Sick, bile-coated fear lines my stomach while I wonder if those princes played me. Did they lull me into a sense of security just so they could do this?
But then an even worse possibility threads through my mind.
Did my mother do this?
Did she somehow orchestrate this attack?
Another blast makes the castle judder. Portraits fall from the walls in the hallway in front of us, knocking people together like bowling pins and toppling them. Others rush past in braying panic as I heave myself up higher in Colter's grip, using his massive shoulders for leverage so that I can stare out over the crowd to see her.
My veins are swollen with anxious energy as my eyes dart manically over the knot of people who rushed toward the entrance she and Father used. But there's a mix of guards shoving and reporters desperately pushing, and they're all in black suits… I can't tell, and my heart gushes with panic.
I thought I'd already lived through my worst nightmare.
I thought being taken was it.
I thought wrong.
This is worse.
This castle is populated by a thousand innocent souls, and now they're all at risk. And this isn't some battlefield. There are maids and couriers and cooks and gardeners. Betas and omegas who've never held a weapon in their lives.
Guilt weights me like a stone tied to my neck because I feel utterly responsible.
I've been played for a fool by someone.
Strung along by hope.
Fuck.
I scrub a hand across my eyes and search the crowd again, teeth gritted, anger surging, because I think the princes still want something from me. They still have so much to lose. There's only one person who stands to gain from this attack.
A "benevolent" fucking queen.
Rumbling bursts of gunfire echo through the throne room, and Colter immediately sets me down on the ground, my men shoving me between them as they circle tight, facing outward, forming a barrier between me and the violence.
An avalanche of sound decimates my eardrums. Crashing thunder, wild screams, roaring engines, the clap of bullets. The cacophony alone could bring me to my knees.
My men herd me toward the hallway exit, but the walls lurch left in front of our eyes. The plaster cracks and stones scrape against one another as a metallic crunch sounds, and the rectangular room becomes a rhombus. The door in front of us tilts on its hinges and snaps down the middle while a rolling cloud of dust encases us.
I glance toward the entrance to the throne room, and my jaw plummets.
A fucking tank is wedged into the golden French doors. Through the still-settling haze of impact, it appears as if the castle wall collapsed on the vehicle, crushing it like an aluminum can, making its main gun jut up uselessly toward the gilded ceiling. Thank god for that, or we'd have no hope.
"Fuck!" Ridge grabs my upper arm in a death-tight grip, his cheeks pale as bone.
We all spin and run toward my parents’ entrance, the least crowded exit, as bullets start to spray like water from sprinklers.
Where are these attacks coming from?
I don't get an answer because we rush behind the pillars lining the room, and my men keep me surrounded as we sprint to a better exit. While my thighs pump madly, my brain disconnects from reality, like a wire came loose when I heard people scream. There's another loud blast, and my ears ring, and suddenly it feels like I'm swimming, peering through water.
A gap forms between Kylian and the others as he turns and fires off a few shots behind us, and I'm finally able to see the throne room.
Bodies splay, women in suits flung lifelessly across tipped chairs, men with briefcases mowed down in the aisles, servants slumped behind pillars. There are entire piles near the doors, and people clamber over the dead in their feral desperation.
A few people still huddle behind overturned clumps of chairs, freezing instead of running.
One of the tasseled guards who escorted my parents leans around a pillar, pistol in his grip. He fires a series of shots toward the entryway. Someone fires back toward the front, and a camera on a rolling tripod cracks and slumps uselessly. More shots zoom past it and pepper the scalloped throne greedily.
