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“I know, and I don’t care. All I care about is her. He can destroy me all he wants. I’m not letting him destroy her,” I tell him with absolute certainty.
“Give us something. What can we do to get her out of there? You broke her out of there once. Do it again,” Jasmine speaks up, and Elio wraps his hand around hers with a gentle squeeze.
Quentin chuckles. “Never thought I’d have to break my baby sister out of a country again but—wait, that’s it!”
“What?” we all ask in unison, waiting with bated breath.
“My brother Mathéo, he’s like me and Camille. While he never left the palace for good, he has a heart of gold. I think I can trust him to take Camille to a secret spot to meet with you guys.”
“You think, or you know?” I ask. “We don’t want to risk losing our advantage of being here by involving him, only to have him rat us out.”
Call me skeptical, but I don’t trust easily.
He’s quiet for a moment, then with clarity says, “I know. I’m going to call him right now, then I’ll give you a call back.”
Quentin hangs up, and I say a silent prayer that he’s right.
“So if this doesn’t work… Y’all ever seen Wedding Crashers? I can start on our background stories as soon as possible,” Theo offers, always trying to lighten the mood.
Jasmine’s smile is faint. “This is going to work, but yes, Theo, that can be plan B.”
We fall into our own thing while we wait. Theo’s on his phone, Jasmine sits on Elio’s lap in the chair by the desk in our room, while I sit here and think of Camille.
Of her long champagne silky hair, of those big light blue eyes that I could spend hours staring into, and her smile that feels like that first warm day after a long winter.
Fuck, I’ve missed her and it’s barely been a full day.
There’s not a fucking chance I would let her go for good.
A few hours later, Quentin gives us a plan that he ensures will work.
Mathéo apparently had no idea about any of this until he saw Camille all over the news. That information lit a fire in all of us because it meant that her dad was bullshitting this whole save the country crap just to get her back under his reign.
The plan is to have Mathéo take Cami for a drive tonight, asking for some sibling time since it’s been so long. He’ll take her to a small waterfall about twenty minutes from the palace, a place they used to go to as kids, I guess.
What she doesn’t know is that I’ll be there, along with Jasmine, Elio, and Theo. Then I’ll ask Camille to be my wife, and hopefully she agrees to a happily ever after with me.
I double-check my pocket, ensuring my makeshift ring is there like I’ve done every ten minutes since we’ve landed.
It’s fucking game time.
Operation Get My Girl Back is officially in action.
Chapter Forty
Camille
Sleep evades me as I toss and turn in a bed that doesn’t feel like my own, despite having slept in it for most of my life. I slam my fists down on my comforter in irritation. Not only has this been the longest day with the time difference, but I’m also mentally exhausted.
Within twelve hours, I’ll be married to a man I’ve never even met before.
I debate running away, but then I picture Ryker. I see him never making his dreams come true, and the gut-wrenching pain that accompanies that picture is one of the things that keeps me from bolting. The other being that I don’t want my country to fall apart because I know how much wealth this partnership with Calis will bring Lorsica.
A knock on my bedroom door has me sitting up in bed, my breaths heavy as I wonder who’s on the other side at this time of night. Lorsica is the place that does sleep. It’s rare you find anyone here up past eleven.
Swinging my legs over, my feet pad quietly across the cold floor to grab my lavender silk robe. My pajamas are decent, a tank top and shorts, but the chill in the air has me wanting to wrap up in the comfort of my robe. With every step I take toward the door, my heart pounds loudly in my ears, more so once I have my hand on the knob.
I breathe in deeply, channel the strength I know I can muster, and open the door. “Mathéo!” I whisper-yell as my eyes instantly fill with tears at seeing the youngest of my brothers, only two years older than me, for the first time in years.
