All Chapters of The Sovereign Veil: Book 1 in the Royal Series: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palais de Versailles had been burning for five hours, and Princess Marguerite Archambault was fairly certain that if she had to listen to the Duke of Lorraine explain his family’s champagne vineyards for one more minute, she would use her butter knife to sever his carotid artery.“Of course, the terroir in the southern hills produces a much crisper acidity,” the Duke was droning, swirling his crystal flute. He was twenty-eight, possessed teeth so white they looked porcelain, and had the intellectual curiosity of a decorative urn. “My grandfather always said that soil remembers blood and sunshine in equal measure. Don’t you agree, Your Royal Highness?”Marguerite smiled, tilting her head at precisely thirty degrees—the angle her etiquette tutors had drilled into her spine since she was six years old.“Fascinating, Henri,” she said in melodic, effortless French. “Tell me, does the soil also remember the peasants who died tilling it during th

London in early spring was a study in slate-gray water and black umbrellas.Marguerite sat in the corner booth of a private salon inside The Palatine—an exclusive members-only club on Hill Street in Mayfair. The club catered to foreign diplomats, oligarchs, and black-market facilitators who required privacy that embassies could not provide.Steiner’s keycard lay on the polished mahogany table between Marguerite and a pot of Earl Grey tea.She had spent forty-eight hours decoding the secondary partition she had lifted in Geneva. The technical specs for the Washington vitrine were complete. But deep within the encrypted sector, she had uncovered an anomaly: a live transmission hook connecting the National Archives security grid to an offshore server farm in Lyon.The job wasn’t just an art heist. The Archives security system had been intentionally pre-compromised from within.“You look troubled for a thief who won the first round, Your Royal Highness.”The voice was like dark liqueur po

Monaco at midnight was an amphitheater of artificial stars and predatory wealth.Marguerite Archambault stood at the edge of the penthouse terrace, forty stories above Port Hercules, watching the lights of superyachts reflect on the dark water like spilled diamonds.Behind her, through the open glass doors, the private auction of Cosima Vane was in full swing.Cosima was an infamous black-market liaison for corrupt defense contractors and private intelligence firms. Tonight’s auction was small, elite, and deadly: thirty guests in bespoke tuxedos and couture gowns, sipping vintage Krug while bidding on military prototypes and stolen antiquities.Marguerite wore a backless emerald-green silk dress that draped over her shoulders, her blonde hair swept into an elaborate braid woven with pearls. In her evening clutch was Steiner’s cloned keycard, a mini signal scrambler, and a forged transfer bond worth two million euros.Her objective sat on a velvet plinth in the private study adjoining

Marguerite woke to the cold smell of extinguished paraffin and complete solitude.She sat up on the narrow cot, her stitched shoulder throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache. The cottage was empty. The titanium sleeve was gone; the motorcycle was gone. On the table, pinned beneath the empty suture bottle, lay a single torn scrap of paper with Carmen’s jagged, uncompromising handwriting:The hardware is mine. If you follow me to America, you do so as a target. Go home, Marguerite. I don’t collect princesses.Marguerite stared at the note, her fingers tracing the sharp angles of the ink. A slow, defiant smile touched her lips.“You don’t collect princesses,” she murmured in the empty room. “Then you had better run faster, Sanchez.”She burned the note in the hearth, concealed the Archambault signet securely within the inner hem of her trousers, and hiked down the goat track into the village of Èze. Within two hours, using a secondary credit line and an impeccably forged Belgian passport in

Washington, DC was shrouded in a heavy autumn drizzle that turned the marble monuments into ghostly gray monoliths.Marguerite picked the triple-deadbolt lock on the Georgetown safehouse above the antiquarian bindery in less than fifteen seconds. She slipped inside, the rain dripping from her dark cashmere coat, and closed the heavy oak door without a sound.The flat was pitch black, smelling of damp cedar and stale gun oil.Marguerite took one step onto the worn Persian rug.In the next fraction of a second, a shadow detached itself from the gloom behind the door. A forearm locked like an iron band across Marguerite’s throat, driving her backward against the wall, while the cold, razor edge of a tactical blade pressed flush against the hollow beneath her jaw.“You’re getting slow, Your Highness,” Carmen’s voice rasped in her ear.Marguerite didn’t struggle. She let her head tilt back against Carmen’s shoulder, feeling the fierce, rapid hammer of Carmen’s pulse against her own back. “