A Dance of Princes (The Heir, Book 1)

Chapter 19

Author’s Note: I’m so sorry this took so long. You know how it is, college gets more of my spare time these days. I hope you enjoy!

After taking a quick shower and dressing appropriately for the weather, I had Octavian escort me to the Botanical Gardens since I didn’t know where it exactly was; I was blindfolded that night. Jack was leaning against a tree of the entrance into the path we walked in and he straightened himself when he caught sight of me approaching him.

“Your Highness,” he greeted, but his face wasn’t joyous. It had a look of seriousness that made me feel nervous. I’ve never seen Jack at this kind of level of solemnity.

“Good morning, Jack. Is there something wrong?”

He extended an arm that gestured into the path. “Walk with me.” And so I did.

There were a few minutes of silence, and I couldn’t help but take in all of the little details of our surroundings. The path had black marks that signified the ricocheting of bullets; some of the bushes looked like they were tormented while pieces of shredded material from the floating lanterns laid on the ground. There were no plans to clean the area as the forensics team took the entire two days trying to scout and hunt for evidence that may lead the military and forensics to a possible location, suspect, anything that would help identify these people.

“It’s frightening coming back here, isn’t it?”

“A bit. I’ve had a couple of short episodes since then, post-traumatic stress thing.” My hand involuntarily patches the area where the bullet wound once was on my arm. It was probably the most painful experience I’ve ever had the displeasure to encounter.

“I’ve been meaning to discuss this matter with you, but we were both in a weak state so I didn’t want to push it until now.”

“Proceed.”

“The night of the attack, I was assaulted right after I left you and Prince Octavian to your night. It all happened so fast I didn’t know what was going on. Someone hit me in the head with an assault rifle; I fell into the bushes. They covered my mouth with their hands, and they were unbelievably strong. I couldn’t get their hand off me. They kept asking the same thing. ‘Where is the entrance to the catacombs?!’ They asked it over and over and over. I didn’t want to give it away because that was classified information. When I refused to answer, they shot me in the arms and legs and left me in between the hedges. I’d probably be dead if it weren’t for Prince Octavian finding me there.”

“Why were they asking you for the entrance to the catacombs?” I tried to think of any possible explanations as to why they would ask about the entrance to the catacombs, but my mind was too busy focusing on the things they did to Jack. Again, I felt a flow of guilt in me for that happening to him. We shouldn’t have left him alone.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I shouldn’t have kept it to myself. I need to tell the General.”

“I’ll go with you in case he goes hard on you. I personally would waive you of not approaching me since you didn’t give away its location. It’s probably the only safe place in the Palace of a rebel attack.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

“Come on, let’s go see if he’s in.”

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“Why didn’t you bring this up before?! I could have you suspended from work for keeping valuable information to yourself. I could even have you thrown in jail for treason!”