Page 4 of Royal Guard

That feeling I had when I first saw her was back. Like something inside me had been caught and lifted by the wind. Whatwasthat? And the attraction... I’d felt it before, but now, looking into her eyes, it was ten times stronger, a force of goddamn nature. When I looked at her, I couldn’t stop. Those fine, delicate features. The lips, so soft, the creamy skin—

Across her throat, I saw a hair-thin line of red where the knife had pressed. He’d marred her.

I wheeled around with a growl, just in time to see the guy run at me, knife outstretched. Hot rage boiledup inside me and I took two big steps forward, my body filling the aisle, a protective wall between him and her. As he reached me, I roared right in his face and slammed a right hook into the side of the head.Get away from her!

I knew this was risky. The memories were right there, hanging above me like a thousand ton weight, ready to descend. Fighting like this could bring them down on me and then I’d freeze and this bastard would kill me.

But the only other option was to walk away. And I wasn’t going to let her be harmed. No way. I gave a low growl, dodged the knife, and thumped him again.

The guy went staggering back, but stayed on his feet. He was tough: there weren’t many guys who’d still be standing after a punch from me. He wasn’t as big as me, but he seemed to be all lean, wiry muscle. And he knew how to use a knife. I saw now that he had a buddy, over on the other side of the cabin. That guy was struggling with the two guards I’d met earlier. Another two guards lay dead on the floor.

This wasn’t some crazy guy with a knife. This was a professional hit. They’d waited until she was on a commercial flight, the one place her guards weren’t allowed to carry guns. Then they’d bided their time until the middle of the night, when half the guards could be silently killed in their sleep. Someone had planned to kill her. A vicious, cowardly attack... but well planned. It would have succeeded, if I hadn’t heard her scream. And the assassins were well trained. My eyes narrowed, an unsettling thought scratching at the back of my mind.

The guy I was fighting stabbed at me again. I swayed back out of the way and as he stepped under alight, I got my first good look at his face. His skin was weirdly pale and stretched tight over his cheekbones. His dark hair was slicked back and plastered to his scalp with gel: it made him look almost skeletal.

I landed a good hit on his ribs, feeling my training coming back. He panted in pain and his lips drew back in a snarl. “Who are you?!” His accent was thick, something guttural and European.

I risked a glance at where the two guards were fighting the other assassin. The young guard had him in a headlock and the old guard had pried the knife from his fingers. “No one,” I muttered.

There was one other person in first class, a woman about the same age as the Princess, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her run over to the Princess, unfasten her seatbelt and help her up out of her seat. They started backing towards the curtain that led to economy.Yes. Good. Get her out of here.The guy I was fighting was tough, but I was holding my own. Once the Princess was safe, I should be able to take him down.

The guy I was fighting could sense the tide turning. He looked at his buddy, already restrained. He looked at me and the murderous rage on my face. He looked at the Princess, backing away to safety….

He pulled something from his belt and threw it. It hit the exit door in the side of the plane and stuck there. It was only when I saw the red light flashing on it that I realized what it was.

I turned and ran at the Princess. Launched myself at her and bore her to the floor even as I screamed at her toget down!

The force of the explosion knocked me forward, heat scorching my back. Then I was being pulledbackwards by a howling, gale-force wind.

I craned my head around and saw the ragged hole where the exit door used to be. The hole everything was now being sucked out of.

4

KRISTINA

We forget.We sit in our cozy, pressurized cabins, insulated from sound and wind and cold, and it slips our minds thatthat’s the sky, out there.Air so thin you can’t breathe, so cold it freezes your lungs. A place humans can’t survive. And now, suddenly, the sky wasright there, twenty feet away, reaching in through the gaping hole to claw everything warm and living out into the blackness.

I’d wound up on my back in the aisle, my head towards the hole. My hair was streaming out, sucked so hard that the roots screamed in protest. My airline pajamas were rippling in the wind, the fabric snapping and jerking as if a giant was plucking at it. The air was getting thinner and what little there was was rushing past so fast, it was hard to snatch a breath.

All around me, anything not bolted down was tumbling across the floor and shooting out of the hole. Life jackets, newspapers, pillows... a coffee cup flewacross the cabin, clipped a seat and shattered, raining down fragments. There was a flash of silver as a fork shot past, missed the hole and embedded itself in the bulkhead like an arrow.

But I didn’t move an inch. Becausehewas pinning me to the floor like a rock on a leaf. He was taking some of his weight on his forearms, so as not to crush me, but he had enough of his muscled form—

I swallowed.Onme...that I wasn’t going anywhere. His chest was pressed to my chest andgod,it was like rock, not an inch of fat on him. My fingers and toes were already going numb from the cold, but the front of my body, where it touched him... that wasso warm.

Everything my mother had always told me to fear: a commoner and a huge, brutish one, more beast than man, with his threadbare clothes and dirty boots, pushing me down on the ground. Her voice in my head,men like that only want one thing—

I looked up into his eyes and I saw it there. Hedidwant that. And I wasn’t ready for the answering flush that started in my face and went right down through my body, a need I hadn’t even known I had, suddenly awakened. But that wasn’t all he wanted. Those blue eyes were burning as he glanced between me and the assassin who’d tried to kill me.

He wanted to protect me. A different kind of warmth flooded my body. I reached up and instinctively clung onto his shoulders and it was like tethering myself to a sun-warmed rock. As long as I stayed there, I knew I’d be alright.

Movement made me glance towards the hole. The assassin took three running steps towards it and then flung himself through. Just as he jumped, he looked right at me. That glare of pure hate again: I wasnothing, an inferior species. Then he was gone, lost in the blackness.

“Just hold on!” The man who’d saved me had to yell over the howl of the wind. “It’ll get easier as we go lower!”

I nodded. He was right: we were descending, the floor tilting at a steeper and steeper angle. The pilot was taking us down to where the air would be thick enough to breathe. One assassin was gone and Emerik and Jakov had the other pinned to the floor. Just another few minutes and we’d all be alright—

A scream split the air. I looked over my rescuer’s shoulder and my stomach lurched. Caroline, my maid, was clinging onto the top of a seat, her body entirely horizontal in mid air, flapping like a flag. And her grip was slipping. As I watched, her fingers failed and she shot past us, straight towards the hole.No!

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