Chapter 46 : Troubled

For fuck's sake.

We just couldn't catch a break tonight. They were ahead of us at every turn. I expected my heart to race, my knees to go weak, for some sign of the distress I knew I should be feeling to make itself known, but there was nothing.

I was numb. I felt defeated. I let the ice-cold anguish wash through me and back out to the ocean. Maybe it traveled down those same damned drainage pipes we crawled through. Wherever the feelings went, I found some well of strength deep inside and pulled from it to stay standing.

The king smiled, his yellowed teeth showing from underneath his salt-and-pepper mustache. "Am I interrupting something?"

"What do you want, Dad?" Rowan demanded.

"I don't want you to take this personally," the king began. "It's just that the blonde ruined things this afternoon, so I've had to expedite my plans."

"Do we have to do the monologuing?" I sighed.

I was soaking wet. I'd been falsely accused of attempted murder, imprisoned, and had to scramble f