Page 73 of The Abandoned Princess

I didn’t like his tone, but I wasn’t going to stop to argue with him. We needed to find those earrings as quickly as possible.

Andrew charged out of the room first, and we all streamed behind him, moving as quickly through the palace as we could given the heavy traffic in the corridors. Servants seemed to be everywhere, preparing for the coming festivities.

Protests followed our swift progress, but we ignored them, focused on our goal. When we reached the right section of the palace, Danielle thrust her way ahead of the boys and was the first at her mother’s door.

She pulled it open and led the way inside, Xander only a step behind. He had drawn his sword in anticipation, but the suite of rooms was empty.

Danielle moved straight to her mother’s dressing room and produced a key from her pocket which she used to open a locked drawer. She drew out a heavy box and placed it on top of the dresser.

We all tried to crowd in behind her for a look, shoving against each other in our eagerness. But when she opened the box, extending out each of its sides, I could see no sign of ruby earrings. Before I could say anything, however, she ran her hands over the back in a particular pattern, making a second, hidden tray pop out of the bottom.

We leaned closer but there were still no ruby earrings. Danielle and Arabella exchanged a look, and Arabella put her finger on an empty section of green velvet.

“They were right here,” she said.

We all fell back a step, even the boys looking serious now.

“Could your mother have taken them with her for the procession?” I asked, but Danielle was already shaking her head before she finished.

“It was only an overnight trip just outside the capital, and she was going as Princess Celeste, not Aurora. She won’t have taken them.”

“Then Eulalie already has them,” Xander said slowly. “Which means she has everything she needs for her plan to take the throne.”

“But how is she going to control the king and prince?” I asked. “There’s a reason we thought she must be looking for something to do that.”

“She must already have a way,” Lori said. “Some sort of drug maybe, like that neyara stuff.”

“It’s nayera,” Xander corrected absentmindedly, his brows knit as he considered the mess we’d made of everything.

A horrible thought occurred to me. If she waited until the king had passed authority to his son before enchanting them, there would be no need to keep the old king alive at all. One man would be easier to control than two. I couldn’t say the thought aloud, though, not in front of the children.

“Dani,” said Arabella, sounding uneasy, “we have to get going.” She looked at her brother. “All four of us do. We’re not dressed in our formal clothes yet, and if we’re not there at the gates to welcome the procession with everyone else, we really will be in trouble.”

“That’s the life of a royal child,” I muttered with a sigh. “Play whatever tricks you like, but don’t you dare disrupt a formal event.”

Danielle hesitated, looking at us. “We really do have to go. But we’ll see our parents at least. We can warn them about what’s going on. We’ll stop the proceedings if we have to.”

There was nothing we could do but agree as she closed the jewelry case and locked it away again. We followed the children out of Princess Celeste’s suite, but they ran off once we reached the corridor, presumably heading for their own rooms and the very stressed maids that must be waiting there to assist them into their formal outfits.

“What do we do now?” Lori asked into the silence that followed their departure.

“We have to find Eulalie,” Xander said with a return of his usual spirit. “We can’t leave it to those children to save Northhelm on their own.”

“We’re not exactly leaving it to them alone given who their parents are,” Lori said doubtfully.

“I agree with Xander,” I said quickly. “We need to find Eulalie. We should split up.”

Xander hesitated at that, but I glared at him. “It’s a large palace, and we’ve lost her completely. We forgot to even ask where the handover of power is taking place. So we need to separate and search as much of the palace as we can.”

He sighed. “I suppose that makes sense. Just remember we’re looking only. No one should be confronting Eulalie on their own.”

“Including you,” I said sternly, and he nodded.

We divided up the levels of the palace and ran off in different directions. I kept to the edge of the corridor, dodging decorative plants and plinths rather than people. Everywhere I went there seemed to be activity, but nowhere did I see so much as a glimpse of leathery skin.

I was about to give up and circle back to the rooms we had slept in—our agreed meeting place—when someone grabbed my wrist. Before I could see who it was, I was dragged through an open door into a small deserted sitting room.

I pulled my arm free as the door closed firmly behind us. Turning, my insides clenched as I saw who had attacked me.

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