Those few short days in America had frozen their happiness in time, like a photograph, gone and never to return.
Ashley Bowen suddenly felt her heart grow heavy. Leaning against the railing of her bedroom's open-air balcony, she gazed at the red leaves in the courtyard below.
'She really isn't cut out to be a queen. She belongs in her lab, tinkering with beakers and flasks.'
'When she'd learned that Elaine and Chloe had both disappeared, she had been completely at a loss.'
'And that time she'd sabotaged the Platinum Palace's infrared security system—that had been her terrible idea, too.'
'Maybe she just didn't have the courage or the cunning. Maybe she wasn't fit to be the one by Yuri Sinclair's side at all.'
Yuri Sinclair returned early, just before lunch. He looked relaxed, as though everything had been handled smoothly.
