Prince Incognito (14 page)

Lillian boarded the helicopter obediently and was relieved when she was allowed to sit in a seat, instead of being
shoved into the luggage compartment this time. But then this helicopter was much more comfortably equipped than the military craft she’d been transported in the week before. Their ride back to Sardis would be considerably more luxurious than the trip to the desert had been.

While her father and uncle sat toward the front discussing their plans in low tones, Lily sat opposite her mother and
wondered what role Sandra Bardici had been playing in the unfolding events. Since the woman was only a member of the family by marriage, and not a descendent of Lydia, she wasn’t eligible to sign the covenant that Parliament had prepared. If Lily had been asked to describe her mom, she’d have called her submissive. Quiet. Dutiful.

For most of her life, Lily had watched her mother follow
her father around, doing whatever he asked her to do, going where he told her. Rarely did the woman question anything.

Lily looked up at her mother, who offered her a pinched smile.

“Did you want something to drink? A sandwich?”

“I’m fine.” Lily was tempted to ask if her mother realized what was going on, if she cared about what they were up to, but even if her mother had wanted
to say something, the Bardici brothers were right behind her. Besides, what was there to discuss? Parliament had given all eligible descendants of Lydia forty-eight hours to sign the covenant. If Alec didn’t get to the Hall of Justice in Sardis before that narrow window closed, he’d be left out.

There was nothing she could do to help him now.

* * *

Alec stumbled over the chains
that bound his legs as Titus led him toward the waiting helicopter. Unlike the military craft that had brought him to North Africa, this copter was a sleek corporate craft, a limousine of the sky. Through the windows, Alec caught sight of several figures seated inside. The Bardicis?

Rather than seat him in the same comfortable compartment the passengers rode in, Titus led him to the rear
door, a cramped, low-ceilinged secondary compartment filled mostly with luggage.

Another soldier appeared behind them as they climbed in. “Bardici said to secure him to the retaining rail.”

Alec glanced at the metal bar high on the sides of the compartment. If they looped his cuffs through the rail, he’d dangle uncomfortably for the length of the trip.

Titus shoved him inside
as he addressed the soldier who followed him in. “Do you suppose Bardici is coming back here to check?”

“Not this time.” The other soldier chuckled as he took a seat on the floor. “You gonna chain him to the retaining rail?”

Titus nodded to Alec to sit. “Not this time.”

* * *

Lily caught the movement outside the window, and looked just in time to see two soldiers hauling
a bound man onto the copter. In spite of her partially obstructed view, Lily knew the man well enough to recognize him in that momentary glimpse.

Alec.

So he was coming to Sardis, too. Her heart soared with the knowledge that he would be in the same city as the document that required his signature. More than that, she wasn’t alone—he was with her, even if they were separated by the
partitions within the helicopter.

But as quickly as that realization hit, it was followed by another. Her uncle had warned Alec away from her. The prince probably hated her for betraying him, and even if he realized that she’d been as much a victim of her uncle’s plot as he had, that didn’t erase the threats that hung over both of them if they so much as tried to speak to one another again.

A chill sense of foreboding washed over her.

Her uncle was bringing Alec to Sardis. That meant he must have plans for him.

And David Bardici’s plans for Alec couldn’t be good.

* * *

Alec eyed the two soldiers warily. Titus hadn’t said anything more since he’d taken a seat on the floor of the helicopter without cuffing him to the wall. Alec’s wrists and ankles were still
bound, but at least he wasn’t dangling from the low ceiling.

The other man, who Alec recognized as Julian, another of the men he’d served with in Benghazi, sat grimly by the door, anger written in his posture and his face. Was he upset about being scrunched in the cramped luggage compartment? Offended that Titus hadn’t chained up the prisoner?

Or was he, like Alec, outraged by all
that General Bardici had gotten away with of late?

When the rotors thrummed up enough lift to pull them from the ground, Titus leaned closer to Alec. “Do you know about the covenant Parliament has arranged? All those with a claim to the crown must sign it by midnight, or forfeit their claim.”

Alec felt his heart sink. “I’d heard rumors something like that might happen. Have any signed?”

“Both of your sisters.”

Alec felt a wave of relief wash over him. Isabelle and Anastasia had accomplished far more than he had in the week since their motorcade had been ambushed. He’d always been proud of them, but never more so than that moment. At the same time, he felt the sting of his own failure.

“That’s why Bardici is taking his brother and niece to Sardis on this flight,”
Julian explained, “and why he won’t let you out of his sight. He’s going to sign the document, and he’ll do everything in his power to make sure you don’t sign it.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t killed me yet.”

The two soldiers exchanged glances. “You’re still too valuable to him alive,” Titus told him. “Apparently you know something…”

“Something he needs to know,” Julian finished.

Reassured that he wasn’t about to be assassinated, Alec asked the question that had been troubling him since the men had mentioned his sisters. “What about my parents? Isn’t my father eligible to sign this covenant, too?”

Titus let out a heavy breath, and Julian shook his head.

“The covenant is being kept at the Hall of Justice in Sardis. Your sisters both managed to sign the
document, but they were attacked.

“Attacked?” Alec immediately felt concern for their safety.

“They’re fine. They got away when your father arrived—no one had seen him before this, no one knew where he was…” Julian shook his head again.

Alec looked back and forth between the men. “My father made it to the hall?”

“He was shot,” Titus admitted. “I don’t believe he was killed.
From what I’ve heard he’s in a coma.”

“But he didn’t sign the covenant?”

“No,” Julian confirmed. “That much I’ve heard with certainty. And that’s why—” he stretched out his long legs in the cramped space of the rear helicopter compartment “—Titus and I have both decided to pledge our support to you. For the last week, no one knew where our king was, or if he’d abandoned us to the rebels.
But that fact that he took a bullet defending his nation and his daughters—”

Titus picked up where his fellow soldier’s words had dropped off. “You’re his heir. We’ve seen enough of the way Bardici works to know we don’t want him as our king. You could have killed me with that floor lamp last week, but you didn’t.”

“I didn’t recognize you,” Alec explained quickly. “I didn’t even know
who I was until a few days ago. The ambush wiped out my memory.”

“We’d surmised as much.” Julian nodded. “Whether you knew who anyone was or not, you still acted with greater honor and integrity than our general. You have our support.”

“But—” Titus raised a hand of caution “—we have no way of gauging the support of the rest of the men, especially those we’ll encounter in Sardis. They’ve
been trained to follow their general’s orders, and we can only assume they’ll continue to do so.”

“We’ll be outnumbered in Sardis,” Julian assured them. “Bardici only kept a skeleton crew at his African compound in order to avoid detection. He’ll have hundreds of men in Sardis, instead of dozens. And I can’t name a single one of them who would directly defy orders. None of them know you’re
alive. Bardici has given us instructions to put a bag over your head when we disembark. I doubt he’s going to let anyone on to the knowledge that the Lydian heir is back on Lydian soil. There won’t be anyone on the ground we can trust.”

Alec nodded solemnly. There was one individual he hoped he could trust, but he wasn’t about to mention her to the men. They’d already watched Lily betray
him once. He knew they’d lose all faith in him if he suggested they trust her again. But that didn’t keep him from praying that God would keep Lily safe. Whether she could be trusted or not, he didn’t want anything to happen to her. She’d already suffered enough.

* * *

Lily’s hand shook as she signed the covenant that would allow her to rule Lydia along with her father, uncle and Alec’s
two sisters. Somehow the signature still came out legible, though she couldn’t help feeling that in signing her name, she’d sealed off any possibility that Alec might ever forgive her for her association with her family.

After all, she’d promised him she’d spy on her uncle to undermine his evil plans. In signing her name, she only buttressed his plans. But she didn’t see any way around it.
If she was going to stay in her uncle’s good graces, she
had
to sign. Besides, signing only made her a member of the oligarchy. That didn’t mean she’d vote alongside her uncle in oligarchical rulings. In fact, if she ever managed to wriggle out from under her uncle’s thumb, she had every intention of using her newly claimed power to help Alec’s family.

Of course, she couldn’t let on about
any of that to her uncle.

The general had already signed the covenant that morning, unwilling for the three of them to arrive at the Hall of Justice together, especially not after the violence that had met the princesses when they’d arrived to sign. But other than taking separate trips to the Hall of Justice, he hadn’t let her or her father out of his sight.

Lily and her father climbed
into the limousine, and she watched her father warily. This was the man who’d tossed Alec overboard, who’d called David to come pluck them from the yacht, who’d ordered the hay that had poisoned her beloved horses.

Michael Bardici shook his head sadly. “You didn’t want to sign it,” he whispered from the seat beside her.

Lily shrugged. “I didn’t have any choice, did I? Whether I run
away or whether I comply, David gets his way.”

“David always gets his way,” her father repeated softly, and leaned closer to her, dropping his voice so she had to strain to hear. “And I’m getting tired of it. I shouldn’t have let him take you from the yacht. I shouldn’t have let him control me for so long.”

Lily pulled back and studied her father’s face. His warm brown eyes glimmered
with regret, and his mouth was drawn in a thin frown.

“Alexander’s family’s claim to the throne rests on your great-grandfather’s abdication,” Michael Bardici explained. “If they could prove that Basil abdicated, David would have no further stake in the crown.”

“Can they prove it?”

Her father shook his head. “Your uncle isn’t working alone. He and the other Lydian generals are
all on the payroll of a man who goes only by number 8. Six years ago, this 8 asked King Philip to verify Basil’s abdication, and King Philip produced the abdication document.”

Lily gasped. “So it really ex—”

Her father shushed her. Already their car had left the city and drew closer to David Bardici’s country estate. They didn’t have much longer to talk. “It
did
exist. 8 stole it.
I had assumed the document was destroyed, but this is not the case. Earlier today when I opened your uncle’s desk drawer for a pen, my fingers slipped on the release to a false drawer bottom. The abdication document is hidden in the false compartment. I caught only a glimpse of it before I shut the drawer for fear your uncle would see. Now I’m afraid he may suspect what I saw, because he won’t let
me out of his sight within the house.”

“If I could get it—” Lily breathed, hope hammering against her heart as the car cleared the gates of the Bardici estate.

Her father shook his head. “You would have to be very careful, and even then, I don’t know how you’d get it back to the royal family. But you have done many things in the past week I didn’t know you were capable of. Perhaps…”

His sentence hung unfinished as the car came to a stop and her uncle waited for them to exit. And then, just as her father had intimated, David Bardici followed them both into the house, trailing her father as though he didn’t dare let his eyes off him for one moment.

Lily’s mother met her by the stairs and escorted her to her room. “Everything went smoothly?” Sandra Bardici confirmed.

“Without a hitch.” Lily nodded. “Now I think I might rest.”

Lily lingered in the doorway to her suite as her mother disappeared down the hall. Had her father told her the truth? Did the abdication document still exist, and was it even now inside the very estate where she was staying?

It almost seemed too good to be true—which was why she couldn’t help wondering if her father’s
words were just another trap.

THIRTEEN

L
ily stepped into the hall. They hadn’t locked her in her room. Perhaps now that she’d signed the covenant and the sun was setting on Alexander’s window of opportunity to sign it as well, her uncle had decided to let his guard down a little.

Or perhaps he’d given her a chance to prove once again that she wasn’t on his side after all.

She’d spent time at the
estate the week before, but she wasn’t clear how to find her way through the sprawling mansion to her uncle’s office, which she’d never wanted to find before. Unsure where to start her search for her uncle’s desk, and unsure whether it was even a search worth embarking on, Lily prayed silently as she made her way down the richly carpeted hallway.
Dear God, if I shouldn’t be doing this, please
stop me. I don’t know which way I should turn.

She paused at a fork in the hallway, and the scripture she’d read two days before echoed through her mind.
Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Attuning her ears to whatever words might come, Lily heard nothing.

She studied the two paths for some
signal, any indication of which way she should go.

Muffled footsteps sounded behind her, and Lily spun around to see a plump woman in a maid’s uniform pushing a cart up the hall.

“Trying to decide which way to go?” the crinkly eyed woman asked her.

“Yes. I’m afraid I still don’t know my way around here very well.”

“Where are you trying to get to?”

It was an innocent
question, but Lily didn’t have an innocent answer, and a blush crept up her cheeks while she tried frantically to think of a plausible answer. “I, um, just need to get out and get some air.” It wasn’t until she’d spoken that Lily remembered she’d just come in from outside.

The woman had dimpled elbows and dimpled cheeks and didn’t stop working while she spoke. “Front door’s the other way.”
She pulled a card from a hook on her cart, stuck it in the magnetic key-card reading slot of the door nearest her, and when the red light changed to green, she let herself into the suite before hanging the key on a tiny hook again.

Lily watched the woman disappear into the room, then looked at the inauspicious card.

Was it a master key that accessed all the rooms?

The maid carried
a wastebasket from the room toward her cart.

Lily hurried down the hall. She couldn’t take the woman’s key card, not without being caught. And if her uncle even suspected she was up to something, he’d surely lock her up again.

Coming around a curve in the hallway, Lily finally recognized where she was. On one side of the hallway, wide windows overlooked the central fountain and curved
driveway of the front courtyard. Beyond the high stone walls the city of Sardis shone like gold in the sinking evening sun. Come midnight, it would be too late for Alec to sign the covenant that would allow him to rule in the oligarchy with his sisters.

Isabelle and Anastasia would be outnumbered.

Lily blinked, and realized that among the soldiers who were stationed at regular intervals
throughout the courtyard, her father and uncle were deep in conversation with men outside. Her uncle still hadn’t let his little brother out of his sight.

But how long might they stay outside?

Turning to the opposite wall, Lily recognized the door to her uncle’s office, and realized with a sinking heart that the solid double doors were latched with a magnetic-strip-reading card key
lock. Of course her uncle wouldn’t keep his private office open for anyone to wander in.

The sound of the maid’s humming filled the hall.

“This is the way; walk in it.”

Lily looked outside to where her uncle and father still stood, then darted down the hall toward the maid’s cart, thinking quickly.

She couldn’t steal the key card. There was no way—she’d only get caught
and get in worse trouble. Besides, she couldn’t imagine that God would want her to steal the key card.

“This is the way; walk in it.”

Lily smiled as the woman pulled rolls of toilet paper from the shelf under her cart.

“Still trying to get somewhere?” The gray-haired woman smiled back.

“Yes, and I just realized—” Lily turned on her most hopeful, pleading look “—I don’t
have a key to get where I’m going. Could I borrow yours—” she pointed to the card “—if I promise to bring it right back?”

“I just work here.” The woman chuckled. “Your uncle owns the place.” She handed over the card. “I’m going to need that for the next room.”

“How soon?”

“Takes me twenty minutes to do up a room right.”

“I’ll have it back to you in half that.” Lily promised
as she held the card tight in her hand. “Thank you.”

The woman resumed humming as Lily darted back down the hall. Would the key work on her uncle’s office door? She could only pray that it would.

With another glance out the window, Lily saw that her father and uncle were no longer standing in the courtyard. Had they come inside?

Unable to answer that question, Lily figured it
didn’t matter anyway. She only had the card for ten minutes, and might not get a chance to borrow it again. Giving in to the mounting sense of urgency fueled by her pounding heart, she slipped the card into the slot.

A tiny green light lit on the handle, and she pulled it open quickly before it could go red, stepping inside her uncle’s office and pulling the door shut quickly behind her.

The room smelled faintly of leather, the sweet cigars in the humidor and her uncle’s cologne—a potent scent that smacked of her uncle’s many betrayals. The instant it hit her nostrils she wanted to turn and run.

But she slipped the card into her pocket and headed for the desk. In the pure sunlight that filtered in through the generous windows, Lily had plenty of light to see. She hurried
to her uncle’s desk. There was no telling how soon her uncle might return, but she got the sense from the cologne-infused air that he spent much of his time in the room.

He could return at any moment.

Running her fingers along the center desk drawer, she felt a tiny latch give way at the gentle pressure of her thumb, and the bottom of the drawer swung loose, pivoting outward toward
her, just deep enough to accommodate the thin sheaf of papers hidden inside.

Lily plucked them up. Were these the abdication documents? If she was able to get these to Alec or his sisters, would they be able to prove their family’s right to the throne and end the political turmoil that kept Lydia in upheaval? Would her uncle finally be kept from power? She prayed it might be so.

Wanting
to tuck the pages in some hidden spot to sneak them out, she realized she hadn’t brought a bag or anything else to put them in.

But that realization quickly became irrelevant when she heard the rumble of men’s voices just outside the door.

That was her uncle’s cold laugh—she’d recognize it anywhere.

Glancing at the lock, she saw the light turn from red to green, and looked desperately
around the room for somewhere to hide.

* * *

There was no furniture in the room, nothing but solid cement walls, cement floor, even a cement ceiling above his head. Alec paced the narrow space and watched through the tiny barred window as the sun sank lower in the sky, taking with it any chance he had to sign the covenant and support his family’s claim to the crown. By midnight, his
window of opportunity would close.

He couldn’t blame Parliament for putting a time limit on signatures. The way he understood it, they were just trying to avoid any more squabbling. They had hundreds of years of Lydian laws and history to abide by—creating the ruling oligarchy had stretched those rules enough already. But they’d found a way to honor the law that allowed only descendants
of Lydia on the throne, while at the same time avoiding the likelihood of crowning the wrong person before the rightful heir could be established.

They’d done the best they could do, given the circumstances, and placing a deadline on signatures was simply their way of promising the Lydian people that the uncertainty would end.

No, he was the one who’d failed everyone. Even his little
sisters had gotten along better than he had. As he paced, his determination grew. Somehow, he’d find a way out of the Bardici estate. Somehow, he’d make it to the Hall of Justice. But how could he possibly get there by midnight when he couldn’t even find a way out of his room?

* * *

Lily spotted a small door beyond her uncle’s desk and ducked into the space behind it, pulling the door
shut after her just as she heard her father and uncle step into the office. Hardly daring to breathe, she prayed the men would leave quickly so she could get the papers to Alec or his sisters before sunset. Since she had no idea how she was going to smuggle them out of the Bardici estate, she knew she had to hurry.

But the voices of her father and uncle rumbled from the other side of the
door.

“It doesn’t matter. Lily certainly didn’t know anything about it—the polygraph backed up her story. I couldn’t beat a confession out of Alexander the last time I tried. Even if he knows where it is, he’s made it clear he’d never going to tell anyone. It’s quite simple. Alexander is a liability I can no longer afford. As long as he’s alive, there’s a chance he could retake the throne.”

Lily stared at the richly stained wood door as the meaning behind her uncle’s words sunk in.

They were going to kill Alec.

She couldn’t let that happen. With trembling hands, she lowered the pages she held. Critical as they may have seemed a moment before, now they hardly mattered. Granted, she still felt the crown ought to be restored to Alec’s family, but far, far more importantly,
she had to do something to save Alec’s life.

Still praying, she took a step back from the door, and bumped into something. She felt the oblong item with her hands. It was smooth, a little higher than counter height, with buttons on a panel toward the front. She realized the closet she’d stepped into was an office workroom.

A plan formed in her mind.

A foolish, crazy plan.

Her uncle held no esteem for her life. As long as he didn’t care whether she lived or died, she had nothing to bargain with.

But he cared about the papers she held. He’d do anything to keep them from falling into the wrong hands.

She waited until her uncle’s fading voice told her he’d left his office again, then quickly got to work. He’d said little to indicate when he planned to murder
Alec, but Lily got the distinct impression it would be soon.

She didn’t have much time.

* * *

Alec heard footsteps approaching.

Good enough. The sun had already begun to set, but from what Titus and Julian had told him, he had until midnight to reach the Hall of Justice. He braced himself near the door, ready for whatever came his way. At this point, he was desperate enough
to take whatever break he could get, no matter what risks might be involved.

He only had until midnight.

The door opened, and the dying light illuminated the faces of Titus and Julian.

Alec relaxed slightly. They were his only known allies. He wasn’t going to attack them.

“Bring him this way.” David Bardici’s voice echoed from the hallway. “We’re going to have one last
negotiation session.”

The soldiers cuffed him on either side, shackling their wrists to his, and followed Bardici up to the back courtyard. Flaming torches illuminated smooth walls towering twenty feet around, topped with parapets and gun-wielding soldiers.

In fact, as Alec’s eyes adjusted and he looked around, he saw that men with guns rimmed the ground and the wall, a double layer
of muzzles pointed directly at him.

Bardici wasn’t taking any chances.

The general pulled out a handgun and stood opposite him no more than two meters away. In a low voice, too quiet for the men who rimmed the courtyard to hear, he began. “I’ll make this simple. I will ask you a question. If you do not answer to my satisfaction, I’ll shoot you—not a deadly shot, but something that
will hurt enough to jog your memory.

“If I have to ask my question again, and if you don’t answer to my satisfaction, I’ll shoot you again. We’ll keep going like that until I have the information I need, or you die, whichever happens first. Got that?”

“Yes,” Alec answered with a sinking heart. He had a good feeling he knew exactly what the question was going to be. And he knew he wouldn’t
have an answer that would satisfy the madman who faced him.

* * *

Lily returned the key to the maid with extra thanks and headed down the hallway almost at a run. The sprawling mansion was quiet. Too quiet.

She had to find her uncle.

Bounding down the wide front stairs with the sheaf of papers in her right hand, she came around the corner and almost slammed into her mother.

“Lily!” Sandra Bardici looked more upset than startled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I need to find Uncle David. It’s important.”