"An... assassin? I'm the target?" Louise's voice trembled badly. Instinctively, she glanced around. The empty beach and frozen sea suddenly seemed fraught with danger, as though every shadow and every rock concealed a deadly dagger.
"Why? Who? The Sauron? Or..." Several possibilities flashed through her mind in rapid succession. Infighting within the royal family? Some Carnford radical jealous of her status? Or had she unknowingly offended someone?
Karl did not immediately answer her question of "who." He chose to avoid mentioning the name Katerina, the Empress Dowager.
No matter how cold, distant, or even calculating their nominal mother-daughter relationship might have been, telling Louise outright that it was her stepmother—the Goldflower Kingdom's regent Empress Dowager—who wanted her dead would itself be like another poisoned dagger. It would pierce the last lingering fantasies this young woman might still have about family and kinship. The shock and hurt it could bring would be no less than that posed by the assassin himself.
She had no need, nor should she have to face the conspiracy now. Some darkness was better borne and held back by him alone.
"We're still investigating who sent them," Karl said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. "But the source is reliable. We must immediately take the most stringent protective measures. Louise, for your safety, I suggest that you move out of the Amber Bay villa at once."
Louise nodded almost without hesitation. Her voice still quivered, but dependence and trust showed in her eyes. "I understand, Karl. I'll follow your arrangements. Move to... the castle?" She assumed it would be some heavily guarded tower or suite within the castle.
"No." Karl shook his head and looked into her eyes. "The underground shelter of Carnford Border Bank. It was newly built after the war, located in the