“I… can’t imagine sharing this conversation with anyone.”

  “Excellent.”

  If anyone had told her Rache would show up in her suite to talk about underwear and testosterone… “This is surreal.”

  “Indeed. If you decide to alert the guards that I was here, I would appreciate it if you give me a ten-minute head start. As a favor for not killing, kidnapping, or otherwise threatening you.”

  “You’re a loon.”

  “Five minutes then.” He held a finger to his faceplate where his lips would be, then stepped back into the closet and closed the door.

  What the hell? There wasn’t another way out of there.

  Oku waited for several long seconds, expecting him to realize that, walk out, and leave through a window. When he didn’t, she crept forward and opened the door.

  Save for the stacks of towels and linens, the closet was empty. But a fresh hole had been cut into the ceiling. She stared up at ductwork and insulation and what was apparently enough room to move around between the floors of the castle. In full combat armor.

  “Time to request a new suite.” Oku rubbed her face, then decided to go find Chasca, abruptly worried by the realization that the castle wasn’t as difficult to infiltrate as she’d always believed.

  When her dog had been kidnapped, she had assumed Finn had assisted the outsiders in getting her, but here Rache had wandered in all by himself. She was positive nobody here would have opened a gate for him.

  Should she report him?

  As she strode past staff and guards in the halls, she wrestled with the thought, but would it be incriminating that she hadn’t screamed for help the instant he’d shown up in her suite? She didn’t think there were any cameras in her rooms, but after learning that Royal Intelligence had snagged all the communications off her chip, she no longer had any faith in her privacy.

  She would hate to claim that Rache had grabbed her and forced her to stay quiet only for footage to appear later that showed how she’d done nothing but stand there while he talked. And the fact that he’d not only brought up Casmir but had wanted to put a good word in for him… That could incriminate Casmir. Further.

  Oku groaned as she went out a back door to the courtyard, frustrated with the entire situation. For now, she wouldn’t say anything. If it was possible that Rache had come to rescue Casmir, she didn’t want to stop him, not when she didn’t yet know if she could find him and retrieve him.

  When Chasca didn’t run out of the darkness toward her, Oku started toward some of the bushes that she favored, but she saw a Fleet soldier in blue armor, his helmet and gauntlets removed, standing outside a side door and rubbing Chasca’s side. She was leaning against his leg and wagging enthusiastically.

  “Chasca,” Oku said sternly, heading toward them. “Haven’t you learned not to fling yourself willy-nilly at strangers?”

  The soldier peered into the darkness at her, then lifted his eyebrows when he recognized her and dropped to one knee. “Princess Oku. Greetings. And sorry if I wasn’t supposed to pet the dog. Is she yours? My family has hunting hounds like this. I grew up in the country with a whole pack of them. Had four that slept on my bed at one point. That sometimes meant I had to sleep on the floor, but that’s how it works when you like dogs, you know.”

  Now that their heads were at similar heights, Chasca licked him in the mouth.

  “And when they like you, I imagine.” Oku waved for him to rise.

  “I had a sandwich on the way down.” He rubbed his lips. “They can always tell.”

  Chasca sat and looked up at the soldier as if she had a new best friend.

  “This is why it’s so easy for people to dog-nap you,” Oku whispered to her.

  All it took was a kidnapper with sandwich breath. Though she knew her dog well and suspected the soldier had actually fed her something to win this much interest.

  “Sorry, ma’am. Uhm, Your Highness.” He was big and towered over her, but he only appeared to be about twenty and wasn’t threatening. He bit his lip sheepishly, looking like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  A sandwich on the way down, he’d said.

  “Did you come down with the shuttle?” Oku remembered the man she’d seen walking between all the armored soldiers but who she hadn’t been able to identify from a distance. “With my father?”

  “Yes, Your Highness. But he had to go right back up, on account of something happening in space.” The soldier pointed upward. “Not sure what it was, but he was in a powerful hurry. Said we’d have to head to the launch loop and find our own ride back up to the ship after we secured the prisoner.”

  Oku froze. “The prisoner?”

  “Uhm, yes, Your Highness. But we’re not supposed to talk about it.” His expression turned wary, as if he worried she would ask him to break those orders.

  If she did, would he? Maybe he believed a princess’s wishes superseded military orders. Not that her father would agree.

  “I didn’t know the Fleet stored its prisoners in the castle,” she said casually.

  Oku didn’t want to get him in trouble, but she had to know. Was it Casmir?

  She couldn’t think of any other prisoners who would secretly be stuffed in the castle dungeon. And that was the only place she could imagine he would have been confined if he’d been brought here. This door led to underground bunkers and secret passages out into the city, but it also led down even deeper into the cliff the castle perched upon. Nobody had ever told her that a dungeon existed, but as a curious child, she’d once explored most of the nooks and crannies down there.

  Had Rache known Casmir would be brought here? Was that why he was lurking in the castle?

  “We put people where the king asks us to, Your Highness.”

  The door opened, and relief washed across his face as three other armored soldiers came out.

  He stepped back, no doubt pleased that this would put an end to what Oku considered a very mild interrogation.

  “It was nice meeting you and your dog, Your Highness.”

  The other soldiers all bowed politely to her before striding back toward the front gate. She walked far enough to see them join up with a couple of castle guards who escorted them out.

  Once she was alone, Oku eyed the closed door. She had no doubt whoever was guarding the prisoner would have orders to keep people out, including her, but it ought to be easier to break him out than if he’d been taken to a maximum-security prison. She couldn’t imagine how she would do it without Royal Intelligence and eventually her mother and father knowing she’d been responsible, but… so be it.

  “Time to make some plans, girl,” she murmured and took Chasca back inside through another door.

  7

  Casmir’s second trip to the cell under Drachen Castle wasn’t any more appealing than his first. If anything, it was worse, because his chip had been stolen, so he couldn’t work on offline projects, and he had little hope that King Jager would come down and give him another opportunity to prove himself.

  He didn’t think Jager was even on the planet. Casmir had ridden down in the same shuttle as he had, but the king hadn’t gotten out. As armored soldiers had ushered Casmir away from the landing pad, the shuttle had taken off again, heading in the direction of the launch loop. Strange that Jager had ridden down with him—it wasn’t as if they’d spoken or even made eye contact—and left immediately. Had he wanted to personally make sure Casmir made it to the castle? Or had some message come in, drawing him back up to the warship?

  Casmir scratched at his two weeks of beard growth and rubbed his watering eyes. He was lying on his back and felt the cold hardness of the cement bench against his shoulder blades and through his tousled hair that was badly in need of trimming. His temple throbbed, and his entire head ached. Even though the surgery had been minor, his nerves knew something was missing that should be there.

  In the corridor somewhere down from his cell, a guard cleared his throat and spat. Casmir imagined hardened phlegm all over the floor and grimaced. Not that anyone would see it in the dim lighting of the ancient stone-walled dungeon.

  Heavy footsteps sounded, a second guard arriving. “Reporting in for change of duty.”

  “Yup.” Another throat clearing accompanied this.

  “Is this station as boring as it looks?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is that guy really a traitor who worked with Rache?”

  “Dunno. He’s a scrawny geek who keeps sneezing.”

  Casmir sniffed self-consciously. He hadn’t sneezed that often. It wasn’t his fault that there was no air-filtration system for this dank, mildewy subterranean prison. At least he wasn’t spitting on the floor.

  “I heard he was a professor at the university here in town.”

  “He should have stayed there.”

  If only. Casmir gazed up at the dark ceiling, wishing an opportunity to escape had presented itself. It seemed a failure that his supposedly clever brain hadn’t been able to find a way out of this mess. But without his friends and his robot allies and network access—and now without a chip at all—what was he? A scrawny geek, indeed.

  Footsteps sounded again, the old guard leaving and the new one settling in. Casmir wondered if there was any point in trying to chat with the man. He’d tried to draw the last one into a conversation and failed to get a response. There was probably a rule against chatting with the prisoners.

  He sneezed.

  The footsteps sounded again, the guard walking toward his cell this time. To peek in and consider his scrawny geekness?

  The armored man carried his rifle on his back and had his helmet tucked under his arm. Brown-skinned, brown-eyed, and snub-nosed, he was shorter than many of the guards, but perfectly capable of dealing with Casmir, he had no doubt. The cell bars further ensured he was in no danger.

  “If you find me boring, let me know,” Casmir offered. “It hasn’t been more than a day since my last meal. I still have some energy. Perhaps, given the proper accoutrements, I could juggle. Or if you slide me a few tools, I’m not bad at repairing robots, vehicles, and even appliances. Do you, by chance, have a toaster on the fritz?”

  “I’m Sergeant Rokuro.”

  Strange. None of the other guards had introduced themselves.

  “Did you get this duty because you irked someone?” Casmir asked. “If so, my sympathies. I’ve been irking the wrong people for months now.”

  “I’ve heard that. Do you know what happened to your chip?”

  “A doctor removed it.”

  “Do you know where it was taken?” Rokuro clarified.

  Even stranger. Why this interest in him?

  Casmir swung his legs off the bench so he could sit up and face the guard. “No. He put it in a baggie, so hopefully that means someone kept it.”

  “Hm.”

  “Any chance you know what’s supposed to happen to me?”

  “According to the news, there will be a public execution tomorrow evening.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “So the university students and faculty are telling everyone. There have been protests.”

  Protests? For him? Casmir was touched even as he was mortified by the thought of being dragged off to some primitive hanging in a public square. With his luck, he would have a seizure right as someone was about to wrap a noose around his neck.

  Rokuro wandered back to his position.

  “If you let me out, I’ll request that the protestors don’t graffiti your armor,” he called.

  “A tempting offer,” came the dry reply.

  Rokuro did not return to open the gate.

  Casmir sagged back onto the bench, images of this public execution filling his mind. Would it be televised? Would his friends and colleagues see it? Would his parents see it?

  Thinking of them brought tears to his eyes. With his chip removed, he would never have an opportunity to send those letters out to them, never get a chance to say goodbye, a last chance to hug them.

  The tears trickled from his eyes, and he sniffed, not able to stop feeling sorry for himself. Some heroic clone of Admiral Mikita he was.

  Did Oku have any idea he was down here in the bowels of the very castle she lived in? Was there any chance he could talk this Rokuro into giving her a message? Out of all the guards and soldiers he’d dealt with since blathering his drug-induced truths about his relationship with Rache, Rokuro had been the most decent by far.

  Casmir scrubbed his sleeve across his face and sat up. He would try to talk the man into it.

  But the creak of a door opening sounded before he called out. Another change of the guard? So soon?

  Rokuro murmured something too softly for Casmir to hear. Casmir sneezed.

  “Is that him?” a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize asked.

  For a fleeting moment, he thought the queen might have found out he was here and come to see him, but the voice was rough around the edges, more like someone who’d grown up on the streets than in a noble household.

  “He’s the only one down here,” Rokuro said.

  Casmir sneezed again. Damn it. It was hard to eavesdrop when one’s own body insisted on making noise.

  “Is he sick?” the woman asked.

  “I didn’t ask him.”

  “You’re helpful.”

  “I’m just here to drive. And take the position of someone else who might have protested a kidnapping.”

  “It’s a rescue, not a kidnapping,” came a new voice from farther back.

  Casmir lurched to his feet, hope swelling in his chest. He knew that voice.

  “Princess Oku?” he dared ask.

  Clacks sounded on the cement floor. It wasn’t Oku but a gray short-furred dog that trotted into view.

  “Uhm, hello, Chasca.” Casmir had never met Oku’s dog in person, but he grinned goofily at the pup.

  The dog tilted her head and wagged her tail. It thwapped against the bars of the cell across the corridor.

  The next person to step into view was the one he’d dreamed of seeing. Maybe not in this situation, with his eyes watering and more sneezes threatening his nose, but it was far better than seeing another callous guard.

  Princess Oku wore a fur-trimmed parka with the hood pulled up, and he could barely make out her features in the poor lighting, but he had no doubt it was she. She carried a stunner in one hand and a lantern in the other.

  “I hope you didn’t come to shoot me, Your Highness. I’m very glad to see you and would prefer not to be unconscious for what I hope is a jailbreak.”

  “It’s good to see you alive, Casmir.” She used his name, his first name! And she pushed the hood back so he could see her elegant features and her thick black hair held in place by a headband that appeared woven from dried straw or some other material rather than fabric.

  Remembering the time he’d seen her with grass stuck between her toes, Casmir grinned so broadly that his mouth hurt. His injured temple throbbed a protest at this overly exuberant use of his facial muscles, but he didn’t care.

  “I’m merely armed in case we run into trouble,” Oku added. “This may shock you, but my father would not want me to break you out of the dungeon.”

  “I am not shocked. For some reason, your father has never warmed up to my delightful but admittedly eccentric charm.”

  “Weird.” She smiled, looking him up and down, her gaze lingering on his socks—why did the guards always insist on taking his shoes?

  “I thought so.” He straightened under her scrutiny, wishing he were washed and wearing clothes that weren’t rumpled and smelly.

  Her gaze lingered on his temple. “They took your chip?”

  “Yeah.” It was silly, but the word came out as a croak, emotion making his throat tight. “I had a bunch of letters for my family on it, and all your bee stuff I’d been tinkering with these past weeks. I’m sorry. If I get a chance, I can redo it. Oh, and Kim has all the bacterial bee stuff on her chip. If we can get in touch with her, we can get it.” He waved to his temple and said, “I’m sorry,” again before he could stop himself.

  He wasn’t burbling nervously in quite the same way he did with Rache—at least he didn’t think so—but he’d wanted their next meeting to be perfect. A coffee date, not this travesty.

  “It’s not your fault they took it. And I’m the one who’s sorry that they—my father—hurt you.” Oku leaned to the side and pressed a button, and the gate opened.

  He wiped his eyes again and stepped out. “Just so you know, I’m not crying.” He doubted she would care if he was, but he was already such a mess that he hated the idea of her seeing him as some weepy wimp on top of it. “I’m allergic to dungeons.”

  “Also weird.”

  “You’re describing me well.”

  She hadn’t stepped back as he’d scooted out of the cell, and as he found himself face to face with her, the profound urge to hug her came over him. Because she was rescuing him and because she let him send her robotic-bee schematics and because… she was nice and sweet and—damn it, boy—was he falling in love with a princess?

  His arms twitched up for that hug, but he caught himself. He was a scruffy—extremely scruffy at the moment—commoner and some throwaway-clone at that. He couldn’t presume that—

  Oku stuffed the stunner in her pocket and wrapped her arms around him. The lantern clunked him in the back, but he was far too delighted to mind that.

  Her cheek brushed his, and she whispered, “I’m weird too.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, but I’m willing to go along with it if it means you want to hug me.” Casmir knew they weren’t alone in the corridor—the tail that thwacked him in the leg was a reminder—but he didn’t care. He would hold the hug as long as she wished.