Page 55 of A Girl and HER Prince
Not yet! Not yet!She dug her feet into the wall, jamming every toe she had into the crevices. Venice shouted for her to come to him, and she scrambled upward, finding his shoulder next—even as she wondered why she hadn’t slipped from his grasp yet or how she was pulling herself up, only that she’d do anything to keep from surrendering to death’s hungry jaws.
Screaming, her fingers found the branches and she hooked her arm around them, wrapping herself around the scratchy pine and bark. Venice still had her wrist. He brought her farther into the tree, away from the rocks that still pelted the walls around them.
“Do you have a good grip on the branch?” Venice’s voice flooded her ears. His whole face was awash in pain.
“Yes,” she sobbed. She held her face away from the prickling needles.
“… make sure they can hold your weight.”
That’s when she noticed the branch cracking under her hands. She pulled herself farther into the tree, crying out in agony as the needles dug into her unprotected skin. Venice wasn’t the only one bleeding now.
He was shouting down at the assassin below as more rocks came their way. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, or even what was coming out of her mouth as they moved through the cruelty of these branches that whipped and scalded and ripped at her hair. What she’d do for that wetsuit! Every part of her felt exposed.
They reached the top of the rocky bluffs. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She hadn’t known she’d been crying; more so now that they were almost free. The horror of what this man was doing to them was only now hitting her—they were less than insects to him. She slid into the dirt on the other side of the tree, shaking with anger and fear now that she was on firm ground.
They’d made it! They were out of the fishbowl!
Venice’s hands were on her back. She felt scraped raw, but she was alive. It was more than she expected when she’d dangled through the air with nothing but his bloody grip holding to her wrist. He hadn’t let her go! He’d been wracked with the torment of those vicious injuries, and he hadn’t let her go! She fell into his arms with a tearful cry, not sure how to return the favor, short of stitching him up.
One glance past his shoulder at the glittering lagoon below showed her that their pursuer wasn’t about to take their same death-defying route, in fact, he was retreating—a good thing for him because she’d been ready to defend herself with whatever boulder or fallen tree on hand.
“He’s going back the way he came,” Venice said. The man dove back in the water with the precision of a Navy SEAL.
They were dealing with a trained expert.
A drop of rain somehow reached Livvy through the thick canopy. They were in a forest of pine, beech, and oak. She noticed the olive trees, too—those and the cicadas singing loudly through the trees were the stark reminders that they weren’t anywhere near home, and without any of the life-saving necessities of police and paramedics.
“You’re bleeding again,” she said. Their makeshift bandage on his forearm was soaked-through. The abuse he’d taken on that climb had surely made it worse. They’d have to try to bandage it up again or he’d be too weak to walk out of this. She noticed a rip over her shoulder and began to tear at it. “You can take my other sleeve.”
He let out a tired chuckle. “The way you’re going you won’t have anything but me to cover you from this storm.”
That forced a reluctant smile from her lips. Her humiliation would be worth it to keep him alive, but at the same time? That wasnevergoing to happen. Thunder rumbled above them. Her gaze shot back up through the foliage above them.
That storm! She hadn’t thought too much about it earlier, but seeing the dark clouds gathering above them made her heart speed up again. “We’ve got to find a phone,” she said. Livvy almost had torn away the last of the fabric. “A little help, please.”
His fingers pressed into her arm while he tried to work off the rest of her sleeve. He was moving slower. Not a good sign. She was not set up for blood transfusions here. She wrenched the last of her sleeve off and this time wrapped it around his forearm as tightly as she could.
He pressed his lips together. Clearly, he was keeping from her how much pain he was in.
“Where’s that radio you had earlier?” she asked.
“The cave,” he said, “and good riddance. It’s got GPS on it.”
“Wouldn’t we want that?” Confusion and regret rang through her. “They could ping our location.”
“And kill us,” he said. Nothing about his expression showed he was joking, not that he would at a time like this, but this felt too surreal. “Maybe that’s how they found us in the first place.”
She stared at him, wondering if he’d finally lost it, but those brilliant Tyndarian eyes of his had never been clearer and more certain. “This was an inside job,” he said. “It has to be. They’ve got spies everywhere.”
He’d said something like this earlier. “Why are the Murder—Murd…” What were they called again?
“Myrdons,” he supplied the name then clenched his teeth when she tied off the bandage.
“Yes, the Myrdons. Why do they think you’re a threat?”
“My uncle leads them. His name is Atreus Mnon Tyndarian. And he’s been killing off his family one by one, so he can rule. He launched the Tirrojan Revolution thirty years ago by assassinating his oldest brother, the King of Tirreoy, and his whole family. After that, the Myrdons went after my father’s family. We stood between him and the crown, since Atreus Mnon is the youngest, but he couldn’t get all of us…”
No, he hadn’t. Livvy had actually heard some of this in the news lately, about a missing princess who’d just been found. She was the only surviving child of this king, a modern-day Anastasia and Cinderella all in one—she’d married the heir of the billionaire enterprises, WaterSprites.
