“Don’t apologize for taking off without me. I know how this shit works,” Jeremiah said.

Elias exhaled a pent-up breath. Jer was alive. He’d answered his phone before the end of the first ring.

“Glad to hear your voice. Where are you? We can circle back and pick you up. How is everyone else?” Elias asked, ignoring the look from a few of his guards. Going back wasn’t an option.

“Inari survived the initial attempt, but I don’t know where she or Caspian are right now. Your security teams are concerned with one thing only at a time like this: escape with you intact. Caspian’s people surrounded him and whisked him away almost as fast as Inari’s team did.”

“You didn’t tell me where you are.”

“A block from the hotel. About to get a cab back to our hotel so I can get all our crap and find a way to the airport.”

“Going back isn’t a good idea. We can have anything we can’t live without sent by the hotel.” Elias knew Jeremiah would do what he wanted to anyway, regardless of the danger. Jer understood what he was getting into, thus Elias didn’t attempt to persuade him more than that. “We’re headed to the embassy, actually.”

“Embassy, got it. I’ll meet you there in an hour or so.” Jeremiah ended the call.

Elias was just pulling up Inari’s contact information when his phone rang.

“How are you?” he asked without preamble.

“Shaken up, but fine. Is everyone else okay?” she asked.

“Jeremiah is good. I don’t know about Caspian yet, but I’d venture to say he got out all right. Jer mentioned seeing Caspian’s guard surround him at the same time yours did.” Elias ran a hand through his hair and glanced out the window. The Latvalan Embassy’s gray stone walls loomed high and foreboding as the limousine approached the gate.

“I hope so. I feel awful to have put that many people in danger if those shots were aiming for me.”

“We won’t know for sure until they conduct an investigation. Probably be three or four days until we have any definitive answers.” He paused as the driver spoke to another guard at the gate, and drove onto the property once clearance had been gained. “I’ll probably be incommunicado for a day or two, so if I don’t return your texts, you’ll know why.”

“What does that mean? I know you’re not referring to your underground search,” she said.

“I’m going to do some investigating with Jeremiah. Caspian will probably get involved. I’ll call you and see what you’ve learned when we surface again.”

“I don’t understand. There are a hundred people working on it right now.”

How did one explain what he and his friends did? That their group went away on secretive missions to help other royals or those with elite connections who could not help themselves? It was a sensitive subject to him and his team. To everyone involved, especially the people they saved.

The target—Inari—was much closer to him this time than usual. His father had told him long ago that any girl he might date needed to be kept in the dark about his other activities until she could be trusted with the truth.

Inari was one of them, involved on a personal level. There was no way to get around being absent for two or three days and her not get suspicious. Although he didn’t delve into the semantics of their group—there were more than the three of them—nor admit that his own father, uncle, and their friends went on the same type of missions, he gave her enough, he hoped, to satisfy her base curiosity.

“I prefer to do my own investigating sometimes,” he said, covering his evasiveness with another question. “You’re heading back to Somero soon, I take it?”

“Tonight. Right now, actually. We’re almost at the airstrip. The German government has kindly loaned us a ride home.”

“Good, good. I’ll talk to you in a few days.” He paused again, then said, “Be careful, Inari. This is the second attempt. Next time, the strike might be a lot more precise.”

And fatal.

---

Inari stared at the phone long after it had gone dark. She thumbed the smooth screen, watching the streak from her skin disappear like magic.

Fingerprint-free glass. Technology had come a long way.

Her phone lit up with a text message just as the sedan came to a stop inside the private airstrip. It was Caspian, checking in.

Made it to the airplane. Waiting on word everyone’s all right and arrival times.

Inari returned a quick text. Flying out separate. Am okay. Glad you are, too. Talk soon.

Then the hustle began.

From the car to the helicopter, hunched and moving as quickly as her shoes would allow. Her guards surrounded her on all sides, blocking easy access to her person.

Halfway across the tarmac, she experienced a moment of panic when the guard to her left suddenly went down with a grunt.

He’d been shot.

Dear God, how the hell did these people keep finding her?

But the guard rolled right back to his feet and filled in his spot at her side.

Not shot. Just a stumble.

Everything took on a surreal cast for Inari after that, from the flight through the darkness, across borders, to the landing near her family estate and the subsequent dash to get behind the tall palace walls.

She wasn’t fifteen steps through the door before her father was there, snatching her urgently into his strong embrace. He had ever been her champion, her staunchest supporter. Tough, sometimes, but never cruel or mean. King Thane reminded Inari of a medieval knight, always and ever, with his neck-length dark hair shot through at the temples with silver, and the neatly trimmed mustache-goatee that framed his generous mouth. He had the build of a warrior, broad in the shoulder and trim at the hips.

Inari filled him in as best she could after the embrace, pacing at his side toward the king’s parlor, a private room where she knew they would not be overheard.

“I’ve had several men personally looking into this. So far, they’ve come up with no leads and have heard nothing in the underground about an assassination attempt on a royal. This has come at us blindside,” Thane said. He paced the perimeter of the room like a caged animal, a hairsbreadth from lashing out should he happen upon his prey. “I need you to think hard, Inari, about anyone else that could be responsible. Besides the fake photographer—we know about him.”

Once again faced with the same question Elias had asked, Inari gave the only answer she could. An honest, forthright one. “I can think of no one who would go to this extreme. I haven’t pissed anyone off that bad, that I recall. I’ve got a good relationship with my peers, I haven’t noticed any stalking tendencies in the men I’m around—nothing. I just don’t know why this is happening.” Although he paced, she stood in one place, following his path with her eyes.

“I know this is difficult, but I think, for your survival, that you need to stay within the palace walls for now. Until we at least get some kind of lead. I don’t usually condone hiding and allowing others to dictate our lives, but this has gone too far. They’ve come too close twice now.” He slanted a look her way, as if expecting rebellion.

Once upon a time, she would have rebelled. In the last two years, however, she’d reached a new level of maturity and shed some of her former belligerence. She’d come to terms with her role in life and what was expected of a future queen. Inari was aware that she was still in transition, as it were. That she had a long way to go to reach the stature she would need later when she took the throne. She still enjoyed gay laughter and pranks and challenging herself in ways a queen probably shouldn’t. For the former reasons, and because she was still shaking from the encounter in Berlin, she nodded her agreement.

“I won’t leave the palace. I’d like to be updated, though, whenever you have any new information.”

“Of course. I’ll keep you post—”

The parlor door flew open, interrupting the king. Inari darted a shocked look toward the king’s advisor, Hermann, who surged inside. No one dared interrupt the king when the parlor door was closed. Even Hermann.

“Your Majesty! It’s Lisbet!” Hermann’s frantic plea, wide eyes, and pale pallor suggested the worst of the worst. He ducked back out into the hallway where several guards began to swarm around the door.

Inari covered a gasp with her hands.

Lisbet. Her sister.

What the devil was going on? Had she choked on food? Fallen down the stairs? Been thrown from a horse?

Inari hurried in her father’s wake when Thane charged from the parlor, brushing people aside like they were so much ballast.

Ahead, from deeper in the palace, feminine wails and screams hit the air, sending pinpricks of ice up and down Inari’s spine.

Dear God, please don’t let my little sister be dead.