The King's Daughter

26 River Rendezvous

• Aria's POV •

The atmosphere in the house the next day was drastically different then the day before. Everyone I passed in the hallways had serious expressions on their faces and there was no laughter. The whole house was on edge. There were even more security guards than before and Felix was following me everywhere. I hadn't seen Louis all day. I expected he was in the basement trying to get answers out of Mason.

As I was headed for the dining room for lunch, I heard my name being called. Glancing back I saw Louis hurrying toward me. He waved Felix away, but my bodyguard just stood there.

"Excuse you, you can go." Louis snapped to him as he came up to us.

Felix still stood beside me with his arms crossed. I had noticed lately that he wouldn't obey Louis if he could help it. I thought it was kind of funny, seeing Louis' reaction.

"Are you deaf? I need to speak with my wife privately." Louis insisted, clearly annoyed.

"It's okay, Felix. I'll be fine." I patted my bodyguard's arm and he nodded to me, swiftly walking away.

Louis huffed and rolled his eyes. "I just wanted to know if you're okay."

Raising my eyebrows I shrugged. "Yeah, I'm fine. Are you okay?"

He gave me a weird look, as if he was surprised by my question. "No. Have you eaten? Are they feeding you? And by the way, has anyone suspicious been around you?"

"I'm on my way to lunch. And I haven't seen anyone suspicious." I answered.

He looked around, his eyebrows scrunched into a troubled frown. "I'm gonna have to clean out the house of all my dad's spies. I don't know who I can trust anymore."

"Did you get any answers out of him? Like what game he's playing?" I questioned.

He ran his hands down his face tiredly. "Not exactly. He keeps claiming he's just trying to teach me a lesson. He's acting like he doesn't have an endgame, but I know him. He has a master plan. If I let him out, he'll probably only make more trouble now that I've taken initiative to put him in his place."

"What are you going to do?" I asked quietly.

He sighed. "I don't know."

"You aren't going to let him go again are you?" I worried. Louis had let Mason get away with too many things lately and the man would only come back for more. He needed to be stopped.

"I don't know..." Louis stared at the wall.

"I'm pretty sure he was going to kidnap us last night. You aren't seriously considering letting him go after that?" I frowned.

"This is more complicated than you know." He defended himself.

Sighing in annoyance, I felt my cheeks getting hot with frustration. Louis was about to speak, but a guard approached us. He walked by, probably simply patrolling the halls, and Louis moved closer to me.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about your weekly checkup."

My stomach dropped and I looked away. I had removed all my hair this morning because Quinn warned me that Louis had talked to her about it. Obviously I didn't want Louis to look at me naked, but if he insisted on doing so, I wasn't going to give him an opportunity to shave me himself.

"Louis..." I murmured in dread, ready to argue with him for the millionth time about letting me off the hook.

"Hold on. I was only going to tell you that I'm retracting the hair rule. You can do whatever you want and no one will be checking you anymore." He said.