Page 5 of The Stolen Princess
Drake looked around the room at the last three kings. They seemed hesitant.
“I’ll do it,” Reddick finally said.
“Same with me,” Hilton answered.
“I guess I’m outnumbered.” Marx sighed. “Count me in.”
Drake let out a breath. The mission was on. Now the kings needed to come up with a plan.
3
Myka
Six Months Later
The Kingdom of Tolsten
August 2260
Princess Myka stared blankly at the breakfast plate in her hands, absentmindedly pushing clumps of eggs back and forth with her fork.
“More,” her father coughed out.
Myka lifted her fork to feed him another bite of food. She watched her father as he chewed. He’d been wearing his navy silk pajamas for two days now. Piles of white fluffy pillows were stacked around him in bed. She leaned back into her chair, glancing around the suite. Since the king had become too ill to leave his room, the staff had brought in a rectangular conference table so his meetings could continue as usual. The couches and chairs had been pushed against the walls to make room. An oversized maroon chair was now permanently placed next to his bed for Myka or, when she wasn’t around, nurse Blanch. His nightstands were littered with medicines, tissues, bowls to catch his vomit, and glasses full of water he refused to drink. The room was a vivid reminder of how much things had changed in the last few months.
It wasn’t just the king’s suite that had changed. The illness had changed Myka’s life too. Her morning and evening meals were now eaten by her father’s bedside. The already quiet Tolsten House had become even more removed from society.
She scooped a pile of eggs onto her fork and lifted it to her father’s mouth for another bite. He weakly opened wide enough for the food to be dropped in. One piece of egg fell off the fork, landing in the hollow space below his chin. Myka quickly set her fork down so she could pick up the soggy egg. Her heart broke a little as she wiped at the loose skin at his neck. It was hard to see her mighty father—the king of Tolsten—crippled by illness. Her father had hired a new doctor almost a year ago to treat him. Doctor Von said her father was plagued by the pre-Desolation disease, cancer.
Over the last ten months, ever since he had come home from the kingdom of Albion and that tragic wedding, King Adler’s health had declined. His once tanned skin had paled to a pigment Myka didn’t recognize on him, and the black strands of his usually thick hair had thinned. But the most significant change was the way his body drooped. Broad shoulders and toned muscles had been replaced with loose skin and gaunt features. At least his deep blue eyes hadn’t changed. It was a trait that they both shared. Myka bit the side of her cheek as she tried not to think about his sickness or how much she would lose if he didn’t recover.
The king’s declining health was a closely guarded secret in the kingdom of Tolsten. Her father didn’t want anyone to know about his condition. He said it would ruin his image as a powerful king among the other six kingdoms. To keep the secret, precautions had been taken. The staff who dealt with the king had been dramatically reduced. Most of the king’s meetings had been canceled. He now only met with Commander Stoddard and occasionally with a few High Rulers who knew the secret about his health. Her father’s secretary, Nolan, handled everything else. They had told the staff and the newswriters that the king was recovering from knee surgery and would be back to his old schedule soon. For now, people believed that excuse, but as the weeks went on and his health declined, Myka worried that they weren’t going to be able to keep it a secret very much longer.
She forced a smile and went to scoop up more eggs, but he shook his head. “I’m done.” He closed his eyes as he spoke. “What are you going to do today?”
It was the sixteenth day of the month—the day Myka always snuck out to go see Rommel and Joett. She had been secretly sneaking out of Tolsten House to visit the older couple for the last two and a half years. If her father found out, he’d be furious. His overprotective nature didn’t allow her to do anything, but now wasn’t the time to argue about that. She set the plate on the nightstand and sat up straighter. “The normal stuff. School and piano lessons and then I think I’ll ride Bronze around the grounds for a few hours.” Myka held her breath, hoping he didn’t ask any more questions. She didn’t like lying to her father, but she didn’t like being locked inside her house like a prisoner either. She decided to change the subject to avoid more lies. “I hear you have a meeting this morning with your secretary and Commander Stoddard to discuss the new procedures from the most recent Council of Essentials. The staff is buzzing about clothing dyes. They’re saying it’s only going to be a matter of weeks before they can start buying colored clothes.”
Her father’s eyelids lifted open. “Transportation and colored clothes for the working class. It’s ridiculous.”
Myka smirked. “Your advisors voted for those things at the last Council of Essentials. So technically, you voted for them.”
“Clarke and Duggless are idiots,” her father muttered as he situated his body to get more comfortable. “I should have sent someone else to the Council in my stead.”
Myka pushed a cheery smile onto her lips. “Well, you’ll be at the next Council ten years from now, and you can vote however you want.”
Her father’s weak gaze drifted to his nurse, Blanch. She mixed his morning medicines by the dresser.
“Yeah, I’ll be at the next one.”
The wobbly edge in his voice didn’t sound like he truly believed that, but Myka refused to give up hope. They had been trying some new herbal medicine and oils that she’d gotten from Joett. Joett had a way with natural concoctions. Her father’s doctor had dismissed the medicines from the start, saying that the king needed more than a few crushed herbs and plants to heal him, but the natural-based remedies had helped. Myka could see the difference. They just needed more time to completely get rid of the darkness that had taken over his body.
“Are you going to sit in on my meeting this morning, hear how the new essential items will be rolled out?” her father asked. He closed his eyes again like his eyelids were too heavy to hold up.
Normally, Myka wouldn’t miss a political meeting, but she’d already made plans to sneak out. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it today. I have a lot of school work to catch up on.”
“School work doesn’t compare to what you can learn in real life. If you’re going to be queen soon, you need to know what is going on in the kingdom.”
Myka didn’t like when her father talked like that. She didn’t like what the conversation implied. The only way she’d be queen soon would be if her father was dead. She shook his words away.
