Page 73 of A Wise Prince

He kisses the top of my head. “Are you OK?” he asks, finally pulling back slightly so that he can look down into my eyes. I nod.

“Ashlyn?” he asks my sister. She nods but loses her footing on her bad ankle. He releases me just in time to catch her.

“My ankle,” she whimpers.

“I got you. Let’s go get that looked at,” he says to her gently, looking over at me. I feel like we exchange an entire conversation in just looks.

We walk to the vehicle in silence. Auggie helps Ashlyn in the car. Nico sits by him.

“I radioed in. We need to head back to the palace, now,” he says to Auggie.

Auggie nods and we take off, breaking several driving rules, speed amongst them.

Auggie turns his attention back to me. “What happened?” he growls as he expertly steers us through the winding country roads.

“It’s all my fault,” Ashlyn says on a sob. I wrap an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder.

“It’s not,” I sigh. “Ashlyn met a boy on our trip. He messaged her and said to meet him in the village by the palace, that he was here. She was sneaking out of the palace, and I decided I should go with her. I had no idea…the boy was Bill, it’s Jared’s cousin. Ash never met him before. They drugged us, and we woke up in this house and managed to get out.”

“And that’s it?” Auggie says, his voice clipped. “What the fuck were you thinking? You could have been killed. You knew how dangerous things were.” He continues without letting me get a word in edgewise.

“Auggie, I thought they were two kids meeting up to have a night out. How was I supposed to know?” I yell, stopping his rant.

“Fuck! Well, for one, Jared is over here. Two, we know someone wants to mess with both our families. Three, you are the president’s daughters, you can’t just go gallivanting around Europe.”

I growl; an actual animal sound of frustration escapes my lips. “Listen, I admit I didn’t use my best judgment, but shit, I didn’t know things were so bad, so…dangerous.”

“Well, they are,” Auggie clips as he continues driving, not bothering to turn around to look at me. I can see his hands flex on the steering wheel. He’s pissed. I sigh. I can’t do this right now. I’m pissed off, tired, and probably still in shock from the events of last night.

Thirty minutes later, we pull into the palace. Everything is quiet for a moment before everyone shuffles out of the front doors toward us.

“Oh god!” my mother cries out as she runs to us, wrapping her arms around both of us at one time.

“Mom,” Ash cries into Mom’s shoulder.

“Are you OK?” my father asks from behind us. I grimace at his voice. I feel like I don’t even know this man.

“My ankle,” Ash says to him, pulling back from my mother.

My father snaps his finger at one of his Secret Service agents. “Get a doctor,” he commands.

I can’t even bring myself to look him in the eyes.

“Everyone in the study, now,” a very tall, muscled man with reddish-brown hair dotted with gray commands as he walks back inside. One by one, we all follow him, until we are seated on each piece of furniture. I see Jackie across the room, she glares at me. Shit, she’s gonna kill me.

“I’m Jack. I’m here to assist with the investigation. Tell us exactly what happened,” Jack says as he leans against the king’s desk. The king sits behind him. I wonder who this Jack is exactly.

“I wanted to meet up with Will…I mean Bill,” Ash whispers from the sofa, where she sits next to my father. “Kate wouldn’t let me go alone. It’s my fault.”

I raise a hand. “When we got into the village, she started running to a man. I recognized him as Bill Farrington, Jared’s cousin. A second later, Jared was behind me. He injected me with something. The next thing I remember was waking up in a house, a bedroom. He told me it was all a trap. They wanted to kidnap Ash, I was just a bonus, I guess. They used the diamond to get to Auggie. There’s more going on. They have people over here working for them. I don’t know who them is exactly, some sort of anti-monarchy society, but it’s not just about the presidency.”

Jack nods. “How’d you get out?”

“He left us alone in the room. I found a door hidden in the wall,” I say, but from Jack’s expression he already knows this.

Jack turns on the computer screen.

He shows us an image on the screen, and I stop breathing. I’ve seen this before. When I first moved here, I began researching for my thesis paper. I was fascinated by how monarchies use intelligence and undercover agents. I came across an article by a government official, Conrad Johansen. He had formerly worked as an analyst for Norddale’s intelligence ministry. I found the article interesting because he had left the intelligence field to pursue politics. He claimed he only had an entry-level security clearance, but I had found a document made public which had copied him as a high-level analyst, which would have required him to have high-level security clearance. I always wondered why he had lied, and now I was sure of the answer. Conrad Johansen didn’t want the public to know he was cleared at the highest level, a level that would have had him knowing intelligence such as the investigation into Queen Louisa’s death because then he would have been scrutinized by the press and the public. My mind continued connecting invisible dots. The crown.

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