Page 45 of Dark Reign

“Good evening.”

The disembodied voice startled me from my thoughts and rendered Liv and Felix silent in my ear. I glanced around the vehicle, only now remembering that its dreaded A.I. tech spoke, as if my life being in its hands wasn’t bad enough.

“Evening, Ellenore,” Julian grumbled.

Ellenore? This thing had a freakin’ name?

“I expected the others would be joining you,” it stated, I assumed speaking of the three princes we’d left behind to do damage control.

Another frustrated sigh left Julian’s mouth before giving a short answer. “Not tonight.”

“Hm,” it said, as if analyzing his response. The idea of it … thinking … gave me the creeps.

“Will I be taking you straight home?” it asked next.

“Yes, and quickly.”

“Of course,” the oddly human, feminine voice replied as we inched forward.

My brow quirked, but not because I was weirded out by the A.I. What confused me was Julian’s response to its question. He instructed the car to take us to … his home?

My mind whirled until coming up with a reasonable explanation. I’d heard some royals built prison towers on the grounds. They were reserved specifically for criminals who’d committed crimes against the family.

That had to be where I was headed.

It was strange being driven while the front two seats remained vacant. The steering wheel turned smoothly, moving as if controlled by a ghost. There were glittering lights and gadgets all around and I wondered what purpose they served. While our team’s van hadnoneof these perks, these things still wouldn’t have been familiar if it did. If it wasn’t on two wheels and didn’t require a helmet, I wanted nothing to do with it.

We picked up speed near Lord Wilford’s gate and I was glued to my seat. It was easy for Ianites to entrust a machine with their lives, being immortal and all. I, on the other hand, was not.

Almost as soon as the thought entered my mind, a gentle, rolling vibration made my seat rumble. Shocked and even more uncomfortable, I nearly jumped out of my own skin.

“What the …”

“I’m sorry, Miss. Did I frighten you?” the car asked.

Panting, I didn’t answer as I used both hands to hover in the air and away from the seat, doing my best to balance as we moved out onto the street.

“I’ve activated my massage function,” the car announced. “My sensors detected an unusually rapid heartrate. Even for a human,” she added, creeping me out even further.

From the corner of my eye, I caught Julian staring.

“If you don’t like it just … ask her to stop,” he pointed out, still carrying so much tension in his tone, his shoulders.

It also wasn’t lost on me that he said‘ask’and not‘tell’.Meaning, he expected me to ask his car politely to stop groping me. Adding insult to injury, I noted this hunk of metal was officially more well-respected than us humans.

Slowly, I lowered into the seat again, ignoring Julian’s suggestion, andalsoignoring what felt like a hundred actual fingers beneath the fabric of the seat. Instead, I turned to stare out the window.

I had only a vague idea of where his family’s palace was, but knew it was quite the elaborate compound. From footage of annual events hosted there, I recalled it being nearly twice the size of Lord Wilford’s residence, and situated a considerable distance from the fast life of the Capitol.

Julian had given no clue as to what would happen next. He’d woven quite the elaborate lie tonight. We both had, but for two starkly different reasons. The end result had been that two sentinels now believed their prince had taken a Doll.

Me.

“Did you enjoy the gala, Your Highness?” the car asked.

Julian was slow to respond, but when he did, his tone was solemn. “For a while, yes, I suppose you could say it was enjoyable.”

I blinked up at a building that towered so high it nearly reached the clouds. Like many of the other structures in the city, it was a feat in the advancement of Ianite architecture. The array of twinkling lights was both beautiful and breathtaking and I stared in awe. An elaborate system of tracks several stories off the ground wound between buildings, connecting to transit stations that floated high above.

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