The guest room that Emma-Leonie had prepared for Ras turned out to be on the same floor of the villa as Princess Tishna’s bedchamber. Ras had half expected the Wicked Princess to insist upon sharing a room but was pleased to see she hadn’t. At least she wasn’t quite as lacking in common sense as Fiarca, Ras thought—an evaluation that, unfortunately, would not survive until the dawn broke.
In the dead of night, an intruder crept into Ras’s room—an intruder with beautiful blond hair, wearing a semitransparent nightgown that revealed her undergarments.
“What are you doing in my room, Princess Tishna?” asked Ras, lying atop the bed, his eyes still closed.
Tishna froze in her tracks like a startled kitten.
“Sir Talion. I didn’t realize you were awake.”
“I’d make a pretty poor excuse for a bodyguard if I slept through someone entering my room.” Ras sighed and languidly sat up.
In fact, Ras had woken the moment he heard Princess Tishna leaving her own chamber, because in doing so, she triggered the aura network that Ras had set up outside her door for precisely that reason.
The two years he’d spent living at Fon’s brothel had instilled in Ras the marvelous ability to sleep without dampening his senses. He had created a sort of independent thought process in his brain that automatically alerted him to what was happening in his immediate proximity and activated it whenever he retired for the night.
It was complicated to explain, but quite simple for Ras to pick up. That was because such a skill was an absolute necessity for surviving the harsh environment of ParadiasH.
“All you had to do was just lie back and relax,” said Tishna, pouting.
“And what were you going to do with me? It’s the dead of night, you know.”
Tishna responded unabashedly to Ras’s accusation. “I was going to create for myself a convenient excuse,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“There’s only one thing for a young, healthy couple to do on a bed, is there not?”
“Ah. A pillow fight.”
“Quite right. I was going to unleash my Over Pillow Arts and— No, of course not!”
Despite Ras’s valiant efforts to ignore Tishna’s implications, the royal princess leaped atop his bed and crawled over him on all fours. Dangling her ample bosom over Ras, she brought her face close to his.
“You’re an odd man, do you know that?” said Tishna, her voice full of allure. “What I’m offering you, men would kill for. You can have the night of your life, no strings attached.”
“It’s all strings as long as you’re involved,” Ras replied coldly. “What are you planning?”
Tishna smiled coyly and brought her lips to Ras’s ear.
“I’m just trying to make your job easier,” she whispered. “Isn’t it your mission to seduce me?”
“Is that what I told you last time?”
Ras did his best to keep his presence calm and his tone steady, so as not to betray his inner turmoil. His mind went back to Gradage Canyon, where the princess had kissed him out of the blue.
“You know why these people want to kill you,” he said. “And you’re planning to let them do it.”
“I already told you I’ve captured the assassin, didn’t I?” replied Tishna, a little peeved. But Ras shook his head firmly.
“You know as well as I do that there’s every chance they sent more than one. Tell me, who is it that wants you dead?”
“I couldn’t possibly say,” replied Tishna with a casual smile. “My enemies are too numerous. Auriol is the heir to the imperial throne. If I marry him, then the black sheep of Charlgia becomes the most powerful woman in the empire overnight. There are more people opposed to that than I can count on all my fingers and toes.”
“Could it be jealousy, perhaps? Do you suspect your sisters?”
“The ringleader is definitely from the empire. But I’m sure somebody from the Charlgian royal family is helping them, whether that’s my half sisters or their mothers.”
Ras was impressed by the princess’s rational analysis. She accepted and understood that the culprit could be someone she thought she knew well. Hers was a level head that could only have come from many years steeped in backstabbing and intrigue.
“I see,” said Ras. “So the person you’re trying to protect is Queen Maia.”
He sighed quietly. Maia, Tishna’s mother, plucked from her vassal-state kingdom and kept all alone in the royal palace. It was unsurprising that her daughter, Princess Tishna, would be willing to die to keep her safe—so unsurprising, in fact, that it was a bit of a letdown.
However, after Ras said it, Tishna’s shoulders drooped.
“You’re so perceptive that you’ve missed the most vital point,” she said.
“Doesn’t that make me unperceptive?”
“I suppose it does. In any event, that is not important right now.”
Tishna reached for Ras’s covers and pulled them back. After admiring his toned, muscular chest for a moment, she said, “I should like you to get ready to go out, if you may.”
“Go out? Where to? It’s the middle of the night and there are assassins after you.”
Ras was understandably peeved. In what world did a princess’s bodyguard help her break out of her own castle? Not to mention that if anything happened to her, it wouldn’t just be on Ras’s head—it could cause an international dispute.
But the princess cared less than nothing for the trouble she caused Ras. “It is precisely because it is the middle of the night that I have come,” she stated boldly. “I’m sure I shan’t escape Emma-Leonie’s watchful eyes, but at the very least I should like to leave before Koko awakes.”
Their path illuminated by an aura light, Ras and Tishna traversed the long underground passageway. This secret path led directly from Tishna’s room.