Jacob had never been specifically trained to treat wounds, but the combination of fighting in a civil war and working closely with an ailing king had lent him the skills he needed to keep Iris from succumbing to her injuries. He worked tirelessly in the house where he’d found her, using what little equipment and resources he had available until he felt like she was stable enough to move. The open wound in her midriff had been staunched, her broken bones had been set, and he finally picked her up, carefully, off the floor to bring her down to the first working car he could find on the street down below.

He picked the door open, hotwired it to get it running, and laid Iris’s limp body across the backseat with a blanket spread over her both for warmth and to conceal her identity when he drove back to the capital. There was no getting inside the city without passing through a security checkpoint equipped with infrared cameras. There, he leveraged his status as the head of capital security to avoid having the car searched. When the border patrol questioned him about the second body in the vehicle, he explained it away as a captured, unconscious prisoner from the rebellion that he was bringing in for interrogation.

The guards took him at his word, and he was permitted to pass through, driving along the highway that would take him to his condo on the north side of the capital. When he’d accepted the job as head of security for King Atlas, he’d moved into a room in the palace to stay close to his monarch. However, he had never stopped making payments on the other unit, just in case he ever needed it. Until now, nothing else had come up, but with Iris barely clinging to life in his backseat, he was glad he’d had the foresight to continue renewing his lease.

He pulled the borrowed car around the back side of the building, where there was less foot traffic and witnesses to worry about, and gingerly lifted the unconscious girl to carry her up the back stairs to his condo. Unlocking the door was a little tricky, but he managed to get it open by using the wall as a brace for his shoulder while he fished in his pocket. Once they were safely inside, he finally set her down on the bed and set about tending to her wounds more properly than he had when they were in the districts.

The bloodstained clothing was exchanged for an old t-shirt and basketball shorts—though he left her undergarments in place, uncomfortable with the thought of removing them when she was someone important to Caspian—and he scrubbed the dried blood from her skin. The stab wound was stitched with his own kit, the makeshift brace on her arm was replaced with a sturdier binding, and when he was confident that she would start recovering on her own, he finally returned to the palace to check on his king, stifling the guilt he felt about telling the other man that she was dead when she was really locked up in his condo only a few miles away.

When he got back, he found the palace in the exact state he expected. All function had ceased. The halls were quiet, visiting representatives had been sent away, and two guards stood posted outside the doors to the king’s bedroom with orders not to let anyone inside until told otherwise. He could tell that many of the other security workers were confused about Caspian’s reaction to the raid, since none of them had known how close their monarch had been to the woman they’d been trying to rescue, but he also knew it wouldn’t take long for them to put the pieces together and figure out why he was so devastated—if they hadn’t already.

In that way, Jacob was glad he’d made the decision that he had to keep her survival a secret. If there was to be any blemish on the fledgling king’s reputation because of his affection for a rebel, it would quickly pass. That relationship was over and done with, so there would be no reason for concern among the Aspirian people that their leader’s allegiance was divided with the Scourge.

He spent the night in his room in the palace, just in case Caspian needed him for anything before the morning. However, when the sun rose and nothing changed while the other man continued to grieve his loss, he decided to return to the condo to see how Iris was doing since he’d left her the day before. He took his own car this time to make the drive back, but still parked behind the building. Inside again, he found the former rebel passed out where he’d left her, so he settled in the living room and flipped through channels on the TV to catch up on the local news, leaving her to rest in the bedroom.

An hour passed quietly while he lounged on the couch with a beer. In a way, it felt like a vacation, since he was usually busy at the palace seven days a week with security work and management, but the peace was eventually broken when he heard a faint, muffled voice cry out behind the door. He got up right away and turned the TV off, heading back into the bedroom where he saw that Iris was awake and struggling to climb out of the bed.

“Iris.” With a tone both firm and soft, Jacob stepped over to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Lay still or you’ll reopen your wound. You’re safe now. Ethan is dead.”