Rachelle McCalla - Protecting the Princess

But at the soldier’s confirmation back, Kirk picked up his pace. Were they on to him? Had someone spotted him leaving the palace with the princess and alerted the soldier already?

A second later the soldier shouted back at him, confirming his worst fears.

“Kirk Covington? I need to ask you some questions.”

Kirk broke into a run. Slim as his odds seemed of making sail before the soldier caught up to him, he couldn’t let anyone find the princess. If the massive explosions and the rumors he’d heard were any indication, all the members of the royal family had been targeted for assassination.

Boots pounded down the pier behind him. The man was armed. Kirk couldn’t risk drawing his fire—not with the princess slung over his back.

He set the duffel down behind him on the pier and turned to face the soldier just as the man flung himself through the air toward him.

TWO

With a roar, Kirk leaped at the man, catching him by the arms, mindful of the soldier’s gun that could send a deadly spray of bullets across the pier with a touch of the trigger.

He couldn’t let the man get a shot off. Stasi was far too vulnerable tucked inside his duffel bag. At the same time, Kirk realized he needed to get rid of this soldier quickly. No doubt there were others in the area. The last thing he needed to do was draw the attention of more of them.

Overpowering the man’s grip on the gun through the sheer advantage of his strength, Kirk pried the weapon from the soldier’s hands and flung it through the air. It splashed into the sea.

The man’s hands flew to his sidearm.

Kirk jabbed his knee between the soldier’s hand and his holster before he could reach his gun. Eager to end their scuffle as quickly as possible, Kirk shoved the man backward, sending him tumbling face-first into the Mediterranean. Weighed down as he was by his munitions, Kirk figured it would take the soldier a while pull himself out of the sea, though the water wasn’t quite deep enough to drown in. The soldier would be fine.

Unwilling to spare even a split second to see how long it took his attacker to surface, Kirk grabbed the duffel bag and bounded toward his sloop, setting the bag that held Stasi gently down on the deck, unfettering the boat, shoving off with a mighty heave and powering up the trolling motor that would propel the boat until he could pick up a breeze in the open sea.

Navigating the lightweight craft through the crowded marina, Kirk focused on putting some distance between his boat and the soldier. He glanced back in time to see the uniformed man swimming toward a pier support. Kirk hoped he’d have to struggle to climb out of the sea in his heavy gear—that would at least buy him a little more time. And he prayed the man hadn’t gotten a decent look at his boat.

Once he’d maneuvered his sailboat into the open sea, Kirk hauled the duffel into the boat’s small cabin and pulled back the zipper.

The fluffy folds of Stasi’s royal skirt didn’t budge.

Was she okay? She hadn’t suffocated in there, had she?

“Your Highness?” He pushed back the flouncy fabric, and Stasi peeled her hands from her face and blinked up at him. She was trembling, from her shoulders to her lower lip, to the tears that shimmered on her cheeks.

“Are you okay?”

She hiccupped.

Kirk wished there was something more he could do for her—some way to comfort her or dry her tears, but there wasn’t time. Any number of folks might have seen him leaving the harbor. “I’m sorry.” The words seemed so inadequate against the terrors they’d both just witnessed. Had her family members all been killed?

“Where are we?” Her voice shook as she disentangled herself from the inside of the bag.

“At sea. You’re safe for now. I need to go back up and steer. You stay below. We can’t risk anyone seeing you.”

She opened her mouth as if to speak, but Kirk didn’t have time for her questions. Instead, he turned and went back above, closing the cabin door behind him. She appeared to be overcome with fear and shock, and he prayed she’d be okay until he got her to relative safety. Then he’d do what he could to reassure her.

But not now. She had to stay out of sight for now. Sardis Bay tended to be crowded. He needed to be where he could steer the craft through the busy waters.

The nation of Lydia shared the Mediterranean coast with Albania and Greece. Her capital city of Sardis was also her primary port. Beyond the marina, the cove of Sardis Bay was protected on the north by a finger of land that jutted toward an archipelago. Tourists and Lydians alike loved the white-sand beaches that rimmed the small islands, which extended for almost fifty kilometers beyond the mainland.

The islands had once formed a peninsula that was connected to the capital city, and centuries before, the royal family had built a stronghold on the rocky promontory at its tip. Now the ruins of that fortress lay at the outermost tip of the stretch of islands. No one ever ventured to the Island of Dorsi.

Dorsi was said to have been contaminated by land mines during the world wars, though no one could ever agree what enemy had placed them, since Lydia had remained neutral throughout those conflicts. Besides that, the massive blocks of limestone that teetered in ruinous towers were rumored to fall at the slightest provocation, especially when disturbed by those who didn’t belong there.

The island itself was such a formidable rock that there didn’t seem to be any decent spot to anchor, and if that weren’t deterrent enough, the periphery of the island was dotted every twenty feet or so with fearsome signs, warning potential visitors of certain death should they venture there.

Kirk would take an indirect route to the Island of Dorsi. If anyone tried to follow him, he could hopefully lose them among the islands, especially with evening coming on. The evasive measures would take time, and it would likely be sundown by the time he and the princess arrived on the Island of Dorsi. He could only pray they would arrive safely.

Anastasia slumped down on one of the cushioned benches that lined the sides of the boat’s cabin. The summer evening was warm, but she still felt a distinct chill and hugged herself while she tried to bite back the tears that threatened to fall.

Terror squeezed her heart. She’d heard enough of Kirk’s encounter with the soldier at the pier to realize they’d come quite close to being discovered. She hadn’t even been certain, until he’d zipped back enough of the bag for her to see out, that she hadn’t fallen into the hands of those who’d targeted her family.

At the mere thought of her family, her heart clenched. What had happened to her parents and siblings? The explosions had been so huge, the black smoke so thick, it was difficult to imagine that they might have escaped unscathed. Had they perished in the attack?

The horrifying thought was more than she could bear, and she reeled as fearsome thoughts washed over her. What would become of her family? Was she the only member of the Royal House of Lydia who’d survived? What if the assassins tracked her down? Where could she possibly go from here, alone and hunted?

When Kirk had zipped her into his bag, she’d felt a helplessness unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Though the extralarge military duffel had allowed sufficient room for her petite frame, she’d realized as Kirk carried her toward his boat that she was completely at his mercy. What if anything happened to him? What if his motives weren’t pure?

Stasi thought back to the days following her brother’s disappearance. Her mother, Queen Elaine had been frantic. Her father, King Philip, had insisted that Thaddeus would check in anytime—that he’d simply needed some time to himself. But as the hours had grown into days, it had become obvious that the crown prince wasn’t coming home. Kirk Covington had been the last person to see him alive. Witnesses had watched the two of them take off in Kirk’s boat one morning. Kirk had returned that evening alone, and had remained tight-lipped about what had happened to Thaddeus, where he was or whether he was even alive.