Origin

“I must trust you?” Julián demanded.

“Yes.”

Julián squeezed the shoulder of the young driver and pointed to a grassy shoulder on the deserted country road. “Pull over,” he ordered sharply.

“Keep going,” Valdespino countered. “Don Julián, I’ll explain—”

“Stop the car!” the prince bellowed.

The acolyte swerved onto the shoulder, skidding to a stop on the grass.

“Give us some privacy, please,” Julián ordered, his heart beating fast.

The acolyte did not need to be told twice. He leaped out of the idling car and hurried off into the darkness, leaving Valdespino and Julián alone in the backseat.

In the pale moonlight, Valdespino looked suddenly frightened.

“You should be scared,” Julián said in a voice so authoritative that it startled even himself. Valdespino pulled back, looking stunned by the threatening tone—one that Julián had never before used with the bishop.

“I am the future king of Spain,” Julián said. “Tonight you’ve removed my security detail, denied me access to my phone and my staff, prohibited me from hearing any news, and refused to let me contact my fiancée.”

“I truly apologize—” Valdespino began.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Julián interrupted, glaring at the bishop, who looked strangely small to him now.

Valdespino drew a slow breath and turned to face Julián in the darkness. “I was contacted earlier tonight, Don Julián, and told to—”

“Contacted by whom?”

The bishop hesitated. “By your father. He is deeply upset.”

He is? Julián had visited his father only two days ago at Palacio de la Zarzuela and found him in excellent spirits, despite his deteriorating health. “Why is he upset?”

“Unfortunately, he saw the broadcast by Edmond Kirsch.”

Julián felt his jaw tighten. His ailing father slept almost twenty-four hours a day and should never have been awake at that hour. Furthermore, the king had always forbidden televisions and computers in palace bedrooms, which he insisted were sanctuaries reserved for sleeping and reading—and the king’s nurses would have known enough to prevent him from trying to get out of bed to watch an atheist’s publicity stunt.

“It was my fault,” Valdespino said. “I gave him a computer tablet a few weeks ago so he wouldn’t feel so isolated from the world. He was learning to text and e-mail. He ended up seeing Kirsch’s event on his tablet.”

Julián felt ill to think of his father, possibly in the final weeks of his life, watching a divisive anti-Catholic broadcast that had erupted in bloody violence. The king should have been reflecting on the many extraordinary things he had accomplished for his country.

“As you can imagine,” Valdespino went on, regaining his composure, “his concerns were many, but he was particularly upset by the tenor of Kirsch’s remarks and your fiancée’s willingness to host the event. The king felt the involvement of the future queen reflected very poorly on you … and on the palace.”

“Ambra is her own woman. My father knows that.”

“Be that as it may, when he called, he was as lucid and angry as I’ve heard him in years. He ordered me to bring you to him at once.”

“Then why are we here?” Julián demanded, motioning ahead to the driveway of the casita. “He’s at Zarzuela.”

“Not anymore,” Valdespino said quietly. “He ordered his aides and nurses to dress him, put him in a wheelchair, and take him to another location so he could spend his final days surrounded by his country’s history.”

As the bishop spoke those words, Julián realized the truth.

La Casita was never our destination.

Tremulous, Julián turned away from the bishop, gazing past the casita’s driveway, down the country road that stretched out before them. In the distance, through the trees, he could just make out the illuminated spires of a colossal building.

El Escorial.

Less than a mile away, standing like a fortress at the base of Mount Abantos, was one of the largest religious structures in the world—Spain’s fabled El Escorial. With more than eight acres of floor space, the complex housed a monastery, a basilica, a royal palace, a museum, a library, and a series of the most frightening death chambers Julián had ever seen.

The Royal Crypt.

Julián’s father had brought him to the crypt when Julián was only eight years old, guiding the boy through the Panteón de Infantes, a warren of burial chambers that overflowed with the tombs of royal children.

Julián would never forget seeing the crypt’s horrifying “birthday cake” tomb—a massive round sepulchre that resembled a white layer cake and contained the remains of sixty royal children, all of whom had been placed in “drawers” and slid into the sides of the “cake” for all eternity.