Whispers in the Forest
Copyright© 2025 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 11
Zoryanovich Estate.
The hangar smelled of cold concrete, aviation fuel, and secrets. Volkov didn’t waste time. He moved to a heavy steel door in the rear wall, punching a code into the keypad. The lock buzzed, and the door clicked open.
“Stay close,” Volkov ordered, his voice low, and handing me a mean looking AK-12 assault rifle with all the trimmings for a close quarter combat scenario.
“Alexandru, take point. Juri, rear guard. Dmitri, stay with the aircraft—monitor the comms and keep the APU running. We might need to leave in a hurry.”
Dmitri nodded, looking pale but resolute, clutching his side where the shotgun pellets from the farm ambush still pained him. He settled into the cockpit, ready to defend the only exit we had.
We stepped into the tunnel. It was narrow, lit by recessed floor lights that cast long, eerie shadows upward against the damp concrete walls. The air was stale, recycled, and cold.
“This runs under the garden,” Volkov whispered, his voice echoing slightly. “It comes out in the wine cellar of the main house. From there, we move to the Security Room.”
I walked beside Lena. She had shed the oversized flannel shirt she’d worn for the climb at the château and was back in her own clothes—the jeans and sweater she’d worn in the escape, though now they looked like battle fatigues. She held the wooden box against her chest like a shield.
“Are you ready?” I asked softly.
“No,” she admitted, her eyes fixed on the darkness ahead. “But I am here.”
“That’s half the battle,” I said. “The other half is looking good on camera.”
She managed a weak smile. “I wish I had a hairbrush.”
“You look fierce,” I said. “That’s better than polished.”
The tunnel ended at a spiral staircase. Volkov held up a hand. He drew his weapon—a silenced pistol he’d pulled from his side holster. Alexandru and Boris did the same. He moved up the stairs, silent as smoke. We waited in the dark. A moment later, we heard a muffled thud, then a soft whistle.
“Clear,” Volkov hissed from above. We climbed up into the wine cellar. Rows of dust-covered bottles lined the walls—vintages that cost more than my King Air.
It felt disturbingly similar to the dungeon we had searched in Knysna, only this one smelled of expensive French oak rather than rot.
“The Security Room is down the hall,” Volkov briefed us. “We expected twelve guards on rotation. But the sensors in the tunnel picked up no foot traffic on the perimeter.”
“Lazy?” I asked.
“Confident,” Volkov corrected. “Or drunk. With the Regent in the palace, the discipline has slipped. We move now.”
We moved through the lower level of the house like ghosts. The estate was opulent—marble floors, gold-leaf trim, heavy velvet drapes—but it felt empty. Soulless. It was a house built to impress, not to live in.
We reached the heavy oak door of the Security Room. Laughter drifted through the wood, along with the distinct smell of cigarette smoke. Volkov signalled. Three. Two. One. Alexandru kicked the door. It flew open with a crash. Inside, the room was a haze of smoke. Five men in private security uniforms were sitting around a table littered with playing cards, overflowing ashtrays, and two empty bottles of vodka. Their weapons were leaning against the wall, out of reach. They scrambled to stand, chairs clattering backward, reaching for holsters that were too far away.
“Sit down!” Volkov barked in Russian, levelling his weapon. Alexandru and Boris flanked him, covering the room. The guards froze. They looked at the suppressed pistols. They looked at Volkov’s face—a face every soldier in Volynia knew.
“Colonel Volkov?” one of the guards stammered, his hands half-raised. “We ... we didn’t know you were—”
“Silence,” Volkov commanded. “You are relieved of duty.” He stepped aside. “Enter, Your Majesty.” Lena walked into the room. She stood in the doorway, framed by the corridor light. She looked at the five men—dishevelled, smelling of cheap liquor, terrified. She didn’t look like a fugitive. She looked like judgement day.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, her voice calm and regal. The lead guard, an older man with a grey crew cut, stared at her. His eyes went wide. He looked at her red hair, her green eyes—the face that had been on every coin and stamp in the country. Slowly, he lowered his hands. He nudged the man next to him.
“It’s the Princess,” he whispered. “The true heir.” The guard dropped to one knee. The others followed suit, a ripple of movement around the card table. They bowed their heads, ignoring the guns pointed at them.
“Your Highness,” the older guard said, his voice trembling with something that sounded like relief. “We were told ... we were told you were sick. That you were in a clinic in Switzerland.”
“I was not sick,” Lena said, stepping into the room. “I was hunted. By the man who pays your salary.”
“We serve the Crown,” the guard said, looking up. “Not the Duke. We only serve the Duke because the Crown was silent.”
“The Crown is silent no longer,” Lena said. “Stand up.” They stood. “I am taking this house,” she told them. “And then I am taking back my country. Are you with me, or do I need to lock you in this room?”
The five men looked at each other. They looked at the vodka bottles, the cards, the boredom of serving a tyrant they clearly didn’t respect. Then they looked at the young woman standing tall in dirty jeans, commanding the room with nothing but her presence.
The lead guard grabbed his rifle from the wall, checked the magazine, and slung it over his shoulder. He snapped a salute. “We are with you, Your Majesty. What are your orders?”
Volkov lowered his gun, a rare smile touching his lips. “Good. Secure the perimeter. No one enters. No one leaves. And cut the landlines.”
“Yes, Colonel.” Five minutes later, our force had doubled. We moved upstairs, now a squad of ten, sweeping through the silent house. We reached the double doors of the study on the second floor.
“This is it,” Volkov said. He pushed the doors open. It was a massive space, dominated by a desk that looked like a throne and a wall of monitors. On one wall, a professional broadcast setup—camera, lights, microphone—sat waiting.
The Regent liked to make his speeches from home, projecting an image of control to the nation.
“Secure the door,” Volkov ordered the new recruits. They took up positions in the hallway, looking proud to finally have a real mission. Volkov moved to the broadcast console.
“I am locking out the external feed. We are going live in two minutes.”
I turned to Lena. She was standing in the center of the room, looking at the portrait of the Regent hanging above the fireplace. It was a massive oil painting, depicting Zoryanovich looking noble and stern.
“He sat here,” she whispered. “He sat here and stole my life.”
“And now you’re taking it back,” I said. “Give me the box.” She handed it to me. I placed it on the massive desk. I opened the lid and took out the documents—the deeds and the red letter. I arranged them on the leather blotter, right under the camera lens.
“Volkov?” I asked.
“I have the satellite uplink,” Volkov called out, his fingers flying across the mixing board. “I am patching into the National Emergency Network. We are overriding the state media feed. Every TV and radio in Volynia is about to hear you.” He looked up. “It is a one-way broadcast. We have maybe five minutes before the military jams the signal. Make it count.”
Lena took a deep breath. She smoothed her hair. She walked behind the desk and sat in the Regent’s chair. It was too big for her, but she didn’t look small in it. She looked like she owned it. She looked at me. Her hands were shaking slightly. I reached out and squeezed her shoulder.
“You flew a King Air through a storm. You climbed a rotting tower. You can do this. Just tell them the truth.”
She looked up at me, her green eyes clear and sharp. She nodded.
“Stand by,” Volkov said. The room went silent. The turned guards in the hallway watched through the open door. I stepped back, out of the frame.
“Three ... two ... one ... You are live.”
The red tally light blinked on.
A hush fell over the room—heavier than any silence I had ever felt in a cockpit. This wasn’t the quiet before turbulence. This was history holding its breath.
I watched from the shadows near the door.
Lena sat behind the massive, ornate desk that had once belonged to the man who stole her life. She looked small against the high-backed leather chair. No crown. No sash. Just a dust-stained sweater, travel-worn jeans, and a face scrubbed clean of make-up. Her red hair hung loose and wild, catching the studio lights like a halo of copper fire.
She didn’t look like a queen from a painting.
She looked like a survivor.
She stared into the lens, and for a long, terrifying second, she said nothing at all. She simply let the people of Volynia see her—see the exhaustion in her eyes, the dirt beneath her fingernails, the truth written across her face.
Then she leaned forward.
Her voice wasn’t the practised boom of a politician. It was quiet. Intimate. As if she were speaking to a friend across a kitchen table.
“People of Volynia,” she began.
“My family. My friends.”
She paused, letting the words settle.
“You were told that I am ill. You were told that I am recovering in a clinic in Switzerland—too fragile to lead, too weak to stand before you.”
She raised her hands slowly, palms open.
“I am not ill. I am not weak. And I am certainly not in Switzerland.”
She lifted the documents and held them toward the camera.
“I am speaking to you from the Regent’s private estate in the Văldani foothills. I have returned home. Not with an army ... but with the truth.”
I glanced at Volkov. The hardened soldier was staring at the monitor, awe written plainly across his face. In the hallway, guards who had been playing cards an hour earlier now stood at attention, transfixed.
Lena’s hands were steady now.
“For years, you have been told that we must tighten our belts. That our resources are scarce. That the wealth of our land belongs to those with the ‘strength’ to manage it.”
She let the deeds fall onto the desk.
“This is a lie.”
She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.
“These are the original deeds to the Lunovar Province. They prove that the oil, the land—the very ground beneath the Regent’s feet—was never his. It was stolen. Stolen from the Crown. And stolen from you.”
She looked directly into the lens, green eyes cutting straight through the glass.
“He sold our resources to foreign shell companies. To Russia. He enriched his allies while our schools froze and our hospitals went without adequate medicine. He told you it was necessary. He told you it was for the good of the Kingdom.”
She picked up the second document—the red letter.
“But how can a man serve the Kingdom when his power is built on betrayal?”
Volkov zoomed the camera in tight. The yellowed paper filled the screen. Names. Dates. Proof.
“This letter was written by Ivan Zoryanovich, not a duke, but a farmer and the Regent’s grandfather,” Lena said, her voice trembling now, not with fear but with restrained fury. “It is addressed to Lavrentiy Beria. To the NKVD.”
She swallowed once.
“In it, he offers to trade the lives of my great-grandparents—the Royal Family—for his own safety and standing as a nobleman. He was not a duke, either of Royal blood. He did not pass a dukedom to his son, and so the Regent is a fraud and a lie.”
The air in the room felt thin.
“He’s grandfather was not a patriot,” she said softly. “His grandfather was a collaborator. A man who sold our blood to butchers.”
I felt sweat gather in my palms. In this part of the world, that word—collaborator—wasn’t an insult. It was a verdict.
Lena lowered the paper.
“The Thorn Regent sits on a throne of lies,” she said, her voice rising at last, hard as steel. “He claims he protects the Crown until I come of age. He claims he is the thorn that guards the rose.”
She leaned toward the camera.
“The Rose does not need his protection.”
She straightened.
“And the Crown does not need his permission.”
She stood.
“To the generals of our army. To the officers of our police. To every man and woman who swore an oath—not to a man, but to a nation.”
She placed her hand over her heart.
“I am here. I am alive. And I am asking you to do your duty.”
Her voice did not shake.
“I am Elena Sofia Alexandra Valeriy. I am your Queen.”
She held the lens in an unblinking stare.
“And I am coming to Velyngrad to take back our country and our home.”
“Let the kingdom be united and let Her people prosper.”
Three seconds passed. Princess Elena looked drained and emotional.
But unbroken. Unyielding.
“Volkov,” she said softly, off-mic but unmistakable.
“Cut it now.”
The red light went dark. The screen faded out.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then a guard in the hallway began to clap.
Then another.
Then Volkov.
I crossed the room as Lena slumped back into the chair, the fire finally draining from her. She looked up at me, suddenly young again, eyes wide and vulnerable.
“Did I do it?” she whispered. “Did they hear me?”
“Lena,” I said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I think they heard you on Mars.”
Volkov stepped forward, his phone lighting up with alerts.
“The broadcast went out everywhere,” he said, grinning. “State TV. Radio. Internet. The Regent’s firewall didn’t stop it in time. Social media is exploding. People are already flooding the streets of Velyngrad.”
He looked at Lena with something close to reverence.
“You lit up the fire, Your Majesty. Now we must move—before the Regent tries to put the fire out.”
I held out my hand. She took it, and I helped her stand.
“I am tired,” she said, looking up at me with a crooked smile. “And starving.”
“If the Crown is hungry,” I said, “the Crown must eat.”
“There’s a McDonald’s in Velyngrad,” she said. “I want a Big Mac, fries, and a milkshake.”
“Your wish is our command, Your Grace,” I replied. “But I strongly advise against you being recognised on the street right now.”
She laughed softly, leaning her head on my chest, her hand still in mine, her other arm snaked around my waist.
I heard Volkov softly telling Juri: “And maybe the Queen has chosen a life partner...”
Outside, a kingdom was waking up.
City of Velyngrad, Volynia about an hour later after the broadcast.
General Karkarov pushed open the double doors leading into the palace’s innermost wing—the restricted heart of power where only the most trusted were permitted.
He was permitted.
Behind him flowed a platoon of soldiers in matte-black tactical uniforms, faces set, movements economical. Each man carried an AK-12 at the low ready, fingers indexed, muzzles disciplined. These were not ceremonial guards. These were professionals.
At Karkarov’s side walked the Commissioner of the Volynian National Police, flanked by six detectives hastily summoned from their beds. Their jackets were buttoned wrong, ties absent, eyes still adjusting to the reality unfolding outside—sirens, crowds, chants echoing through the capital like a rising tide.
An aide stepped into their path, pale and flustered.
“General—Sir—the Regent is in his private quarters. You don’t have an appointment.”
Karkarov did not slow.
“Take us to him,” he said coldly. “And do not interfere in official matters.”
“General, this is unheard of—”
The aide never finished the sentence.
“Commissioner,” Karkarov snapped without looking back, “arrest this man on suspicion of conspiracy and obstruction. I will deal with the traitor myself.”
The aide’s mouth opened in protest as two detectives closed in and took his arms.
At that moment, the door to the private hall swung open.
Zoryanovich stepped through, robe half-tied, hair dishevelled, the confusion of interrupted sleep still clinging to him. His eyes darted from rifles to badges to Karkarov’s expression—and sharpened with anger.
“General,” he hissed. “What is the meaning of this?”
The Police Commissioner stepped forward.
“Zoryanovich,” he said evenly, “you are under arrest for fraud, corruption, abuse of office, and crimes against the people of Volynia.”
For a heartbeat, Zoryanovich simply stared.
Then his face flushed red.
“This is absurd,” he barked. “I am the ruler of this country. What evidence do you have for these accusations? Speak, man!”
“You will turn around and place your hands behind your back,” the Commissioner replied. “Now.”
“I will not! Guards! Guards!”
“You have no guards,” Karkarov cut in. “They are under my command. All of them.”
He took one step closer.
“I advise you to comply voluntarily. Otherwise, force will be used.”
“This is outrageous!” Zoryanovich screamed. “I am the Regent!”
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