Royal Vengeance (Royal Blood #3)
Chapter One
Ravens Missing from the Tower
Three of the seven ravens residing at the Tower of London have mysteriously vanished, leaving fewer than the six required ravens inside the historic fortress.
“It’s ominous, isn’t it?” says Katie Mayburn, owner of the nearby Teapots and Treason Café.
“Everyone here knows the legend—that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, both Great Britain and the Crown will fall. And with His Majesty in a state and the entire royal family hiding in Scotland…well, we can’t blame the ravens for seeing the signs, can we? ”
While Lord Clarence has returned to Oxford for the new term, Evangeline, who has spent the past eight months straddling the line between commoner and royal, hasn’t been seen in public since the bombing.
Sources within the palace report that she has fled to the United States, and after the endless trail of trouble she has caused in her short time in Britain, no one expects her to return, even as His Majesty’s life continues to hang in the balance.
The Ravenmaster has offered a substantial reward for the safe return of the missing ravens.
—The Daily Sun, 31 January 2024
Someone is following me.
The steady thud of their footsteps echoes against the cobblestones, and I shove my hands deeper in my coat pockets as I hurry through the tunnel.
My knit hat is pulled down to my brows, and my scarf is wrapped around the bottom half of my face, leaving only my eyes exposed to the January chill.
No one should be able to recognize me. And yet—
Thud, thud, thud.
Maybe I’m imagining things. I have plenty of reasons to be paranoid, after all, and Oxford isn’t exactly a ghost town in the middle of term. Maybe we’re just headed in the same direction. Maybe—
“Oi!” calls a deep male voice, and the footsteps grow louder. “Wait!”
My stomach sinks, and I rest my finger against the panic button sewn into the lining of my pocket, but I don’t press it yet.
If I do, any number of MI5 agents and personal protection officers will descend on this walkway, and everything I’ve been working toward—everything we’ve all been working toward these past weeks—will be ruined.
I could whirl around and confront him, but if he’s one of the dozen paparazzi staked out on the other side of the building, where Kit’s last lecture of the day lets out soon, I’ll only be blowing my cover.
And in the time it takes to upload a photograph and write an attention-grabbing headline, the entire world will know that I’m not in the US, like everyone thinks I am.
And if he isn’t a paparazzo…if he’s someone much, much worse…
My heart is in my throat now, and I focus on the courtyard ahead, resisting the urge to break into a run.
“Oi!” he calls again, panting now. “Bloody hell, I’m not going to hurt you. You dropped your keys.”
I should keep moving. It could be a trick, but my hands grope around in my pockets anyway. Wallet. Defense spray. Phone. Tissues. Tracker. Everything’s here, except—
He’s right. I’ve dropped my damn keys.
My boots root themselves to the ground. Those keys are my only way into the flat I share with Kit, the singular safe harbor in the shitstorm that is my life, and something primal within me refuses to take another step without them.
But before I can think this through—obviously someone in my security detail must have a copy—a bulky man in his thirties steps in front of me, blocking my path.
He’s at least twice my size, with patchy stubble on his chin and watery eyes that rake over me, but if that wasn’t enough to creep me out, he also has a camera hanging from his neck.
Shit.
“Here.” He dangles my key chain in front of me, and I snatch it from him, not caring that I’m being rude. He’s the one following me into an empty part of university grounds, after all. And he’s the one trying to profit from Kit’s supposed misery.
“Cheers, mate,” I mutter, and to my horror, it comes out in more of an Australian accent than an English one. He studies me closer now, and even though I’m wearing color contacts, I avert my eyes.
“Me mum’s from Brisbane,” he says, as if this is supposed to endear him to me. “Where—”
“Gotta go,” I mumble, and this time I sound Scottish. Without giving him a chance to tell me his dad’s from Edinburgh, I dart past him, no longer bothering to disguise my fear.
Please don’t recognize me. Please don’t recognize me, I silently beg as I hurry toward the courtyard beyond. But while I’m sure he watches me for several beats too long, at last I hear a low grumble and the shuffle of footsteps as he finally leaves me in peace.
That was close—too close. And as I burst into the courtyard, my pulse is racing and my scarf has come undone, leaving my nose and mouth exposed. I pause to fix it, my gaze sweeping across the dormant lawn, but no one else is here, and—
“You’re late.”
I whirl around and bite back a curse. Lady Tabitha Finch-Parker-Covington-Boyle stands directly behind me, her designer coat belted at the waist and her black pixie cut hidden by a hat with a sparkly pom-pom.
Her expression is dangerously neutral, and she holds two thermoses of what I suspect is coffee.
“Did you not see the paparazzo following me?” I say, glancing once more into the tunnel. Part of me expects him to double back, but he’s gone now, disappeared onto the busy road. “I thought he—you know.”
“Recognized you?” Tibby raises a single perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Did he?”
I shake my head. “Pretty sure he thinks I’m Australian. Is one of those for me?”
She offers me a thermos with a sniff, and I take it gratefully as we make our way to a nearby bench.
English winters have nothing on the icy air in Vermont, or Michigan, or any of the other states where I spent almost seven years of my life being expelled from various boarding schools.
But it’s perpetually damp here in a way that seeps into my bones, and I’ve all but forgotten what it feels like to be warm and dry.
As Tibby and I sit side by side, a nearby clock tower starts to chime.
Kit’s final lecture of the day is letting out, and by now the paparazzo who returned my keys has undoubtedly rejoined the other so-called photographers, camera at the ready.
But just like yesterday—just like every day these past weeks—Kit will take their shouts and insults and leading questions on the chin without comment, his silence the only answer guaranteed to leave them frustrated.
Anything else—a smirk, a wink, or even a glance in the wrong direction—and they’ll happily turn it into a scathing headline.
Which will only bring more vultures to the perch for tomorrow’s encore.
A pang of guilt cuts through me, and I disguise my grimace with a sip of mocha from the thermos. Kit’s here in Oxford because of me. He’s enduring their abuse—the abuse of the entire world—so I don’t have to do this alone. And I will never, ever be able to repay him.
“We haven’t got much time,” says Tibby, and her tone makes it clear that she blames me entirely. “Have you made any progress?”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” I say, and she gives me a withering look. Technically this is true—Tibby isn’t part of this operation, and she has no business knowing what’s going on. But she somehow has all the details anyway, and I sigh. “I completed my cybersecurity course.”
“Wasn’t that supposed to take you two months?” she says, and I shrug.
“I don’t exactly have much to keep me busy right now. Might as well learn how to hack properly.”
“Inspiring,” deadpans Tibby. “And Kit? Is he also learning how to lead a life of crime?”
I shake my head. There’s no use explaining to Tibby the difference between a white hat and a black hat hacker, or any of the colors in between. “He’s trying to reestablish his connections to Fox Rex, but he’s worried they don’t trust him anymore.”
Tibby’s expression flickers with barely disguised disapproval. “Have you considered the possibility that they might bring him back into the fold, only to silence him for good?”
Suddenly the temperature in the courtyard seems to drop twenty degrees. “That won’t happen. He has his own security team, and Fox Rex isn’t the problem—”
“Fox Rex feeds directly into the Abr,” says Tibby. “They may fancy themselves a secret society, but they’re terrorists in training, and you know it.”
I grip my thermos tighter. “They don’t, though. There’s no evidence that any of the members of Fox Rex know they’re connected to the Abr—”
“And what if it isn’t Fox Rex that comes knocking?” says Tibby. “What if the Abr and this Guy Fawkes arsehole go after him instead? What if—”
“Would you please just stop?” I snap. “I know you and Jenkins don’t want us here, but Kit and I have a real chance at finding the list—”
“You mean the list that may or may not even exist?” says Tibby, and I huff.
“Aoife Marsh said that Guy brags about their former members all the time. Doctors, lawyers, members of Parliament, nobility—even people working inside the palace. And MI5 is sure that means he has a list somewhere. Aoife agrees, and she hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”
“You are, as always, an excellent judge of character,” mutters Tibby before taking a long drink. “And what happens when you find this supposed list?”
“Then MI5 will know who to investigate,” I say stubbornly. “They’ll know everyone who could possibly be associated with the Abr, and everyone who might’ve been involved in the bombing—”
“But you do realize Ben won’t be on it, yes?”
I blink. “Of course he won’t. He doesn’t even go to Oxford—”
“So you’re doing this out of the goodness of your own heart, then?” she says. “You’re risking your life—you’re risking Kit’s life—to simply give MI5 a hand?”
Our eyes meet, and I grit my teeth. “If the Abr finds out that MI5 knows about their connection to Fox Rex, they’ll burn any evidence, including—”
“That list of names. Yes, I’m aware,” says Tibby.
“And…any proof that Ben’s involved in the Abr, too,” I mutter. Because she’s right. I’m not just here for that list. And I can’t go home—wherever that is these days—until I’ve done everything I can to make sure the monster trying to kill my family pays for it.
“Evan,” she says with a sigh, as if I’m a misbehaving child who needs to hear the rules one more time before they stick. “That’s not on you.”
“No one else is looking,” I protest. “No one else believes Ben is part of this—”
“Plenty of people believe you,” she says. “He can’t go anywhere in Balmoral without being tailed by half a dozen protection officers, and he’s not the one they’re protecting.”
I clench my jaw. “If I’m going to accuse the third in line to the throne of treason and terrorism, then I need enough evidence to nail him to the damn wall.
It can’t be hunches, or coincidences, or the looks he gives me when no one else is watching.
It has to be concrete. It has to be enough.
And this is the only way, okay? Ben’s too smart to leave a trail, but maybe the Abr slipped up. ”
“And if they haven’t?” says Tibby, softer this time. I swallow hard.
“Then he’s going to kill everyone who stands between him and the throne until it’s finally his.”
This isn’t an exaggeration—I have the bullet wound to prove it, still healing and too close to my heart for anyone’s comfort.
My father will always bear the scars that prove it, too, if he ever wakes up.
And it’s only by sheer luck that my mother wasn’t caught in a fire that could have—would have—killed her.
Because we’re the ones in Ben’s way now. And there is nothing Prince Benedict of York is more afraid of than the simple fact that if my parents ever decide to marry, I’ll be legitimized, and the crown that was once all but guaranteed to be his will fall to my potential heirs instead.
“How’s my dad?” I say as I trace the logo on the thermos with my bare fingers.
Tibby purses her lips. “His Majesty is showing signs of regaining consciousness, but it’s slower than his doctors would prefer.”
I bite my lip. It’s been almost three weeks since the bombing that nearly stole Alexander’s life, and with every day that passes, I know the hope of a full recovery—or any kind of significant recovery at all—dwindles. “Is my mom still with him?”
“According to Jenkins, she doesn’t leave his side,” she says. “He also told me to tell you that should His Majesty grow aware of his surroundings and ask after you—”
“He’ll tell Alexander where I am,” I mumble. “I know.”
“And frankly,” says Tibby, “if this little sojourn of yours goes on much longer without any progress, I wouldn’t put it past Jenkins to go to Her Royal Highness and have her pull the plug.”
I shudder at the thought of what Maisie, my half sister, would say if she knew what I’ve been up to while she’s been stuck in Balmoral, but there’s also a distinct possibility she wouldn’t care.
As the heir to the throne, she and the other Counsellors of State have their hands full trying to keep the monarchy from collapsing, and considering how furious she was with me for my evasiveness during our last phone call, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s all but banished me from her mind out of sheer spite.
“We just—need more time,” I say, my voice cracking. “Please, Tibby. Whatever you can do to convince Jenkins—”
“And if I don’t want to?” she says, but when I give her a pleading look, she sniffs. “This is reckless, Evan.”
“I know. But so is doing nothing and letting Ben get away with it.”
A muscle in her jaw twitches. “No matter how deep you dig, you might never find what you’re looking for.”
“At least I’ll know I tried,” I manage, and she holds my gaze for another long moment before finally rising to her feet.
“Don’t die,” she says simply. And with that, Lady Tabitha Finch-Parker-Covington-Boyle strides away, leaving me with my thermos in hand and the weight of the monarchy’s survival on my shoulders.