She could take advantage of this time. To learn. To gather what she needed. Because this was the beginning of something. Truly. She had help. She was not going to simply be an accessory to a man for the rest of her life. She was not going to rot away and lose herself the way that her mother had.
No.
That conversation with her father had proven to her that she had power. That she was smart.
She wasn’t lesser.
She had won. Today, she had won.
“Excuse me,” she said, when she saw the man that she had learned was Ragnar’s right-hand adviser. Soren. “I need a computer. And an internet connection. I’m also going to need some idea of what the finances for the country are. And…”
“I will check with the king.”
“Well, do that. But I’m not a prisoner.”
“Are you not? I seem to recall that you were taken forcefully.”
“But Ragnar and I have come to an agreement.”
“I will see.”
She gripped the front of her dress and swished back to her room.
It really was a lovely dress. She took it off, and went to her wardrobe, taking out a pair of camel-colored pants, and a loose-fitting top. By the time she was finished dressing there was a knock on her door.
“The king says you may have this.”
She was presented with a laptop. Brand-new from the look of things.
She clutched it to her chest. “And?”
“He says he will send you information that might be relevant to you.”
“How?”
“He established an email address for you.”
And with that, Soren was gone.
And she set the computer on her desk and began to hunt through different webpages for information on Asland. Not just recent history, but the history of the past.
The history of what had happened at the palace on the day of the coup.
A coup that had resulted in horror for everyone.
The king and queen had been killed.
She knew that. Logically. But reading about it now that she knew Ragnar made her feel cold.
The young prince was eight years old. He was thought to have been killed along with his parents initially.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she realized that the implication of that was that there had been other victims who were children.
What an awful thing.
It made her feel a sense of deep anger at everyone involved. At her father. Who had formed an alliance with this new government rather than repudiating it. Who had done what was expedient to him at the time, rather than what was right.
There were no details about what had happened with Ragnar, because no one knew. His appearance on the scene had been a surprise to everyone the world over. But DNA results had proven that he was exactly who he said he was.
