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I only realize the acolyte at my side is dead when she falls against me and to the floor.
CHAPTER 36
Blood.
It’s blood on my hands, across the front of my gown. I cast my gaze to my sisters, first; Clare and Tara are both wide-eyed, but I see no obvious wounds on them.
The acolyte is on the ground, a throwing knife lodged in her spurting throat.
“Protect the queen!” someone shouts.
It’s Nathan.
I throw my hand out to grab him. I need an anchor in the chaos. He would never let them hurt me, never let—
He grunts in pain and staggers back. More blood splashes across my gown and I scream.
Someone grabs me, and I’m torn from Nathan’s side. The last thing I hear him say is, “Get the queen to safety!”
“What’s going on?” Tara cries as the thrall guard drags us into the empty ball room.
I look back at the crowd as the doors close and fear claws up my throat.
“Take them to the residence,” the head guard orders. “I want shutters, spike strips, nobody leaves through the front gate.”
I blink at him, thinking he’s talking to me, but he’s speaking into his wire. Someone grabs me by the arm and physically hauls me through the ballroom.
“Nathan!” He’s still out there, and he’s wounded.
The bodyguards overpower me. I can’t go back to help if I wanted to, which, frankly, I don’t because I’m the queen and that definitely paints a target on my back.
I’m the queen.
And there’s a coup happening.
The riot seems to be confined to the ballroom; more security guards than I’ve ever seen rush through the halls. I’m glad the people manhandling me through the corridors know a different way into the residence, one that doesn’t require backtracking past the throne room doors. They practically push us up the back stairs, where more guards waited at the top.
“Is everyone okay?” a thrall with a red cross on her shoulder asks, bowing her head briefly to defer to me. “Your Majesty, are you hurt?”
Am I? I didn’t really get a chance to think about it. “No?”
The answer gives her a small pause.
“The king is still out there. And Hannah!” Oh my god, Hannah and Ryan. They were in the crowd. What happened to them?
“Let’s get the queen and her ladies to the safe room,” the thrall says to another with the same medic patch.
“There’s a safe room?” It would have been nice to know about that, just in case anyone else tried to kill me.
I’m the queen.
People are going to try to kill me.
The safe room is located behind the bar in the formal sitting room. A section swings out to reveal a narrow door that can admit only one person at a time. A door as thick as a refrigerator.
This thing can probably withstand a direct meteor strike.
Despite being a place one goes in an emergency, the safe room is oddly luxurious. It’s actually more like a safe suite, with couches and a kitchenette and a stocked wine chiller. I roll my eyes. People are trying to murder us, and my mate is worried about not having a nice dry white to go with whatever luxury survival MREs are stocked in the cabinets.
Tara and Clare drop onto the sofa and an armchair, respectively. Tara is shaking all over, and a medic rushes to her.
“Is she okay?”
Clare’s eyes are hollow, her face frozen as she stares at the thralls who cluster around our sister. “She’s in shock.”
“Get her legs elevated,” one medic says, piling cushions under Tara’s feet. “And get a blanket!”
“I’ve got fluids,” another medic says, rushing in from another room in our windowless safe quarters.
Which feel very, very unsafe.
Clare and I watch in horror as they wrap Tara in a blanket and start an IV. A blood pressure monitor appears from somewhere, and a pulse oximeter.
“Make room!” someone calls in a voice so loud and gruff, it makes Clare and I jump. Which I’m sure is also great for Tara, who’s being given oxygen through a little bottle with a mask on it. The source of the voice backs into the room, carrying something with another person.
The something is Nathan.
They carry him past me, into an adjoining room, and I run after, my shoes smearing the spatters of his blood into gory footprints on the carpet. They took his jacket off him, and his white shirt is soaked with red. My heart is in my throat as I follow them into a bedroom, but when they put him down, he cries out in pain.
But he’s so strong. Surely, he can handle…whatever is causing so much blood.
So much blood.
Medics push in and I stand aside, helpless, as they cut Nathan’s shirt off and reveal a deep gash across his abdomen. At first, I don’t recognize the bubble-gum pink spilling from the wound. Then, in a horrifying second, I do. It’s his intestines. His insides are on the outside.
