My adventure in the capital last week proved that.
Besides, he could use a little excitement in his life, with how tense he has been on this trip thus far. He is paranoid, and that will help no one.
“Will you relax?” I tell him, instead of answering his question. “I will be sure to tell you my ideas before I implement them.”
He narrows his eyes, saying nothing, but his worried thoughts are clear.
Yes, I think being myself is exactly what I need to do.
Chapter Eleven
Elliot
“Ican’tbelieveyoutalked me into this,” I say through gritted teeth, scanning for threats as our open-air bus trundles through the streets of Windgaard. I don’t think I have ever been this stressed in my life, and I once had to extract a high-value informant out of a halfway collapsed warehouse while under fire because our cover had been blown.
This is worse.
“And if you look to your right,” a portly gentleman says, his Candoran accent thick through his microphone, “you will see the sea wall where the great Captain Dunholm fended off British invaders for eight straight days with nothing but a small band of fishermen.”
“Fascinating,” I grumble. If I were in any other circumstances, it might actually be an interesting story, but I’m too busy cataloguing all the ways this could go wrong to pay attention.
Freya nudges her elbow into my side, her smile faltering when she hits the gun holstered beneath my jacket, like she didn’t realize it was there. “You are getting on my nerves, Mr. Reid,” she hisses under her breath. “I am trying to listen to our wonderful tour guide.”
Our “wonderful tour guide” has brought up The Great Fish Fry of ’98 six times now, as if a city-wide seafood feast is the most exciting thing to happen in the history of Candora.
“We’re getting off at the next stop,” I say as my leg starts bouncing. We shouldn’t have gotten on the bus in the first place, but I made the mistake of trusting the princess when she said she wanted to check on something around the corner from our hotel. Thinking it would be a quick stop, I left the rest of the palace guards to get the event center ready in case Freya decides to continue with the original plan of giving a campaign speech.
Now we’re on a tour bus. In plain sight. Riding around the whole of the city where anyone can get to the princess. If she dies because of this, it’ll be entirely her fault.
But I’ll be the one to take the blame.
“Mr. Reid,” she says again and touches a hand to my bouncing knee. “Please.”
My eyes jump to her warm fingers, stuck there for a long moment because this might be the first time she’s touched me. Elbowing me in the ribs doesn’t count, and she hit my Glock anyway, so the fact that her pale handremainson my knee is making it difficult to concentrate. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep over the last few days jumbling my thoughts, but suddenly the words ‘she’s touching me’ are on repeat in my head.
Only when she moves her hand can I think straight again. “I’m never listening to you again,” I mutter so only she can hear. “You know that, right?”
Despite my low tone, the young couple in front of us glance back like they have multiple times throughout this tour. I don’t think they heard me, but they’ve clearly recognized Freya. They look more intrigued than suspicious, which is the only reason I haven’t tucked my hand inside my jacket to be ready to pull my gun at a moment’s notice.
“Elliot,” Freya says, softer this time. “This is a good idea.”
I scoff.
“I know you agree with me because you stepped on the bus to begin with.”
She has me there, but I didn’t count on this tour beingfour hours. Seriously, I don’t think there’s a city in the world with enough points of interest to justify a tour this long. We’re only an hour in, and I can only imagine how much detail I’ll know about the smoked Haddock our guide ate almost thirty years ago by the end of the tour. He’s already talking about the fish fry again.
“Remind me again why this is necessary,” I say and narrow my eyes at the couple in front of us when they turn around again. They quickly face forward and start whispering to each other. “There are going to be pictures of you everywhere.”
“Yes.”
“Freya.”
“This is necessary,” she says forcefully, “because I have never spent any significant time in this part of Candora, and I wish to rectify that.”
The urge to groan rises with every word she speaks. If she’s going to start taking public outings like this everywhere we go, and I highly suspect she is, she really needs to work on her speech patterns. It’s one thing to change the way she talks when she’s giving a practiced speech, but it’s another to do it naturally in conversation when around regular people like we are now.
“Okay, Rapunzel,” I say, shifting in my seat so I’m sort of facing her. My knee bumps into hers, pulling her eyes down for a moment, but she’s back to looking at me a second later.
