When vengeance strikes in the form of a bullet out for the princess's blood, Princess Aleia VonAuclair must flee the heart of her country in order to protect the people she loves and take back the pieces of her soul she'd lost to the girl she once l...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I blinked up at my ceiling, the same way I'd been doing for the past hour.
The incessant drumming of my heart drowned out the rest of the world underneath the sweltering covers of my sheets.
It was nearly fifty degrees out and yet, my sheets were drenched in sweat from the past hour of tossing and turning. I'd climbed into bed in hopes of silencing my racing thoughts, but it seemed that even sleep couldn't quite lure them in enough to shut them out.
Throwing back the covers, I switched my silk pajamas for a short sleeved, one-piece suit that ended in biker short just below my mid-thigh.
After I abruptly left the library two days ago with quick promises of seeing Cara and Edrian at Taco Tuesday, I'd returned home restless and on edge, my insides coiling into taut strings with nervous energy that I'd needed a reprieve - a way out.
I grabbed my personal bow and quiver of arrows before racing over to the west wing of the basement. Archery had never been a sport the palace was particularly fond of. Something about a princess handling such a brute weapon didn't bode well with the royal precedent set centuries ago for the monarchs.
But as long as I didn't waltz around the country, parading said brutal weapon, they never bothered to bring up the topic again.
I'd loved playing archery ever since I could wrap my hand around the wooden bow and pull. There was something so thrilling, and so completely intoxicating when the arrow pierced straight through the intended target.
The calculations and pure dedication it took to even launch the arrow into the air with enough speed to catapult its head into a solid surface exhilarated me.
Since we moved here, I never got the chance to take the training grounds in the basement for a test drive and now was a good time as any. It was nearly one in the morning as I bounded down the concrete steps to the basement floor.
There was a slight chill in the air and it coaxed a shower of goosebumps all over my exposed skin, though, even then, it did nothing to calm the heat singing my nerves.
Bryan usually conducted his training sessions in the gym upstairs, since it was the one reserved only for the occupants of this house but when my feet stepped down the last set of stairs, a rush of eager anticipation washed over me.
The training grounds spanned the entire west wing, with a few boxing rings to the right and a motorized target sequence on the left. Transparent bulletproof glass divided the two sections, the walls covered in tiny dents I could only assume were the telltale signs of a missed bullet.
My feet crossed the short distance to the second section before a group of guards training in the rings caught eye of my movements and froze. I gave them a polite smile with a small wave of my hand.
