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“His Majesty was quite insistent on it, sire,” Aitor said from the doorway. “He barely let me check the room for assailants before ushering me out and shutting the door.”
“Did he say anything?” I nudged a crate with the toe of my boot and it collapsed in on itself, spilling something that was maybe straw – but now resembled grains of sand – onto the floor. The air became thick with dust as it billowed around my feet, and I coughed, covering my face with my sleeve while it settled.
“Sí, king consort. That he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and I was not permitted to let anyone but you through the door.”
I glanced at him questioningly. “But you did? Not...not the intruders,” I quickly amended when Aitor gave me a pained look and fell to his knees. “Please get up. I meant that someone had to have entered the room to realise he was missing?”
“I failed him, and you. I’m so sorry, Your Highness,” he whispered, still kneeling on the filthy floor with his head bowed. Whereas I might have usually felt the need to comfort him, the sting of my husband’s absence still pricked sharp and deep.
“Sorry doesn’t do shit,” I snapped instead. “So get the fuck up andhelpme.”
The young guard was immediately on his feet.
“Councillor Vidrio came by to remind the king that he was due to take citizen appearances. When he failed to answer the door, the councillor ordered me to open it and said he’d take the blame, but...” Aitor’s mouth tightened. “His Majesty was already gone.”
I searched the floor. My boots had trodden prints in the layer of sand and dust that now covered it, but the wooden boards had been clear of debris when I arrived. Our servants’ diligence in keeping the floors clean meant I couldn’t tell how many people might have been in here, but it was a small room, so Ren’s captors surely couldn’t have numbered more than two.
Yet if it was so few, wouldn’t he have been able to fight them? Perhaps not enough to escape, but at least to have alerted his guard outside with a call for help or by knocking something over...
I realised now why Morales had been so confident when she’d said there were no signs of a struggle. In such a confined space, Ren could not have been forcibly taken against his will without disrupting the same crates and sacks I’d upset myself, and that would have left a similar amount of mess. Yet the room had been pristine.
I swallowed as the horrific implications sank in.
Ren hadn’t struggled against whoever had taken him. Because they’d threatened him?
Or because he knew them? Because hetrustedthem?
“There are obviously no windows by which anyone could have entered or left. And so after much searching, we discovered this,” Aitor informed me, slipping past and shoving at a section of panelled wall at the back of the room so it swung open into the space behind it. Brass hinges now gleamed mockingly, but closed, the ‘door’ had been otherwise indistinguishable from the solid walls on either side of it.
I moved to the guard’s side. Unlike the palace’s escape tunnels, this hidden entrance hid a lot fewer secrets: it merely opened up to the room behind it, of the same dimensions and dreariness as this one but seemingly used to store furniture instead.
“I didn’t know this existed,” he confessed quietly. We both stared at the space in the wall that had allowed Ren to be stolen away in the middle of the palace without alerting his guard.
“Neither did I,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Aitor made a noise that told me he disagreed, but I’d meant it. It wasn’t our guards’ job to discover every secret the palace held: they could only protect us from the ones they knew about. Aitor believed he’d been defending the only approach to his king, unaware that our enemies knew another way to get to him.
And again, did that not suggest our adversary was one we would otherwise call ally? Had they seen Ren enter the storage room and taken advantage of an opportunity, or had they somehow lured him in here specifically?
It wasn’t hard to imagine what someone might stand to gain from Ren’s death. He had many enemies. But for them to kidnap him instead of killing him outright…as grateful as I was not to be standing over my husband’s dead body, it held even more sinister implications.
Ones I did not dare dwell upon, but which infested my mind all the same.
*
Chapter Twelve
“King consort,” Vidrio greeted warmly as I entered the Council chamber, and all four councillors offered me deep bows. I waved them up impatiently.
“Any news?”
Councillor del Olmo ran a hand through her short hair and gestured to a guard standing to attention. “We were just about to receive an update. Would you like to join us?”
They all looked expectantly at the head of the table. Swallowing my urge to be contrary, I accepted the proffered chair with Aitor taking up position behind me, realising too late how wrong it felt to be in Ren’s seat when he wasn’t here. Stealing it from the prick to earn his inappropriate yet witty commentary in response? Planting myself in his lap so I could enjoy him wrapping his arms around me? Those were acceptable options. This...was not.
“As you were,” I said awkwardly, and the reporting guard launched into an overview of everywhere they’d managed to search in the last hour. An impressive area for so short a time, to be sure, but all that resonated with me was that there was no sign of Ren or whoever had taken him.
I blew out a breath as the woman finished her report with a bow, her hand dropping to the hilt of her sword as she turned sharply on her heel and left the room.
