hon, that one gives you nightmares.)
…it was all happening so fast…
(There’s nothing to be afraid of.)
…and then her father…
(We’re going to be all right now.)
…her father…
(There’s no such thing as monsters.)
…slowly folded to the floor.
She heard another sound—the flat, smacking sound of metal hitting flesh—but she was too busy looking around, looking around for…
There.
“Not s’ fast without y’r pea shooter, eh?” she heard someone, Kurt? David? slur.
“Y—you have to come with me, Prince Nicholas,” the monster said. He was reaching for her little brother, actually daring to reach for her brother after the gross assault upon her father. “Your place is with us.”
“Get the hell out of here, you traitorous piece of shit,” her older brother David ordered. Alexandria agreed wholeheartedly…to a point. “If you leave now, our security team might not blow your head off.”
Stay a while. Just a minute longer. I’ll give you something to remember the Baranovs by, you prick.
“Us, sir?” her little brother, Nicholas, asked. As always in response to stress, he was overly polite.
She slipped out of one of her shoes. There was more talking, but it was background noise, it was how the ocean sounded to a starfish. Huge and irrelevant.
“My father is the true king,” Nicholas said, and that she did hear. Nicholas was a child, a brave and honorable one, but too young to know it was useless to talk sense to an extremist.
“Devon!” her sister-in-law Christina shouted, and Alexandria heard that, too, like the crack of a whip, again and again: Devon. Devon. Devon. “You’ll never get out of here.”
Never.
She caught Nicholas’s gaze, saw him glance at the gun, Kurt’s gun, on the floor. She shook her head but he ignored her and bent for it. Thank God, Devon was distracted by Princess Christina.
“You’ve fucked up, it’s done.”
Yes, it’s done.
“You shot my daddy,” Nicholas said, and the rest of them noticed what she had just seen: he had the gun. It was steady in his small hands; the butt snugly against his left palm, right index finger on the far end of the trigger guard.
Yes, you shot my daddy.
“You shot my king and my sovereign, and you hurt my friend.”
Dad.
“So I’m thinking, it’s only fair if I shoot you.”
Don’t worry, Nicky. You won’t have to. I’m going to fix him. I’m going to fix everything.
“Your High—”
The last thing Devon said. Fitting that it should be proper use of a title. Part of one, anyway. Her hands had closed over the banquet chair. Wood, not metal—but she would make do. Her grip was firm, not sweaty. (The night sweats would come later, and stay forever.) She levered the chair up off the ground; it went easy, lighter than feathers.
She swung the chair sidearm
(“Honey, not like that. You’re throwing like a girl. Yeah, yeah, don’t go all PC on me. Do it like this.”)
putting every ounce of her one-fifty behind it.
The monster did not fall; he slammed against the wall. It wasn’t what she was expecting at all; it was nothing like TV. Her hands and arms absorbed most of the shock of the blow and it would be days before she could raise her wrists above her shoulder.
The chair, as she had calculated, did not shatter. It was good wood, it held. But force had to go somewhere. She had been counting on it, and from the blood coming out the monster’s ears, the force had gone exactly where she intended.
“There!” she said, her arms still vibrating. “That’s—” Then he got up. The monster actually got up off the floor, blood dripping down his sideburns, moving steadily, not noticing he was mortally wounded. In her head, Alex screamed and screamed.
Devon brushed cake from his uniform and took the gun from Nicholas’s nerveless fingers, shot her brother David…
(this is wrong)
shot her other brother Nicky, shot her sister-in-law Christina. Took the chair away…
(it’s not like this)
swung…
(it didn’t happen like this)
and the last thing she saw was the chair, descending. The last thing she knew was that she had failed. Everyone was dead and she failed.
Chapter 1
The Sitka Palace
2:42 A.M.
She didn’t scream.
She never screamed.
She was cringing in her bed, bracing herself for the blow, and it took a minute or so to remember it was just the old nightmare, she had not failed, everyone was alive, she had not failed.
She had not failed.
Princess Alexandria, third in line to the Alaskan throne, pressed a hand to her mouth, hurried to the bathroom, and threw up.
Alexandria stole down the hall, took a left, nodded to an insomniac footman, and walked quietly into the nursery. But not so quietly that her sister-in-law, Christina, didn’t hear.
The nursery was right next to David and Christina’s bedroom, and after years of being on her own and looking over her shoulder, Christina slept about as deeply as a cat with ADD.
There was no night-nurse; there was barely a day nurse. (Christina had the charming idea that she should raise her own daughter, which was adorable, if common.)
Knowing she had permission, Alex scooped up the sweetly sleeping baby and cuddled her against her shoulder. Dara stirred but did not awaken and Alex simply stood over the crib, holding the baby and taking comfort in her warmth, her sweet milky smell, the fineness of her baby hair, the softness of her skin.
“Another one?” Christina whispered. She didn’t whisper so as not to wake Dara; the baby didn’t sleep, she hibernated. But Christina didn’t want to wake her husband, who had a grueling day of ribbon cutting and Chardonnay drinking and penguin counting ahead of him. “What is this, the third time this week? And it’s only Tuesday.”
Alex shrugged. She adored Christina, but did
