THE ROYAL CROWN WARS

Chapter Twenty-Six

It's official: I've broken more rules in the last few days than I ever have in my whole life.

Breaking into my uncle's suite wasn't like sneaking out to get cookies. We'd be in big trouble if anyone caught us. My uncle would lose his mind if he caught us. He'd tell our parents, and probably demand that we're punished.

I'd promised Dean I wouldn't tell anyone about Christian, but Lizzie needed to know. If she was going to help me, she deserved to know every detail.

So, I told everything Dean told me last night.

"Seriously?" she asked once I finished.

I nodded. "Yeah, that's what Dean said happened. Why would he lie about any of that?"

She shrugged. "I can't believe Christian could've been our King."

I shuddered at the thought.

I pulled at a loose string on the blanket. "Are you sure you want to help me knowing everything? If he catches us, he'll ground us forever."

"Or, he'll kill us," she said, casually.

My eyes widened. "Kill us?"

"Not literally," said Lizzie. "At least I don't think so. It'd be hard for him to hide."

"Dean and Alexandria won't be able to get us out of this."

She nodded. "Jamie, I'm not going to lose my best friend because I'm scared of your uncle. If he did take the crown jewels then we're going to be heroes. We just have to make sure that we don't get caught."

Simple. Real simple.

"No, we can't," I said. "We're going to either have to pick the lock to his room or get his keys. There's no way he's leaving his room unlocked." I didn't get a choice in the matter. Mom and Dad didn't come into my room without permission, but I still wasn't allowed to lock it.

"Would Dean or Alexandria have keys?"

I snorted. "Christian would not let them have any kind of keys like that." For some reason, Christian didn't like Dean or Alexandria. I shifted uncomfortably. "Your dad might have keys."

"I'm not stealing my dad's keys," said Lizzie.

I tapped my finger on my chin. "The guards probably do. They probably even have one of those master keys."

"Master keys?"

"Yeah, it's a key that can unlock a whole bunch of doors. Supposedly."

"Supposedly?"

"I don't know if it actually works or not. We won't know until we get the keys and try them."

She sighed. "I guess we're going to have to steal the keys from the guard. Any idea on how we're going to do that?"

I shook my head. It wasn't hard to sneak into the library to steal the blueprints, but it was another thing to steal keys from the guards. It wasn't like they'd just give them to us.

Lizzie opened her mouth and then closed it. "How would they do it in that book of yours?" She pointed towards the desk.

"That's gone missing with the blueprints," I muttered.

"Seriously!?"

"Yep," I said.

"Well, you've read it enough to know what would happen right?" Lizzie asked.

I shifted uncomfortably. "Kinda."

"Kinda?"

"In the book, they'd probably distract the guards somehow and steal their keys that way."

"Then that's what we'll do," Lizzie said matter-of-factly.

"We're going to manage to distract the best guards in the whole nation?" How were we supposed to do that? The guards trained for years to be in this position. They didn't just let anyone do this job.

Lizzie shrugged. "We managed to get into one of the most secure rooms in the nation without getting caught. Security isn't that good."

It was true. We shouldn't have been able to get into the crown room without a guard catching us, but we'd done it. Maybe they just liked to pretend that they were good at their jobs.

I bit down hard on my bottom lip, and my mouth filled with a familiar metallic taste. I didn't want to cross this line, but there wasn't much of a choice. We needed those keys.

I held up my hands in defeat. "Alright, Alright. We'll distract the guards. We just need a plan. We need a good plan too because if anything at all goes wrong, we're dead."

"Not dead but grounded for life. My dad's head would explode for sure. He might even ship me off to the same military school as my brother."

"And, my dad would send me to boarding school anyway," I said. "We just can't get caught."

"It'll be easy."

Sure, it would be.