Leslie Kelly, Jennifer LaBrecque Read online

  She looked around the room, not believing it.

  “Trust me on this. We’ll go backstage and talk to him when he’s finished,” Rafe insisted. “Just don’t do anything to upset him now. Otherwise your job convincing him to go back with you is going to be a whole lot harder.”

  “Very well,” she said, crossing her arms on the table in front of her, and leaning over it to stare at the stage. “But as soon as this is over, we go find Ruprecht.”

  “All right,” he murmured, trying to keep her calm.

  “He’d better be in a traveling mood,” she added. “And he’d better not be wearing a dress.”

  “I WON’T GO!”

  Prince Ruprecht swept his big wig off his big head, throwing it onto a table overflowing with cosmetics, perfumes and powders, and literally stomped one high-heel-clad foot. “I won’t. Do you hear me? And you can’t make me, Olivia Vanderbrook!”

  “I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, taking a threatening step toward her prince, who’d started to whine the moment he’d seen her.

  Rafe put a restraining hand on her arm and squeezed, holding her back before she did something foolish. “No, you’re not.”

  “Fine. Get some rope.” She scowled at her monarch. “I’ll tie him up and drag him back.”

  Ruprecht darted behind a chair, clutching it tightly and glaring right back at her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I would. Your mother is frantic.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “She’s a drama queen.”

  “Takes one to know one,” she snapped.

  “Olivia, calm down, sweetheart. Why don’t we try sitting down and talking,” Rafe said, moving between her and Ruprecht, as if afraid she would do violence to the man.

  She wouldn’t sit and talk, despite the nice term of endearment her handsome companion had uttered. She didn’t have time for talk. She merely wanted to tap Ruprecht in the jaw with her fist, knock him unconscious, dump him in a bag and go.

  “Who are you?” Ruprecht asked, finally noticing the other man in the room. When Rafe turned around, the prince gasped in surprise. He stared into a face that looked just like his own—at least, when it wasn’t covered with that awful powder and paste, saying, “It’s you, isn’t it. You’re the one people think is me!”

  “Vice versa, princey,” Rafe said, obviously not liking the comparison. Especially given the prince’s current appearance, complete with sparkling jewels on his ears, and what looked like thick, imitation hairs that clung to his half-lowered eyelids.

  “My, you are a handsome fellow.” Ruprecht grinned, amused by his own wit. “One of the handsomest I’ve ever seen.”

  “You have to come with me, Ruprecht,” Olivia said, gritting her back teeth, trying to sound placating rather than bossy. “Don’t you understand what’s at stake?”

  “Don’t you?” Ruprecht asked, finally turning his attention back to Olivia. He blinked his eyes rapidly as if to prevent tears. That made one set of the silly false hairs flop halfway down to dangle in one eye.

  “Oh, for Athena’s sake,” she groaned.

  Ruprecht reached up and yanked the miniature hairpiece off. “I’m finally happy, the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

  She hesitated, believing him. Strange as it seemed to her, she knew this man, and she knew he meant it.

  “I have friends—real ones. I love performing. I am even in the running for Amateur Drag Queen of the Year. In a few weeks’ time, I will be singing in front of hundreds of people and if I win that round, and go on to the state finals, I may actually get to perform on that marvelous invention they call television!”

  Olivia had to concede, that was a little impressive.

  “I could even go to nationals and become renowned across this whole, great land.”

  Her lip curled. “For dressing up like a woman?”

  “It’s a respected tradition here. There are entire movies—oh, mercy, Olivia, have you seen films yet? In a theater? It’s heaven!” he said, appearing rapturous. “There are classic ones starring the most brilliant performers of the age dressed up as women—like Robin Williams. And…and John Travolta.”

  “You really enjoy this?”

  “I do.” The prince’s eyebrows wagged up and down and he grinned. “And I’m good, aren’t I?”

  She didn’t reply. No need to add to his already swelled head. Because despite the fact that he’d shocked her, and she hadn’t liked the whole concept, she had to admit, his performance had been quite entertaining.

  His bottom lip pooched out. “If I go back now, and miss my chance, I’ll just die.”

  Staring at the man, she saw he was entirely serious. He looked more passionate than she’d ever seen him.

  About singing in public. To peasants. While wearing a dress. And impersonating his mother.

  His mother.

  “My prince, your mother sent me for your own good. If you do not return by your birthday, which is mere days away, you will lose your throne.”

  Ruprecht must have heard the seriousness in her voice, because he finally came out from behind the chair and lowered himself onto it. “Truly?”

  “Yes. I had it from the queen’s own mouth. If you are not crowned by your thirtieth birthday, your throne—and the entire kingdom—go to a distant cousin.” Knowing he had always enjoyed the cushy life, she added, “You will lose everything. The wealth, the palaces, the clothes, the stables.”

  “My cape made of gold?”

  “Midas himself couldn’t keep it from your successor.”

  “And Lucy? My goose?”

  “Along with all her golden eggs.”

  He nibbled his bottom lip, and she knew she was reaching him. “I understand your position. It can be difficult to do one’s duty,” she said. “Coming here, leaving my troop, wasn’t easy for me. Yet I had no choice. You know my own family’s position is precarious. They will lose everything, too, should your line fall from power. I fear for them, as the queen fears for you.”

  Beside her, she sensed Rafe staring, and realized she’d revealed a little too much about herself.

  “I suppose,” Rupurecht murmured.

  “I know you are enjoying your time here,” she said, keeping her voice low, calm. “But do you really want it to last forever? If you don’t go back now, you will have nothing to go back to.”

  The prince looked at his reflection in the mirror, lit garishly by a number of round globes of light. Saying nothing, he reached for a cloth and began to wipe the cosmetics off, revealing his handsome face, bit by bit.

  “I’ve been so happy,” he whispered. “I’ve found out who I really am.” Swallowing, he added, “I’ve even fallen in love.”

  “Oh, Rupie,” she said, shaking her head sadly. The prince’s romantic difficulties were stuff of legend. Everyone knew he’d spent years looking for his one true love. And while there had never been a romantic bone in Olivia’s body, she suddenly did feel deep sympathy for him at this additional woe.

  “Jess will never forgive me if I don’t go through with the competition. One of my songs is a duet. If I don’t perform, Jess won’t be able to, either.”

  He looked so bereft, so utterly crushed, it was all she could do not to reach out and put a consoling hand on his shoulder. Ruprecht had always been a silly thing, but he’d never been a bad person. Nor, she realized now, had he ever seemed truly happy. Spoiled, petted, yes. But none of that had ever brought the kind of excitement to him that she saw right now.

  His one kind, loving parent had died when he was a child. In terms of upbringing, her own family life had been much more rich than his. She’d been cherished, while he’d had to live in Verona’s cold, wicked sphere.

  “If only I had more time,” he said, sniffing.

  Olivia met his stare in the reflection, seeing Rafe’s, too. He’d been silent throughout much of this conversation, though the frown on his brow said he’d heard—and didn’t understand much.

  Now that Ruprecht had u
nadorned himself, the resemblance truly was uncanny. She noted Ruprecht’s thinner lips, the slightly weaker chin, but otherwise, they could be twins.

  Ruprecht apparently noticed, too. He kept staring at his own reflection, then at Rafe’s. Until, suddenly, his mouth fell open, as if he’d been struck by a shocking idea. He quickly snapped it shut, spun around on his chair, rose to his feet and stood nose to nose with his double.

  “You could go in my place!”

  Her whole body tensing, Olivia frowned at the arrogant prince, so used to controlling the lives of other people.

  Rafe, on the other hand, merely started to laugh.

  “I mean it,” Ruprecht insisted. “I’ll pay you handsomely. We look so much alike, no one would ever know.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Rafe with a snort, not realizing the prince was entirely serious. “Not even your mother?”

  “The only way she’d be certain is if she saw you didn’t have my lavender birthmark on your posterior. And it would be a simple enough matter to draw it on.”

  Rafe glared. “Nobody’s getting a purple Sharpie anywhere near my ass, pal.”

  Ruprecht waved away the concern. “It doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t ask to see it. She’ll be so thrilled when you—I—return!”

  “Stop it, Ruprecht,” Olivia snapped. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “It’s not ridiculous!” He turned back to Rafe. “You simply go to Grand Falls with Olivia, stand there and let them put a crown on your head, then say you’re leaving on your first trip as king. Return here, go back to your life, and I’ll go home a few weeks later, after Jess and I finish our competition.”

  “This is madness,” Olivia said. “Utter madness.”

  “It’s not. It would work. Nobody would ever know.”

  “I would know,” she insisted. “Besides which, Rafe would never do it, not for all the gold in Elatyria.”

  Ruprecht stared back and forth between them, the cogs in his mind obviously ticking away. Then, a sneaky look she recognized from childhood crossed his face. “But would he do it for you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Rafe asked, his eyes narrowed.

  Olivia was too angry to speak. She grasped what Ruprecht was getting at and took back every nice thought she’d just had about the arrogant fool. “Don’t even think about it.”

  The spoiled prince merely smiled. “I have thought about it. And I’m not going. The end. Goodbye.”

  “Your amphibian ancestry is revealing itself, you slimy toad,” she snarled.

  Rafe appeared stunned. “You’re willing to lose everything?”

  Ruprecht waved a hand. “My mother won’t let that happen. She will have squirreled away plenty of valuables. I’ll be fine.” His eyes gleaming, he added, “Of course, poor Olivia and her family might not be. Isn’t that too bad.”

  “Shut up, Ruprecht,” she said, wondering how the queen would feel about her addressing the royal prince in this manner. Somehow, considering he still had lipstick on his mouth, dark shadow over one eye, and wore a glittering gown, she couldn’t muster up much royal reverence.

  “You heard her yourself. If my family loses the throne, her family loses, as well.” Ruprecht drew a hand to his chest, his every move exaggerated. “Why, Olivia, you would lose your position, too, wouldn’t you? Surely the new king would want to appoint his own Captain of the Guard. You would be put out to pasture like an old mare.”

  Her fingers curling into fists, she launched at him, but Rafe leapt in front of her. “Don’t. I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll beat him?”

  “No. I said I’d do it. I’ll go.”

  Trying to dart around him, she grabbed for the prince, seeing only the bossy boy who’d once gotten her spanked because she’d told him she could defeat him in a wrestling match—and had then proved it.

  “Olivia, I said I’ll go!”

  Ruprecht’s joyful expression and clapping hands sunk in before Rafe’s words did. But finally, the steam left her head and she allowed herself to acknowledge what he’d said. “Now you’re the one being ridiculous.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” he told her. “I have a passport, I’m self-employed and don’t have much on my schedule. The band doesn’t have a gig for next weekend.” He shrugged, smiling, obviously having no clue what he would be letting himself in for if he traveled to Elatyria—a place she suspected he didn’t even know existed. “I’ll go, play the prince, then come home. Everybody wins.”

  “Including you, Olivia,” Ruprecht murmured, sounding so pleased with himself she wanted to lose her evening meal all over the floor. “Not to mention your family.”

  Her family. Her kind parents, her sisters—so anxious to be married off to eligible bachelors. Her brother, so quiet and studious, needing the sponsorship of the royal family so he could continue his quest for an education.

  She thought of them. She thought of the prince, the way he’d looked so excited about the idea of being on television, and the way his face had lit up when he mentioned being in love at last.

  She also thought of the fact that taking this trip with Rafe would mean she would have more time in his company. More chances to figure out why he made her feel things no man had ever made her feel. And more time to decide what to do about them.

  That, more than anything, made up her mind. It was madness, went against her training, her judgment and could get her executed.

  But she was going to do it anyway.

  6

  BY THE TIME RAFE REALIZED he had ended up in another dimension, or a weird alternate reality—some crazy crap like that—it was too late to turn around. Far too late.

  “What have you gotten yourself into?” he whispered, looking back at the mysterious blue-green mountains, swathed in mist, jutting into the sky. They seemed far away, and yet he’d climbed down a path on those mountains an hour or two ago.

  Time was off.

  So was everything else.

  Because at some point during that climb, all he knew to be true had been turned upside down and inside out.

  Not literally—he wasn’t standing on his head, but he might as well have been. The whole world felt different. The air tasted strange in his mouth, the colors were all wrong—trees laden with navy-blue leaves, the ground ripe with dark orange grass. The sun itself seemed to move in the wrong direction in the sky!

  He’d thought for a second he was asleep, dreaming as they took a long, red-eye flight across the Atlantic. But there had been no flight. No dream. Just a drive north, then a hike up a hillside near a petrified forest, where she’d mumbled about finding a gateway. Then that strange, narrow pass that had seemed to twist and turn right into the mountain itself.

  And then, out the other side. Right into this place.

  It wasn’t until he had refused to mount one of the horses she’d had waiting at the base of the mountain that Olivia stopped and told him exactly where she’d brought him. That explanation had silenced him for a good ten minutes. He’d been expecting a trip to Europe. Not one over the freaking rainbow.

  “I still can’t believe this,” he muttered, unable to tear his eyes off those mountains, the “borderland” she’d called them, between her world and his.

  “I know,” Olivia replied as she reined in next to him. “Again, I’m sorry for not better preparing you. But I thought it would be easier to explain if I let you see for yourself.”

  “Yeah, uh, speaking of that, your definition of ‘explain’ and mine are very different.” She hadn’t explained much, other than to say this Elatyria somehow existed right alongside Earth.

  It was the same planet, occupying the same space, at the same time. But different.

  Which was impossible.

  And yet…here he was.

  “You’ll have to ask others wiser than me to make it clear,” Olivia told him with a sigh. “I’ve told you as much as I know.”

  “Yeah, I heard ya, a world within a world,” he said. “Like we’ve falle
n into a Dr. Seuss book and I’m right now sitting on a clover flower perched on an elephant’s nose?”

  She didn’t catch the reference. “I’m sure wise men in your world—in the place they call the government—know the truth, too. They just don’t tell anyone.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You don’t think they know?”

  “I don’t think there are any wise men in the government.”

  Her face serious as she tried to make him understand, she said, “All I know is what our wise men have said. Our worlds occupy the same space, but different dimensions.”

  “And they share these borderlands.”

  She nodded. “Yes. Some of the borders are incredibly small, passable only at certain times of the month, when the moon is at its fullest.” She nodded toward the mountains. “Others, like that one, are larger, more accessible. It was through a large one that my Amazon ancestors crossed over, most of them deciding to remain in Elatyria many centuries ago.”

  “Gotcha. And all that stuff you were talking about with Ruprecht—the goose with the golden egg, King Midas…”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. Pure fiction in your world. History in mine.”

  History. All the fairy tales and fables, legends and myths of his life were the very fabric and foundation of hers.

  “For what it’s worth, that government you were talking about? It’s set in Washington.”

  A thoughtful frown appeared on her face, then she barked a laugh. “So he’s not a fictional character?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What about the strong man who wears the red cape and can fly?”

  “That one’s fiction.”

  “Too bad.”

  Without a word, she started moving again, and he followed. He asked no more questions for a while, focused only on staying on the damn horse—he hadn’t ridden one since he was seven and got thrown off a pony at a small carnival. But at least this one didn’t have wings. Or a horn. Because judging by what he’d learned so far, otherworldly creatures actually did exist over here. Unicorns, dragons, giants.