Royally Endowed (Royally 3)

Ellie is mine to have and to hold. To save and keep. Forever and always.

At last, I see The Goat ahead of me. My eyes find the door, engulfed in flames. I push and leap and shove my way through the crowd. The heat is on my face, blistering against my skin—suffocating and scorching. My lungs strangle on the acrid smoke that coats the air. But it doesn’t matter—she’s in there, so that’s where I need to be.

I clear the crush of people and am just a few steps from the door . . . when I’m hit, tackled from behind and knocked to the ground.

My heart roars, even if my throat can’t. I push and fight, ready to destroy whatever’s stopping me.

But another weight piles on, and another, pinning me down.

Later, I learn it’s the firefighters, gripping me, holding on. They’re shouting in my ear, but I don’t hear them. I only see the door.

And then I’m shouting. Screaming my lungs raw.

For her. Calling her name.

But I can’t hear my own voice.

It’s drowned out, overwhelmed by the inferno and the deafening sound of cracking, splintering wood. As the roof of The Horny Goat caves in, sending an eruption of deep-red sparks into the air like a volcano.

And anything or anyone—is consumed by flames.

“WHERE WERE YOU?”

Olivia, the Duchess of Fairstone, my Lady and so much more, looks down at me with an ashen face, her eyes like two sapphires left out in the rain—hard and wet.

I don’t know if she means to sound accusatory but I hear the blame in her voice.

Where were you? Why weren’t you there? What were you doing, you worthless cunt?

Or maybe . . . maybe it’s just my own guilt, burning me alive.

I open my mouth to answer, but the words are lodged behind the lump in my throat. I have to clear it to speak.

“She was with Tommy. I left off early.”

We’re in the front parlor of Guthrie House. Where we’ve gathered—me, Olivia, Nicholas, Henry and Sarah—to wait for news while the fire marshals investigate and Winston and his army of Dark Suits chase down leads. Evan Macalister, the owner of The Goat, is in the hospital being treated for smoke inhalation. Tommy’s one floor below him, unconscious with a concussion from a falling beam. Both of them were dragged from the burning building; the other patrons all made it out on their own.

Except Ellie.

“Why?” Olivia asks.

I rub my eyes. “I don’t . . .” Hold it together. Don’t you fucking break, now. “I can’t remember . . .”

When I was seventeen, in the military, I watched a man die next to me. Sniper shot came in, got him right in the heart. I remember seeing the hole in his jacket, the fabric singed around the edges. He didn’t bleed, not right away. And he didn’t fall at first; he stayed standing.

A dead man standing—looking down at the wound in his chest. Waiting to bleed out.

That’s what I am now.

The pain’s there—an exquisite, intense agony, the likes of which I have never known. But I don’t feel it. I can sense it, like it’s shored up on the other side of a wall, a rising tide.

And I have to hold it off, just a little while longer.

I can’t think of her. Can’t picture her face in my mind. Those haunting blue eyes—the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The sound of her voice . . . her laugh. One wrong word, one thought, and the anguish will surge over the wall. It’ll send me to my knees and I don’t think . . . I don’t see how I’ll ever get up again.

Prince Nicholas walks into the room, his expression drawn and hesitant. Olivia sees it too.

“What is it?” She glances past his shoulder, waiting to see if anyone follows behind him. “They told you something—I can see it in your face. What is it, Nicholas?” Olivia’s voice sharpens, bordering on hysterical, and the sound echoes in my veins. “You have to tell me!”

He clasps her arm, pets her hair, then rests his palm on her round stomach. “Easy, love. Be easy.”

Then Nicholas looks down at the ground. “They found something—a phone—that they think may be Ellie’s. They want to see if you can identify it.”

Olivia nods, and her husband gestures to the man just outside the door. He steps in and presents a clear plastic bag. Inside is a charred, mangled heap. When he turns it over, I see traces of the pale pink phone case—and remnants of what used to be an E etched in rhinestones.

She bought it on a Sunday, at one of the craft tables at the spring market, just a few days after we’d arrived in Wessco. It had seemed like a common, trinkety thing to me—but to Ellie it was a treasure. Handmade—not another exactly like it in the world, she’d said. And she’d smiled so brightly. So happy.

Olivia stares at it for a few moments, and then her face just crumples. She covers her mouth with her hands and this sound comes from her throat—an awful, wheezing, keening sound, the kind a mother dog makes when her pups are taken away.

Nicholas pulls her into his arms but she struggles, grasping and twisting at the front of his shirt with her fingers, tears streaming down her face. “I would know, Nicholas. Listen to me. I would feel it. I would know if she was . . .”

Olivia squeezes her eyes closed and shakes her head.

And my wall weakens and cracks.

“I don’t believe it.” She whispers, like a prayer or a wish. “I don’t believe it.”

“Shhh . . .” Nicholas holds her face, wipes her tears with his thumb and swears, “Then I won’t believe it either.”

They stare into each other’s eyes for a moment, then Olivia takes a deep sniffling breath and tries to pull herself together. She rubs at her damp cheeks with one hand and cradles her stomach with the other. “My dad . . . I have to call him. I don’t want him to hear about it on the news . . .”

Henry rises, but keeps hold of Lady Sarah’s hand where she’s seated near the fireplace. “Granny has already spoken to your father. The jet’s on its way to New York. To bring him here.”

The reality of what that means presses down on me—that the Queen herself doesn’t believe this will eventually end with a phone call from Ellie, explaining a silly misunderstanding or mishap.

She thinks it will end some other way. A way that requires Eric Hammond be here with his one remaining daughter, because she’ll need him. They’ll need each other.

And the tide inches higher.

I stand up, quick and stiff, a good tin soldier.

“I have to go.”

I have to get out of here.

“I’ll head to the hospital, see if Tommy’s awake yet. I’ll report in if he says anything.”

As soon as Prince Nicholas gives me the nod, I’m out the door. Almost running.

But in the hall, a voice stops me.

“Logan.”

It’s Lady Sarah. Slowly, I turn to face her, and her big brown eyes swim with compassion.

“I just . . . I just want you to know, whatever happens, this isn’t your fault. I know it can feel like it,” she shakes her head, “but it isn’t.”

She’s a kind lass. Gentle. It radiates from her and wraps around anyone nearby like a comforting blanket. It’s why Henry is so protective of her—why he guards her so carefully.

But at this moment, that comfort could shatter me.

So, without a word, I nod, my face tight, hard—probably angry. Then I bow quickly and leave as fast as I can.

It’s in the sterile, cold hospital, outside Tommy’s room, that I realize I look like day-old dog shit. My cheek and hands are scraped bloody from the firefighters pressing me to the gravel. I’m covered in black soot and smell like a fire pit from hell. Strangers pass, raking their gazes over me with varying expressions of shock, concern and wariness.

And I don’t fucking care. I feel nothing.

Somewhere a television’s on—a news update on the fire, but I block it out.

My eyes meet the kelly-green orbs of Janey Sullivan, Tommy’s fiery redheaded older sister, through the window into his hospital room. Without hesitating, Janey comes out and hugs me with long, strong arms.

“Hey, Lo.”

I lift my chin at the view of Tommy, closed-eyed and unnaturally still in the hospital bed.