Royalty, Romance Novels + Secret Attackers

Mysterys

Gus groans when he sees me approaching him in the kitchen. "It's too early in the morning to deal with you. I need coffee."

I grab a mug from the cabinet, pour him a mug from the machine, and slam it in front of him. "Here. Drink up sunshine."

He takes an aggravatingly slow sip from the mug. I tap my fingers on the table waiting for him to finish. Eventually I run out of patience.

"You're infuriating. You know what, I'm just going barge away anyway. So, I was thinking."

He gasps. "You actually do that?" He laughs at my long expression.

I fake a laugh. "Very funny. Anyway, I don't know why I didn't think of it before! We have cameras all over the palace. Surely one of them saw someone locking us in the library."

"Huh. I didn't think of that." He pats my head. "Good work."

Frowning, I shove his hand away. "I'm not a dog."

He takes another sip of coffee.

"Well?" I ask.

"What?"

"Can we go now?" I whine.

He gestures to his mug. "Coffee."

I grab it from his hand and shake it a little. "Well, coffee's going this way." He sighs and follows me.

I lead him to the lower part of the castle where security has set up headquarters. I say hi to Jill, the security head, as we walk in.

"Would you be able to look up what the cameras caught outside the library at around 4 pm. yesterday?" I ask her.

"Of course." She leads us into a back room full of computers and sits down at the right most one, waking it up. The screen asks for a password and she pauses, glancing up at Gus.

He gets the hint and turns around.

"Sorry, it's just, until you make it official-"

"No, no, it's fine." A few taps later, he is free to turn back around.

She navigates around for a few seconds before pulling up the footage. She frowns, clicking around frantically. "That's weird."

"What?" I ask.

"The cameras were wiped." She whispers.

"How is that possible?" I ask.

"Who was on security detail last night?" Gus questions.

I glance up at him. "You think it was a security guard?"

"Yeah, think about it. We take security everywhere we go, they would probably be part of the team in order to get get past the security measures so many times in the past."

"You're right! And they must really like cheese." I say, thinking.

"Right," Gus mutters skeptically.

But why else would the vineyard be out of cheese, if only to make me suffer an already boring outing?

"Hmm, I'll look into it for you and prepare a list." Jill states.

Gus thanks her and we make our way out.

"You know what we do now?" I ask, as soon as the door closes behind us, smiling up at Gus. He looks on, worried. "Fake date."

"Oh." He exhales, relieved. "To be fair that's all we've been doing anyway." He admits.

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