The palace—usually bustling with government office workers and dignitaries and people arriving to attend meetings like the main floors of a busy hotel—wasdeserted.
The opulent wall trimmings and busts of historically important people were visible becausethere wereno people around.
Uh-oh.
Everyone must be at the Crown Council meeting.
Or holding their collective breaths in their offices.
But no one was walking the corridorsexcept them.
Dree touched Max’s arm. “Doesn’t it seem a little weird—”
A gunshot blasted from a corridor to their right.
The military men splashed aside.
Maxence’s arm pulled Dree against his chest, his arms around her, just as two of their large men grabbed and shoved him aside.
They fell to the floor, rolling over and over as the mercenaries snapped into action. Some of the men took up positions around the entrance to the hallway where the gunshots had rung out, while the redheaded guy checked Dree and Maxence to make sure they were all right before scouring their position for an avenue of escape.
Maxence scowled. “What the—” and sprang up from the ground to standing.
The ginger merc dragged Dree to her feet and placed his finger on his lips.
Dree nodded while shaking like an earthquake and wishing she’d changed her damn shoes. She couldn’t run in these high-heeled pumps. She couldn’t fight in them, and she might need to.
The redheaded guy made some hand signals to some of the other soldiers, and one of them broke off to stand beside Maxence. The redhead whispered to Max, “Nearest stairwell?”
Max pointed and led them to a door that looked like all the others, but once they were inside, stairs wound up and down from the concrete landing.
Dree and Max started down the stairs, but the redheaded guy said, “Nope, we’re going up.”
Maxence frowned. “We could travel on other floors, I suppose, but the throne room is a floor below us.”
The guy shook his head. “We’re aborting the mission. We’ll take you out via a helicopter on the roof.”
The mercenary had a thick Scottish accent, which Dree hadn’t expected, but she wasn’t really sure what she had expected from a mercenary. Maybe she’d assumed they’d all have Texas accents.
“Absolutely not,” Maxence told him. “This Crown Council meeting is of the utmost importance. Imustattend.”
The Scottish guy squinted at him. “Can’t ye reschedule it?”
“If I reschedule it, they will probably go on without me, which means my uncle Jules will be elected the next sovereign, and Monaco will become an authoritarian state.”
The Scottish guy tilted his head and stared a little more intently at Maxence. “Monaco isn’t already an authoritarian state?”
Maxence frowned at him. “It’ll turn into acriminalone. And no, it’s not. We can discuss political philosophy later. I need to get to that meeting.”
The mercenary clicked a radio microphone hanging on his shoulder and relayed this to someone else. Dree and Maxence couldn’t hear the response because the guy was wearing an earpiece, but he rolled his blue eyes just barely and said, “Come along, then. On to the council meeting. But don’t take us straight there. Keep to the stairwells and back hallways as much as ye can.”
Maxence led them on a circuitous route—down a few floors and then through the servants’ quarters and the kitchens, earning them some startled glances from chefs and servers. They trotted through increasingly more opulent rooms with higher and higher ceilings, the mercenaries stopping them and checking each room before waving them inside until they reached a massive double door that was shut tight.
Inside, a conundrum of voices rumbled.
Dree had been worrying that they’d evacuated the palace due to a bomb threat.
Max tried the door handles, but they didn’t move under his grip. Dree was trying to wish them to be unlocked with her mind, but it didn’t work.
