His Princess (A Royal Romance) Read Online Free Page A

we’re getting married. I was going to invite you.”
    She turns up her nose, like the invite is withdrawn.
    Idiots.
    I hold on to the crates as the truck bounces and jounces along, maybe twenty miles an hour. Slow enough that I’m tempted to jump and make a run back to camp, fast enough that I don’t dare, knowing I’ll break a leg or worse. Ending up out here in the middle of the night, crippled, would be a bad time.
    There are wolves out here, and the followers of the Old Way talk about worse things I’d rather not believe in, but riding in the open back of a pickup truck through the dead of night toward the Carpathian Mountains, it’s easy to believe the dead walk and feast on the essence of the living. They have some creepy legends in their folklore.
    I guess you get really creative when you’re imagining the things that can eat you out here.
    The mountains get closer and closer, filling up the sky. The ground just juts upward all at once, and the truck swerves onto a track that cuts a gentler path up the slope, sawing back and forth to level out a bit. The driver is aggressive, and I have to hold on hard. Brad holds Melissa tight against him and grips the rail on the side of the bed with white knuckles.
    The truck slows to a crawl as it ascends, for another hour at least. I could definitely jump off and run now, but then I’d be trapped in these mountains with no food, no water, and no way to call for help or contact anyone. The border is somewhere in the mountains and while I don’t think we’ve passed it, it must be close. I can feel its presence, like an invisible breeze gusting over my shoulders.

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    B y the time we draw close to the camp, I’ve settled between two crates. A couple of times I look over my shoulder and see a thin line of dirt, some rocks, and a sheer drop of about five hundred feet and growing. They picked a good place to set up their camp. It’s too small to be accessible by air, and can only be reached by one narrow road. If they’re well supplied they could withstand an extended siege.
    Or get blown to hell by missiles and bombs. I can’t believe this is happening. Penny, you stupid, stupid girl, of course you’d end up like this.
    I’m never going home. When my parents don’t get their phone call next week they’ll call the church and demand an explanation, and a sincere, warm pastor with a buttery voice and a calm manner will tell them that the Lord works in mysterious ways and if they pray hard enough, he will see fit to guide me back to safety.
    My mom will sit in the kitchen and tear towels apart with her hands and my dad will soldier on and keep going to work, like if he sticks to his routine hard enough, it will force the world to make sense again.
    I’ve seen it before.
    At five or six miles an hour, barely above idling, it takes hours to ascend the mountain slope. The road is cleverly concealed from below. You’d have no idea it was there if you didn’t know where it was. It saws from north to south up the steep grade. The truck groans and leans at the sharp hairpin turns before leveling out again, working its way up an almost vertical ascent.
    Melissa holds Brad’s hand while we ride up. He smiles at her reassuringly and pats her hand, which for her is probably like a hand down her shirt. I can see her just melting under his gaze, and I half believe he’s completely sincere and thinks this is a great idea and doesn’t realize the danger he’s put us all in.
    We’re all going to die.
    The road levels out again. Ahead there’s a pair of men smoking cigarettes, milling around a wooden gate. The truck driver waves and they pull the big rickety gates open, and we slow. The truck drives very slowly over a little wooden bridge that’s clearly designed to collapse if something heavier rolls over it, so whatever it is will get stuck in a trench. On the other side of the gate, machine guns that look like they came off the set of a World War II movie sit on tripods, aimed