I hated flights. Never liked them. Short ones, long ones. Especially anything over two hours.
But after these past two plane rides, I couldn't find the energy to pace the aisles in my usual paranoia-induced fear. Underneath dimmed blue lights, I slumped against one of the jets' windows, fielding calls left and right. The last time my voicemail filled so quickly was after Nik announced my new status to the world. Friends I never knew I had crawled out of the woodwork to reconnect.
Being polite and friendly with those people exhausted me.
Tonight, I'd have given anything to deal with them. I could barely muster the strength to accept the calls. All the energy and emotion I had left drained from my voice, left my eyes dry, changed my tone to steely apathy.
"Two in her chest. They wouldn't tell me the extent of damage over the phone. Stable, yes. Transferred to Oslo. Dad's there, too. He's alright, but I haven't been able to speak with him more than a few minutes. He doesn't know how she is, either. I'm sorry, Gemma, I don't know anything else. I'll keep you posted."
Robotic. Pre-planned. The same questions and answers again and again.
Einar finally snatched my phone, but not until I'd spoken to Nik and Marc. I could barely get the words out, asking them to swing by the hospital if they could, for my Dad's sake. He shouldn't be alone any longer than he had to.
"You think Becky's alright?" I asked, staring at the endless, dark ocean. Einar eased himself into the seat beside mine. His tie was off, his sleeves rolled to his elbows; a redness clung to his nose and eyes. Earlier in the flight he'd asked permission to call his wife and kids and he'd been a bit of a mess since. Not that I dared point it out. "She and a family she's never met are planning a funeral. I should've stayed with her. Mom's alive."
His dark eyes were unreadable.
"Have some hope." If I had the energy to glare, I would have. "She's sedated and intubated, but she's healing. She will heal, Einar."
"Did you tell Miss Awles the truth?"
"No."
Becky and I had stood side-by-side in the quietest wing of the hospital, staring down at Darcy's ashen, expressionless face. Staff wouldn't allow Emma into the room, and I was waiting for a phone call from the London hospital about Mom's condition. "He's not supposed to be here." Becky twined her fingers in between his cold ones. "He's supposed to walk her into her first day of school. Bring her to her first dance. Teach her how to drive. How to play soccer. Give her away at her own wedding. He can't leave us this soon."
Nothing I could have said would make her feel any better. I wasn't about to make her feel worse. "That's something you sit down for," I told Einar, "not whisper in her ear on your way past her dead fiancé."
He nodded and, ever the conversationalist, reclined in his chair and shut his eyes. Taking the hint that I should do the same, I turned towards the window and tried to sleep. But I didn't. How could I? A tiny light in the water, some cargo ship surrounded by darkness, disappeared beneath a layer of clouds, and that sight was more peaceful than anything going through my mind.
*
Mom lay unmoving on white sheets. Her pale hair, a honey-gold like mine now transitioning to silver, had been reduced to a flat, messy braid. Having put a career before family, she'd never been a young mother, but now she looked a hundred years old, gaunt and pale, a shadow of the pioneering titan she used to be. She was just asleep, I told myself, remembering Darcy's uncanny stillness. Just asleep. But the ventilator breathed for her in a mechanical way that never seemed easy. I caught myself staring hard at her fingers, expecting to see those manicured nails clench the mattress with every clockwork breath.
I was afraid to touch her, afraid to disrupt the delicate balance her vitals had achieved on the bedside monitor. Afraid that I might pass on an infection to her even with every precaution taken, afraid that I was a curse.
"I'm sorry," I told her, resting a shaky hand on her knee.
I wasn't sure how long I'd stayed in the chair beside her, lulled into a dazed state by steady beeps and breaths, but a solemn-faced young nurse eventually set down his clipboard and touched my coat sleeve. "Your father would like to see you," the man said. "I can take you to him."
"Can you tell me what's going on here, first? Is she okay?"
"She's doing as well as she possibly could be. I'd be happy to explain anything you like, but I got the sense that your father wanted to tell to you."
A knot of tension in my stomach wound itself tighter. Was I going to hear the same news I'd delivered Becky? That there was some sort of complication? "I'll wait for him to say," I told the nurse, forcing myself upright.
The elevator and subsequent walk down the hall to Dad's room -easily identified from the pair of guards stationed outside it- had me imagining a hundred terrible outcomes. What was he going to say? And how was his health, after the heart attack?
The uniformed men stepped aside at the sight of me. Thanking the nurse, I watched Dad for a moment in the doorway. A newspaper lay on his lap as he cleaned his glasses.
"Dad!" I rushed to him, not afraid to throw my arms around him. The newspaper crunched between us. His glasses fell askew, but he never bothered fixing them, squinting at me instead. I backed off upon noticing the IV attached to his arm.
He held me at length, blue eyes moist and heavy. "What happened to your face, Al?"
"My face?" He pointed to room's abstract art installation- some framed, generic watercolor sunrise. I peered into its glass cover, all at once feeling the warmth from the Baker's punch. "Oh. Nothing. When we rescued Emma I slipped on the stairs and banged my chin on the railing."
"She's okay?" He sunk deeper into his pillow with a reluctant sigh. Like Mom, he wasn't a spring chicken, and the etched wrinkles around his mouth were growing ever more prominent.
"Safe and sound." I examined the boring painting, eager to change the subject. From the sound of it, word hadn't reached him about Trisha or Darcy, and I was too exhausted to repeat the sad story. "What happened?"
"Everything was as it should be. Your mother had just stood to make a speech when-" His heart rate jumped twenty beats higher on the screen.
"No, no, nevermind," I urged, grabbing his hand. "Are you feeling better?"
"Too much stress on the old ticker is all. Felt some pains, but they're going away now that I can see you. This is all just a precaution. How's your mother?"
I hung my head, staring into the bleached tile floor. "She hasn't woken up."
Grimacing, he propped himself up using his elbows. "What'd they tell you?"
"The nurse said I should speak to you."
"Ah." He squeezed my hand, and his voice came out tight. Tears slipped past his tensed jaw. "Allison, there's a good chance that the mother we know and love won't come back. It's a miracle she isn't dead. Doctors said there was extensive trauma, trauma that leads to permanent damage. At this point, if she wakes up, there's no knowing the full extent."
"If?" I asked in a tiny voice. "That's not good enough."
"She's a fighter, just like you." He beckoned me onto the bed, but I couldn't crawl up there next to him, as much as I wanted to. I shot up, running my hands over my face, through my hair.
"Sometimes 'if' is all we get."
If.
A gentle knock on the door stopped my pacing. "Mr. Stevens. Your Majesty."
Dad glanced over first, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. His expression shifted into a somber smile. "Marcus, is it?" he asked, wiping his eyes on his sheet.
He nodded and set a plastic jello container beside possibly my only parent. "They were only selling the green one," he explained, pairing it with a plastic spoon.
"I tell you, they're trying to starve me." Dad peeled back the lid, trying to smooth the cracks in his voice. "I've lost more weight here than I ever did on those fitness DVDs."
With my father content, Marcus turned his attention on me. "Allison." He stepped forward to give me a hug, but seemed to think better of it beside the pair of guards.
"Hey."
"They sent me to fetch you." He anticipated my snapped 'Who?' before it rolled off my tongue. "Prince Niklas and Chief Braaten."
"I just got here. I'm not leaving."
"Al, hunny."
I turned toward the bed. "Yeah, Dad?"
"You got in at eleven this morning. It's five o'clock." That late? Already? I looked beyond his weary frown and towards the darkening sky outside the window. "Let your mom and I rest. Go into the city, eat a good dinner, and get some sleep. You can bring me leftovers tomorrow morning. I'm a chef. I need to eat better than the average hospital fare."
"They are very safe here," Marcus agreed with another glance toward the guards. "I would not separate you if it was not extremely important. We are only a few doors down the hall."
I ignored him and his proffered hand. "So was Darcy, and now he's on a flight home to Australia for burial."
Dad gasped. "What? Is Becky...?"
"With his family. She's headed out a day late." Because she has to handle her mother's affairs. "I'll tell you all about it. I just can't right now."
Dad nodded. "Understandable." He looked back toward my friend, who waited by the door patiently. "A word, Marcus? Al, can you step out?"
I relented but stayed near enough to hear him instruct Marc not to let me back into the room tonight. Dad even tried to get him to take the cash out of his wallet to buy me dinner. Typical father.
"Can I at least say goodnight?" I asked as Marc slipped outside the door. He nudged it back open.
"Goodnight, Al," Dad called, lifting his spoon in farewell.
"Night," I mumbled.
We hadn't gone more than a few steps away when Marc pulled me into an empty, unlit room and closed the door. "I know how angry you are inside," he said. His thumb caressed the soft spot beneath my chin, just between my drying tears and the bruise. "Nothing would have changed this."
I pushed against his shirt, mad that he hadn't hugged me, mad at having to leave my dad, mad at everything, really. Like a mountain, he only moved of his own accord, several seconds later stepping away.
"They asked me to come home," I said. "She's in that room because they asked me and I said stay."
"You do not know that."
"Don't I? I should've flung that stupid crown into the fire the moment Nik asked me to wear it. If I left for Boston sooner, instead of waiting for this painting reveal-" My voice froze. I hadn't told Marc my decision to leave yet. "I mean, I just want this to be a bad dream."
If he was surprised, he never showed it. He shrugged and gestured to the empty bed and chair. "You cannot remake choices. This is where you are."
"This is why I have to leave. People are dead because of me, Marc. I killed my best friend's fiancé and her mother and my, my-" It didn't feel right, calling Nik an ex. My tongue tripped over the word. "-Joronn, and now my Mom. You best run while you can, Marc, before someone you love joins the list."
"Someone already did," he said, and the curtailed anger in his tone surprised me.
I stepped nearer, curious. "Who?"
"No one that you know," he said, and left it at that. He laid his hand on the door. "If you are not feeling up to talking with them, I am okay letting you escape. Einar has the keys to my rental car. He will take you to a quiet hotel nearby. Last time I saw him, he was getting coffee in the cafeteria."
"Isn't it an urgent meeting?"
He opened the door and gestured for me to walk through. "Important, but you could stand to get some sleep."
"I can handle a meeting," I said, stepping into the hall.
"You should not have to," he replied, guiding me a few doors down, where Niklas and Chief Braaten awaited us.
"Allie!" Nik sprang from his chair the moment I rounded the corner, shoving an empty stretcher on his way to me.
It wasn't until I'd seen him that I felt like crying. He knew Becky and Trisha and my parents better than the other men in the room, and somehow because of that I was wiping tears off my cheeks and sinking onto the end of the stretcher.
He wrapped his arms around me tight and for a moment he was the only thing keeping me from collapsing into a sobbing mess. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see Marc ease around the two of us to join Chief Braaten in a corner of the room. He didn't want to interfere, but from the way he was studying this room's bad painting I sensed he wasn't exactly happy when Nik kissed my tear-stained lips and then stood with his arm draped across my shoulders. "I am so, so sorry. For you and Becky and especially Emma."
I had to push that to the back of my mind for now, looking up at Nik, surprised. "You know?"
"Einar told us while you were visiting with your mother. I can't believe Trish would...All for money." He shook his head. "Let me know what I can do to help them."
"Find out who paid Trish."
"You have a target on your back, Your Highness." And there spoke my wolf. The hunter. The man who could find anyone. The man who found me when I was skulking about Queen Joronn's castle, desperate for a meeting with her son.
I needed Braaten on my side more than ever. Dressed in his ark uniform, he made for a handsome police chief- dark-haired and clean-cut, not a giant like Marc but tall enough and filled out plenty where it counted- and his eyes, those green eyes were something fierce. He stepped forward with a careless confidence, the sort of gait that comes with living your life as a predator, the one who prowled the nights, the one who preferred to play in the dark.
And I trusted him about as far as I could throw that athletic figure of his. "No shit," I said. "I'm removing it. I'm over being queen. It's high time my carriage turned back into a pumpkin anyway."
"I'm not sure that will matter." He reached into a canvas satchel for a balled magazine. "From their targets, this seems personal. I'm rather certain they have at least one more target in mind, apart from you." With a flick of his wrist the magazine unrolled to reveal a picture of Nik and I relaxing by the resort fire.
Nik took a deep breath. I edged to one side to give him enough space to perch on the stretcher beside me. It didn't appear as though Braaten had filled him in on this detail. "Can't say it won't be deserved," he sighed.
"Don't you dare say that," I leaned against him, then eased back a little when I remembered Marcus. "We can protect him, can't we?"
The Chief tipped his chin in a slow nod. "That would depend on what our former prince wants."
"I'm not going into hiding." Nik sat a little straighter. Resolve filled his eyes. "There are still people who need their stories documented."
"And they will still be there after this mess is cleaned. I thought I was saving you, taking away your mother. It'll all be for nothing if you get shot down now." And I couldn't deal with that. The very thought drained the color from my hands.
"You did save me."
"I haven't. I haven't saved anyone. I've killed people. People I care about, people I love. And I don't even know why." I looked to the Chief, hopeful. "Braaten, please tell me you've got the guy who shot my mom."
"We have the person responsible."
I jumped off the stretcher, searching for my coat before remembering I'd probably left somewhere in ICU. Or lost it. At this point, my day was such a blur I had no idea what I'd done or didn't do. "Alright, let's go." I clapped my hands together. "Bring me to them."
"No."
"I'm your queen, Braaten." As if that would convince him.
"You're the victim's family tonight."
"We're owed answers," I growled, meeting his sharp green eyes.
He was entirely unimpressed, not that I would have been, either. At this point I was pretty wilted, from my wrinkled sweater to my ratty hair. "I can't let you near him."
"You damn well can and will."
"True." His shoulders rose and fell. "If I did, what then? What'll you do?"
"Break all his fingers and work up from there." The angry words tumbled forth and my hands flew to my mouth. I was serious. I sunk back onto the strecher, cocooned in dark thoughts. "I'm turning into her, aren't I?" I asked of the men before me. "I'm just like Joronn."
"You're not her." Nik murmured against my hair.
Marcus stood on the other side of the room, observing me through his calm, even gaze. He saw through the red face and messy hair and the fists clenched tight in my lap. "Have you slept at all these past nights?"
He didn't believe my hissed "Yes."
Nik swooped in, arm heavy on my shoulder. "Al, you're exhausted. Let's set you up with a bed."
"I'm not sleeping in this place." From the pitchy squeak in my voice a childish meltdown approached . Best I could do was try and delay until no one was watching. Stubbornly crossing my arms, I met Marc's worried eyes and argued a faint "the mattresses are awful."
My statement earned a grim smile. "You will make bad decisions if you do not rest for an hour or two."
"My townhome's nearby," Nik offered.
"No, no, not with you. She may wake to regret that." Braaten brushed Nik's arm off my shoulder and gently pulled me to my feet. "Stressful situations often lead to impulsive, bad decisions. My apartment is halfway to the palace. I'll bring her home. I'll even fix you a stiff drink, Your Majesty. You'll be safe with me."
Nik grabbed my free hand, and I found myself between the two men. "How is that any better?"
"No, I'd like that," I insisted, pulling away from him. "I need to feel something other than everything. I want to be blank."
"Talk about bad decisions. Drinking yourself into a hangover. How's that gonna help?" Nik looked to Marc for support. The other man shrugged. I think he was just happy not to have to keep me from Mom and Dad all night.