Chapter 32
LOUIS
I grab my duffel bag and move to the door, listening as the heavy footsteps fade away. The shift change is happening right on schedule, like Davis said.
Seconds later, a soft knock taps against the door.
It cracks open, and Davis is standing in dark clothes instead of his usual uniform. His face is barely visible in the dim hallway. He puts a finger to his lips and jerks his head toward the corridor. I slip out and pull the door shut behind me with a soft click.
The hallway stretches in both directions.
“Three minutes forty seconds,” he whispers, checking his watch. “Stay close.”
We move fast, keeping our footsteps light.
On the way out, we pass the portrait of my grandfather that I’ve walked by a thousand times.
There’s a large antique vase my grandmother imported from China, and the hallway that leads to Delphine’s wing.
I take it all in, knowing I might never see any of this again.
It doesn’t devastate me in the way it should.
Davis stops at the corner, and I freeze as footsteps approach from the left corridor.
He grabs my arm and pulls me through a door I didn’t notice, into a closet that smells like cleaner. Shelves of supplies press against my back as Davis eases the door shut. The space is tight, and his breathing stays slow and controlled, while mine wants to race.
A guard appears in the sliver of light under the door.
He’s humming something under his breath as the precious seconds drag by.
He stops outside the door, and I know if he finds us in here, it’s over.
I’ll be dragged back to my chambers, and my mother will double the guards, and I’ll never get another chance. Not to mention what she’d do to Davis.
Thirty seconds pass, then forty, and he types something on his phone. Fifty seconds later, the guard yawns loudly. This motherfucker is wasting our time, and the window will close. After a minute, his footsteps continue, and so does his off-key humming.
Davis exhales and checks his watch. “Two minutes.”
We slip out of the closet and jog toward the service stairs at the end of a corridor. The air gets cooler as we approach. Davis punches a code into the keypad, and the door clicks open, revealing a narrow stairwell, lit by a single flickering bulb.
“Three flights,” he whispers. “Ninety seconds left.”
We take the stairs two at a time; our footsteps clap against the concrete, no matter how carefully we move. At the bottom, there’s another door with another keypad. Davis enters a code, and the light stays red, so he tries again, pressing each number deliberately, but the light stays red.
“Shit.” His jaw tightens. “They changed it.”
“When?”
“Recently, because this code worked last week.”
He pulls out his phone and scrolls through backup codes, his face illuminated by the screen. We have maybe sixty seconds until the guards are in position, maybe less.
He enters another combination, his fingers steady even though the tension shows in his shoulders, and the light stays red.
“Davis.”
“I know.” He scrolls through his phone again. “There’s one more. Old maintenance code from 2019 that IT was supposed to deactivate.”
He enters it, and each beep sounds impossibly loud in the concrete stairwell. The light stays red long enough for me to start calculating alternative routes. We could go back up and try to slip through another hallway. But then the light turns green, and the door clicks open.
“Thank fuck,” I mutter as we step into the service tunnel.
The door behind us seals with a heavy thunk.
The darkness is broken by the red glow of the emergency lights hanging every twenty meters. The tunnel stretches ahead with pipes running along the ceiling. Water pools in the low spots. The air smells like mold and rust, and the humidity seeps through my shirt and clings to my skin.
“Four hundred meters,” Davis says. “Keep up.”
We move fast, and he keeps glancing behind us, like he’s expecting the door to burst open.
At the next junction, we take another tunnel. Voices drift toward us, faint, but they’re getting closer.
“It’s the maintenance crew,” he mutters. “They shouldn’t be down here tonight.”
Flashlight beams start to bounce off the walls ahead of us.
He points. “That way loops to the same exit but adds two hundred meters.”
The voices get louder as two men complain about a water main and a weekend shift.
“Hide,” I say.
We duck into the side tunnel and press ourselves against the concrete as the maintenance crew passes us. Their voices become murmurs and then silence.
Davis checks his watch. “We need to move faster.”
The side tunnel is darker, with puddles so deep that they soak through my shoes. There are places I have to duck, but I still don’t miss the cobwebs that brush against my face. Something scurries ahead, and a metallic taste coats my tongue from the stale recycled air.
After what feels like an eternity, the tunnel ends at a ladder leading up to a metal hatch.
Davis climbs first and pushes it open, and cool night air floods down, along with the smell of grass and fertilizer.
I follow him up and out, and then we’re standing in a garden shed, filled with rusted tools and bags of soil.
“I can’t believe that worked.”
“Actually, I can’t either,” he says.
Through the grimy window of the shed, the groundskeeper’s cottage sits dark about thirty meters away. Beyond it, the tree line marks the edge of the palace grounds.
“Once we’re in the trees, we’re off palace property,” Davis says. “Two kilometers through the woods, there’s an access road, where a car is waiting.”
I grin and pat his shoulder. “Damn, I’m so glad we met.”
He shakes his head. “If this were a different century, I’d get beheaded for this shit.”
“True,” I tell him as we slip out of the shed and into the night.
The warm, salty air fills my lungs. We sprint across the open grass toward the trees. Each step we take forward only exposes us more.
A light clicks on in the cottage, and we freeze, caught in the open with nowhere to hide.
Someone moves past the window inside—a shadow, followed by muffled footsteps—and then a door opens on the far side of the cottage. A man’s voice calls out into the night, and a dog barks in the distance.
“Don’t move,” Davis states.
The dog barks again, and the man says something mumbled that sounds like a command.
In the faint light, there’s a German shepherd with its ears upright. The dog’s body is tense as it starts barking, loud and aggressive.
“Sprint,” Davis says, and we do.
We sprint across the open grass, not caring about anything but speed, as the dog’s barking gets more frantic. Seconds later, I hear the man shouting and the cottage door bang open. We haul ass until we crash into the tree line.
He looks at me and shakes his head. “Is your life just a big series of close calls?”
“Pretty much,” I say with a shrug. “I test the limits too much though.”
“I agree, Your Highness.”
“Louis,” I say.
We push through branches and step over roots. The duffel bag catches on something, and I yank it free. Behind us, the dog is still barking, but it’s not getting closer.
Davis sets a brutal pace through the forest that makes my lungs ache.
I think about Addison, about the way she scrunches her nose when she’s concentrating on a brushstroke, about the streaks of paint she always gets on her without noticing.
It’s the little things I love though, like how she laughs with her entire body or how fast she is with the comebacks.
I push harder, faster, for her. The sooner I’m out of Montclaire, the sooner I can see her again.
After twenty minutes, which feels like hours, we break through the trees onto a dirt road, where a luxury car is waiting with its headlights off. A young man leans against the hood, smoking a cigarette, and he straightens when he sees us stumble out of the forest.
“About time,” he says, flicking the cigarette away. “I was starting to think you’d gotten caught.”
“Almost did,” Davis says, still breathing hard. “Can we please get out of here now?”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“None of your damn business,” the guy says.
I stare at him.
We pile into the car, and the guy pulls onto the road without turning on his headlights. For the first kilometer, he navigates in the dark. I lean my head back against the seat and try to calm the hell down from the adrenaline rush.
“How did you arrange a plane?” Davis asks.
“It’s best if you don’t know all the details yet,” I say.
He laughs, but there’s an edge to it. “Now you’re keeping secrets?”
“I’m protecting you. The less you know, the less you can be forced to tell them if this goes sideways. Speaking of, if that happens, I forced you. Okay? I threatened you with a weapon. A knife. I don’t care what you tell them, but I will absolutely take the blame.”
The guy driving scoffs and shakes his head.
Davis ignores him and nods. “Fair enough.”
The headlights click on as we reach the main road, and the driver accelerates. The car winds through back roads, avoiding the main highways. Twenty minutes later, the private airstrip appears out of the darkness. Sitting on the tarmac with its lights on and engines running is a Gulfstream G650.
The guy scans a card at a private gate, then speeds down the road leading to the runway. When we’re close to the plane, he stops.
“It’s important that no one knows you saw us tonight,” I tell the driver.
He holds up his phone and snaps a quick selfie with me in the frame before I can react. “Shut the fuck up, Louis. Get out of my car. You’re welcome.”
I stare at him as we climb out, then turn to Davis. “Who the hell is that guy?”
“My cousin.” Davis grabs his bag from the trunk. “He’s a dick, and he hates the royal family.”
“Then why did he help?”
“Because he’ll do whatever he can to fuck the Crown.” The car peels away into the darkness, and Davis shrugs. “But also, everyone is rooting for you, Louis.”