“That was harsh,” Mallory clipped out.
“Hard to do, too.” Kelsey put her hand on her churning belly. “Could we maybe skip the food binge and go straight to a vat of wine?”
“Tonight. Although I’m going to insist on food if you want to drink away your misery. We’re smart enough to know that hangovers are not worth it.”
“I have a hangover already. An emotional one. A physical one would at least distract me from that.”
A staff member by the door said something she of course didn’t understand—the staff didn’t always remember she only spoke English—and they headed into a line.
Mallory squeezed her shoulder before getting into place. “My pep talk’s pretty short. I love you, Your Highness.”
Wow. A shiver chased down her spine. It was the first time her sister had used her title. Now it felt official. Well, that and the herald trumpets blaring an anthem as they crossed through the marble entryway.
The king wasn’t actually first. A row of a dozen bodyguards led the way. Even louder than the double line of trumpets was the chanting coming through the enormous curved doorway. “What are they saying?” she asked King Julian.
“Welcome home.”
Oh. That was lovely. The sound morphed into a solid wave of energy that practically picked her up and carried her outside, down the wide stone steps. Kelsey kept her eyes glued to the ground so the country’s first sight of her wouldn’t be a face-plant.
When King Julian stopped walking, she slowly looked up.
Right in front of her, at the bottom of the steps, was Elias. Breathtakingly handsome in an almost brutish way. His jacket bunched as he lifted his wrist to his mouth, communicating with the rest of the security team. Even though he wasn’t hers anymore, Kelsey let herself, one last time, siphon strength from him.
Then she looked out at the smiling, clapping, cheering throng. It wasn’t just the park in front of the parliament building jammed shoulder to shoulder. Hundreds, no, thousands of people filled the streets, rooftops, even across the bridge where Elias had taken her on their last date.
Her father had been right. They were happy, thrilled to see her with the rest of her family. Their joy was both contagious and tangible. Kelsey didn’t feel like an out-of-place American.
She felt like a Villani.
She looked right, at her father, so tall and commanding—a father to the entire country. Then to her left were Christian and Genevieve. Maybe they hadn’t ironed out all their personality kinks yet, but with siblings you took the good with the bad. This was her family. This was her place.
And Kelsey finally accepted, even embraced it.
There was no choice to be made. She belonged right here. This country, these people—they were her birthright. Her duty. Her destiny.
She’d never be the Princess Valentina an entire country had mourned and missed. But she’d stay, and figure out how to be the best possible Princess Kelsey for them.
From right behind her—in what the royal publicist had sniffed at as “unprecedented access for a commoner”—Mallory thwapped her elbow. “Wave. Smile.”
It was the least she could do. Kelsey was their princess, and her people deserved the respect of a greeting in return, although she should’ve practiced how to wave. The queen of England did that weird sideways scoop with her hand she and Mallory always made fun of.
Crap. Was that the official royal way to do it? She peered down at Genevieve. A little elbow action. A little wrist. Totally doable.
A man near the crowd control fences along the edge of the lawn lifted the flag of Moncriano overhead. At least she could recognize that now. He shouted something Kelsey wished she understood. She smiled right at him and waved enthusiastically.
In the next moment, it was like having a car land on her. Kelsey flew sideways and hit the steps with Elias clamped tight around her. It drove the air out of her, and her diaphragm seized up. His hand cradling her head was the only thing that kept her from blacking out.
She felt the crack of her wrist on the stone in a lightning burst of pain at the same time she heard three loud pops.
The cheering turned to screams.
The king was surrounded by four men and all but carried inside at a run. Christian and Genevieve were similarly strewn as her on the steps, bodyguards covering them.
And then Kelsey turned her head to the side to see Mallory lying a few feet away, gasping, with blood spreading across the front of her blue dress.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kelsey heard the pops, just like before. Only this time they wouldn’t stop.
Her eyes flew open. No, that wasn’t right, either. Her eyelids tried to lift but everything was moving in slow motion. Like gallons of maple syrup weighed down her entire body.
She lifted her hand to her eyes to push them open. That didn’t help. It banged a heavy plaster cast against her forehead as she overshot. A shockwave of pain burst through her wrist, along with a swirl of nausea.
Those sensations surfaced her more through the dregs of whatever pain medication they’d forced on her. Kelsey had refused any, even while they set her wrist, until Mallory came through surgery safely.
Mallory. There was the source of the beeps she’d mistaken for gunshots. It was the steady, rhythmic, and thankfully unceasing sensor of her sister’s heartbeat. With far greater caution and far less speed, Kelsey pushed herself upright in the visitor chair next to the hospital bed.
No nausea this time with the more careful movement. But she was extremely aware that one-hundred-eighty pounds of solid muscle had pushed her onto unyielding stone. Everything ached. In addition to the cast, there was gauze taped over the two stiches along her hairline where a bullet had kicked a shard of stone to graze her.
But she was alive, saved from the gunshots meant for her by Elias and his watchfulness.
Under other circumstances, she’d be happy. Grateful. Thrilled.
Hard to be any of those things, though, when her dress was stiff with Mallory’s blood. When her sister had endured four hours of surgery, and might yet need more. When Mallory could have died, and it would have been all her fault.
Kelsey angled forward to look at the monitors. Heart rate and blood pressure were good. She’d insisted the nurse explain to her what to watch for, what were the normal ranges. She’d also insisted that a translator be on duty so that every nurse who came in with IV refills would explain to her exactly what they were. And she’d insisted that they digitally transfer all of Mallory’s OR notes to the specialist in the States her dad recommended for a second opinion.
Her sister might’ve gotten shot because of Kelsey, but there was no way anything else bad would ever happen to her on Kelsey’s watch.