The Dare Collection September 2018. Stefanie London

      “Are we going to do our dance again, young Prince?” He glances over his shoulder to where Juliet stands captive. “Let her watch this time. Let her see what awaits her in the public square tonight.”

      I roar through the pain and try to climb to my feet, but the man of the Watch pulls a handgun from his side and swings it at my head. Right before everything goes black, I hear Juliet scream.

      Juliet

      In my life, I have known soul-crushing boredom. I have drunk deep from the well of loneliness. I have felt passion grip me in its jaws and tear me to a place between agony and ecstasy. And I have known the awe-inspiring, almost holy sensation of being in love and getting that love returned.

      But I’ve never known hatred—true hatred—until this moment. Bile burns my throat as I fight like a cornered lioness surrounded by jackals. I’m fighting for more than my own life. This is about my unborn child and Damien cold-cocked and discarded on the cold elevator floor like yesterday’s trash.

      One of the abductors carrying me turns my body toward his chest as he adjusts to my thrashing weight. The acrid scent of his body odor assaults my senses. He reeks like liverwurst and stale aquavit. I don’t hesitate, lunging forward and sinking my teeth through his shirt until I connect with the hard muscle beneath.

      Unlike Damien’s powerful body, which exudes a need to protect, this man gives off an air of cruelty and small-mindedness. He wants to hurt me, so I hurt him first and make it count.

      He bellows as my teeth clamp down, and I twist my head back and forth to deepen his pain. I don’t know what has come over me, only that the whole world has turned hazy and red.

      I channel my inner bulldog, driven by a primal need to defend my child. In the background, I am dimly aware of pain in my skull as the man yanks fistfuls of my hair in an attempt to stop my assault.

      My eyes burn, watering from the agony. I can hear strands of my hair giving way as roots are pried from the scalp. But I don’t stop biting because maybe I am buying myself and my baby a few more precious seconds of time. Even now members of The Order might be assembling to come to our aid. And with any luck they will find Damien. Fear creeps into my heart with a reptilian coolness. The last time the Black Watch got their evil hands on him he lost so much. Can he withstand a second assault?

      The world explodes in a white light. A dull, heavy sound of metal striking bone reverberates to my core. My body goes limp as a warm, sticky liquid slides down my neck. As I’m shoved into the cramped darkness of a trunk, a man stares at me with a leering smile, a steel club clutched in one beefy hand.

      “Time to go home, Your Highness,” he chortles before slamming the lid.

      I part my lips to scream but can only muster a weak mewl before I lose consciousness completely.

      I don’t know how long I remain in the trunk. Every so often I start to wake, unable to see anything, not even my hand before my face. Holding my stomach, I croon snippets of lullabies from my country. Not songs my mother ever sang to me, but those my nursemaids and nannies used to comfort me as a child. The lyrics are pretty and silly about mountains and snow, little trolls and wildflowers.

      “It’s a beautiful place,” I whisper before my world goes dark yet again. This is how I spend the ride to my home country—in the trunk of a car, falling in and out of consciousness.

      Yes, Nightgardin is a proud, timeless land forged from ancient glaciers and wild rivers. Its people are good and hardworking even if the ruling class is corrupted to the core. If I find a way to survive the trials ahead, I will figure out how to reforge the monarchy into an institution that can make my people proud once again. Where young women are respected and advanced just like any son.

      But first I need to live long enough to defeat my parents.

      The trunk opens a few hours later and I push myself to sitting, dehydrated with a splitting headache and my hair matted with my own blood.

      I look around, realizing where my abductors have brought me—the Nightgardin Stables. Once it was a place of refuge and freedom for me, but today it may well become my doom.

      “Darling,” a woman croons in the shadow, stepping forward to take the shape of my mother. She looks like a Renaissance painting of a Madonna with her long thick hair and lovely features. The trouble comes when you get a good look at her eyes, which are devoid of any human compassion or love.

      “What have you done, Mother?” I growl as if a fierce voice can cover the fact that my legs are so weak they can barely support me. A pitchfork leans against the closest stable, the home of my favorite stallion, Loratio. If I grab it I could... I could...

      “You wouldn’t murder your own mother, now would you?” she asks with a soft smile, her gaze following mine to the tool.

      “No.” My voice is choked. “I’m not like you.”

      “That’s right.” She watches me with her flat, dead eyes. “You’re not.”

      Then she snaps her fingers, and the Black Watch goons reappear.

      “Tie her up!” she orders. “And put her in the empty stall beside Loratio.”

      “What are you going to do to me?”

      “Me?” My mother adjusts her long gray dress and transforms her face to the picture of grief. “I’m not going to do anything. The Black Watch, however, will show the public what happens to those who commit treason. Because isn’t that what you’ve done...darling?”

      “You’re insane,” I whisper.

      She smiles sweetly, though there is no trace of anything sweet in this woman’s body. “Not at all, darling. I am a woman who knows what she loves, and in my case it’s power. I thought we could tame you—that we could stomp out that spark we saw from the beginning. But when you ran off, we knew you were beyond our control.”

      “So you decided to murder me and pin it on Wartson.”

      She raises a brow. “Look at you, Juliet. You’ve learned so much in your absence. Have you not? You might have actually made a good queen were I ever willing to give up the throne.”

      She laughs, but it is without an ounce of true mirth.

      “You can’t eliminate me,” I say. “The Black Watch abducted me right in front of Damien. He saw everything even as your filthy servants beat him—just like I know they did last time. Soon everyone will know their queen is not a queen of the people but a ruthless, heartless witch who cares only for herself.”

      I have to believe—even after what he almost did in that elevator—that Damien will come for me. I know what it meant for him to have wanted to take me from behind, that I am no different from the countless others who have come after Victoria. But I also know that he is as invested in this child as I am. If it is not me he loves and wishes to save, he will come for his heir.

      She simply shrugs as her minions seize my arms. “What does it matter when he’s the one who ruined Nightgardin’s future queen? In this country, my subjects will only care about one version of the truth...mine. The rest is fake news.”

      “Where is Father?” I cry out as the men drag me to the stable. Of my two parents, he’s always been the kinder one. That’s not saying a lot, but I can’t imagine he would be in favor of murdering his only child in a bid to rule forever—not when they could lock me away in a tower and never let me see the outside world again. It is a fate unimaginable, but at least my baby would live.

      “Detained,” she says as if confirming my thoughts. “My consort is in the palace gaol deciding whether he is with me, the true daughter of Nightgardin, or against me.”

      She turns and begins to walk away.

      “If there even is a spring, you will never get to it. The Lorentz family has protection the likes of which you will never know!” I cry. “You won’t win, no matter what you do. Even if you kill me and your grandchild.”