Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(155)

“He told me about you. Don’t try to play a man-of-the-people card with me. You made him kill his brother.”

“A pity. I thought my Kristien would rule after Kristoff’s untimely death, but like a romantic idiot he insisted on dueling his brother for the crown and my hand. My hand, can you imagine something so foolish? Of course you can, look how you’ve taken to those ludicrous dresses.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes, I am. Intimately and slowly. I will do things to you that your pretty little mind cannot even imagine. That carnival-show torture chamber in the castle will seem like a dream to you. You’ll beg me to take you there.”

I take a deep breath, coughing from the stink of my own blood in my face. “Why? Because he loves me and not you?”

She sighs. I hear the swish of fabric as she crosses her legs. “Are you such a romantic fool as to think that matters? Of course there is an element of quid pro quo at play here. He questioned my lover, so I will show his the same courtesy. I hope he’s gotten a whelp on you. I’ll keep you alive long enough to carve it out and make you eat it.”

I blink a few times. “Your lover, what?”

It hits me. Of course. “Brad.”

“That is not his name. I admit I have a certain fondness for the idiot, he has a nice prick. He thinks he is using me and like all men he thinks the gash between our legs means our brains have leaked out. He relates to me all sorts of plans, all sorts of information. I use him. I reached out to the authorities, and I offered them something they could not refuse in return for backing my insurgency.”

“The armor,” I breathe. “You want the armor.”

“I have a suit of my own. That pretty cut on your beloved’s chest, do you think his brother gave him that? Kristien didn’t last thirty seconds against him. I put that scar there, and he gave me none in return. I would have had him, had the Phoenix Guard not run me off. What I need is the advanced prototype, the one he wears, and you will bring it to me.”

“Me?”

She laughs. “Yes, you. Oh, believe me, nothing would please me more than to let him think you’ve abandoned him. Six months or a year, I think, after he’s fully vented his rage on your precious people… Then I would send him the tape, show him what I have done to you. Let him see that your love was true and you begged for him to the end. Oh, and you will beg. I will have to satisfy myself with eviscerating you after I’ve killed him and pried that damned armor off his corpse.”

I press my throbbing lips shut.

She keeps talking.

“Once he’s gone and I have the suit, the Americans think it will be theirs… And I will give them one, an older model, while I ramp up the production line under the mountain. With both brothers dead and the suit under my control, the castle will be mine. My resistance will don those suits and spread out in every direction like a steel tide, rolling over every foe. Solkovia will be first. I will put every man and woman and child to the sword, for your sake. I will kill the girl children first. I think this will please you.”

“You’re insane.”

She laughs softly, and mirthlessly, to herself. “So you think, I am sure. What is insane is to wield power such as that and not use it. Dear Kristoff argued with me for hours and hours, oh no we mustn’t, oh one man cannot rule all the world, oh if we try we will be utterly destroyed and my people will suffer for it. He has a kind heart, in his way. It’s a shame that defect did not pass over the heir and to the second son. Had Kristien been born first, the world would bow under a black iron yoke and I would be its queen. I will finish what their fathers started. I will ensure you are alive to see it before you beg me for death.”

Oh my God.

She’s f*cking nuts.

I can hear the seat creak as she sits back. “We need only to make the proper arrangements.”

I swallow. “Arrangements?”

“You’ll see. I have something very, very special in mind for you. A prince needs a grand exit from the stage, don’t you think?”

She turns and barks an order in Kosztylan.

I don’t know what to do. I’m not a spy or a secret agent. Maybe I should be paying attention to the turns or trying to count the stoplights, get some handle on where I am.

Not that it would help. I’ve been here exactly once and we didn’t get out of the car. Manhattan is not, as they say, my jam.

Oh God, I’m going to die.

Painfully, apparently.

The best thing I can do for now is sit quietly, I think. Listen, think, and pray. I pray hard, as if it’ll do me any good. I pinch my eyes shut and plead.

The ride takes a long time. An hour, more. When we finally stop and the van door slides open (my spy skills have improved to the point where I can tell it’s a van, because it has a sliding door), the smell of rust and stale air rushes through the burlap, flavored by the crusty iron stink of blood. I’m not sure if it’s soaked into the sack, or just in the air.

“Don’t move, or we’ll break your arms,” she says, standing in front of me. “That will make this vastly more unpleasant for you.”

I go halfway limp, sagging a little as they unbind my arms, only to close handcuffs around my wrists…and force them over my head. I hear a metallic scraping sound, and then a great mechanical noise, some kind of engine revving up.