The Princess Trials (The Princess Trials #1)(68)

“It’s too late,” I murmur into his neck. “But I appreciate the offer.”

We sit so close that our heartbeats synchronize, and my breathing matches his. My mind drifts, and I wonder how different our lives would have been if Prince Kevon had been born in my Echelon.

He draws back and meets my gaze. “I’ll speak to someone about what we discussed earlier.”

My mind races through our conversations, but it keeps getting stuck between Rafael’s body landing on the hood of the car and the electrical charge that caused her death.

“I’ll tell my mother I won’t participate in the Princess Trials unless she arranges a pardon for Gemini Pixel,” he says.

My lips part, and a breath catches in the back of my throat. “Did you change your mind because of Rafael?”

He nods. “That girl doesn’t deserve execution.”

Joy surges through my chest. It’s bittersweet because it took the death of another girl to make him realize that lives were more important than rules. I wrap my arms around him and relax into his embrace. “Thank you.”

The door opens, and I scramble off his lap.

Lady Circi pokes her head into the room and scowls. “I told you to stay in your room.” She steps aside and opens the door for the queen. “Here he is.”

Queen Damascena sweeps into the room, clad in a peach trousers suit. Her gaze lands on me, and the tiniest tightening of her lips hint at disapproval.

I dip into a curtsey but don’t get very low as Lady Circi wraps her arm around my wrist and pulls me toward the door. “We need to talk.”





Chapter 19





My heart pounds as Lady Circi pulls me out of the room, down a windowless white hallway, and shoves me into an alcove.

A dozen paranoid thoughts race through my mind, most of them centered around accusing me of sowing the seeds of Rafaela’s death.

I steady my bare feet and hold one of the fighting stances I learned in the Red Runner training drills—feet apart, arms braced at my sides, fists ready to block and strike.

At around five-ten, the dark-skinned woman isn’t much taller than me, but I’m barefoot and only clad in a flimsy hospital gown, while she wears a tactical catsuit and enough guns to turn me into a sieve.

“Tell me everything that happened last night at the dinner table,” she says.

My gaze is locked in hard, green eyes that look peculiar against her dark skin. “Don’t you have that footage from the cameras?”

“Tell me,” she snarls.

In halting words, I describe how Ingrid taunted Rafaela about her involvement with some actors, and how Prince Kevon intervened when the Amstraadi girls tried to make me say words of sedition on camera.

Her eyes flash at the mention of them. “Did they speak to Rafaela von Eyck?”

I flinch at her words. Somewhere deep down in the pit of my soul, I thought Lady Circi and Queen Damascena had arranged Rafaela’s death. If the lady-at-arms suspects the Amstraadi girls, maybe I was right to be suspicious of their fighting prowess.

“Did they?” she barks.

“I…” My mouth dries, and I swallow. “I don’t remember.”

Lady Circi scowls, looking like she’s about to say something nasty.

I scowl back. “Our table had cameras fixed on us the entire evening. Everything you need to know is in the footage.”

“Excuse me?” says a small voice.

Lady Circi twists around, revealing the woman whose camera I slapped off her face the night before. She stands in the hallway with a colleague.

“I saw Her Majesty enter that room you just left.” The camerawoman raises herself on tip-toes in an attempt to make eye contact with me. “Did you spend a night with Prince Kevon?”

My mouth drops open, and I’m about to sputter a denial, but Lady Circi points a gun into the camera lens. “Would you also like to spend a night at the Royal Hospital? I can arrange that with a click.”

The woman lowers her camera and backs away. “I’m just following orders, My Lady. The Princess Trials are—”

“Come with me.” Lady Circi grabs my wrist.

The muscles around my shoulders tighten. If she has dug any further into my past and discovered my association with the Red Runners, Rafaela won’t be the only one lying in a hazardous waste bag.

She marches me back through the white hallway, where a camerawoman waits outside the door of my hospital room. I glance down at Lady Circi’s hand, which still holds the gun, and a shudder runs down the back of my neck.

What if her suspicion of the Amstraadi is a pretense at making her and the queen look innocent? I shake off those thoughts.

Right now, I’ve got to leave this hospital and rejoin the trials. It’s callous to think about my mission at a time like this, but Carolina, Ryce and hundreds of thousands of people are depending on me to get to the palace.

Lady Circi brings me to my hospital room, which is now empty. She orders me to get dressed and return to the barracks for breakfast. My shoulders slump with relief, and I hurry to the shower room to carry out her orders.





About half an hour later, I arrive at my room just as Berta emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her wet, shortened hair clings to the sides of her face, and her cheeks are flushed from the hot water. She flicks her head at my untouched bed, but all I notice is the gray dress that lies folded on the trunk.