Page 4 of A Fierce Princess

“What?” he asks, stepping back to look down at me.

“I have almost six months to do what I want, and then Dad expects me to take on my duties,” I say dryly.

“Well, beats having to do it now,” he says. Auggie had a brief stint in the military after graduating from university. He works with some wounded warrior projects, but he’s also an assistant to my father’s military advisor. Basically, Auggie gets paid to play. He plays with military aircraft and vehicles and talks to veterans and reports back. In between all of that, he plays video games with his ex-military friends. He did see some action while in the military, but he doesn’t talk about it.

He’s seven years older than me. Chris is a whole decade older than me. I was…a surprise. But a welcomed one, as my dad always says.

“Why did you come in here?” I ask Auggie.

“Looking for you,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“I need a copilot,” he says with a smirk.

I roll my eyes because “copilot” is Auggie-speak for an accomplice.

“For?” I prod.

“Care to get out of here tonight?” he asks.

I laugh.

“You know there are about a hundred cameras and microphones in here, right?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Yeah, but no one actually checks them,” he says with a laugh.

He has me on that. I broke into them once, and they hadn’t been viewed in two months.

“Fine,” I mutter.

“Well, damn, don’t be so enthusiastic. You’d think I asked you to help me bury a dead body,” he says.

I raise an eyebrow.

“I just need a normal night, I swear,” he says, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Normal?” I say.

“Normalish,” he adds.

“Well, then, my dear brother, please tell me all about this ‘normalish’ night we are about to have,” I say as I link arms with him after closing the cabinet. We walk back to Auggie’s apartment in the west wing of the palace to plan our escape after dinner. By the time we are summoned for food, we have our escape route planned, a club picked out, and friends notified. Now if we can just keep Chris and Dad in the dark for about six hours.

Chapter 3

There is a secret passage that leads to the outer wall of the palace. It’s usually guarded and is also monitored with a camera. However, yours truly hacked the camera and has it playing on a loop. And that guard, his assignment somehow got changed for tonight, thanks again to a little error in the system. Someone will catch it, but I bet they won’t catch it for at least four more hours.

I’ve put on discotheque clothes. When I get to the entrance to the passage, Auggie is leaning against the wall. I admire him for a moment. He really is very handsome. I can see why all the ladies fawn over him. If only they knew, he’s a royal pain in the ass.

“Ready?” he asks with a smirk.

“Yes,” I answer with my own smirk. Auggie’s always been my partner in crime. Our father likes to say he’s a bad influence on me. Christian, on the other hand, is the rule follower, the responsible one.

I use the flashlight on my phone as we meander the lesser-traveled passages beneath the palace. There are literally dozens of them. They run between walls, underground, between rooms, and then there’s my secret one, the only one no one living knows exists. The one that I will visit later tonight when the palace is quiet and everyone is asleep.

We reach the exit, and Auggie looks at me.

“You sure your plan worked?” he asks.

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