The Motor Court in the Hills
The travel from office desk — Dante’s office at Golden Age Studios to motel hideout — Milestone Motor Court consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The motel room smelled of bleach and old cigarettes, a chemical fog that clung to the back of Nova’s throat. She stood with her back against the door, her hands pressed flat against the cheap wood as if she could hold the world out, as if she could keep the last ten minutes from happening. But the words were already out, hanging in the stale air between them, and Dante was still on his knees.
Eli’s small hand remained on Dante’s cheek. The boy’s thumb moved, a slow, curious stroke across the stubble there, mapping the unfamiliar terrain of a stranger’s face. His blue eyes—Dante’s eyes, Nova thought, with a jolt that cracked through her ribs—studied the man before him with an unnerving six-year-old gravity.
“You’re crying,” Eli said. It was not an accusation, simply an observation, a data point in a world of sudden, impossible data points.
Dante’s jaw worked, but he didn’t pull away from the touch. “Yes,” he said, his voice a raw scrape. “I am.”
“Are you sad?”
A pause. Dante’s gaze flickered to Nova, standing frozen by the door, then back to the boy. “I am… very relieved. And very sad. Both at once.”
Eli processed this. Then he pulled his hand back and frowned. “Uncle Cole said you were gone. He said you live far away and can’t come to our apartment.”
“I did,” Dante said. “I was far away. I would have come sooner if I had known.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked down at his own hands, as if checking whether they were real, whether he was real, whether this boy kneeling in front of him could possibly be his.
Nova pushed off the door. She had to move, had to break the tableau before the weight of it crushed her. She crossed to the small Formica table, her fingers brushing the keys to the room—two of them, brass, stamped with the faded number 14. The Milestone Motor Court had never seen a prince before. It had probably never seen a man who looked like Dante Ashby. He was dressed like he’d walked off a Paris runway, a dark wool coat that had cost more than the motel’s monthly rent, even now smudged with dirt from the scramble from the safe house.
“We can’t stay here long,” she said, the words coming out flat, practical. It was easier that way. If she let the practicality slip, the sob lodged under her sternum would tear free. “Cole said it was a transit point. A few hours, no more.”
Dante rose to his feet. He moved with that coiled, predatory grace she’d almost forgotten—shoulders back, chin lifted, his eyes sweeping the room once, twice, cataloging exits, checking the window’s static cling, the gap beneath the door. The prince. The soldier. A decade had only sharpened his edges.
“Cole is checking the perimeter,” Dante said. His voice was steadier now. He was building walls, layer by layer, walling off the shattered man who had knelt on this ugly carpet. “He will let us know when it’s clear to move to the primary location.”
Nova nodded. She kept her arms crossed over her chest, a shield. Across the room, Eli had climbed onto the double bed, his small form swallowed by the lumpy mattress. He was watching them, his head swiveling between his mother and the man who had just claimed him.
“Is he really my father?” Eli asked. The question was direct, simple. Six-year-olds were like that. They hadn’t yet learned how to protect themselves through ambiguity.
Nova opened her mouth, but Dante answered first. He moved to the foot of the bed, kept his distance, but his gaze was fixed on Eli with a ferocity that made Nova’s breath catch.
“Yes,” he said. “I am your father. My name is Dante Ashby. And I am going to get you and your mother to safety. That is my only job from now on.”
Eli considered this. Then he flopped backward onto the pillow, staring at the ceiling’s water stain, the shape of a long-dried tear. “Okay,” he said, as if accepting a new rule in a game he hadn’t known he was playing. “Can I have some juice?”
The laugh that escaped Nova was half-sob, half-relief. She covered her mouth, her eyes stinging. “Yes, baby. I’ll see if the vending machine—” She started toward the door, but Dante was there before she reached it, his hand flat against the wood, blocking her exit.
“No.”
The word was quiet, but it carried an absolute finality. His body was a barricade, his warmth radiating in the cold room. Nova looked up at him, and saw something in his eyes that made her stomach drop—not anger, but a dark, possessive hunger. A man whose world had been ripped open and was now trying to hold all the pieces in his arms.
“You’re not going anywhere without me,” he said. “Not now. Not for a long time.”
Nova swallowed. “I was just going to get him a juice from the machine. It’s ten feet away.”
“No,” he repeated. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled twenty, and pressed it into her palm. “Stay with Eli. I’ll go.”
He was gone before she could argue, the door clicking shut behind him. Nova stood there, the bill clutched in her hand, listening to the rustle of the vending machine through the thin wall, the murmur of Cole’s voice as he intercepted Dante in the corridor. She could see them through the window, two men in shadow, talking in low, clipped tones. Dante’s head was angled, scanning the empty lot, the winding canyon road that snaked up from the city below.
The Hills were quiet. Too quiet. A distant siren wailed, then faded. The motel’s sign buzzed, a single letter flickering. MIL-STONE MOTOR COURT, the O dead and dark.
Eli rolled onto his side. “Mama, is the bad man coming?”
Nova crossed to the bed and sat beside him, pulling the stiff sheets up to his chin. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. He looked so much like Dante in that moment—the same strong brows, the same determined set of a mouth that hadn’t yet learned how to smile easily.
“No, baby. We’re going to be very careful, and we’re going to be okay. I promise.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it. But Eli nodded, closed his eyes, and let sleep take him. He was exhausted, running on six-year-old fumes, his small body finally succumbing to the strain of the night.
Dante returned minutes later, a plastic bottle of apple juice in his hand. He set it on the nightstand, then stood at the foot of the bed, watching Eli sleep. His hands were clenched at his sides, knuckles white.
“I used to pray for this,” he said, so quietly Nova almost didn’t hear him. “In the years after you disappeared. I told myself it was a fantasy, a ghost story. That if I imagined you enough, you would somehow come back.”
Nova pressed her lips together, her throat tightening. “Dante…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He didn’t turn to face her, his eyes still fixed on Eli. The question was a blade, honed by a decade of unanswered letters and dead-end searches. “Why did you run? Why did you let me believe you were dead?”
There it was. The question she had rehearsed a thousand times, in a thousand dark nights, in the crib-side vigils and the fevers and the first steps. She had a thousand answers, and none of them were enough.
She stood, moving to stand beside him. She didn’t touch him—couldn’t, not yet—but she felt the heat of his arm, the tension radiating off his frame.
“Because I was afraid,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her heart was pounding. “Not of you. Of them. The Ravenwoods.”
Dante went still. The air between them crystallized as he finally turned his head, his green eyes boring into hers. “What do you know about the Ravenwoods?”
“Enough,” Nova said. “I found out a week after you left. A man came to my apartment. He said he was a lawyer, but he wasn’t. He had your ring, Dante. The one I gave you. He said you were dead.” She shook her head. “Then he told me what they would do to me if I ever tried to contact the Ashby family. What they would do to a child. Our child.” Her voice broke on the last word. “I didn’t know I was carrying Eli yet. But I knew, in my gut, that I might be. And I knew that Jasper Ravenwood had already destroyed one heir. I wasn’t going to give him another.”
Dante’s face went pale. He reached out, his hand brushing her arm, so light it was barely a touch. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know any of that. I was in the middle of a warzone, Nova, trying to prove myself to my father, trying to earn a title I didn’t even want. When I came back, you were gone. The apartment was empty. The landlord said you left in the middle of the night, no forwarding address, no nothing.”
“I had to,” Nova whispered. “I was afraid they would kill my baby. I chose abandonment over burial, Dante. I chose emptiness over grief. And every day since, I’ve carried that choice like a stone in my chest.”
The moment hung between them, dense and trembling. Eli stirred in his sleep, a small murmur, and they both looked down at him. The boy’s eyelids fluttered, then stilled.
Dante’s hand moved to his chest, fumbling inside his shirt. He pulled out a thin chain, and on it, a small object: a mother-of-pearl locket, its surface glowing faintly in the dim light. He held it up, and Nova’s breath caught.
“He was wearing it,” Dante said. His voice was rough, the grief raw. “When Eli woke screaming from a nightmare, he was clutching it. I thought it was just a toy. Then I looked closer, and I found this.” He opened the locket. Inside was a tiny photograph, creased and faded—a picture of her, taken on the night of their secret wedding. She remembered the dress, the borrowed white slip, the cheap amber beads at her throat. She remembered him laughing, tipping her back for a kiss, and the click of a disposable camera.
“I gave it to you,” Dante said. “On our wedding night. I told you to bring it with you, to us, to the future we were going to build. I never imagined you would give it to our son.”
Nova’s chin trembled. “I didn’t give it to him. He found it in my jewelry box when he was four. He said it was his good luck charm. He wears it all the time.” She swallowed. “I never knew he had it on tonight.”
Dante closed his fingers around the locket, his eyes shutting for a moment. When he opened them, they were wet. “He was screaming,” he said. “In his nightmare. He called out for me.”
Nova’s heart cracked. She knew the nightmares well. The Ravenwoods, the faceless men in suits, the shadows that chased him through a forest of doors. She had held him through a hundred such nights.
“He might be yours,” Nova said. “But he is also mine. And I will do whatever it takes to protect him. Even if it means dying in a rundown motel in the hills, with the sign buzzing outside and the world falling apart.”
Dante’s jaw clenched, a muscle ticking at his temple. But he didn’t pull away. Instead, he reached out and took her hand, his fingers weaving through hers, squeezing tight enough to stop the trembling.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “I’m going to get you both out of here. I’m going to bring you back to Avaria. To the palace. To the life we were supposed to have.”
“I don’t want the palace,” Nova said. “I never did. I just wanted you.”
The words hung in the air, fragile and true. Dante’s grip tightened. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only sound was Eli’s even breathing, a small, steady rhythm cutting through the silence.
Then the headlamps crested the canyon road.
They both saw it at the same time—a pair of glowing orbs, low and distant, climbing the winding asphalt toward the motel. Nova’s blood turned to ice. Dante’s hand moved to his waist, where a gun was holstered, hidden beneath the layers of his coat.
“Get Eli,” he said, his voice low and flat. “Get behind me. Now.”
Nova scrambled to the bed, scooping Eli into her arms. The boy woke with a gasp, his eyes wide, his hands clutching at her shirt. “Mama?”
“Shh, baby. It’s okay.” She carried him to the corner of the room, her back against the wall, her heart hammering in her ears.
Through the curtain, the headlamps grew brighter, rounder, closer. The engine cut. A door slammed shut. Footsteps crunched on gravel, then stopped, just outside the motel room.
Nova held her breath. Dante stood between her and the door, his body a shield, his hand on the gun.
Three sharp knocks, quick and clipped.
They all jumped. Then, through the keyhole, a voice came—low, flat, and unmistakably Cole’s.
“They’re here, Your Highness. You have five minutes, not one more.”
Dante didn’t move. His eyes stayed locked on the door, his body coiled and ready. But his hand left the gun, and he reached back blindly, finding Nova’s hand, squeezing it once, hard.
The sign buzzed. The wind whispered through the cracks in the frame. And through the curtain, twin headlamps rounded the canyon bend. Cole’s voice came through the keyhole, low and flat: “They’re here, Your Highness. You have five minutes, not one more.”