Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance) (33 page)

Brad stands up.

“Listen, I’m an American. I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency. I was planning an op against these men to rescue these women…”

The armored man backhands him across the face, casually, like he’s flicking away a bothersome insect. Brad topples to the ground and spits out a mouthful of blood and teeth.

“Fuck,” he snarls.

“He’s lying,” I say calmly. “He was selling us to them.”

“You dumb bitch,” Brad snarls through his bloody mouth. “Don’t you know who this is? He’s the crown prince. He’ll kill us all.”

The armored giant turns and looks down at Brad. When he moves, the armor makes little whirring noises, like it’s some kind of machine.

“You will be silent or I will tear your still-living heart from your chest and feed it to you.”

Brad’s mouth clamps shut.

The giant steps closer. I press against the rock. The clawed tip of his armored finger almost touches my cheek, but he pulls it away as if he just noticed the blood coating the steel up to his elbows.

“See to her wounds. Bring them back to the camp.”

“There’s another girl,” I say. “Her name is Danielle. They shot her in the chest.”

“We found her.”

He switches to Kosztylan to order his men. They remove the short shoulder capes they wear and wrap one around me and one around Melissa, and cut the bonds on our wrists. I clutch the garment around my body and hold on to it like a blanket. I start to hobble back down the path. I twisted my ankle and I don’t even remember when it happened.

“I will carry you,” the armored giant booms.

I stumble back when he takes a step closer, looming over me. I feel like I’m looking up at a mountain, shivering and clutching blankets and cloth to my naked body. Somehow he slips his arms under me without touching me with the sharp steel claws on his hands and lifts me up off the ground.

I have no choice but to curl up in his arms. He moves like I weigh nothing at all. One of his men picks up Melissa and carries her.

“Prince Charming,” Brad spits. “He’s going to kill you the same as me. I hope he’s making a good impression.”

“Be silent and I will grant you a clean death,” the giant thunders.

I shudder. His voice rumbles from the armor against my body as he speaks. I feel like a child carried in an adult’s arms.

It’s a shorter trip back to the camp than I remembered.

My God.

The tents are all down. It looks like a giant strode through the camp, taking no care where he put his feet. The canvas and poles are down around piles of bodies. The trucks and generators are burning. The big mess hall is the only structure still standing, if you can call it standing. The back half is smashed in, all splintered wood, torn metal, and shredded cloth.

I turn away and find myself studying the man’s armor. It’s barely noticeable from a distance but up close I can make out gold inlaid into the surface, somehow
under
the black enamel. It forms the shape of a heraldic phoenix, wings outstretched, with arrows and swords clutched in its claws.

I’m shocked to find women back at the camp, dressed the same as the men, and armed. The crown prince lowers me onto a stretcher and Melissa sits behind me.

They make me hold still as a nurse examines me, and stand in a circle around me to give me some meager privacy as I dress in a plain black uniform like the ones they wear. Melissa changes as well, and hugs me.

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpers. “I’m so, so sorry—”

I shush her as the female guards give me a sharp look.

I can’t take my eyes off him. Two of his guards come from behind and clasp a cape to two points on his shoulders. It’s cloth of gold, so heavy it doesn’t swing or sway when he moves. They carry a heavy steel chair into the ruined mess hall, and he sits down.

The general, Brad, and a few other stragglers kneel in a row along the side of the room. I hold my breath, leaning forward to listen to him speak.

He starts in Kosztylan, but slowly and clearly, with a harsh, aristocratic accent, very precise and deliberate. I can make out enough of it to understand what’s going on.

He’s declared a trial, and the resistance fighters and Brad are the defendants.

He looks over his shoulder and glances at me. I can’t see anything of his face. I only know he’s looking my way because of a narrow slit in his helmet. I can just barely make out his eyes through a smoky material, too hard to be glass.

“You. Come forward.”

Shuddering, I get up and start limping toward him. One of his guards, a woman, slips under my arm and helps me over, and provides me with a folding chair.

“You can’t do this,” Brad spits. “You have no right to put me on trial. This is a farce. You can’t act as judge and jury.”

“You do not need your tongue. You will lose it if you continue to speak.”

Brad shuts up.

“Tell me who you are and where you came from. Do not lie. I will know.”

I shiver.

“You may speak freely.”

“I’m an American. My name is Penny. I was working across the border in Solkovia in an aid camp.”

Oh God, I can’t tell them Melissa was involved.

“The truth. All of it,” the prince booms.

I swallow and look at Melissa.

“It wasn’t her fault,” she cries out, sobbing. “It was me. I was helping Brad bring stuff here. I’m so sorry. Don’t hurt Penny, please don’t hurt Penny, I swear I—”

“
Silence
,” he booms. “Continue.”

“As she says. I followed Melissa out of our tent and found her helping Brad load a truck with boxes. We didn’t know what was in them. Please don’t hurt her, she thought it was food. She just wants to help people, she didn’t know what this place was like.”

I feel like I’m talking to a statue. I look away from him.

“They brought us here and talked about us in Kosztylan. I don’t speak your language very well but I understood what they were saying. They were going to sell Melissa. That man,” I point at the general, “said he was going to keep me. He already had another girl. Danielle. She’s the one who was shot. He…hurt her.” I can’t make myself say it.

The bearded general calls me a name that doesn’t have a direct English translation. It’s a mix of
slut
and
cunt
and it compares me to a female cat.

The butt of a rifle silences him.

“I don’t want to tell what happened when he took me. Please.”

“Did he…?” the question hangs unasked.

“No,” I take a deep breath, eyes closed, “but if you’d arrived a minute later he would have.”

“What is the role of the American man here?”

“He brings weapons. They said something about selling drugs. He didn’t explain it to me. I don’t know any more than that. He left us to be sold or killed. He was going to leave us here.”

It spills out of me with a sudden intensity, until I start to shake.

“I want to go home.”

“I will decide that. I saved your life. Now your life belongs to me.”

I freeze.

Brad laughs. “I told you.”

“I have heard enough to pass judgement,” the prince says, rising to tower over all of us. He turns and barks a single word in Kosztylan.

It means
sword
.

One of his men marches forward stiffly, like this is some kind of ritual. At the same time, two others drag the bearded general to the center of the room and force him to his knees, kicking him forward until his chest lands on a crate, his head hanging over the side.

Oh my God.

The prince draws the sword from the scabbard. The blade is five feet long and as wide as a man’s hand, the grip big enough for him to hold two-handed in his huge gauntlets.

There’s some kind of connector on the grip. It touches a plate on his gauntlet and the sword starts humming, crackling like a high-tension wire. He steps beside the bearded general.

“I, Prince Kristoff of the House Kosztyla, Crown Prince, sentence you to death by beheading. Speak your last words, have you any.”

The general bellows out a string of profanities, accusing the prince of fornicating with apes and insinuating that his mother is a whore who lies with pigs, among other obscenities.

The prince listens to him for a good thirty seconds then looks at me like he’s noticing me for the first time. The blade hovers over the general’s neck.

“Take the women out,” the prince commands. “They need not see this.”

Walking outside feels like floating, even limping on a sore ankle. Once I’m outside the tent, I hear it. The general lets loose a string of obscenities, his last words, as it were. Then they cut off.

I giggle. Cut off. Good one, Penny. My laughter breaks down into sobs.

I can hear Brad.

“You can’t do this!” he shrieks, high and thin. “I’m a fucking American! I’m with the CIA! Do you know who I am?”

I turn back and look.

They push him down, and the prince brings the sword close to his face. The very tip touches Brad’s cheek with a hissing
pop
and I can smell him burning.

“Oh God, please don’t…”

“You plea to God for help now that you reap what you have sown, American?”

Brad just stares at him.

“God will tire of your pleas by the time I am done with you. I, Prince Kristoff of the House Kosztyla, Crown prince, sentence you to death by
torment
. Take him to the castle.”

Brad is silent for a moment, puffing as the prince takes his sword and sheathes it. Then he screams, his pleas turning into wails and sobs as they pick him up, bind his hands and feet, and carry him out.

“Hang the rest,” the prince says, as casually as he might tell his men to throw out a bag of garbage. “Leave them for the crows.”

Then he turns to me.

“You,” then to Melissa, “and you. Come.”

Melissa stands up, shaking like a leaf.

Surrounded by his men, we walk. He keeps pace with us, moving with ponderous, careful slowness, as if the armor suddenly weighs him down.

He looks at Melissa.

“You will be taken to a hospital. There you will be examined and treated for any injuries.”

Melissa starts to cry.

He looks at me.

“You’re scaring her. Take off your helmet.”

Those black eye slits study me hard, and then he gives the slightest of nods, a movement so tiny I wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t hear the tiny
whirr
his suit makes when it moves. He reaches up and sinks his clawed fingertips into notches at the base of the helmet, and it pops open with a soft
hiss
.

He lifts it off and hands it to one of his guards, who struggles to bear the weight. I hardly notice. I’m too busy staring at him.

He’s
gorgeous
. He has a long and severe face with dark-blue eyes that study me hungrily, like they’re going to swallow me up. His dark, straight hair is pulled back and bound into a knot behind his head. His jaw looks carved from stone, and his high, angular cheekbones give him an austere, lean look.

“You said your name is Penny.”

I swallow hard and try not to let my voice crack. “Yes, that’s right.”

“A penny is a coin.”

“Yes.”

“The coin of lowest value.”

I blink. “Yes, but—”

“I don’t like this name, Penny. This is a diminutive, yes? A…” he searches for the word, “nickname.”

“Yes. My real name is Persephone.”

He’s quiet for a moment that stretches until I swallow, hard.

“It would be.”

He turns and speaks to his men. His command is given slowly, clearly, so that I can understand it.

“Take this one directly to the castle. See that she has a change of clothes and a chance to bathe. She will dine with me.”

“You can’t keep us here. We’re American citizens.”

He turns back to look at me again.

“I am the crown prince. I do as I like.”

I
’m not
sure if I was expecting him to literally pick me up and carry me off, but he doesn’t. He strides past me, big metal boots thudding on the ground as he walks, and sharply throws the tent flaps open as he passes. I feel a hand on my arm and blink.

Taller than I am by a foot, heavier, and blonder, the woman who just took my arm is dressed the same as the men and fits in perfectly with them from the neck down. From the neck up, she could have a modeling career. Her short military bob actually looks good on her.

“The prince orders that you be taken to the castle. This way.”

It’s not an invitation. He ordered it, so I’m going. In spite of myself, I lean on her. Melissa grabs my hand and I give her a tight squeeze before they pull us apart and lead her out. I swallow hard and hope we haven’t just fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire.

A big, wide-bellied helicopter with two rotors sits outside. I hobble on my bad leg to the big open door, where two of the prince’s men (I can’t bring myself to call them
Phoenix Guard
) lift me inside by the arms, drop me into a seat, and clip a harness over my chest.

The rotors spin up, and I grab a set of earmuffs from a hook above my shoulder and slip them on to soften the thumping roar. The chopper shifts from side to side and turns a little as the wind catches it, and I grip the edges of the seat with white knuckles. The only time I’ve ever flown was on my two flights out of the States to Madrid and then out here, and never by helicopter. It feels rickety and unstable as it lifts up, the ground sinking away below. The door is still open and the only thing holding me down is the safety harness on the seat.

I feel like I’m falling off the world. As it lifts up I look around at the grim-faced, soldierly men and women surrounding me, and avert my eyes when our gazes meet. I sink into the seat and try to shrink up into a tiny little ball and disappear, but no matter how hard I suck up into myself, I’m still here.

Once in the air, the difference between Solkovia and Kosztyla is night and day. At the door itself a member of the Guard sits at a complicated-looking machine gun with a bunch of barrels, sweeping it back and forth as if he expects an attack at any moment.

I can mark out the border easily. The mountains are all dark, of course, but on the western side, in Kosztyla, the world is alive with light—lights in buildings, street lamps, cars flowing in orderly procession down the roads. The Solkovian side of the mountain range is dark, except for a few points of light in the distance, in the capital.

The chopper goes higher and swings around, and the gunner on the door visibly relaxes, even lighting a cigarette that somehow doesn’t go out or snap away from his lips as he puffs on it, casting a harsh red glow on his face and thick gloves.

I hug myself and rub my arms against the cold as the helicopter cuts swiftly over the lights. I can’t remember the name, but there is a city near the border, then open land. Even there, plenty of light illuminates the roads and small hamlets that pop up here and there among fertile fields.

Everything here is so
small
. Even as an East Coaster, growing up in America has left me with a skewed perspective on distance. A half-hour flight into Kosztyla and we’re in the center of the country.

There is a single mountain that spurs up in the middle of the tiny nation. The gold mines within are said to still be productive, and the capital surrounds it and climbs up its slopes but stops a third of the way up.

Near the top is an actual, honest-to-God castle. In the dark, lit by bright spotlights, it looks like something out of a fairy tale. Red lights blink slowly on the tops of the towers, glowing angry in the mists that surround them and flow down the mountainside in sheets. Some of the stone is dark gray, some is so black it swallows the light, like pools of ink. It’s bigger than it first appears, big enough that in
one
of the courtyards is a chopper pad that can easily accommodate the big transport helicopter carrying me in.

My grip on the seat tightens again during the descent, the vinyl squeaking under my fingernails. I close my eyes but that only makes it worse, and a gust of wind rips across my body and shoves the chopper to the side. It sways violently. When my eyes crack open on their own, I can look almost straight down at the helipad.

I snap them shut again and try not to scream. The chopper evens out but it doesn’t feel any calmer. There’s a
thud
and a sudden lurch and I’m sure we’re going to crash, but when my eyes open again I find myself looking out at worn stone walls and the same tall blonde woman undoing my safety harness.

She helps me to my feet, roughly but steadily, and two of the men lift me down to the concrete pad.

The castle is even more impressive from the outside. The courtyard is ringed by a curtain wall forty feet high and ten feet thick, topped with sharply pointed battlements that claw defiantly at the sky. The walls meet at sharp angles, giving the entire castle a star shape around an older fortress with lower walls, the heavy blocks of stone worn smooth and melded together by time. In the middle, three towers rise up, the tallest and widest as big as a good-sized skyscraper.

Flags, hundreds of flags, whip in the wind everywhere they can hang, the phoenix on a yellow field. Their constant snapping and flapping forms a chorus, like being trapped in a flock of angry birds. I gladly take the offered crutch and make my way toward an open door, flanked by two of the crown prince’s soldiers.

I feel like I’m floating. This isn’t happening. This can’t be real. I’m in some kind of crazy dream. I read
The Lord of the Rings
before I went to sleep and I’m having a nightmare about being trapped in Mordor.

I’ll wake up any second now.

Keep telling yourself that, Penny.

It’s warmer inside, at least. I expected a castle to be damp and drafty but it’s actually nice in here. It is a castle, though. The stone floors are covered in layers of thick rugs woven in intricate patterns, and the walls are plastered and covered over with tapestries.

Real
tapestries, not some crap you’d buy at a mall. This random hallway is adorned with one fifty feet long, covered in scenes of battle. As a rough guess, I’d put the age at anywhere between three and four hundred years old, maybe even actually medieval. Hangings like this tell a story, and I try to puzzle it out as I hobble by.

It’s about a guy in black armor. I have that much down.

The corridor slopes up until it opens onto another one through an arched doorway. It quickly becomes difficult to keep track of all the turns. Without asking, my escorts support me by the arms as I hobble up a sweeping staircase that winds around a curved wall to a higher floor.

The one on my right opens a heavy oak door, banded with iron.

“You will sleep here,” he says in clipped, accented English.

“Uh, thanks,” I mutter, and lean on the crutch to work my way inside.

I look around for something to light my way and my escort helpfully reaches into the room and throws a plain old light switch.

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

This
room
is bigger than my house at home. The ceiling soars twenty feet overhead, with electric chandeliers hanging on big chains that run from one end to the other. Situated between two thick columns holding up the ceiling, an enormous four-poster bed,
much
bigger than a king size, sits piled up with pillows and blankets as high as my neck, with a little staircase to climb up.

Another heavy door stands open, leading into a bathroom. I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe a bucket and a chamber pot, but primitive this is not. The shower cabinet could hold ten people behind its smoky glass doors, and there would be a showerhead for each of them, plus a detachable one on a jointed metal hose. I half expect the toilet seat to be made of solid gold.

No. I’m pretty sure it’s oak, though.

Hobbling back out of the bathroom, I try the doorknob on the main door. It turns freely, but the door won’t budge. It’s barred from the outside.

Great.

I stand there for a good ten minutes trying to figure out what to do. I search for a phone but don’t fine one, though there is a huge antique writing desk that’s probably older than the United States. Stone stairs lead up to a balcony. I make my way up and out into the open air, and jump back with a yelp.

The stone railing is high enough, but on the other side is a sheer drop. I’m bad at guessing distances but it’s somewhere between five hundred and a thousand feet of nearly vertical rock to the lights below, and just a glimpse gives me vertigo that grips my stomach like a fist.

There’s a knock at the door and it swings open.

It’s the blonde guardswoman.

“His grace the prince regrets that he must rescind his dinner invitation to attend to matters of state. He instead commands that you join him for breakfast at dawn.”

“Commands?”

“The prince commands.” She nods and starts to close the door.

She stops abruptly. “There are clothes for you in the wardrobe. See that you are properly dressed.”

The door slams and I hear a heavy bar slide into place, from the outside. I’m locked in here.

Near the wardrobe I find a refrigerator that’s disguised as an antique side table, and some bottled water. I drink it fast, spilling water on my borrowed shirt. Then I open the wardrobe.

No shorts, no pants, no t-shirts, no hoodies.

Dresses
.

For a moment I feel like I’m staring at a cosplayer’s costume collection. The dresses have dagged sleeves, the kind with the huge cuffs that hang way down, like a stereotypical Disney princess. They’re arranged by color from lightest to darkest, cream at one end and black at the other.

They’re not costumes, though. The material is silk and shimmering samite, and the darker ones are a little sheer despite their princess-y looks. I can’t wear this stupid crap.

There are nightgowns, too, and…bloomers. They’re goddamn bloomers.

It beats being naked, I guess.

I grab something that looks appropriate for sleep and carry it with me on the hanger to the bathroom, where I carefully undress. My ankle is a little swollen, but it’s not broken or anything. I should be fine in a day or two.

Sighing, I turn on the water. It’s blessedly hot, quickly filling the cabinet with steam. I walk inside and lean on the wall under the water.

I quickly sink to the floor. An explosive sob rolls through my body. The reality of what I just went through hits me like a hammer square in the middle of my chest. When I look at the grit on my arms turning to a thin coating of mud as the water washes it loose, I can see the general’s sausagey fingers on my arms. I was so close to…

Don’t go there, Penny. It didn’t happen. It could have but it didn’t.

I don’t even realize I’m crying, it just happens. Oh God, how did I let this happen to myself? Where did they take that other woman? Where did they take Melissa? Why did they send her to a hospital and not me?

I stare at the far wall, ignoring the hot spray stinging my eyes. I watched men die tonight. I kept my eyes closed in the pass, but the sounds. It was like someone ripping a side of beef apart, and when the general died… At least I didn’t have to see it.

I giggle stupidly as a dumb thought bubbles into my head. His severed head looked so
weird
. It looked so little detached from his body. I close my eyes and try to banish the image of the stump from my mind.

The guy who did that
took me home
.
I’m locked up in his
castle
.

“This is fucking crazy,” I whine.

I shake harder, curled up in a ball on the shower floor.

No, no, no. Penny, do not let yourself do this. You have to figure a way out of here.

Oh, but I have a great record so far. All I managed to do back at that camp was let Melissa get groped and almost torn apart. If I was so smart and brave, I should have done something
before
I trusted that asshole to get us back to the camp in one piece.

Don’t be too hard on yourself, Penny.
How was I supposed to know he was a corrupt spy planning to sell us?

I should have gotten a job teaching preschool and stayed home where I belong. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not supposed to be here. I repeat it like a mantra.

My eyes snap open. Oh God, my parents. When I don’t make my weekly phone call they’re going to lose it. I don’t know if Mom’s heart can take it. I have to let them know I’m alive, somehow.

How the hell can I do that?

By the time I finally calm down enough to get up, my fingers start to prune. Maybe the heat helped, but my ankle doesn’t feel so bad. Carefully I walk out of the shower and dry myself then slip into the sheer nightgown and thick, velvety robe.

No, wait. It’s not velvety, it
is
velvet. Wow, this is nice.

As I walk to the bed, I can’t help myself. I keep thinking this is some sort of fantasy. I’ve retreated into a fantasy world where a dark prince saves me to keep my mind from breaking. Meanwhile my body is back in the real world, with the general.

This just can’t be real.

I grunt on my turned ankle as I lift myself up onto the bed and roll into it. The blankets seem too thick for a summer night, but a cold draft flows through the room and I quickly find myself tucked up to my chin, sinking into the covers.

Oh God this bed, it’s bliss. It’s like it wants to swallow me.

A sudden and intense awareness comes upon me.

I am
tired
. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

First I can’t lift my head, then I can’t keep my eyes open. I yawn, and that’s the last thing I remember as I drift into a dreamless sleep.

Next I know, bright light pours in through the glass doors leading out to the balcony, and it’s morning. It’s
freezing
in here now, so much so that I don’t want to even push back the covers and sit up.

I end up lying there until the door opens. No knock, somebody just lifts the bar and swings it out. It’s the same blonde-haired guard from last night, but she stops at the threshold and steps aside for a hunched old woman to walk in before slamming it shut again.