Chapter 6

Back at the château.

After stowing the abseiling gear — ropes coiled, carabiners clinking lightly like wind-chimes — I wandered back toward the château. The morning haze still clung to the old walls, softening centuries of stone and ivy, as though the building were half asleep. My muscles ached pleasantly from the climb, and the scent of wet grass and cold iron stained the air. This place had history thick as dust — and we were about to walk knee-deep into it.

I slipped through the rear door, past the herb beds and the dripping rain barrels, into the warmth of the kitchen. Copper pots gleamed on the walls, polished to perfection by hands with standards older than electricity. Lena sat at the marble island like she belonged there — hair wild from wind, coffee cradled between her palms, cheeks still pink from the eighty-foot ascent up the clock tower. Tired, yes. But she was smiling — always smiling — like a fox who knew where the hens were hidden.

Giles turned at the sound of my boots.

“What are you doing with our guest, Sir?” he scolded, voice just shy of a bark. “First you two fly off in the Little Bird, then you make her climb the clock tower. Look at her — the girl needs a rose-petal foam bath and a full hour’s nap.”

“She wanted to go up the tower,” I countered, though even I could hear how flimsy it sounded.

Lena hid a grin behind her mug. Enjoying my execution.

“Well, that is not how we treat guests,” Giles pressed, arms crossed like a headmaster faced with two unruly children.

I sighed, turned to her. She raised an eyebrow.

“You better tell him why you’re here,” I said. “Or he’ll lecture me into early retirement.”

She shrugged one shoulder, calm as clear water. “You may explain, Ruan. Perhaps he knows the château’s deeper history.” A mischievous glint. “He looks like someone who would. With a name like John Esteban St John the Third, he sounds like someone from Buckingham Palace, so he will understand...”

I hesitated — not because I feared telling him, but because the words themselves still felt unreal in my mouth. The world thought of Volynia as a peaceful constitutional monarchy with a parliament and a reigning royal line stretching back a thousand years. And it was — technically. But ever since Lena’s father died, the Regent had controlled the crown until Lena reached twenty-five, when she would ascend as Queen. Until then, she was watched, guarded, shadowed by loyalists and loyal-ish men. And while she wasn’t an exile, she was also not entirely free.

Officially she was here in South Africa after speaking at an international trade conference.

Unofficially, she followed a whisper left behind by her grandmother — a quest for documents hidden somewhere inside this château. Documents powerful enough to make the Regent nervous.

Giles knew none of this. Not yet.

Still — there were titles that could not be avoided.

“Giles,” I said carefully, “allow me to present Her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Elena Sofia Alexandra Valeriy of Volynia, Duchess of Velyngrad, Heir Presumptive to the Throne.”

For a second the room froze.

Giles looked at her — really looked — and the years seemed to peel back from his eyes like old wallpaper revealing polished stone beneath. Then he bowed — deep and formal — one hand behind his back, the other across his heart, forehead nearly touching the floor.

“Your Highness,” he said softly. “I last saw you when you were six or seven. Your red hair and green eyes should have alerted me. I beg pardon for failing to recognise you sooner.”

She smiled gently. “It’s no problem, my Lord. I have changed since six. Please — sit. I would like to speak with you.”

Giles remained standing, spine like steel. “By your grace, I prefer to stand. Out of respect for your father.”

Her expression flickered — pain hidden under poise. “You knew him, my father?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Giles murmured, voice carrying decades. “We met during the Stavernistria conflict of ‘91, shortly after the fall of the old bloc. I served as liaison to your father’s delegation. He was a man of honour. His loss was a wound to the world. I still mourn my friend.”

She swallowed — barely — but I saw it.

“My Lord,” she whispered again, “please — sit.”

Slowly, he obeyed, lowering himself like the gesture cost something. I realised then that I knew next to nothing about Giles. A butler, yes — but also soldier, diplomat, and friend to a king.

“You too, Ruan,” Lena said, tone snapping back to playful with remarkable ease. “Get coffee and sit. The two of you make the room look dark and untidy, gawking at me like that.”

She giggled — and the tension broke like glass underfoot.

I poured coffee with hands steadier than my thoughts. Lena was here chasing ghosts and documents that could tip the balance of a living kingdom. And Giles? Giles had just become a part of something he didn’t even know existed.

The château held secrets.

And we were about to start opening doors.

Dmitri driving north in the Swartberg Pass, following the blip on the screen.

The road began where the foothills opened like a gate into stone. Behind them lay the Cango Caves — cool, echoing, secret — but ahead the Swartberg rose in great ribs of quartzite, cracked and fire-coloured beneath the sun.

The gravel track curled upward at once, steep as a question, pulling them into a world where distance meant little and time moved differently. The Swartberg Pass, known for its treacherous conditions and caution must be kept along its narrow and winding paths.

Around the first bend the land fell away behind them, the Little Karoo stretching out like a pale hide drying under heat. The wind carried dust and the faint resin-sweet breath of fynbos, and each turn of the wheels loosened the world of towns and timetables. Higher still, the pass twisted like a ribbon caught in a mountain god’s hand — switchback on switchback, each sharper than the last — and the stones that held it up looked impossible, as though only stubbornness kept them from collapsing into the abyss.

Rock faces towered overhead, folded like pages in an ancient book, their layers tipped and torqued by some unimaginable pressure from the earth below. At midday they glowed copper and ochre; at the edges, dark fissures hinted at shadowed depths.

On the summit the wind was a presence, not a sound — cold, insistent, tasting of distant snow. From there the world opened northward in a breathtaking gesture: the Great Karoo, wide and pale and endless, rippling into sky. Even the road seemed to hesitate, poised on the edge of a great exhale, before tumbling down toward Prince Albert in a skein of gravel and hair-pinning corners. Like a passage from one world into another, from caves in the earth’s ribs to the open desert sky.

Ahead, somewhere beyond the last descent, Prince Albert waited — small, sun-washed, and shimmering like a promise. But here, in the high reaches of the pass, they belonged only to mountains, dust, and the winding thread of road that stitched them together. Not able to pass the lumbering truck ahead, they had to stay behind it all the way through the mountain pass.

But Volkov saw none of the beauty. He saw only the dust-caked tailgate of the cattle truck grinding its gears twenty metres ahead of them. The heavy vehicle occupied the center of the narrow track, spewing black diesel smoke, crawling uphill at a walking pace. There was no room to pass. To the left was a shear rock wall; to the right, a drop that ended in nothing.

“If this truck don’t get up this hill the little bitch is going to get far ahead of us,” Volkov cursed, slamming his hand on the dashboard.

“I’m not so sure Colonel. It seems she is also driving slowly. The signal sometimes stands still and then jumps way ahead,” Alexandru spoke.

“I think that is the reception of the signal in these mountains...” Dmitri ventured.

“But it still shows her moving at the same rate as us. Sometimes 500 metres away sometimes three kilometres away,” Alexandru replied.

Volkov froze. He looked at the tablet screen over Alexandru’s shoulder. Then he looked through the windshield at the lumbering truck. The blip moved. The truck moved. The blip stopped. The truck shifted gears.

“You say she was as close as five hundred metres?” Volkov asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“Yes colonel, sir.”

Volkov slapped his flat hand against his thigh.

He pointed a shaking finger at the livestock carrier.

“You stupid useless morons! The signal moves like we do and there is no other car or vehicle around! She hitched a ride. She’s hiding in the back with the animals. STOP THAT TRUCK!”

Dmitri didn’t hesitate.

He slammed the rental car into second gear and buried the accelerator. The engine answered with a guttural roar, the kind that vibrated through bone and steering column alike. The vehicle surged forward, back tires fishtailing on loose gravel as the road clung precariously to the cliff side like a ribbon of pale dust.