Page 9 of The Heart of the King

A knock on the double doors leading out of the room made Jazz sit up as DavidOrWhoeverHeWas called for the person to enter.

The man who entered wore a suit and had one of those curly wires from the back of his coat to his ear. “Your Royal Highness,” he started, with a slight bow. “The pilot said it will be about two hours before we can take off. Is there anything else you’d like to do while we’re here?”

“Not particularly. Anything you would like to do, Jasmine?”

She shrugged. “I’d kind of like to visit Hoover Dam, but I’m not sure how far it is or how long it would take.”

The prince looked at his security guy. “What do you think?”

The man shook his head. “We haven’t had a chance to vet the trip. Let me see what else might be available.”

“Thank you,” Jazz told him, though the prince hadn’t seemed inclined to.

“My pleasure, ma’am.” The man bowed her direction then closed the door behind him.

She stood and went back to her seat at the table, leaving her phone behind to charge. “Tell me about your country.”

He popped a bite of bagel in his mouth and thought for a moment.

“First, tell me what name you’re using now. Because WhoeverThisGuyIs isn’t working in my head.” She picked up a muffin.

“I called myself NotCharles for a while in my own head this morning,” he admitted. “But I like your argument for King David, so I guess I’m going to go with that.”

“All right then, soon-to-be King David, tell me about your country.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s home. There’s wonderful people and beautiful places to go. Some of them are nice. Some aren’t. Both the people and the places. It’s far enough north that there’s not much sun this time of year, but come June, there’s not much darkness to offset that.”

That piqued her interest. “Can you see the Northern Lights?”

“Sometimes,” he confirmed. “You have to be in the right place at the right time, but yes.”

“Then I’m sold. That’s been on my bucket list for years.”

He gave her a small smile. “Hopefully, there are many more reasons to keep you there.”

It turnedout there wasn’t anything they could do for the couple of hours they needed to wait before leaving, so David ended up pulling out his tablet and trying to read a document he’d been sent.

Technically, it was pure speculation, but Esme had sent him a draft of a new treaty between Auverignon and Islas del Sargasso. Given the relationship between himself as soon-to-be monarch and the Sargassian monarch, they wanted to have their treaty hammered out quickly.

It was pretty boilerplate, with only a few minor changes to the previous treaty. The biggest change was the names and slight tweaks to some of the tariffs on different items they traded with each other.

He’d propose a couple of minor changes, but nothing big. Most likely Esme would come back somewhere in the middle, and they’d call it good.

Jasmine had been scrolling through something on her phone, though it didn’t look quite like social media.

“Sir?”

David looked up to see Stewart standing in the doorway. “Yes?”

“We’ll be ready to leave in about ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Stewart.”

Jasmine swiped up on her phone and set it on the table next to her. “What do we need to do to get ready?”

David shrugged. “They will have taken care of everything.” A door in the outer room slammed shut. “They’re likely loading luggage now. When they’re ready for us, we’ll go down a back elevator and out a side door to the car.”

“Okay.”

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