Rhiane clenched her jaw as Luke dealt the verbal blow of calling the kiss they shared 'mediocre.' It had been admittedly foolish of her to expect, even passively, that her fiance would provide reassurance that she was wanted or liked when he had failed to do so many times before. The accident had left her feeling like a monster wearing only the costume of a human being. Perhaps the vehicle had been sabotaged but her guilt for the responsibility she bore as driver, for the liability she held in not mitigating the damage better, weighed so heavily on her that she did not now how she would ever escape its pressure. This overwhelming emotion clouded her judgment and made her desperate for any beacon of light to pierce the self-loathing.

The princess elect did not recognize he was punishing her for her self-depreciation. All she could hear was his continued condescension of commoners, of farmers who were her peers not so long ago, how easily he would abdicate his duty of accompanying her to Tobias as she had proposed. For the briefest moment she felt as if she was suffocating. Everything felt wrong. She was injured and being treated against her will, Luke had been severely wounded, the queen would destroy her family if she discovered the truth, she had been rejected as she had feared, and the only person who she knew cared about her without any anger or resentment was in love with her brother, a man who did not need her friendship, who would endure were she gone from this world.

With a burst of anger she sat up in her bed and yanked her good hand with enough force in the opposite direction that the metal stand to which her IV was attached toppled to the floor. Rhiane swung her legs over the side of the bed opposite Luke and pulled again. There was enough leverage now that the needle taped into place onto her hand was freed. She wouldn't die without medication or intravaneous hydration. The stubborn brunette would be in more pain certainly, and it would have been better if she rested to expedite her recovery, but she had slept so much under the influence of sedatives that she wasn't jeopardizing her health. Had the doctor been in room he would have strongly disapproved and cautioned this was the lack of cooperation he was trying to avoid.

But now they could hear yelling on the other side of the door. A body collided with the door, there was the sound of a locking mechanism, and then shouting about a cause. The princess elect let her feet touch the floor and boldly walked towards the sounds. When Luke had been gentle with her he had earned her compliance. Now that they had returned to their more typical hostile exchanges she would not be as easily swayed to heed his directions. She was curious, worried about what was transpired, and if the aggravating physician had new patients that were fighting one another.

A hand tried the door but it did not yield. Rhiane crept closer still until she was only a meter from it, enough that if it swung inward she would not be struck, but near enough she could more clearly hear whatever exchange was taking place. This turned out to be wholly unnecessary. The rebels on the other side had struck the doctor after he had engaged the emergency lock on the door, dragged him into a closet, and were in the process of gagging him and locking him inside. One of them had been treated by him years before and brought back from the precipice of death by his compassion, so they weren't going to kill him. Their target was a sultry vixen ignorant of their intentions.

"Princess!" one of them yelled. Technically she was only a princess elect, not a princess, but they didn't need to be precise to get their message across to their tiny audience. "We know you're in there! Open the door, princess! We can save you!" the voice promised. The only people that would have known they were there beside the palace guards were the would-be assassins. These were the same people that Luke knew, through emails, believed that they could save Rhiane, as well as the country, by murder.

"You don't have to suffer with him any longer," another deeper voice rang out. "We'll take care of your family, princess, you just have to open the door!" This man sounded much more authoritative than the first. The timbre of his voice resonated with an almost paternal tone as if he regularly knew how to appeal to the emotions of others. And it was working. Rhiane was wavering. Rationally she knew from the sounds of altercation that these were not nice people that had come bearing down upon the clinic, but she ached for understanding, for sympathy, for praise. She had not realized how hollow its absence had made her feel.

"Princess, we haven't got much time," a woman called to her. "We promise if you let us in you'll never have to worry about the royal family again!" Because she would be a corpse. But Rhiane didn't know she was their target. They were singing a siren song of escape, of relief from her burdens, of a chance at happiness. She had no reason to suspect they had weapons aimed at the door in anticipation of blasting through it and carrying her to the afterlife for their cause. Because she was so tortured, so frustrated, so tired, she genuinely thought saviors had arrived to whisk her away to a place of security and acceptance.