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“I’ll be back for you once I get this mess figured out. Until then, make yourself at home.”
She smiled and kissed him. “Thank you. This place is great.”
It made him happy to finally see her smiling like that again. He hadn’t seen it on her face in so long, he was beginning to think she’d never smile again. He was happy to be proven wrong, even under these circumstances.
Leaving her to it, Grux headed out and beelined it to where he knew his father would be—his study. If Grux was the last to hear about the Jorvlen attack, his father would’ve been one of the first to find out when it happened.
He didn’t bother knocking when he reached the study. He had no amount of politeness left in him at this point. Not with Scarlett being in danger as well as his future child.
“Father, I need to speak with you.”
To his surprise, the king was not alone.
“Ah, yes. Come in, Grux.” He waved a hand at him. “Come meet Broga. He was sent to us from the Flemlars.”
Slowly shutting the door, Grux moved deeper into the room.
He would be dancing on a razor-sharp edge. One wrong move, and it would send the bounty hunter directly to Scarlett to drag her back to Xoyosis by her hair.
Grux nodded to the bounty hunter, taking in the hood pulled up over their eyes to conceal their identity. Broga had an ambiguous shape to him, neither slim nor built. Tall or short and no discernable marks that would pick them out of a crowd.
Honestly, if he wasn’t so worried, Grux would be rather impressed.
“What did you come here for, Grux?”
Shaking himself out of the thoughts, he turned to his father sitting behind his desk. “The Jorvlens struck our ships.”
“Yes, I did hear about that.”
“What are we going to do?”
The king shrugged. “We’ll ground everyone for now and figure out our best plan of attack sometime tomorrow.”
Grux frowned. “Not tonight? What about our supplies? People needing to get out of Lorr? They’re all stuck here.”
“What’s the rush? Nothing’s going to happen overnight.”
Grux gritted his teeth. Sometimes, his father could be truly incompetent.
“Unless,” his father said with a grin. “There’s some other reason?”
Ignoring the bait, Grux turned to the bounty hunter. “Why is he inside the palace?”
“Well,” his father answered for the hunter, “he got a tip that Miss Scarlett could be hiding somewhere inside of the palace. I told him I wasn’t aware of any claim like that. Are you, Grux?”
He tried to not let the panic show on his face while he shook his head. “No.”
“I suppose we’ll need to let the hunter do a thorough sweep of the palace. Just to be safe.”
Grux wanted to grab his father and shake him by the arms. What was his problem? Did he want Scarlett to get caught just to collect whatever measly bounty was on her head from the Flemlars?
He thought his father was just trying to drive Scarlett into Grux’s arms, but now, Grux wasn’t sure. None of this situation made sense to him.
Perhaps the Terrans turned him down on a meeting or never responded, at all. Was it possible they didn’t care that Scarlett was on Lorr?
“If that must be done, can they do it some other time? We’re kind of dealing with a crisis right now.”
“Grux, the hunter wants to do his job as quickly and efficiently as possible. We need not get in the way of that.”
