Leander
War is inevitable.
That was Leander’s recurring thought as he read the report, his thumb accidentally smearing a pink tinge of crimson across the page. The blood was appropriate, albeit annoying, considering the paper’s contents.
His fresh tattoo was still bleeding and likely wouldn’t stop until he applied some ointment. However, the wound would need to wait. Zuri Aquila had just left, he needed to review this report, and he had a call he could not miss.
The days are getting shorter, Leander thought as he wiped the remnants of blood on his black slacks, with every year I am king.
Reading the report was not of vital consequence, considering that the call he’d received from Captain Kendrick was what had triggered his tattoo in the first place. He’d known for hours that Operation Peaceful Sea was successful the moment it had happened. As commander in chief of all Ashlandic military forces, Leander was the first person to receive the call—the only person who truly mattered.
Still he wanted to read the report anyway. He felt like he owed it to the dead.
Never mind that they’d been trying to steal his crown. Never mind that they had been planning a coup that would put one of the other ancient Ashlandic rival houses on the throne, throwing the country into another civil war after forty years of unprecedented peace and economic prosperity.
The traitors were still human beings and Leander was no monster. He was simply a monarch willing to do what was necessary for the benefit of his people. Though this operation could’ve been avoided if he’d been merciless years ago when he’d first learned that the Scealans were still alive. But with experience came wisdom, and he was finally eradicating the threat now.
His gray eyes scanned the paper, reminding himself of the intelligence gathered from his various sources that had led to this swift, tactical extermination. A man had emerged with the name Scealan and held plans for several choice attacks on energy plants, military bases, and ports, to weaken the country’s infrastructure, military, and economy. The culmination of the conspiracy was his infiltration of Heres Castle and the forceful removal of Leander’s crown along with his head.
The insurrection was quite well strategized, actually.
If Leander were to stage his own coup, this would be how he went about it.
“Pity,” Leander muttered as his gaze raked over the confirmed casualties in the conspirator’s seaside home of Farach, where the royal intelligence team had found the rebels and eliminated them permanently.
Pity that Scealan man had been power-hungry enough to use his genius for treason. He would’ve made a good general.
Leander skimmed through the report’s midsection, explaining all the tactical maneuvering, any errors (naturally there were none), and the extraction as well as the staging for civilian law enforcement. No need to make the public aware of another rebellion quashed. They needed stability. So it would be staged as a break-in where men had been doing nothing but relaxing, drinking, and playing cards. It was a nice house. There wouldn’t be much suspicion. Besides, the tactical team was very good, covering up their jobs as easily as performing them.
It was when he got to the conclusion of the report that he paused.
His tattoo burned, and, absentmindedly, he stroked the cuff of his dress shirt, now tinged in blood.
The rebel had a wife and child.
Operation Peaceful Sea into motion. But it was a tragedy nonetheless.
Unfortunately, the wife had to go. She likely knew of her husband’s plans, and Leander was nothing if not thorough. But the child… the child was innocent.
He would set the child up with a new home. Likely an aunt or a close friend on the mother’s side. Someone willing to raise the child as their own out of love but with enough fear of the regime to keep the adoption a secret. It was easy to arrange such things.
Leander’s gaze flicked to the chair opposite his desk. The one Zuri Aquila had sat in mere minutes ago, asking about the fourth applicant to her beloved Almus Terra.
Ironic that she’d arrived mere minutes before he received the name of the child in this report.
Aurelia.
He liked it. It was strong. Beautiful.
The child could keep their name. At least partially. It would involve paperwork, a lot of it in the adoption process, but this was a small token he could bestow.
A knock sounded at his door and the guard poked his bald head through. “Your call is on line one, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you, Kendrick,” Leander said with a sigh, opening his desk drawer and filing the report into the folder for special covert military operations. His chief secretary had been nagging him to go digital for a long time, but he was wary of computers. Hackers seemed to be getting craftier every day. At least this way, if someone stole these documents, he’d be able to look his traitorous subject in the eye, rather than a faceless nobody overseas.
He reached over and picked up the phone, sliding it between his ear and his shoulder. “Leander.”
There was a beep, and he gritted his teeth. A king should not be kept waiting on a call, and, yet, here he was. Waiting for a man who had more money than God and was somehow considered a relatively “young” billionaire.
I wonder, Leander thought as the second beep sounded and there was the whisper of wind in the receiver, if I should have gotten into business rather than politics.
“Afternoon, Leander,” the smooth voice said over the phone, sounding much too casual.
It was the second time today he let the rigid royal decorum slide. “Rhett. How are you?”
“Better than the Americans.”
Leander lifted his gaze to the ceiling in annoyance. Rhett was American, yet the man seemed to believe he transcended nationalities.
“But not great,” Rhett continued. “This one is going to hurt us all.”
Leander kneaded his temple. “So it will.”
“News is that the US government is going to seize control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
“Mmm.” Leander had not called to talk about the housing market collapse in the United States but the failure of banks and mortgage lenders was currently tanking the American stock market. Unfortunately, that kind of crisis rippled into a worldwide one. Last year the European Union, Australia, Canada, and Japan had all banded together to inject liquidity into credit markets to stabilize the rapidly failing lending markets.
“Leander,” Rhett grumbled, “this does not bode well.”
Leander stood, shoving his free hand into
his pocket and walking to the window. The storm was finally calming now. He could see a break in the clouds in the gray-scaled horizon. “It is what it is. You don’t like it because this proves corporations and banks must rely on governments in crisis. When all else fails, a government remains standing.”
“That’s rich coming from Ashland’s king,” Rhett drawled, “I wouldn’t call your country’s history of government exactly stable.”
True. He had just quashed a rebellion.
“Maybe so. But my reign has yet to fall. Now, have you considered my proposal?”
The billionaire was silent for a long time. The question was not about whether he’d considered it, but whether he was willing to go through with it.
“I… am not opposed to the idea. It is messy, however.”
“Messes can be swept under the rug as long as no one is watching.”
Rhett chuckled as a seagull cawed in the distance, and Leander assumed the man was on his yacht, looking out at a very different sea, with a very different view.
“I suppose that’s fair. You’re certain this… institution can give me what I want?”
Leander thought of his grandchildren, his legacy, and the future of Ashland. He thought of the deposits he just put down. “What you want, Rhett, is the future. So yes, it can.”
The other line was silent, then, “Very well, then. We should meet in person. Expect me in forty-eight hours.”
Then the line went dead. Leander would’ve been offended, but that was yet another indignity he was willing to overlook. The man was, after all, agreeing to a plan that would make Ashland quite rich.
He placed the phone back in its cradle and sat in his desk chair, glancing at his drawer with the report of Operation Peaceful Sea. He did not need to check his watch to know how long the call had lasted. In rare form, he was actually ahead of schedule, and he was not one to waste time.
Opening his notepad, he began to draft a new memo for his secretaries to review and implement. In his superior penmanship, he scrawled Ashland’s National Merit Scholarship Program.
1Alaric
Seventeen years later
Was it a left at the naked mermaid statue or a right?
Alaric didn’t recall the exact directions the servant had given him a few days ago. He went with his gut. Left.
His sleek black Oxford shoes, the ones he was forced to wear at every formal event, padded softly and silently across the deep cobalt rug. Not that discretion really mattered. The fireworks from the traditional summer reenactment of an epic Ashlandic sea battle off the cliffs were a good distraction.
Alaric glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was following him. They weren’t.
In his time at Heres Castle, Alaric had picked up a few clues about its layout and decorative styles. Marble floors were pathways to state rooms, while living quarters, studies, and personal offices had thick rugs and plush carpets leading to their thresholds.
Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, he was getting better at navigating these halls. Ever since becoming an Ashland heir, he’d felt out of place in every castle he’d been in. Which, weirdly, was more than one. His school, Almus Terra Academy, was also in a castle, though a vastly different structure than this one. While Heres Castle had become more of an amalgamation of royal architecture from across Europe, Almus Terra was classically medieval. Though it was now a fortress of learning rather than a fortress of protection for some long-dead Roman Catholic noble.
Sadie would know exactly which noble most likely.
No, nope. He was not going to think about Sadie—his rival, the heir apparent, and the girl he could not get out of his head for the life of him, despite the fact that she was dating his cousin.
Alaric shouldn’t be thinking about anything except the mission before him.
He walked faster. It had already taken him too long to get back inside the castle. The royal courtyard on the Durah cliffs could be seen directly below most of the balconies facing east, but there were hundreds of steps carved directly into the rock between the castle and the courtyard. A lift had been built years ago, but it was manned by guards and Alaric did not want to risk being seen returning when he was supposed to be enjoying the national holiday with the rest of the Ashlandic Court.
Finally, the long corridor ended in what looked like a half-moon drawing room. He must’ve entered a tower. That sounded about right. The servant he’d bribed with a few banknotes from his royal allowance had mentioned that all the princes and princesses had each been given a tower upon their birth, and that his mother, Crown Princess Rhea, had received the northeastern. Not that he knew where northeastern was at this point, but it felt right.
He tried the ornate wooden door on the left. Locked.
“Yeh think in a palace riddled with guards the security inside would be lighter,” he muttered to himself as he pulled out the tools from his jacket pocket.
Before becoming a prince, Alaric had been… the extreme term would be delinquent. But his criminal activities were fairly benign, all things considered. A couple of minor break-ins at run-down businesses and old warehouses. A few fights. Well, not a few. A lot. A lot of fights. Some underage drinking. But that’s it. Nothing serious—no drugs, no stealing, not
even petty theft. Everything he’d owned, he’d earned. Even from a juvenile age, he’d understood what things cost. What life cost.
Still, he knew how to pick a lock.
Flipping the case open, he selected his torque wrench and slid the tool into the lock. With a quick couple turns he was able to determine the direction of the key. Next, he inserted the pick, the curved metal facing upward to push at the pins and test their movement. Once he was confident they’d slide upward, he removed the pick and then inserted his final tool, the rake, slowly lifting each pin and applying pressure through the wrench. Ear pressed against the door, he listened for the sound of the pins falling through the lock mechanism. The technique of raking usually took multiple attempts, but Alaric got it on his second.
Sure enough, the pins clicked and the lock disengaged.
Blowing out a breath, Alaric pushed the door open and slipped inside the darkness, shutting the door behind him. For months, he’d plotted to break into his father’s suite, and he was finally here.
He didn’t pause to take stock of the room. He didn’t care what it looked like or how his father lived. All he cared about was…
Alaric’s gaze landed on the massive mahogany desk and the laptop sitting unguarded on top.
“Bingo,” he muttered.
Crossing the room in long strides, Alaric took out the external drive from his jacket pocket. After plugging his drive into one of the ports, he opened the laptop and was faced with a login screen. Tongue between his teeth, his fingers flew across the keys, pulling up the command prompt and using the hacking script he’d been practicing in his Cyber Security class all last semester.
It was a ridiculous amount of typing. But he was rewarded when the black screen full of his code disappeared and the simple blue screen of his father’s desktop took its place.
and Alaric swore harshly.
Of course Mikael Erickson would have double encryption on everything. It was smart but obnoxious. At least Alaric was prepared. Typing out another command, he began copying the computer’s files onto his external drive. That alone was not an easy task either. There was a security protection in place to prevent copying and Alaric had to dismantle it. Over and over.
Minutes ticked by, but he kept typing, taking down every security feature that was triggered as the files were slowly, but surely, downloaded. Later, he would be able to hack into the folders themselves, but he was already creeping up on two hours of absence from the party.
As the last of the folder downloads reached 80 percent, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Without even checking the ID, Alaric slipped on his earphones and answered the call.
“Yo.”
“How goes the break-in?” Jacob’s voice came through all cheery, his mouth stuffed with some snack. Alaric was going to guess cheese puffs. The kid was addicted.
“Not swell,” Alaric grumbled. “The chancer’s got all the files double-encrypted.”
Jacob barked out a laugh, the sound in Alaric’s ears making him wince. “Your dad is a piece of work, my dude.”
“Tell me about it,” Alaric said as the files finally finished their download. He unplugged the drive and slipped it into his jacket.
Jacob was a fifteen-year-old American, four full years younger than Alaric, but super freaking smart and Alaric’s best friend at Almus Terra. He was studying robotics and aspired to help build Mission to Mars tech. Alaric didn’t doubt he would achieve it.
“Are you going back to the party?” Jacob asked.
With his prize safely in his coat, Alaric ducked out of his father’s room. “Not sure I’d call Ashland’s ceremonial sea battle reenactment a party, Jake. Ilsa mentioned they spent twenty-five million on the ships and gunpowder alone.”
“Is there booze?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s a party.”
Hard to argue with that logic.
He was about to head back down the hall when his gaze snagged on the other door.
His mother’s room. He knew there was nothing to be gained by going inside, but his legs were already moving.
This door did not have a lock to pick. It clicked open with a simple twist of the knob. Jacob must’ve heard the sound because he piped up again.
“You still in your dad’s room?
“No, my ma’s,” Alaric mumbled as he stepped inside. Wisely, Jacob stayed quiet as Alaric took it all in.
The moonlight shone in through the several large windows, highlighting his mother’s dark room in silver. The furniture looked pristine, and it didn’t surprise him at all that they would keep the crown princess’s quarters perfect in both her life and death. Though the decor was not what he expected. It seemed to follow Rhea’s style. She had posters of ’80s rock bands, bohemian-style rugs, and gauzy curtains with astrological symbols. But the furniture was like everywhere else—ornate, heavy, old. A massive cherrywood dresser and desk, a canopy king-size bed with accented throw pillows of… Trolls and Care Bears.
It was then he’d wished he hadn’t answered Jacob’s call, because this had become unexpectedly personal. His throat grew uncomfortably tight. His eyes burned. His mother had seemed… cool. It was clear she didn’t give a shit what real princesses should have on their beds. She liked what she liked and was unapologetic about it. Like Alaric.
“Alaric? Dude?” Jacob’s voice was tentative.
Alaric cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m here.”
He made his way through Rhea’s quarters, taking in every detail, even pulling out his phone and snapping a few pictures. Though now that he knew what this place looked like, he’d be back.
When he got to his mother’s desk he stopped dead in his tracks. “I’ll call yeh later, Jake.”
Before Jacob could reply, Alaric tapped his earbud to end the call, then picked up an ornate gold picture frame. It was a photo of Rhea and a baby—him. He was maybe one year old, if that. There was nothing special about him as a baby, but his mom—his mom—looked radiant. She looked over-the-moon happy. Cupping his chubby baby cheeks, holding him to her face and laughing into the camera, she was incandescent.
For a brief blip in his nineteen-year-old life, he had been loved. Deeply. Setting the picture down with a shaky hand, he picked up the next framed photo. This one showed Rhea holding him on her knees, ready to bounce him. She wore a Tears for Fears sweatshirt, and her raven-black hair, curly and unruly, so much like Alaric’s, hung from a messy ponytail. There were more photos. More of Alaric as a baby, and a few more of her—one when she was quite young, maybe his age now, and then another of her when she was a little girl, wearing a tiara and a fancy dress—probably the only image where she played the princess role.
Hungry for more of a past he thought he’d never know, Alaric started to open the top desk drawer. But then his phone buzzed again. Short and quick this time, thrice in a row.
- Emmeline:GET
- Emmeline:
“Shite,” he cursed, and slipped his phone into his pocket, then hurried back through Heres Castle. The return trip was easier because he didn’t have to remember exact directions. He could find a landmark and reorient himself toward the cliffs. Finally he located the servants’ hallways, found the steps down into the courtyard by going around the lift, then took all damn near two hundred of them.
The torches surrounding the courtyard, held by ornate iron sconces attached to the surrounding columns, eventually came into view and by then he was sweating in the late-August evening air under his suit jacket. Before Alaric even had a chance to scan the crowd, to see what he’d missed, Emmeline was right next to him, shoving a glass of champagne into his chest.
He took it but didn’t drink, his gaze landing on the raised stone dais with King Leander and his chosen royal dynamic duo—Sadie, heir apparent, and Titus, the golden-boy prince and boyfriend.
They, and the rest of the court, all clad in gorgeous dresses and suits, were watching the conclusion of the sea battle. The ship Maiden Eldana pierced the hull of the Serpent Scealan, cannons in the form of fireworks exploding across the ship’s side. It was a summer holiday in August known as Eldana Day, a significant turning point in the country’s history that ended a fifty-year-long civil war back in the 1600s.
“Learn to be more discreet,” Emmeline hissed between her teeth as a lord, a distant relative whose name Alaric hadn’t ever bothered to learn, passed by them, nodding respectfully. Emmeline gave him a charming smile. “Lovely night, Lord Faust.”
Alaric ground his teeth together. “Why don’t yeh just tell me what yer dying to. Did anyone notice I was gone?”
Emmeline could be annoying, condescending, and pretentious, but she was the only family he had that he didn’t want to strangle. She had this weird way of looking out for him. Even if she threatened him afterward.
“Ilsa asked where you were,” Emmeline replied, taking a sip of her own champagne. “I covered for you.”
“Told her I had a bad case of the runs?”
Emmeline snorted into her glass, then looked shocked she could even make such a sound. She jabbed him hard in the ribs with her pointy elbow. “I’m not doing it for you again. You may not be heir apparent, but you’re still a prince. Your absence will be noticed.”
Alaric’s tone was dry. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I’m serious, Alaric. Do you think you’ll have a place in this family if you cause trouble? You’re a spare royal. There’s a fine line between noticing when you’re gone and caring if you don’t come back.”
The words stung, but they shouldn’t have. He’d known for years that he hadn’t mattered.
But I mattered to Ma. Once.
“This family,” Emmeline said, her gaze locked on her own parents across the courtyard—her mother scrolling on her phone, her father drinking deeply from a whiskey highball glass, “will chew you up and spit you out.”
It was then that the ship Serpent Scealan exploded with fireworks, signaling its defeat against the Maiden Eldana. Smoke and sparks and more rockets going off into the night, reflecting the multicolored pyrotechnic stars on the dark waters of the Labrador Sea.
Sadie was dressed in a gold shimmering gown, intricate jeweled beadwork shining like stars across her slim form. Her strawberry hair twisted into a curled mass down her back with braids woven around the delicate tiara on her head.
She was stunning.
Just like she’d been for the last eight months.
Breathtaking and untouchable.
Then his cousin leaned down and kissed her. Titus pulled back after the too-long kiss to smile at her, all handsome and adoring. Always the perfect prince.
Alaric tossed the entire champagne flute back in one swig, feeling the external drive shift against his chest with the movement.
At least he’d managed to steal one thing tonight. ...
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