Page 17 of Captured

Dimitri shook his head, disbelieving his own ears. “Your Maj—Catherine, I’m a captain of the ONSF, not some kind of hired-out bodyguard.”

“You’ve protected every member of the royal family when the need dictated—and for quite some time.”

“Yes, I have,” he countered. “But Lauren Grant isn’t part of the royal family. She’s a guest in a highly public location. We have people for that.” They turned sharply down another corridor, this one flanked by two attendants who bowed to the queen. She nodded back graciously, then swept forward, picking up her pace.

“We do have people for that,” she said, her words decisive. “And one of those people is you, who, if I am not mistaken, tookan oath to be bound to serve whatever your monarch commands. Or did I miss a clause in that arrangement? You did agree to it quite some time ago.”

Dimitri gritted his teeth. Queen Catherine had a way of making the most high-handed request seem like it was your sworn duty, and here she was doing it again. “I will, of course, do whatever the Crown requests,” he said curtly as they turned into the conference room.

Stefan Mihal, Oûros’s top diplomat and half-cousin to the royal princes, stood at the head of the table, staring at a file folder, but he wasn’t alone. It was the first time in a while that Dimitri was actually glad to see the royal family’s chief advisor, Cyril Gerou. Maybe he could talk some reason into the queen.

Cyril’s face was neutral. Stefan’s was as well, but then again, Stefan defaulted to neutral. The royal ambassador glanced up when the queen entered the room, bowed perfunctorily, then held up the file. “You’re correct in your assumption, Your Majesty.”

“You could go with Aunt Catherine, you know. Keeping up appearances, and all that,” the queen said, turning to accept a similar file folder from an attendant who’d appeared at their side. She scanned the document. “Oh my.”

“Yes.” Dimitri frowned at them both as Stefan kept talking. “Smithson has been invited to the event.”

A black bolt of anger and anticipation surged up inside Dimitri, unexpected but brief. “Then, fair enough,” he said. “Lauren doesn’t go to the party. Problem solved.”

“Not solved so neatly as that, regrettably,” Stefan replied, apparently unperturbed by the queen’s grimace. “In addition to inviting Smithson, the ambitious Raptis has invited his good friends, Lauren’s parents. By happy coincidence, all three of them are traveling on the Smithson yacht at this time, though there was no indication Raptis knew this when he extendedthe invitation. The lot of them are expected in port Wednesday morning.”

Dimitri’s scowled. “Your information is better than mine.”

“Not better,” Stefan corrected. “Merely more current. While you were on duty today, the inquiries we made into the whereabouts of the Grants yielded far more fruit than our initial research on Smithson. The Grants apparently are not nearly as diligent about their personal security as their host, or simply prefer to keep a more public presence.”

“So Lauren has to attend,” the queen said, tossing the file on the table. “Her parents will be there. We can’t very well keep her from her parents.”

“She could leave the country,” Dimitri put in, which earned him a thin smile from Stefan, and scowls from Cyril and the queen. “Look, I shouldn’t be in the middle of this. And I’m not equipped to play babysitter at a fancy dress party. That’s his job.” He poked his finger toward Stefan.

To his credit, Stefan didn’t deny it. “We could dress him up, but enough people know Dimitri as a captain of the ONSF. It would arouse suspicion to have him so close to Lauren.”

“You’re going,” the queen snapped before Dimitri could jump in. Cyril blinked, clearly startled at her royal vehemence, but she didn’t back down. “She trusts him,” she said to Cyril.

“She what?” Dimitri stared at her. “You can’t be serious.” He sent a longing look to Cyril, but the advisor looked as shocked as he felt. “I’m due?—”

“We can make arrangements for that,” Cyril said, lifting his hand to quell words that Dimitri wouldn’t easily be able to take back. Catherine was his monarch, even when she was being ridiculous. The only one who could override her command was Jasen, and he wasn’t here to lend his voice. “Stefan will take the first line of defense for Ms. Grant, should she need any, and withany luck, she will not. Dimitri will be on hand to monitor the girl from a distance, but more importantly, to monitor Smithson.”

He stared at Dimitri. “Somehow, that box got into the palace without going through any normal channels. It wasn’t on the scheduled delivery manifest from the local couriers, and there was no record of it entering the country, let alone the palace. We were lucky, you could say, that it didn’t contain more than air.”

“No record? But the video feed showed a truck?—”

“Unscheduled. The regular driver wasn’t anywhere near the palace when that truck entered the drive. And the man who was driving it isn’t showing up on any of our databases.”

“Hired help,” said Stefan dismissively. “A one-time hire at that. The box would have tripped our sensors, except there was nothing to trip, since it was empty. It exposes a low-tech weakness in our security if nothing else. Something we’ll need to address.”

“And the names of Smithson’s yachts?” the queen demanded, squaring her shoulders at Cyril’s and Stefan’s surprise. “He calls them the Typhon I and II now. Lauren shared that.”

Cyril spoke first. “Typhon hasn’t been anywhere near the gates.”

“But he rules over everything that slithers!” Catherine snapped right back, with unusual sharpness. “And don’t even get me started on the shapeshifters he commands. It wouldn’t be so hard for one of them to escape, especially if we weren’t looking for it. Plus—Dimitri, tell them.”

Dimitri grimaced as Stefan and Cyril turned to him. “There was a disturbance in the gardens last night. A low-level monster god harassing a nymph. I separated them, chased the dickhead back into Olympus, but he was one of Typhon’s, and he mouthed off.”

He hadn’t told Catherine about this part, but Cyril needed to know, and the advisor nodded subtly for him to continue.

“Nothing specific, just the usual rhetoric of one day the gods would rise, and we’d be sorry for thinking we could control them.”

Stefan snorted. “They’ve been saying that for a thousand years.”

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