king need to pass on during a war?

  Her mind wandered, conjuring the horror of a medieval war. Enemies charging in on horses. Villages in chaos. Peasants screaming as they tried to flee. She shuddered, knowing the carnage would have been horrendous. Men slain in the roads. Hysterical mothers clutching their sobbing children and racing into the hills. Families huddling together in terror, hiding from the deadly hordes.

  The abbot’s words floated through her mind again, and she struggled to connect the thoughts. The Muslims invading. The king commissioning a medallion. Knowledge that they had to pass on. Villagers hiding in the mountains, hiding…

  Her heart thudded fast. Her gaze cut to Deven again. “You think the king hid something—something he couldn’t take with him during the invasion?”

  Deven nodded, his face grim. “I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Like what? What are you thinking?”

  He rose to his feet, paced toward the rocks piled at the entrance, and turned back. “That it’s connected to the Roma legend. The three treasures. All that happened during the Muslim invasion, and they still haven’t found the crown.”

  She jerked upright, her fatigue abruptly forgotten, electrified by the thought. She’d heard the legend, of course—who hadn’t? It was a beloved fairy tale in these parts. According to the tale, the Hindu goddess Parvati, impressed with an eleventh-century king’s bravery in battle, rewarded him with three sacred gifts—a necklace, dagger and crown. Together, these treasures gave him the power to rule the world. But Parvati cautioned the king to use those powers wisely—and never for personal gain.

  The king obeyed. Decades passed. The Roma prospered and lived in peace.

  But then the wise king died, and his impulsive son gained the throne. During the celebration, the newly crowned king watched a beautiful virgin dance. Determined to have her, he misused the powers of the treasures to take her, even though she’d been promised to another man. Devastated and disgraced, the woman cursed the Roma king and condemned his people to roam. A short time later, the Muslims invaded, driving the Roma from their kingdom, and their sacred possessions were lost.

  Until recently, no one believed the legend was true, although rumors about the treasures surfaced from time to time. But then, several months ago, the fabled necklace showed up in a Spanish bank vault, part of a cache of forgotten Nazi war loot. Shortly aft
er that, the Roma princess found the sacred dagger buried in an Incan tomb. And now that the world knew the treasures existed, the hunt was on to find the final treasure, the ancient crown.

  “You think my medallion leads to the missing crown?”

  “It fits. The time frame, the goddess Parvati. The abbot even mentioned the lunar eclipse.”

  She scrambled to remember the rest of the legend—that when the three sacred gifts were recovered, the curse would be broken and the true Roma leader revealed during a bloodred lunar eclipse.

  She shook her head, trying not to let her excitement overrule common sense. “You’re saying the king hid the crown, and made this medallion to show its location?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “No, it’s not. It doesn’t make any sense. If the king was going to hide the crown, why didn’t he hide the other pieces with it? Why wouldn’t he keep them together?”

  Deven shrugged. “Who knows? It was a thousand years ago. Maybe he did put them together and they got separated later on. Or maybe he thought the treasures would be safer if he split them up.”

  “I don’t know.” She rubbed her throbbing forehead, too tired and confused to think straight. “It sounds so far-fetched.”

  Deven paced back to the blanket, then lowered himself to the ground. “I know it’s a stretch. But Singh could believe it. And Interpol has been trying to find out if he has ties to the Order of the Black Crescent Moon.”

  The Order. Her stomach swooped, her world further knocked off-kilter by the thought of the hate-filled group—murderers dedicated to eliminating the Roma worldwide. They’d slaughtered her people for centuries to find the treasures, believing they were the rightful owners.

  “Think about it,” Deven continued. “That crown is a powerful symbol. If Singh gets it, he could claim to be the rightful king of Romanistan. The people would have to recognize him if he had the crown. And if he gets control of Romanistan’s nuclear arsenal…”

  Their eyes met. Her hand rose to her throat. Dear God. “No one could stop him.”

  Deven’s mouth thinned. His eyes turned black, simmering with anger, determination—and something more.

  Her chest tightened with apprehension, along with a terrible feeling of dread. This was far more than a job to him, more than the need to bring down a dangerous man. Deven wanted revenge.

  She couldn’t blame him. Singh had murdered his mother, driven him away from his country and changed his life. But that feral look in his eyes…A chill penetrated her heart.

  Rattled by his reaction, she tugged the medallion from beneath her tunic and held the reassuring weight in her palm. She gazed at the figure of the goddess Parvati, the still-mysterious inscription on the back. Could this possibly be the key to an ancient treasure? It sounded so crazy….

  “Supposing we’re right,” she said slowly, “and this is the key to the missing crown, then how did Singh know about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And even stranger, how had she gotten it? She’d been an orphan, a street kid, homeless all her life. How had the key to a medieval treasure ended up with her?

  Unless it had been stolen.

  She grimaced. So much for the fantasy that she’d come from a kind, upstanding family. At best, someone had found the medallion and given it to her, not realizing its worth. And at worst—she was descended from thieves.

  Shaking her head at that irony, she watched Deven leap to his feet again and prowl the musty cave. His strong body rippled with energy. His scar formed a somber slash. She eyed the lines bracketing his mouth, those wide shoulders broad enough to protect the world. She’d woven so many dreams around that man—dreams of a family, a home. Love.

  She knew better now. Deven would never marry her—no matter how badly she yearned for him, no matter how explosive the sex.

  And now she had to put another fantasy to rest—that the medallion signified something good about her past. “I guess we should turn this medallion over to the proper authorities.”

  Deven pivoted back and braced his hands on his hips. “Not yet. We don’t have any facts, just theories. It might not be the key to anything.”

  “True.” The abbot’s poor health might have made him delusional. His cryptic warning about danger was proof of that. And even if the medallion was some sort of key, it might lead to something far less exciting than the crown—census records, a philosophical treatise, important to the medieval king and interesting to historians, but hardly a treasure trove.

  Plus, who would they give it to? Singh had contacts everywhere. Who could they possibly trust?

  She blew out her breath in a sigh. “I guess we need to find that sadhu hermit tomorrow and hear what he has to say. We can decide what to do after that.”

  Deven strode to the rocks covering the exit and tossed a few aside. Dense bushes sprawled across the opening. The rising wind moaned in the trees.

  Without warning, a terrible sense of danger shuddered through her. Maya didn’t think she was superstitious, no more than most, but she’d heard stories of the Forbidden Valley for years—a place where people disappeared without a trace, where evil spirits lurked. The wind keened again, and she rubbed her arms.

  Deven glanced her way. And she saw that distance in his eyes again, as if he were retreating, blocking her out. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No,” he said quickly. Too quickly.

  She didn’t believe him. Something had happened in that monastery today, something that had changed him. He’d been pulling away ever since, becoming even more withdrawn than before.

  “I’m going outside to scout around,” he said. “You stay here and rest.”

  “I’m fine. I’ll go with you.” She got up, stifling a groan as her body ached in protest. She swayed, fought off the dizziness blurring her eyes.

  Deven came back to her and gripped her arms. “Maya, you’re done in. You hiked all day. You carted that straw for miles. Now you can hardly stand on your feet. Sit back down and rest.”

  She opened her mouth to argue. Was he that anxious to escape her? Did he think she’d built up expectations about last night? Or worse…was he intending to abandon her here?

  She deliberately stifled the doubts. Deven wouldn’t do that. Of course, she’d believed that once before….

  “No one knows where this tunnel is,” he continued. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll just take a quick look around, then come right back. We’ll eat, look at that map, then hike out together at dawn.”

  She searched his face, saw the sincerity in his eyes. And she realized that somewhere along this journey, she’d come to fully trust him. He might not love her, he still might harbor secrets, but she could rely on him to protect her medallion and her life.

  “All right. I’ll wait here.”

  “Good.” He brushed her cheek with his calloused hand. His eyes met hers—and held. Awareness shimmered between them, but beyond the desire she saw longing, yearning—the same hunger that ached inside her.

  Needing to hold him, she leaned toward him, wanting the comfort and thrill of his touch. But he dropped his hand and stepped back.

  She swayed and staggered forward. A sudden ache formed in her throat. She crossed her arms, fighting to beat back the swell of hurt as he turned away.

  She hadn’t imagined that look. He’d wanted her, and then he’d resisted her. But why? Why erect that wall between them? What could possibly be wrong?

  Maybe it was the ordeal they’d been thorough, the utter exhaustion of the past few days. And maybe it was the fact that her world had been turned on end. But she was tired of evasions, tired of secrets. It was past time she got him to talk.

  “I’d like to know something, though,” she said.

  He shoved his pistol into his waistband, then picked up the machine gun, not quite meeting her eyes. “What?”

  “I understand why Singh wanted to find your mother, but why is he still after you?”

  He went dead still. His e
yes went blank, his face wooden, and her stomach jittered with dread. What was so bad that he wouldn’t say?

  He slowly swung the gun over his back, moving as stiffly as if he’d aged sixty years. Then his gaze returned to hers.

  “I told you before, I have something of his, something he wants back. And you know Singh. He never forgives a grudge.” His eyes turned stark; his lips curved into a smile so bleak that her belly turned to ice. “But then…neither do I.”

  He strode to the entrance, tossed several more rocks aside. Then he glanced back, his eyes still tortured. “I’ll be back.”

  “Be careful,” she whispered, her mind spinning.

  He nodded and slipped through the bushes outside. She sank to the blanket again, her thoughts in total turmoil. What had he taken from Singh? What didn’t he want her to know?

  She pulled the blanket to her chin and swallowed hard—because the fact that she couldn’t answer that question worried her even more.

  Maya opened her eyes, disoriented by the total blackness, cold, musty air filling her lungs. Her body throbbed. The sound of flowing water rushed nearby.

  The tunnel. The medallion. Deven’s revenge against Singh.

  Memories of the past two days rushed back, and she pushed herself to sit up, groaning at her aching back. She reached for the flashlight she’d left beside the blanket and clicked it on, but the batteries were dead.

  A wolf howled closer to the cave, a long, keening wail that raised goose bumps on her arms. Her mind flashed back to the stuffed wolves in the monastery’s chapel, and she shivered hard. What a bizarre sight that had been.

  She groped for the basket and pulled it toward her, managing to find a candle and matches at the bottom of the supplies. She scraped a match along the rocks and lit the candle, but the tiny flame did little to dispel the dark. Still uneasy, she dug through the basket for spare batteries, replaced the ones in her flashlight and clicked it on.

  The added light helped soothe her nerves—but where was Deven? How much time had passed since he’d left? One hour? Several? The wind moaned outside the cave again, putting her more on edge.