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...
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A piercing honk sliced through the watery afternoon air, jolting me out of my thoughts. I turned to my right and caught sight of a man in his car cursing off another car who'd nearly swerved directly into him, his hands waving cynically out of his window.
The boardwalk was a melting pot of life, bustling with people going on with their day-to-day lives and strolling through the city streets. I'd finished my last class of the day and had decided to venture to the bookstore near campus. It was a short walking distance and I basked in the last of the cold kiss of winter and the watery sun.
I'd invited Cara and Lily but apparently, they had some things going on with a new assignment and needed to meet with Matt before he left for some important, overseas thing.
So, with a bag full of books and my daily dose of hot chocolate, I walked back to my car to head home. I stopped near a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green when I looked ahead and noticed a crowd of people standing in front of the electronics store.
My brows furrowed.
Usually, at this time of day, the streets were pretty sparse.
The light turned green.
I really didn't have much of a choice but to walk around the group huddling in front of the display glass but as I went to round the small circle, a woman close to the edge took a step back and nearly tripped me over my own feet. She knocked the bag of books out of my hand.
"Oh, dear! I'm so sorry," she exclaimed, twisting to find my books strewn haphazardly all over the ground.
"It's okay," I said and bent to pick up the books. She followed suit, helping me with the last of them before we both stood up. I glanced over to the crowd again. "Is there a sale going on?"
She handed the books over to me and shook her head. "Oh. No, it's the news channel. There was a big shooting that happened in Asrea this morning, so we're watching to see what happened."
My heart stuttered.
"What?"
She twisted to the TV then back to me.
"Some people said it was the princess. Some say it wasn't. She was at the botanical garden or something. Crazy, huh?"
My heart plunged into my stomach. Dread snaked along my gut, twisting knots so tight and deadly, I could barely breathe through them. The clock began to tick in my head again.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Bile churned and all I could feel, all I could think of, was the memory of staring down the barrel of the gun. I snatched my phone from out of my pocket, my breaths sawing in and out of my lungs in shallow pants and opened to Asrea's national news outlet's latest headline.
Renowned sharpshooter strikes again, resulting in the fatal death of what has appeared to be Princess Aleia's body double. According to recent sources, the Princess and Crown Prince have fled the country in search of refuge from the hitman who'd shot a Princess Aleia during her last birthday ball, resulting in the coverage of Elliana Woods, the Princess's body double.
