Ascension Saga: 9. Grace Goodwin
the hell was going on here?
They knew I was the queen. Greeted me formally. As Destiny would say, WTF?
“What are you talking about? Where are you taking me? To the palace?”
The second guard straightened and stood tall, shifted his shoulders back and puffed out his chest, as if he were proud to be holding his queen captive. As if locking me up against my will was a fucking honor. “Our king has returned, My Queen. He has instructed us to escort you to your new home where he will see to your safety and well-being.”
The King? Again, WTF? What the hell were they talking about? “The king is dead.”
The first guard, young and beautiful, and clearly so, so naive, smiled. “No, My Queen. He lives. He has returned, at long last, to take his place by your side.”
“At long last?”
“Twenty-seven years is a long time to wait, My Queen. We had nearly given up hope.” His dark blue eyes were bright with excitement, as if he were about to open a gift on Christmas morning. The look was genuine. Which meant this young idiot believed what he was saying. He hadn’t even been alive all those years ago.
“The king has been gone for twenty-seven years?”
The second guard spoke. “Yes, My Queen. He disappeared when you did, and returned soon after your daughters appeared.”
“He disappeared because he’s dead,” I countered. Dead was dead. I’d watched as my mate, King Mykel, was stabbed, killed in front of me. It was a memory I could never forget.
“He’s alive and well and eager to see you, My Queen.”
But… could he be alive? Could he have somehow survived? Surely, others would have had to know; he’d have needed a ReGen pod. Help to get there. Doctors.
And this guard used the word eager. No one was eager and waited twenty-seven years. Yeah, I just bet he was. If it was Mykel then why wait so long? Why now? It seemed the game had changed even more than I had realized. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Someone else and that meant nothing had changed. I still didn’t know who’d kidnapped me. Tried to have the girls killed. Now they were going to try to convince me to accept someone else as my dead mate? Did they believe that after nearly thirty years, I would not recognize him? True, our mating had been short, the attack coming soon after our mating ceremony, but I would know him. He had eased my Ardor, pledged his life and love to me. And died protecting me. Or had he?
“Then where is he?” I asked the guard. “Tell him to come down here and explain this to me himself.” I’d watched a masked assassin in black drive a dagger through the king’s heart moments before I’d fled. That hadn’t been faked. Whoever these guards were following, he had to be an imposter of some kind. Surely. Mykel was long dead. My heart belonged to Adam now. Adam, who was far away on Earth, worried sick about his family.
“He can not yet reveal himself, My Queen. He has asked us to personally escort you to your new accommodations and see to your safety.”
I’ll just bet he has. “Then why the handcuffs?”
The first guard dipped his head in a show of apology. “Apologies, My Queen, but he was afraid you would not believe us and attempt to escape.”
The mystery king was right. But I wasn’t going to attempt anything.
I sat on the edge of my bed and took my sweet time putting on my shoes, hoping the guards would come closer and enter the room.
My patience was rewarded. By the time I was done, they were both inside my cell and the door left wide open behind them.
I stood and held out my wrists like a docile doe. The guard nearest me stepped forward with the cuffs.
“You know,” I said, “the last person to stand where you are now threatened to murder all three of my daughters.”
His eyes widened in a mix of surprise and horror, as if the idea was appalling to him. Strange, considering I was his prisoner. “Our apologies for your mistreatment. It took us some time to find you. I assure you, that person will not hurt you or the princesses.”
“Is that so?” The cuff drew near and I held back a smile when the second guard stepped closer, very close to the first. Two puppies, the bumbling fools. Kind, unlike the others, therefore, I would only incapacitate them, not hurt them.
Catching my escorts unaware, I grabbed the first guard’s wrist and tugged him toward me. Off balance and leaning forward, I swept his front leg with my foot as if I were kicking a soccer ball to the side. With his leg lifted out from under him, he fell like a redwood tree and the wind was knocked from him. On the way down, I grabbed the handcuffs.
The second guard stood there blinking, completely stunned that I’d actually moved, and on top of that had taken his partner to the ground. I took the opportunity to snap one end of the cuff around his wrist. When his eyes met mine, I gave him a small smile. “Sorry.”
I was a little bit sorry because they were sweet, but not sorry enough to stop.
Letting the cuff drop so it dangled from his wrist, I placed both hands on top of his hand and twisted. It turned his lower arm in a direction that wasn’t all that comfortable—thank you Destiny for torturing the entire family with showing all of us what she’d learned in her Jiu-Jitsu classes way back in ninth grade—until he had no choice but to drop to his knees, then to the ground as I kept up the pressure on his shoulder blade. He went to the floor or his shoulder popped out of the socket.
This happened in all of two seconds, and I wrapped the cuff around the nearest leg of the simple bed, then connected it to his partner’s wrist. The first guard was finally catching his breath and they flailed and tried to get up, but they didn’t make it far since their arms were trapped beneath the bedframe which was affixed to the floor.
I looked down at the two, wondering if they were the worst guards on the planet or if they had truly felt I was a sweet, kind queen they’d envisioned their whole lives. I could be sweet, but not when someone threatened my daughters. Moving to the open doorway, I stopped and looked back at them where they moved awkwardly on all fours. “You’ll be found soon.”
Someone would come for them, eventually. Moving on silent feet down the hallway, I kept going until I saw another guard. This one armed.
Good. When I found this imposter king, I was going to put a very large hole in his head.
When he saw me, he raised his weapon, but I played the weak woman card. “The guard, he’s hurt.” I pointed anxiously down the hallway and gave him an Academy Award winning performance. “Hurry, I think he needs a ReGen pod.”
He came close to me, his weapon forgotten since I hadn’t portrayed myself as a threat. As he was walking past me, I grabbed his ion pistol, quickly set it to stun and shot him.
He crumpled to the floor, remained still. Leaning down, I patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll live.” He’d be incapacitated for a while, but I had no idea the strength of his stun setting, so I didn’t linger.
Goddess, it felt good to be doing something, to be assertive instead of meek. Offensive instead of defensive. I was grateful they’d moved me to a less secure cellblock. They’d transferred me every day, as if they were barely keeping one step ahead of someone who was looking.
Well, the queen was out of the cage now, and the whole world was going to know about it. I’d lure this imposter king to me. And if it was Mykel after all these years, he was going down.
Alarms pealed, the sound harsh on my ears after so many days of near silence, alone in my cell. I might have been able to take down three guards, but it was impossible to disable cameras. Eyes on the walls saw everything. Saw me take down a guard. I ignored the shrill sound. I had to get out of this area of the prison, find guards who were loyal Alerans, not minions of my enemies.
The third guard station was manned, based