Royal Wedding Threat. Rachelle McCalla

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      Having fought the woman enough times before, Jason had learned to pick his battles. He didn’t need his men to watch him be defeated by the wedding planner. “Fine. But the papers stay here. And you’ll do as I say.”

      He heard Ava make a noise in her throat, followed by hushed snickers from his men.

      Jason chafed, not just that the woman so openly defied him, but that her disobedience was obvious to his men—and apparently amused them to the point of barely stifled disrespect. His men—the royal guards who’d served alongside him for years—were drilled in decorum. They understood ceremony and symbolism and the dignity of their positions. But the newest recruits from the army, including Titus, were a rougher sort, more interested in proving their strength than polishing their shoes. If the royal guard hadn’t desperately needed the manpower, he’d have sent the men back to the army.

      His inability to control the wedding planner set a particularly bad example for his men. At a time when he wanted the new recruits to learn etiquette and protocol, Ava Wright made them snicker and crack jokes behind his back.

      He needed to regain full control of the royal guard.

      Too bad the wedding planner seemed equally determined to control everything within her reach.

      If he was going to control the royal guard, he’d have to set things straight with the wedding planner first.

      * * *

      Ava watched as the captain bent to inspect what appeared to be a random patch of cobblestones. They were a little over a block away from the place where her car still smoldered, a blackened testimony to the violence that had invaded her morning.

      “We’ve taken samples,” a member of the bomb squad told the captain soberly. “We’ll have to process them at the lab to learn exactly what it is, but based on the dogs’ reaction, it’s most likely residue from an explosive.”

      They stood about eight feet from the sidewalk—where the driver would have stepped through the door of a compact car, had a vehicle still been parked there. Ava tried to sort out what the men were saying. “So whoever put the bomb in my car may have parked here, in this spot?”

      “Exactly.” Jason nodded. “We can review the footage from the security cameras on the palace wall to see if they picked up anything, although I’ll warn you, the cameras are designed to protect the walls, not the streets of Sardis outside our jurisdiction. We might not have gotten much. What was the time window that your car was parked on this street?”

      “I arrived to meet with the princess shortly before eight, then stopped by your office to get your approval on the wedding plans. You kept me waiting.”

      Jason didn’t apologize. “The explosion happened shortly after ten. That’s more than a two-hour window. Any number of vehicles may have come and gone in that time.”

      Though she was tempted to point out to the captain that he might have narrowed the window by agreeing to see her when she’d first arrived at headquarters, another thought made her heart beat with apprehension. “A car pulled away from this spot right after the explosion.”

      Both the captain and the members of the bomb squad looked surprised.

      “You mean you saw a car drive off?” Jason clarified.

      Ava nodded, the memory rushing back clearly now. She was certain of what she’d seen. Everything had happened so quickly, and yet she distinctly recalled seeing a car pull away—in the back of her dazed mind, she’d thought to herself the driver was fortunate to have parked ahead of her on the street. Otherwise the vehicle would have had to drive past her smoldering car to leave.

      The bomb tech scowled at the captain. “The person witnessed an explosion, but instead of checking to see if everyone was all right, he fled?”

      “Maybe he was scared?” Ava suggested, her voice betraying that same emotion.

      “Or guilty.” Jason ran a frustrated hand through his hair, exposing the silvery flecks that framed his close-cropped ebony hair. “We need to look at that footage. Can you describe the car you saw?”

      “It was a car,” Ava told him, recalling all she could.

      “Make or model?”

      Ava bit her lip. She hadn’t looked closely enough to see any details—most of her attention had been on the pain in her legs and all the confusion around her. The ringing in her ears hadn’t helped her focus at all, either.

      “Color?” Jason prompted.

      Ava pinched her eyes shut, replaying the memory. “Dark?” She couldn’t say anything more certain than that.

      To his credit, Captain Selini neither laughed nor rolled his eyes. “We’ll have to look at the footage. Are we done here?” he asked the bomb tech.

      The squad member nodded. “We’ll give you a call when we get the results on those samples.”

      Ava walked alongside the captain as he headed back toward the pedestrian gate in the palace wall, to the royal-guard headquarters building that lay inside the palace grounds. They passed the smoldering remains of her car, and she glanced at it, her steps wavering as she considered what might have happened if she hadn’t stopped and turned back to face the captain.

      She could have been killed. At the very least, it would have been her face that was disfigured, instead of her ankles.

      Suddenly the captain took hold of her arm. “Are you okay?”

      Ava wanted to dismiss his question with a laugh, but she had to struggle to catch her breath, and she felt uncharacteristically unsteady on her feet. Attempting to straighten, to pull away from the support of his hand on her arm, she instead stumbled forward unsteadily, her high heels catching in the gaps between the cobblestones.

      Jason clasped one hand around her waist. For an instant, she feared he was going to hoist her over his shoulder and trundle her off as before, but instead he met her eyes with surprising concern. “Don’t look at the car,” he told her in a soothing voice. “Just walk slowly. One foot in front of the other.”

      In any other situation, Ava would have snapped at him. But it was all she could do to lean on his arm and step slowly forward as instructed. She glanced at his face and found his eyes on hers, concerned, reassuring. His eyes, which had only ever seemed cold and steel-gray before, now held a hint of compassion she hadn’t expected.

      “I am not an invalid,” she told him sharply as soon as she found her voice. She needed to push him away. It was her personal policy not to trust anyone. She’d learned that lesson the hard way, enough that she didn’t usually forget. Trust led to pain. Always.

      And yet, for the moment at least, it seemed she needed him. His strong arm kept her upright, when otherwise she might fall. She felt so light-headed, the memory and the fear swirling together in her mind. What would have happened if Jason hadn’t stopped her from reaching her car? And why had someone planted a bomb there? Granted, she didn’t go out of her way to be nice to people—not anymore, not since the two people she most trusted on earth had taken advantage of her trust so horribly.

      But surely her newfound assertiveness hadn’t prompted the attack. Perhaps she had become prickly, maybe even harsh. She’d only meant to keep people from getting too close to her. She’d never dreamed it would be enough to provoke someone to attempt to kill her.

      THREE

      Jason watched the images on the security screens as Oliver replayed the relevant moments. As he’d feared, Ava’s car had been parked on the edge of the security camera’s range, with only the rear bumper in view. The vehicle she’d watched drive away moments after the explosion had been far beyond that. They didn’t get so much as a shadow.

      “That’s it?” Ava asked impatiently from where she stood near his elbow. “You haven’t got a single image of any of it?”

      “You