Chapter 90 - Bounty On The Runaway

The Crown Prince returned to his chambers expecting to see the red-haired girl lying on his bed, but instead he found nothing but an empty mattress and undisturbed sheets. The absence struck him immediately, a quiet wrongness settling into the room where her presence should have been. He searched anyway, moving through the chamber with growing impatience, checking behind curtains, inside the bathing room, and even the balcony, yet there was no trace of her—not a scent, not a strand of hair, not even the faint warmth that would suggest she had recently been there. A frown formed slowly on his face as unease crept into his chest. The possibility crossed his mind that she might have suffered another nightmare and teleported somewhere unintentionally, but that explanation did little to ease the tightening irritation beneath his skin. Wherever she was, she was no longer under his control.