Page 38 of The Abandoned Princess

Horrified, I finally launched into movement, sliding across the room and through the open door. Tugging Lori with me, I closed it firmly behind us.

“We don’t want to draw her attention!” I said, painfully aware I had been the first one to make a mistake.

I should never have gone into the room in the first place. Once again I was proving that I still leaped thoughtlessly into action like the child I had once been.

“Whose attention?” Xander asked from behind us, making me jump.

“Don’t scare me like that!” I scolded.

He frowned instead of teasing me as I had expected.

“What happened?” he sounded concerned. “You look spooked.”

“Eulalie is in there.” I indicated the closed door. “It shocked me, but I don’t think she saw me. So now we won’t have to go searching for her, at least.”

Xander went to open the door, but I grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

“What are you doing?” I hissed. “We don’t want her to notice us.”

“I’d say she was far too distracted by the king to pay any attention to this side of the room,” Lori said.

“The king?” I asked at the same moment as Xander said, “King Richard is here right now?”

He slipped out of my grip and eased the door slowly open. Peering through the gap, he was silent for an extended period. When he closed the door again, he looked thoughtful.

“He doesn’t look worried, so I’m guessing they think I returned to my room late last night and just haven’t emerged yet. It didn’t look disturbed as far as I can tell, so they probably haven’t checked it yet.” He hoisted his pack higher on his shoulder. “Hopefully that means everything will go smoothly with finding the note.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t consider that Eulalie might be in there,” I said bitterly, still thinking about my foolhardiness. “Her individual enchantment makes her look like a stranger to everyone but us, and what more logical place would there be for a stranger than the inn?”

“And more importantly, this is where King Richard and Prince William are,” Xander said with so much weight that I frowned at him.

“Do you think she’s here for them?”

“It certainly looked like it,” Lori said.

The door to the tap room opened, making us all startle. Lori and I moved back to flatten ourselves against the wall, but Xander looked frantically around as if trying to find somewhere to hide.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him against the wall with us.

“We don’t have to worry about that, remember?” I said at normal volume. “It’s those advantages I was talking about.”

He blinked, a slow smile growing on his face as two men in the uniform of royal guards left the tap room and started up the stairs. They looked mildly concerned, but I caught a brief glimpse of the tap room as the door swung shut again, and everyone else looked calm. Nothing alarming could have occurred in the short time since I’d left the room.

“Can’t they see my pack?” Xander asked, shifting it on his shoulder.

“As long as you’re holding it when they encounter you, they can’t see it,” Lori said. “You can’t conceal a whole building by touching it or anything, but it seems to work on anything small enough to be picked up.”

“Fascinating,” Xander said.

“It gets a lot less interesting after five years,” I said sourly, only to immediately brighten. “But this is a lot more fun than being stuck in my tower. Think of the places we could go! We could walk straight into the royal vault.” I cackled, and Xander laughed at me, although he looked so genuinely amused, I couldn’t take offense.

“There might be a few thick, locked doors in the way of that particular goal,” he said.

“Just don’t goad her into strutting into the throne room and plonking herself down on Northhelm’s throne.” Lori gave me a long-suffering look. “She would do it—and wilder things besides, I’m sure—and knowing our luck, that would be the exact moment the enchantment lifted.”

I gurgled. “If it did, I would be nothing but grateful!”

The clattering sounds of rushed feet interrupted our lighthearted conversation. We all turned to see the two guards hurrying back down the stairs, their earlier mild concern amplified to far higher levels.

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