My voice echoes faintly through the eerily quiet space.
No answer.
A tight knot forms in my stomach.
Ignoring it, telling myself that she has to be sleeping, I start to search for her, going room by room.
I check the kitchen.
Empty.
The couch where she’d been sitting earlier.
Empty.
My bedroom is wishful thinking, but there’s no sign of Lucy in there. I check hers, expecting to find her curled up on her bed, but… no.
My pulse starts pounding.
“Lucy. Come on, Luce. I know you said you needed space, but you also said we can talk. I’m home, baby. Let’s talk.”
Still nothing.
Breathing heavily through my nose, I look at the phone app again. This time, I pink it. I didn’t want to disturb her, but I figure that, wherever she is, she had to have brought her phone with her.
When I don’t hear it right away, I start my search over, doing everything I can to hold my panic back. It’s hard to listen for the faint beeping when my pulse is thudding in my ears, but this is important. I have to find her. I need to know?—
She’s gone.
When I finally track down her phone, tossed haphazardly in a closet in one of the unused guest rooms, my heart drops all the way down to my boots. At the same time, cold dread spreadsthrough my chest when I look back at the untouched bed and there’s no sign of Lucy.
I grab it, turning it over in my hand like the damn thing might suddenly explain where she went. Before I gave it to her, I keyed my face to it so that I could unlock it if I wanted to. I never did—wanting her to have some privacy, wanting to trust her to want tostay—but now I have no choice.
There’snothing. No messages. No calls, incoming or outgoing. It’s clean, and gives me no clue what happened to my Dandelion.
No. That’s not right. I don’t know where she went, but I do know one thing.
She doesn’t want to be found.
And that’s just not going to work for me.
Pocketing Lucy’s phone, just in case, I switch it for mine. As much as I fucking hate being King, I’m not above using it to my advantage when I can. This is an emergency. I select one of my stored contacts, cursing under my breath when it takes more than three rings for Derek, the head of security in the Fortress, to answer.
When he does, I snarl, “Lock the building down.”
“Sir?”
“Lucy’s gone.” The words taste like poison as I spit them out. I’ve been so goddamn careful to hide her, to make sure that no one who could hurt would know that I had her. The only ones outside of my brothers were supposed to be the security team in the Fortress because my need to keep her safe won out over my need to keep her a secret. “I want cameras checked. Every entrance, every street corner, every damn alley around the Fortress.Find her.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, your majesty.”
Any other time, I would tell Derek where he could shove his ‘your majesty’. Now? I just bark out, “Do it,” then end thecall. Almost immediately, I’m dialing again. No time for texts. I get those who matter—Adrian, Bas, Connor—on the line, letting them know my Lucy isn’t where I left her, and that I need their help to do whatever it takes to track her down.
My brothers are on it. Each one promises to do what they can, and I believe them. Bas shuts down the garage early to hop on his bike and take a tour around the Fortress, just in case she went on foot. Connor says he’ll ask Haven what she thinks happened to Lucy, and if she somehow reaches out, hell let me know.
And Adrian…
My cousin is cool. Calm. Motherfucking collected. He’s the only one who could talk me off the ledge, pointing out that I said myself that I upset Lucy with my lies, that she was the one who demanded some space, that the last time she was hurt, her instinct was to run. He told me he would take the ride out to the park—to our fountain—and see if Lucy went there to seek refuge. In the meantime, I should stay in the penthouse. If Lucy just went for a stroll to clear her head, I should be her when she comes back.
