his hand. Her feet slid beneath her. Blood. It was blood she’d been slipping in. In stark contrast to the gruesome scene, the stranger was watching her with the kindest eyes she had ever known. She turned her head to look at her father and sister, to see what help they needed.
The man put his hand on her cheek. “Do not look, Princess. This is not what you should remember.” He took a white handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped her face. Blood smeared the material.
He began to escort her away. Suddenly, her father’s guards flew in her direction, ripping her from the man’s arms and slamming him against the wall.
“Release the princess!” More shouting and commands.
Serena held out her hands toward the stranger this time. “Please stop. Stop! I command you to stop! This man saved my life.” Now the guards appeared again? In the chaos, they had left her and her family unprotected. Hysteria threatened to consume her. She stared at the stranger. If she looked away from him, she would look back at her father and her sister.
“Come, Princess, you need to be taken to the safe room.”
The stranger looked over his shoulder at her. Her guards released him and he turned toward her, bowing slightly. “You will call on me again if I am needed.”
He fled the ballroom, toward the sound of sirens. He was gone before she realized she didn’t know his name.
* * *
President DeSante pulled Casimir away from the crowd. Everyone was being questioned by the police. In the circle of DeSante’s guards, they could speak freely.
“Was this your plan?” DeSante asked.
“I already told you it was not.” Casimir threw off his fury and focused. Someone had beaten him to the punch, but the assassins had killed the wrong king, at least in his thinking. “I had nothing to do with this.” His plan had been to kill King Warrington of Rizari only. His revenge did not include a massacre.
“This was chaos. This was reckless.” DeSante’s fingers bit into Casimir’s arm and his eyes were blazing with intensity. “This was not the revenge you had planned, but this is an opportunity. Don’t squander it.”
An opportunity?
DeSante spoke quietly. “Think like a king. Who is next to inherit the throne in Acacia?”
“The princess. Princess Serena.” It had been difficult to walk away from her. But he couldn’t stay. He had no reason to remain with her and if he did, too many questions would be asked.
“That’s right. The princess, the woman whose life you saved.”
Casimir mustered control of his anger over his lost chance. He focused on what his old friend was saying. They were not blood relatives, but they were brothers on the battlefield and DeSante owed Casimir a debt. A debt that would not be paid until Casimir’d had his revenge.
“I killed one of the assassins.” Casimir had slit the throat of the man who had planned to kill the princess at point-blank range. The assassin had gotten what was coming to him and Casimir felt no regret for his actions.
“That you did. I promised you revenge and asylum from the fallout of that revenge, but this is more than I could have given you. Use her.”
Use her for what? DeSante was a chess master, seeing many moves ahead in the game and in life. For Casimir, his anger often drove him harder than reason. He shook off his anger and took a cleansing breath. “You said she is to inherit the throne. Are the king and Princess Danae dead?” From what he had seen, it didn’t look as if they had much chance of survival, but doctors could sometimes perform miracles.
DeSante inclined his head toward the ambulances. “An official announcement has not been made, but I would assume that yes, they are dead.”
The ground had been covered in blood. The assassins had worked quickly.
True peace in the Mediterranean between Icarus, Acacia and Rizari had never been achieved. After tonight, Casimir guessed it would be impossible. Accusations would be made and blame would be spread around enough for everyone to be hit with some.
But perhaps DeSante was right and this was an opportunity for Casimir to achieve a goal he had never believed possible. As a royal, Princess Serena would be part of King Warrington’s social circle. After all, he had been planning to marry Serena’s sister. Casimir could use contact with Serena to keep the king close while Casimir planned his next move. If he was lucky and played his cards right, instead of killing King Warrington outright as he had intended tonight, perhaps he could clear his mother’s name. Casimir could make a play for the crown and the throne of Rizari. The crown that rightfully belonged to him.
King Warrington would pay for what he had done to Casimir and his mother, but not with his life. Instead he would lose everything that mattered to him.
* * *
“Do you think that President DeSante is responsible for the bloodshed?” Iliana asked. She set a cup of coffee next to Serena’s easel.
Serena didn’t look away from her canvas. She had been painting since midday. Painting and thinking. Her long-term therapist, Dr. Shaw, had helped, but she’d had only a couple weeks to process what had happened the night her father, sister and fifteen others had been killed in a massacre the media had dubbed the Birthday Bloodbath.
Serena found the name distasteful, but she found everything about the situation distasteful and almost too painful to bear. “He denies it. The investigation hasn’t uncovered who hired the assassins to murder my father.”
According to the one killer who had been apprehended by the police, the deaths of her sister and the others had been collateral damage. As if they hadn’t considered that firing bullets into a crowd in the dark would result in deaths. Serena wasn’t surprised to learn the ME had found amphetamines in the assassins’ bloodstreams. Their behavior had been aggressive and erratic.
Serena had never planned to be queen, and yet she would be Acacia’s queen in a few weeks’ time. She hadn’t had a boyfriend, and yet negotiations were in progress for her to marry the king of Rizari. Samuel Warrington had been courting Danae, and now, as if the two sisters were interchangeable, he planned to pursue Serena.
Serena had asked for a fortnight to grieve away from the public eye in the seclusion of her beach house, knowing that being granted that amount of time was a boon. Her personal feelings didn’t matter. Her country needed a strong alliance with King Warrington and Rizari, the closest country to the east, to keep the dictator of Icarus on their western shores from attacking during a time of weakness. Acacia’s Assembly would keep the country running while she grieved, but the country needed their princess.
King Warrington would provide military protection in exchange for uniting their countries and placing his own advisers in positions of influence in Acacia’s Assembly. He had agreed to respect her country’s culture and traditions and give Serena a certain amount of independence. It was the best and only offer she’d had. Her advisers were discreetly inquiring about other arrangements, but Icarus, through that detestable Demetrius DeSante, was rattling its saber, letting it be known that the death of the king of Acacia had presented them with an opportunity to strike. Rizari and Icarus had long been enemies and Acacia, being geographically in between them, was subjected to the fallout of that long-standing feud.
Serena’s
