Royal Protocol

by Dana Marton

  She had a bad feeling about this. “I’m not even Valtrian. I’m not involved in any of this. You could just let me go.”

  Vilmos laughed darkly. “I might be a generation older, but I’m not blind yet. The young prince would give much for you. You’ll make a fine bargaining chip if things come to that.”

  “The young prince has a fiancée,” she snapped. That she would have to be the one to share that piece of good news galled beyond words. “Maybe you should be looking her up?”

  The information took the man aback, but only for a second. “I have the one he wants,” he said, sounding pretty self-assured.

  Prince Benedek did not want her beyond a quick conquest, but it was too demoralizing a news flash to share with a conscienceless rebel. “You might be disappointed,” was all she said. She certainly had been.

  “Insecurity between lovers. Isn’t that sweet?” Vilmos mocked her.

  She wished they would stop so she could kick him in the shin. But he was pulling her along at a fast pace on narrow stairs. She didn’t want to add falling on her face to the list of indignities she’d been given to suffer today. She was in plenty of trouble already. She could do without any broken limbs.

  Which gave her an idea.

  She hooked her foot in front of Vilmos’s the next second.

  He did tumble. Unfortunately, he dragged her with him as they rolled down the stairs that seemed a mile long all of a sudden.

  “Oh, God.” She moaned into the pain. Her ribs felt like they were going through a meat grinder.

  Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, they slammed against the wall at the bottom, with him on top of her.

  For a moment, they were both still. Then he pushed off her with one hand and unceremoniously backhanded her with the other.

  “Get up,” he yelled.

  She did, her cheek stinging, every muscle protesting. They were all the way down at the bottom, in a basement. She hadn’t succeeded in holding him back from taking her wherever he wanted. She had simply got them there faster.

  Way to go. She could only hope men with better combat skills than she were in charge of defending the palace.

  He dragged her across a small room. A boiler room, she realized after a minute. He took her all the way to the back, to a ratty old closet. The key he pulled from his pocket opened the padlock on the door. He shoved her inside and locked the door behind her.

  She was all alone in the darkness, locked in a closet. Shelves dug into her back. The smell of chemicals choked her. She tried to shift to get some fresh air through the crack in the door, and pushed against the shelves accidentally. Bottles rattled. The shelves moved back.

  Strange.

  She pushed back a little more. Once again, the shelves accommodated her. She had enough room now to turn around and push with both hands. The shelves kept going and going. She stopped and felt around in the darkness, drawing back when her fingers got tangled in cobwebs. She could hear nothing but some squeaky noises in the distance, which she hoped to heaven weren’t rats.

  Because by now she had a pretty good idea that she wasn’t inside any cleaning closet. She was back in the catacombs, this time without Benedek. And if anything happened to Vilmos in the fight, nobody would know that she was down here.

  Even if Vilmos did come back for her, it would only be to use her against Benedek. She gave a few moments of thought to that. She was mad at him, but not mad enough to want to see him hurt. Her anger had cooled quite a bit, actually, now that she wasn’t sure how he fared and whether she would make it out of this place alive.

  He was expected to make a royal alliance. All the princes were. He hadn’t been engaged, not truly, not yet. He’d said he hadn’t even met the girl. He’d just agreed to some vague notion of doing his duty. She’d known going in that anything serious between them would be impossible.

  She was as much to blame as he.

  She’d been attracted to him. From the beginning. And she’d resented him because of that unwanted attraction. Then they were forced together in close proximity and the attraction grew into full-blown lust. Then she got to know him better and…

  She couldn’t think about his gentle touch and scorching passion and understated sense of humor, or his courage, the way he risked life and limb to protect her from the rebels. If she contemplated that, she was going to fall headlong in love with him and that would cause nothing but trouble.

  Not that she needed to look for more trouble. She faced plenty where she was, right here. The yawning darkness in front of her was a physical presence, like a beast waiting to devour her. Obviously, Vilmos had thought that she would be too scared to venture forth in the darkness and get away from him.

  Staying put would have been the smart thing for sure. But what if there was another exit someplace near? If she could only find that, she might be able to get to a section of the palace that wasn’t yet controlled by the rebels.

  The tunnel was absolutely pitch-dark and moldy. She sneezed. More squeaking from up ahead. Dear God, was she really going to walk toward that? But what other choice did she have?

  She hadn’t run into any rats in the tunnels with Benedek, but it made sense that there’d be some in the immediate vicinity of the palace where they could get in through the cracks and steal food. Not a theory she wanted to contemplate. She held her hands out in front of her so she wouldn’t rush smack into a wall, and moved forward.

  Something light ran across her foot in the darkness.

  “Shoo!” She just knew it had been a rat. She almost turned back to wait obediently by the door for Vilmos. But then she thought of Craig. That bastard had already killed her agent. He was not going to get her, not as a pawn and not as a victim. She gathered up her strength and took another step forward into the darkness.

  She didn’t want to fall for fear of falling on a rat. The thought that they might crawl on her was more than she could bear. Maybe noise would scare them away.

  She began to sing. It was just like when she’d been a child, singing to hold the darkness at bay. God, it brought back memories and not the good kind. She’d never thought that one day she’d be back here, scared and all alone.

  Except that she wasn’t a child anymore with limited options. She was a grown woman. A strong woman. Not just her walls, but on the inside. Wasn’t that what Benedek had said?

  No wonder she was falling for him.

  She couldn’t have him. But she could have her life back. Without her paralyzing fears. She’d begun to overcome her fear of flying. She’d made it all the way to Valtria. Maybe next she could let go of her fear of allowing people to get close to her. Even if she did get burned now and then.

  Benedek had taught her that. What had happened between her and Benedek still hurt, but did she wish that she hadn’t spent those few hours in his arms? Maybe she was crazy and self-destructive, but she didn’t.

  She sang louder. The aria from Aida comforted her somewhat. But instead of the notes, as uplifting as they were, she wished she had Benedek.

  Chapter Eleven

  At least an hour passed before Benedek could extricate himself from the battle in the basement and go to rescue Rayne. The fire alarms had stopped by then. He ran down the hallway, blocking out the damage, and nearly ran into a rebel. Since he’d completely run out of bullets, he used his sword to dispatch the man.

  He heard a noise behind his back, a door opening. He spun, his sword ready.

  “Your Highness!” Chancellor Egon was pale and shaking, shrinking back.

  “Have you seen Miss Williams?” was Benedek’s first question.

  “I just came up, looking for you, Your Highness.”

  Benedek ran forward. “How is the Queen?”

  “Safe.”

  “Keep her that way.” The closer he got to Rayne’s room, the more charred the carpets and wallpaper were. Her door stood open. He burst into the room. Balcony door open. He checked there. Nothing. Not in the bathroom either.

  �
�Your Highness—”

  “You go to central command and let the royal guard know to look for Rayne Williams.”

  “Your Highness…” The man hesitated, but then barreled forth. “It would not do to have your name associated with Miss Williams. Your fiancée—”

  “I don’t have a fiancée.” Benedek strode out of the room. He had to figure out where Rayne had gone.

  “But you had agreed to a royal match.” The Chancellor ran behind him.

  “And I just changed my mind.” He left the Chancellor gaping. The door to the servants’ staircase stood open. Maybe Rayne had gone in there.

  “But, Your Highness, you’ve always been the reasonable one, if I might say, not at all like your twin brother—”

  “Get word to the royal guard about Miss Williams. Or you’re going to find out just how unreasonable I can get,” he ordered, and ran down the stairs.

  Trouble was, he had no idea where Rayne might have exited the staircase. He ran out to the second floor. Meeting rooms and a media room, a small movie theater took up most of it in this wing. Not much looked touched here.

  “Rayne!”

  No response.

  “Rayne! It’s Benedek.” He ran down the hall and opened doors randomly. Nobody there.

  He ran back into the staircase, to the first floor. A small fight raged here, one he didn’t engage in. “Did you see Miss Williams?” he asked the nearest royal guard, a man who pulled into cover to reload his weapon.

  “No, Your Highness.”

  A rebel rushed at them. Benedek ran him through with his sword before the surprised guard had a chance to get off a shot.

  “Thank you, Your Highness.” The guard had his gun ready and stepped in front of him.

  Benedek backed into the staircase and took the stairs two at a time to the basement level. The boiler room was on the opposite end of the palace from the wine cellar. No rebels down here. Nothing at all.

  “Rayne!” he yelled anyway, but received no response. If he were the type to punch holes in walls, this would have been the time. But taking one’s frustration out on architectural elements was not his thing. He took the stairs up two at a time, exited on the first floor, dispatched one rebel after another until he found one with a radio.

  He grabbed that one by the neck. “Make contact.”

  “With whom?” The man gasped for air.

  “Whoever is in charge here.”

  The connection crackled to life in a second.

  “This is Prince Benedek. I want Rayne Williams,” he said into the receiver.

  “Meet me in the coronation room,” a staticky voice said.

  Benedek tossed the receiver at the same time as the rebel went for Benedek’s gun. The guy miscalculated, surprise on his face when nothing happened after he pulled the trigger. Benedek cut him down where he stood, then ran for the coronation room, knowing there was a better than good chance that it was a trap.

  He encountered sporadic fighting on his way. Everywhere, rebels were winning. There had to be a reason that the Army wasn’t here yet. Maybe the Chancellor was wrong and the Queen wasn’t safe. Maybe the rebels were holding her hostage, holding the Army at bay with that threat.

  Miklos had cleaned the Army of all traitors recently. Benedek couldn’t imagine that anyone could turn the current generals against the monarchy.

  He slowed as he reached the coronation room. Inspected the hallway. Nobody there. The door was closed. He pushed it open slowly.

  Empty.

  He wasn’t given to foul language, but now he swore under his breath. He walked the perimeter of the room. Maybe something had been left here for him. A clue.

  And, yes, it had. Someone had cut letters into the red velvet of the throne itself. HUNTERS’ DINING ROOM, the message said.

  He ran out the door and down the hallway, down the stairs. The Hunters’ Dining Room had been his father’s favorite, the king having been a great huntsman. It was the most masculine room in the castle. And often, the only escape for the princes. The ladies of the court hated dinners held here and often excused themselves.

  The walls were dark wood, as was the ceiling, the chandeliers made of enormous antlers. The decoration was overwhelmingly dead. Taxidermy reigned free here. Growling bears with five-inch incisors, mountain lions, elk and a list of other trophies stood silently.

  Vilmos stepped from behind a richly carved gun cabinet, holding a gun at Benedek.

  He’d shot the man in the tunnel. “You were dead. How did you get here?” Benedek kept his sword ready, knowing he could do little against a bullet.

  “I guess you missed the important parts. Everyone makes mistakes. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Your Highness.” Vilmos smiled with a mad fire in his eyes.

  He didn’t have time for this. He had to find Rayne. “They’re using you. Whatever they said you were going to get after you assassinated me and my brothers at the opera, you wouldn’t have gotten it. They would have blown the building anyway. They would have killed you,” he bluffed.

  But Vilmos only laughed. “That was the plan. It’s been a suicide mission from the get-go. I volunteered.” Hate boiled in his gaze. “I had to make sure that Their Highnesses were in the security office when the big bomb blew right on top of them.”

  To kill for a cause was one thing, to be willing to die for it took a whole other level of conviction. “Why?” Benedek asked. “What did my family ever do to you?” He no longer bought what Miklos had said before about the money. This felt more personal.

  “Killed my sister.”

  He stared at the man. The guy was crazy.

  “Remember Anna?” Vilmos said. “You didn’t know, did you? She was my little sister. Different names. We had different fathers. She was young and sweet, an innocent thing before she met you.”

  Young and sweet but no longer all that innocent. She’d initiated the affair, in fact. The seduction had been rather mutual, but this wasn’t the time to mention that. “I never meant for that to happen. I’m sorry about Anna.” More sorry than he could ever say.

  “I was the only one she told everything to. What could I do? She disgraced herself. The prince’s mistress, carrying the prince’s bastard. She shouldn’t have asked me for help.” Vilmos’s face was as dark as the catacombs had been.

  A hundred questions flew through Benedek’s mind, but before he could voice any, Vilmos said, “One prince down, five more to go. How about you go next?”

  He glanced to the gun cabinet behind Vilmos. A hunting rifle would have been a great help, but the cabinets were kept locked and he didn’t have his key on him at the moment.

  One down. That had to mean one of his brothers. His blood ran cold at the prospect, his attention drawn away from Anna and the past. “You lie.”

  “You didn’t feel it? I guess all that talk about a special connection between twins must be a myth then.”

  “Lazlo is not dead.”

  “You can check with him in a minute when you’re walking the fiery road to hell together.”

  A bonfire of rage burned in his chest. That the man wouldn’t make it out of the dining room was a foregone conclusion. “Where is Rayne?”

  “Exactly where I want her to be. And proving extremely useful. Got you here, didn’t she?”

  Benedek had no choice but to rush the man. With ten meters of distance between them, Vilmos was at an advantage. But in hand-to-hand combat, a sword could be just as dangerous as a gun.

  Vilmos knew that. He fired, missing Benedek, but hitting the sword just above its handle. The weapon flew out of Benedek’s hand.

  He needed five more meters before he could reach Vilmos, and disarm him. The next bullet would end everything.

  Except that Vilmos’s pistol clicked empty. That was all the break Benedek needed. He grabbed the nearest trophy from the wall above his head and charged at Vilmos with the antlers. He pinned the man against the gun cabinet, the antlers going through flesh.

  “Where’s Rayne?”

>   Blood bubbled from between Vilmos’s lips. He choked on it as he said, “In the catacombs.”

  “Where? Which entrance?” He was careful to hold the trophy in place, not wanting to cause more damage for the moment, not until he had the information he needed.

  “I’ll let you know when we meet in hell.” Vilmos thrust his body forward and finished the job, impaling himself completely.

  “Where?” Benedek swore and shook him. He pulled the antlers back.

  But he was too late. Vilmos was dead.

  And Rayne, who was more scared of darkness than anything else in life, was lost somewhere below the palace in a maze of dark tunnels.

  BY THE TIME SHE REALIZED THAT there were no other exits nearby and her best chance of rescue was to go back to the door that led to the palace’s boiler room, she had taken too many turns and could no longer find her way back.

  There were rats down here with her. And secret burial rooms. As in dead people.

  Miles and miles of tunnels, some of them undiscovered, Benedek had told her. She wished she could forget.

  Benedek.

  She’d been an idiot to run off in a huff. She had plenty of time now for his explanation to sink in. Of course, royal marriages would be a matter of state interference. She had known that. She had never planned on marrying the man, for heaven’s sake. She hadn’t planned on giving him the time of day, to be honest.

  She’d resented that she had to fly to Valtria at his bidding. She’d resented him, because she’d thought he would expect her to automatically fall into his bed.

  But he had turned out to be a completely different man from her expectations. Smart, brave, gentle. And she did end up in his bed. And that had confused the hell out of her.

  She never did that. She had studiously kept out of romantic entanglements with opera patrons, no matter how charming or wealthy.

  Benedek was different. In hindsight it was obvious that he could be after neither her money nor her fame—he had both in spades. He wanted her. And for the first time in her life the thought of a man wanting her filled her with excitement and a responding need, instead of worry.