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“Stay in the suite.Don’t leave unless it’s at the queen’s command.Otherwise, you’ve broken our terms for your safety and relieved us of our vows.”
Us.Our.
Words he’d used to bind Vori and himself.Now those same small words drove them further apart as Mykata chose her sister’s side.The realization cut, and the ache in his chest throbbed in the hollow space carved by the loss of his princess.
He couldn’t let them bury the truth.“Find your sister.Not the one calling herself a queen.The other one.”
Mykata shut the door in his face.He stared at the wood, the swirls in its patterns, the stone at his feet, anything but the bed he’d shared with Vori and the rooms where they’d been together earlier today.He breathed in to steady himself and cursed.Her scent was all he could smell.The same he’d breathed when she’d kissed him.He licked his lips, hoping to catch a taste of her, but it’d already faded.
He had to rescue her as she had him.Who knew how awful a goblin dungeon could be?Thanks to Vori’s kiss, his powers were subdued now, but there was enough electricity here to refuel and weaponize.He would wait until he figured out a plan.
Opening the hidden panel in the closet she’d shown him earlier, he found the privacy stones.Those might be helpful to shield their escape.Because he wasn’t leaving this realm without her.
Footsteps and voices from the hallway outside told him guards had been posted.He’d need to find a way out of here that wasn’t through those doors.
What had she meant by she’d find him first?Puzzling through the riddle wouldn’t get him anywhere but frustrated.He’d ask her later.
Get out of the suites, find the dungeons, and free Vori.That was the plan.They could decide the rest together.
He shook the contents out of the backpacks they’d brought, searching for anything that might help.Lemon candies bounced and scattered, wrappers crinkling.Her favorite.Everything reminded him of her.He pushed aside the hurt, unwilling to dwell on it if it cost him a minute of getting to her.Nothing in the bags could help.He sank into a chair and held his head in his hands.He’d failed her.
A flutter of pages rippled through the room.The magical book that’d been so attached to his princess flew at him, smacking a corner of its spine into his arm.
“What?”He waved it away like a buzzing insect.“You didn’t want anything to do with me earlier.”
Undaunted, the book came at him again in a rustle of paper and the smell of hours he’d spent in the law school library.Something toppled out of it.Something she’d hidden inside.An envelope hit the wood with athwack.His name was written on the front in Vori’s neat blockish print.He ripped it open and skimmed the folded pages.
The tiny letters blurred on the page.Vori had made arrangements for him in case she didn’t make it back to the human realm—places to hide, contacts to help him.She’d done all this for him.No one had ever done as much.
The kiss replayed in his mind again and again, a loop he wouldn’t stop.The passion had been there.That couldn’t be faked.But the rest?Thewhy.
She’d been proving to everyone there that they were a couple, protecting him with no benefit to herself.She’d settled his powers.She’d made him crave her all the more.
The last thing she’d said to him made no sense.Not if I find you first.What had she meant by that?He didn’t know, but he needed to find a way to her.
“Any ideas how to get to her?”He felt stupid talking to a book, but it’d responded to Vori.
It zoomed to the closet, floating in midair as if waiting.
“Of course.”He raced to follow.“There would have to be an emergency escape in a princess’s suite.One like the tunnel we took to her mother’s rooms.She had a hidden compartment in here for the privacy stone.There could be more.Thanks.”
The book sank onto a table nearby as if satisfied he’d listened.Perry ran his fingers over the stone wall inside the closet.He would go over every inch of these rooms if necessary.
He’d worked his way to the bookshelves when the electricity blinked off.The glow of the stones was enough he could continue his search.He pulled one nonmagical book after another from the shelves.
Dark shadows swirled in the closet.Maybe it was a trick of the light.He blinked and froze, his hand on one of the heavier history texts.Not the best weapon, but he could make do.The stones above flashed rich gold, and he glanced upward.
“Light bedtime reading?”his princess’s voice teased.
He dropped the book.“Vori?”He looked around the empty suite.The door was still closed.There was no one here.Had he lost his mind?Where had the voice come from?The shadows?
She stepped from the closet.The one he’d searched moments before.“Told you I’d find you first.”
“Vori.”His voice sounded muffled over the pulse pounding in his ears.The room seemed lighter and brighter, or maybe that was just him.His thoughts stuttered and stopped before racing with a thousand questions that weren’t important because the only thing that mattered right now was she was here.He yanked her to him, reassuring himself that she was real and not the fantasy he’d lived with for years.“I’m never letting you go.”
