Chapter 17
Luca turned and sprinted back the way they’d come, clearly expecting Natalie to follow. But he’d have to go back through the main room and then circle the whole building before he could get a clear line of sight to the fleeing man. The blackmailer could be gone by then.
Glass splintered beneath her boots as she ran in the opposite direction, across the shards now littering the corridor floor. She could at least track him through the window until Luca appeared.
But when she reached the end of the corridor, another idea struck her. She didn’t need to go through the broken pane itself. If she pulled the window all the way open, as her attacker had done, she should be able to slide out without running afoul of the shards still inside the frame.
A door opened halfway down the corridor. “What’s going on?” a sleepy voice asked.
Natalie turned to see a man peering in her direction, blinking in confusion. At least one of the gardeners had chosen to catch up on sleep rather than go out to celebrate.
“Help me!” Natalie gasped. “I need you to hold this window open while I climb through.”
The man stepped all the way into the corridor, his eyes widening in alarm. “Now, look here! You don’t want to go doing that. There’s broken glass everywhere!”
“I can see that,” Natalie cried, already turning back to see how far the blackmailer had gotten. “Now hurry! Hurry!” She said the final word so forcibly that the man rushed forward.
He took the window frame from her and held it open as far as it would stretch. She hoisted herself up on the ledge and slid carefully through the opening, shrinking herself down as much as possible and taking care not to even brush against the jagged edges of glass.
“Thank you!” she cried as she tipped out the other side, only just catching herself with her hands as her legs slid through. There had barely been enough space, but she’d made it.
“Go fetch some guards!” she called to her assistant as she leaped to her feet, her eyes already looking toward the last place she’d seen the fleeing man.
Movement at the end of a row of bare orange trees caught her eye. He was fleeing north along the far end of the rows.
She didn’t bother chasing him up the aisle of trees. She didn’t want to catch him, just keep track of his location. Running along the closer end of the rows, she kept pace with him, straining to match his speed as he flashed past the end of each row.
“Luca!” she screamed as she ran. “Over here!”
She didn’t dare look back to see if Luca was close. All her attention was on keeping track of her quarry in the moonlight and making sure he hadn’t disappeared between one row and the next.
When he did pivot, turning down one of the aisles between two rows of trees, she nearly missed it. It took her several strides to slow down and turn, and when she did, he popped out of the trees in front of her.
They dove for each other at the same time. Her attacker seemed to have realized she was temporarily alone and had decided to go on the offensive. Natalie, however, was determined to hold him until Luca arrived.
Her opponent managed to seize one of her arms, but she used her momentum to spin, pulling him around with her and breaking herself free. Twisting sideways, she clamped her arms around his knees and brought him crashing to the ground.
He swore, pushing himself into a sitting position and scrabbling for the knife at his belt. Natalie let go and scrambled backward, as if she were one of the crabs Luca had shown her on the beach.
“Lila!” Luca finally arrived, lunging the last of the distance and pressing his sword tip to the man’s throat.
Her attacker went still, hatred in his eyes as he glared up at the prince. Luca didn’t take his steely-eyed gaze from the man.
“There’s a pile of orange picking bags over there,” he said to Natalie. “If you detach one of the straps, we can use it to secure his hands.”
Natalie raced to obey, removing the strap and bringing it back.
“Do you know how to tie a secure knot?” Luca asked.
She grinned. “Of course I do. I’m not really a princess, remember? I know how to do all sorts of practical things.”
She bound the man quickly, pulling the knots extra tight despite his protests. After his attempt to murder her, she had no sympathy for his discomfort.
Luca prodded the man to his feet, pointing him in the direction of the main palace. The man grunted, his eyes darting in every direction, but no one appeared out of the darkness to save him.
Natalie retrieved the bag he had been carrying which he had dropped in the scuffle. As she trailed behind the other two, she rummaged through it. There was no sign of any documents, but at the bottom she found a small leather pouch.
“Aha!” she cried, pulling it out with joy. “I think I’ve found—Yes! It’s the missing Arcadian seal. It matches the one used on my letters.”
“That’s not mine,” the man said quickly. “Someone must have put it there. I don’t even know why you were chasing me.”
Natalie rolled her eyes. “Don’t bother trying that. I recognize you from that time you tried to murder me. Remember that occasion?”
Luca gave him a threatening jab with his sword, the prince’s expression turning savage at her mention of the murder attempt, and the man subsided.
They made it most of the way to the main palace building before they met Natalie’s gardener assistant, who was hurrying back in their direction at the head of a squad of confused guards. A shout went up as the men caught sight of Luca and his prisoner, and the guards all broke into a run.
The captain of the squad stopped at Luca’s side, giving Natalie a chance to quietly pocket the pouch with the seal.
Two other guards converged on the prisoner, seizing him roughly from either side.
When yet another guard stopped respectfully in front of her, she handed him the blackmailer’s bag.
She hadn’t noticed anything else of interest inside, but there might be something to establish the man’s identity.
The bulk of the squad marched the prisoner away, but the captain hesitated, looking between Luca and Natalie.
“Are you sure neither of you have been harmed, Your Highness?” he asked. “The princess must be very shaken. We can provide an escort to see her safely back to her maids.”
“I’ll take her back to her room myself,” Luca said. “Please ensure the prisoner is held securely.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” The man bowed once in Luca’s direction and a second time toward Natalie before hurrying away with the last of his men.
Natalie stepped closer to Luca. “I kept the seal,” she said quietly. “I’ll return it to Rose directly.”
He nodded his approval. “We should be able to keep the Arcadian aspect of the situation out of any official proceedings. His attempt to murder you will be a sufficient charge to bring against him.”
Natalie sighed with relief that the whole ordeal was over. Despite all her mistakes, she had helped bring down the blackmailer in the end. They’d even recovered the stolen seal.
A horrible thought occurred to her—one she should have considered from the beginning.
“But what use has he made of the seal in all this time?” she asked. “If he used the documents he stole as a guide, he could have created any number of falsified papers by now! What should we do?”
“Nothing,” said Luca firmly.
She stared at him, bewildered.
“That man tried to murder you in our palace grounds. There was no way I was letting him wander free. I’m very pleased that we’ve also recovered the missing seal in the process, but that—and any documents it created—are an Arcadian matter.
And, as you just recently pointed out, you are not, in fact, an Arcadian princess.
” He grinned at her. “But it so happens that we do have an Arcadian princess in our midst. So I suggest we leave the question of any missing documents to her to sort out.”
“But surely we should help her!”
Luca was unmoved. “If Princess Rose needs help, I think Crown Prince Leo would be a more appropriate person for her to apply to than either of us—wouldn’t you agree?”
Natalie considered the matter. “Yes,” she said decisively. “You’re quite right.”
She had overestimated her own capability quite enough lately. She was more than happy to leave the retrieving of any documents up to a prince and princess who had the resources of two kingdoms behind them—not to mention Aurora’s spy network.
“You don’t need to worry,” she told Luca.
“I’ve finished overstepping in all areas.
I won’t meddle with finding the documents, and your cousin is safe from me, too.
” She shook her head. “I’ve always thought that if you want something, you should make it happen.
I couldn’t understand why other people didn’t do the same.
But I was so busy thinking about how I wanted to be a queen, that I never stopped to consider if I’d be a good queen. ”
She gave a wry chuckle. “I think it’s fairly clear after the last few weeks that no one should be entrusting any kingdoms to my care.”
“To be fair,” Luca said, amusement in his voice, “you are only eighteen. There aren’t many eighteen-year-olds who would be good at ruling a kingdom. Even Leo—who was raised for the role—has told Uncle Frederic that he isn’t allowed to retire for at least thirty years.”
“The worst of it,” Natalie said in a defeated voice, “is that I don’t think I’d even like being royal, after all.
All those tedious court occasions and the endless small talk.
Being on display all the time…” She sighed.
“Gwen is going to laugh at me. She tried to warn me that I might not like being a queen as much as I imagined.”
She looked wistfully around the garden. “I will miss Lanover when I leave, though. I’d convinced myself it was my future home, and it’s just as beautiful as I imagined.”
“You’re leaving?” Luca sounded dismayed. “You’re not just giving up on being queen but leaving Lanover completely?”
“Of course. I never had any true claim on your family’s hospitality, so I can hardly stay and continue inflicting myself where I was never invited.
Rose will be returning home in a week, and I’m hoping she’ll let me travel as far as Arcadia with her.
That’s assuming she’ll still speak to me after I blurted out the truth to Leo. ”
Luca raised his eyebrows. “You told Leo? How did he take it?”
Natalie shrugged. “I have no idea. He dashed off almost immediately.”
Luca frowned, but after a moment he shook his head, apparently dismissing his cousin’s strange behavior from his thoughts.
A cool breeze hit Natalie’s bare arms and shoulders, and she shivered. Now that the excitement of the chase was past, the cold of the night was seeping into her.
“Thank you for helping me,” she said. “And for not taking offense at our charade. I hope that one day Lanover will become just as close an ally of the mountain kingdom as it is of Arcadia.”
“I think,” Luca said with an enigmatic smile, “that there’s a good chance of that.”
Natalie tried to feel pleased at the prospect, but all emotion seemed to have leached out of her along with the heat of the chase.
“Goodbye,” she said. The word felt utterly insufficient, but she couldn’t think what else to say. She began walking toward the palace.
“This isn’t goodbye!” Luca said quickly. “You said you’re not leaving for a week.”
She stopped and turned back with a sad smile. “But as of now, I’m no longer Princess Rose of Arcadia. So I’m certainly not going to push myself into court gatherings any longer. I think I’ve already done quite enough of that.”
“Lila!” he called after her, but she kept walking, and he must have thought better of it because he let her go.