Page 33 of The Stolen Princess
It didn’t add up, but one thing was for sure, Drake needed to get his head in the game.
He needed to summon all of his professionalism. This was a job, and from this moment on, the princess would be nothing more than a means to an end. That’s how it had to be. Drake had bigger goals and things going on than his five-second attraction to Princess Mykaleen.
His heart had dropped when he’d first realized who Myka was. It was one thing to kidnap someone, but another thing to kidnap someone youliked. The fact that Drake had met her before and liked her complicated things. Now Drake felt sick. From the beginning, he had been against the Council’s plan to kidnap Adler’s daughter. This new revelation made it worse. If he had known he’d been talking to King Adler’s daughter, he would have behaved differently. Drake would have acted like a soldier. He wouldn’t have flirted with her or swapped stories about scars. He would have used his time to try and find out about the weapons.
But there was nothing he could do about that now. He had to leave all of his mistakes in the past and move forward like a soldier.
He had to ignore the weeping girl sitting in front of him on his horse. She was sad and broken, but there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t comfort her or make her feel better, and he hated that. Hehatedbeing the bad guy. His father had drilled into his head to never make a woman cry, and when it came to Mykaleen Adler, that was exactly what Drake had done. But this was different.
He did thisforAlbion.
He sucked in a deep breath, driving his horse forward even faster. He needed this horseback ride to be over as soon as possible.
Drake wasn’t sure how much longer he could helplessly watch the princess sob.
Myka
After Arco had left, Shaggy Hair had lifted Myka’s crying body onto Drake’s horse while he swung a leg up over the saddle behind her.
The first two hours of the horseback ride, Myka had sobbed. Her tears had rolled down her cheeks, wetting her neck, dampening her shirt. Then there was the moisture coming from her nose. Everyone always acted like the puffy eyes and the red face were the worst side effects of ugly crying, but those people were idiots. The worst side effect by far was the never-ending snot that accompanied a heavy cry. Myka seriously considered turning around and wiping her nose on Drake’s bare arm, but she decided an action like that would probably get her slapped across the face or something worse. Not that Drake had been mean to her, because he hadn’t. During the worst part of her sobs, he had urged her to lean back against him, but she would never do that. Myka had done everything she could to keep from touching him. She wanted nothing to do with the despicable man. She didn’t even want her clothes to brush up against him. He’d been following her for the last month, targeting her. He’d used his charms to make her trust him. And she hated him for it. So instead, she had to settle for wiping the excessive snot moisture on the sleeves of her gray jacket. Eventually, her cries subsided, and her tears crusted on the sides of her cheeks, dried by the wind hitting her face.
She had sat rigid for as long as she could, her shoulders drooping forward, but eventually, her head had nodded forward and her heavy eyelids had closed. She must have relaxed against Drake’s body for support. Her cheek had leaned against his chest, and her head had rested under his chin. That’s where she’d found herself when her eyes opened. For a moment before that, she’d felt safe. But it became clear that she wasn’t safe. She had straightened as soon as she’d woken up, hating the fact that she was pressed up against the enemy.
The other four men on horses surrounded them as they rode. The sixth man was back at the Denton Inn waiting for her father’s reply. The pace was fast, and her mind went through the geography of Tolsten. They headed northwest, and in a day or two, Myka guessed they would reach one of the Tolsten lakes. Maybe they would even take a boat across the lake. It seemed unlikely. There was a Tolsten army base in Camgrove, and it didn’t make sense for the kidnappers to camp next to the army they were trying to hide from.
Every once in a while, Myka would glance behind her, hoping to see dust flying in the air from the tires of transporters chasing after them. Only people in government positions or soldiers had access to transporters and personal transporters, so the fact that these men were riding on horses must have meant they were working-class rebels. Transporters and PTs were patterned after pre-Desolation cars and motorcycles and were much faster than horses. But no one at Tolsten House would know she was gone until dinner time when she didn’t show up to eat with her father. If her father was still hallucinating, like he had been when she’d left him that morning, he might not even notice when she didn’t show up for their nightly meal together. But if he did notice, he would send his entire army after her.
Despair struck her in the chest.
Her father.
Had his fever worsened? Was he dying? Myka wouldn’t even be there to hold his hand, to see him take his last breath, to reassure him. If he died, she’d have nobody left. Everyone she loved would have left her...alone.
Loneliness—it was something she’d felt quite a lot in her eighteen years. If her father died, she’d really be all alone. She’d thought she had Rommel and Joett, but she didn’t even have them. At least, she didn’t think she had them. She didn’t know why Drake had been at their house, but it felt significant, more than a coincidence.
Her mind circled through other scenarios. If her father died, who would come to find her? It seemed like a selfish thing to think about. She should be praying that her father would live, even if it meant she would die or never be found. But she wanted to be found. She wanted to matter so much to someone that they would do anything to find her. She had to believe that her father would live and that he would risk everything to save her, but if that didn’t happen, she needed to save herself.
Myka didn’t even know how to save herself. She’d lived a sheltered life. She didn’t know how to fight. She’d never win in a footrace against these men or in a boxing match. She had no weapons. Her gun was still safely packed in her bag that had been tied to Bronze’s saddle. At this point, there was nothing she could do.
She glanced over her shoulder at Drake. Her captor. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she’d have acaptor.She had flirted with him,likedhim. Now, she questioned her ability to judge character. Everyone who meant something to her had turned on her. Clearly, Myka’s judgment couldn’t be trusted.
She looked around at the rest of the men. She was scared of them—of what they could do to her—scared of the way they had so easily taken her. The man with the long face and goatee was already staring at her all the time, giving her the creeps. She didn’t think these men would kill her. Most likely, they wanted something in exchange for her—something like money.
Unless they were the same men who had killed Princess Seran, and this was all part of a bigger plan, a princess assassination plan. She swallowed back the rising dread inside of her. Myka needed to find out what she was dealing with. She needed to know the terms they had written in their letter. Knowledge was her only source of strength right now.She lifted her chin, vowing that there would be no more tears. From that moment on, she would be strong. Drake would see a different side to Myka, a side that wouldn’t be easy to deal with.
“Where are we going?” she asked. It was her first question. The first thing she had said to Drake since he’d kidnapped her.
“That’s not for you to know.” His words came out clipped. A big change from the way he had spoken to her earlier that day.
She raised her chin higher, refusing to be intimidated. She needed to appear tough, like they couldn’t walk all over her. “What? Like if you tell me, you’ll have to kill me or something?”
“Something like that,” he said, but there was no joking in his voice. She brushed off his threat, focusing on the land in front of them. Right now wasn’t a good time to ask the million questions she had in her mind. The pounding hooves and the jostling horse made it difficult to hear and carry on a conversation. Myka would try again as soon as they stopped.
Drake tugged at the reins of his speckled horse, pulling the animal to the right. Myka glanced at the other riders. They veered right as well. The land around them was empty, nothing but trees and scattered ruins from Desolation—decaying cement roads, large pipes that stuck out of the ground with weeds growing inside of them, and twisted metal choked by tree branches. The horses slowed as they entered a thick mass of oak, and there were several times Myka had to duck or lean to avoid hitting a branch with her head. These men were too smart to travel near cities and houses. A group this size would draw too much attention. Especially with ropes tied around her waist and hands. Nothing screamed suspicious like a hostage. Myka guessed they would stick to the wooded areas for the majority of their ride.
The air dampened around them, and the trickling sound of water mixed in with the stomping hoofbeats.
“We’ll rest the horses here,” the old man in front of them called out to the group.
