Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,90

Leo again” turned out to be too late?

Edvin’s stomach cramped at the thought and he pressed a hand against the ache… only to immediately have his stomach growl at him in response.

“Quiet, you,” he mumbled with another damp sniffle, not appreciating the reminder that he’d had nothing to eat since the lunch break he’d taken the day before. True, hunger was a bit of a distraction from his misery and heartbreak, but it was also yet another thing he couldn’t do anything about at the moment, and since his own hunger only led him to worry about whether or not his siblings had cooked themselves a proper dinner last night, it was definitely not a helpful diversion.

Had they remembered to double-check that all the windows were locked before going to bed? Were they worried that Edvin had abandoned them? Would they have gone to the palace this morning as planned, or were they still at the apartment, distressed by all the same horrifying scenarios that would have run through Edvin’s head if one of them had failed to come home on time?

Edvin bit back another useless sob, then pulled his dead phone and Hans’s useless keycard out of his pocket, giving them both a watery glare.

“I hate you,” he croaked at them, his throat feeling a little raw since he’d wasted a few solid hours yelling for help after realizing that the keycard had stopped working the night before. And how did that even happen, anyway? It had been perfectly fine the first few times he’d used it to go in and out of the restoration room, and when the cleaning crew had arrived the night before, he hadn’t even bothered to alert them that he was there since it hadn’t occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to leave once he was finally done.

His stomach clenched again, the same panic he’d felt when he’d first realized that he couldn’t get out of the restoration room threatening to swamp him again. He breathed through it, pinching the bridge of his nose until he calmed down enough to stop feeling dizzy.

“Right, then,” he said, his voice only trembling a little. “Maybe… maybe I missed something?”

He settled his glasses back on his face, refusing to feel foolish for talking to himself since there wasn’t anyone around to hear anyway. And oh, great. Thinking of how very, very alone he was only served to set off another round of tears.

Useless. Exhausting. Unhelpful.

The unfairness of it all almost threatened to swamp him, but enough already. He took off his glasses again and scrubbed furiously at his face, then shoved them back on decisively and pushed himself to his feet. What he needed to do was push aside his hopelessness and despair and figure out if there really was something he’d missed. Some way out. Some solution.

Yes, life was unfair, but Edvin had been confronted by that fact about a billion times over the last five years, faced with seemingly impossible challenges that he’d felt woefully unprepared to handle, and yet somehow, he’d managed to muddle through each time anyway. So maybe now, if he meticulously went through the contents of every drawer, shelf, and cabinet, he’d… he’d come up with something that hadn’t occurred to him yet. Maybe he’d find everything he needed to build an amateur ham radio, or to send up smoke signals, or… or to pick the lock on the electronic lockbox that the dratted keycard refused to activate now.

He squared his shoulders, determined to at least try… even if he wouldn’t actually know how to do any of those things if it turned out that all the supplies he needed were on hand. And true, he pretty much knew the contents of the room inside and out from all the times he’d worked in it and it was highly unlikely that he’d suddenly find a hidden treasure trove of escape tools or the entrance to a secret tunnel or instructions on how to build a cellphone charger out of brass edge boards, awls, and beeswax, but miracles could happen, couldn’t they?

He bent over and scooped up the keycard and his dead phone, stabbing at the buttons again on the off chance that the phone had miraculously absorbed a charge from the atmosphere all on its own, since that would actually be a lot more convenient than trying to cobble one together with bookbinding supplies.

Shockingly, the screen stayed dark.

“Come on,” he said, his frustration spilling over as he shook it