Page 52 of The Stolen Princess
“No!” the other boy said. He had a giant smile on his face, making it easy to see that his two front teeth were missing. “She’s on your shoulder.”
“She’s on a boulder?” Drake said back to them. “Why is she on a boulder?”
All three kids bent over laughing, and Myka found herself smiling too.
“No! She’s sitting on your shoulder.”
Drake raised his eyebrows. “I’m getting older?”
“Right by your head!” The toothless boy groaned.
“She’s dead!” Drake yelled dramatically.
A small puff of laughter escaped Myka’s lips. Then immediately, she clamped her mouth shut. She wasn’t going to laugh. He wasn’t funny. So what ifDrake Vestry was good with kids. He was still a kidnapper. Not akidnapper, kidnapper—at least as far as Myka knew—but aprincessnapper.
He was the enemy, wrong about her father. But in every other respect, Drake actually seemedgood.If Drake was good, did that make her father bad? Was her father a terrible man who blew up villages, leaving the survivors to live in poverty? Myka shook her head. Her resolve couldn’t crack. She needed to shore up her defenses. Drake had taken her from her dying father. Hewasthe bad man, not her father. She couldn’t let any of his goodness derail her from believing that.
Drake
Drake loaded suppliesinto the bag tied to his saddle.
“Let’s get some lunch, then get back on the road,” Grady said, coming up beside him to get his canteen from the saddlebag on his horse.
Drake looked behind him. “Did the princess eat?”
“Yeah,” Grady said, looking over to where Myka sat by Winslow and Portlend. “Man, she’s something else.”
“What do you mean?” Drake asked, looking over at her too.
“You know what I mean.” Grady wagged his eyebrows. “I bet you enjoyed the ride here, having her cozied up next to you.”
Drake wouldn’t say that he hadenjoyedthe ride. There was a war raging inside his head, a battle between wanting to comfort Myka while also trying to keep everything professional.
Grady smiled. “Maybe I want a turn riding with her.”
Drake tried to mask his irritation. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think the princess is starting to trust me. We should probably build upon that relationship.”
Grady scoffed. “She’s never going to give you any information about the weapons. She’s way too stubborn for that.”
“No, I bet I can get her to trust me.” Drake didn’t really believe that, but it was better than having Grady next to her, trying to gain Myka’s trust.
Grady’s expression turned to disbelief. “There is no way you can get the princess to trust you. Youkidnappedher.”
Before Drake had kidnapped her, he had thought Myka had liked him. She tried to act like she didn’t, but he could see through it. There was a big part of him that wanted to get back to that relationship—the relationship where she didn’t look at him with so much hatred.
“I still think I can get her to trust me,” Drake said, keeping his gaze on her. Her brown hair was tied into a long braid, and the gray working-class dress hung around her legs and knees. Her chin rested against her hand and she stared blankly into the fire in front of her.
“Do you want to make some sort of wager?” Grady asked.
His eyebrows shot up. “Like a bet?”
Grady shrugged. “Yeah.”
Drake should say no. Bets werenevera good idea, but there was something really tempting about this bet—the built-in excuse that it gave him to always be close to Myka. “How would we even measure a bet like this?” he asked.
Grady leaned his elbow against his horse’s saddle. “Well, we know her father is sick and dying, and she’s hiding that information from us. So, let’s make that the bet. I bet that you can’t get the princess to tell you the truth about her father.”
“And if I do?” Drake asked. “What do I win?”
