Page 48 of Desperately Yours

“No,” I shook my head, unwilling to believe that, “she wouldn’t.” My fingers dug into my hair, tunneling through as I tried to still my thoughts. She wouldn’t leave. She couldn’t. But someone could capture her. If there was ever a bargaining chip to play, it would be Michaela. There was nothing I wouldn’t give up to ensure her safety.

I turned to Kabir. “Expand the search. Tear the kingdom apart. Ground the planes. Freeze the trains. No one, and I meanno one,leaves the country, understood?”

“Yes, Sire.” Kabir saluted once more before making a hasty exit. I rubbed my palm over my mouth to dispel the buzzing, nervous energy this news had released. But even in my state, I didn’t miss the new title. I’d spoken like the king, and he understood it as a command.

“I’m not saying she doesn’t love you,” Bishop started to explain, but I cut him off.

“Don’t bringyourbaggage into this. She’s out there somewhere.” The sun had started its descent. Time wasn’t on my side. “Until she tells me herself that she’s leaving, I refuse to believe it. For now, we operate on the assumption that she’s been captured.” I glanced at the chamber doors behind me. My time was limited with him, but Michaela needed me. I was sure of it. “Take me everywhere she went. We have to find her.”

Michaela

Agroan reverberated through my chest. A response to the aches in my head and bones. I blinked, eyelids heavy with exhaustion. It felt like the time I’d pulled an all-nighter before the state championship for debate team. Hazy, confused, and regretting everything. Worst of all, worried I was about to lose everything.

Where was I?

My eyes started to focus, but nothing felt right.

Bricks.

Not like the red ones that made paths and walls at home, but gray and thick, hand-carved even, old…

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. It had to be theremnants of a dream. Maybe I wasn’t fully awake yet and the wisps of my subconscious were still masking the world around me. But nothing helped. The room came into focus faster and fear started to take hold.

Gray stone walls, open windows that displayed nothing but darkening sky, and iron shackles that hung from the wall on rusted eye hooks. Dread rose in my chest as I searched out an exit, but as I twisted, my heart clenched.

She watched me, silent in the shadows, face calm and unreadable, lips sealed with no hope of giving away her secrets. Every ounce of my surging terror abruptly morphed into anger.

“You!” I charged forward, ready to go middle-school violent on her, reverting back to a time when no one thought of consequences or control. But as fast as I tried to lunge at her, my body pitched back as if an anvil weighed down my frame. Whiplash threw me in reverse. Pain shrieked in my shoulders, elbows, and wrists as the restraints bit down and kept me imprisoned.

“There’s no point in getting worked up. You won’t be able to move. Not with those ropes in place.” Sadie’s sad face tipped with pity. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“Then here’s an idea,” rage boiled in every one of my words, “don’t tie me to a chair in the first place!”

She sighed and shook her head. “It wasn’t my idea.” Her arm waved in my direction. “Not this or anything else for that matter.”

Was she trying to get my sympathy? If she thought she was going to play victim aftershe’droped me to a chair like a hostage in a cheap action movie, she had to be crazy.

“Then untie me.” I jerked against the ropes, but only pain answered my request. Someone had fastened them with a strength I was sure Sadie didn’t possess. She wasn’t working alone.

“I’m sorry.” I barely heard her whisper. “I can’t. I don’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have a choice?” Panic started to rise in my chest, but ranting helped expel the energy. “There’s always a choice.”

“Not for me.” She squared her shoulders. “And, unfortunately, not for you. Not anymore.”

“Not for…” My voice trailed off as I took in my surroundings with a new horrified perspective. What was this place? I would think dungeon because of the stones and shackles, except I could see the painted sky from the setting sun. Fitz said the palace didn’t have a dungeon anyway. He always joked about sending me to the… tower.

I’d finally ended up there after all.

No one would find me in the tower. It was separated from the palace, a turret that rose up behind the structure with nothing surrounding it but the pitched roofs and sheer drop offs that made up the rest of the palace. Even if I screamed, who would hear me?

A stiff breeze slipped through the open arches. I would freeze to death before anyone ever thought to look for me. The fear became a beast inside of me, ravenous and full of spite, determined to squash out my reason and logic without leaving any hope. A scream burbled in my chest, eager to break free, but as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t lose it. Not yet. Not without some answers.

Last I remembered, we were in the storage cellar. Sadie was smaller than I was, no way could she pull me through the palace without anyone seeing her.

“How’d you get me up here?”

Sadie didn’t deny my insinuation that we were in the tower, but she also didn’t appear ready to give me much more information either. “That’s not important.”

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