Hour Ten

Joseph pulled out his radio and cried, "Shades! Shades! Can you hear me? Answer me!" He waited a moment, but got no answer. "Shades! Charlotte! Somebody, can you hear me?" Still nothing.

"What about the earpiece?" Lionel suggested. Joseph tried his headset, but it was out of range.

"Shades!" he yelled again into the radio.

"I would say either he's turned it off, or the battery is dead." Lionel put in.

"What are you doing standing around! Assemble the men, and prepare to follow me to the cottage! MOVE!" he roared. Lionel quickly scurried away to do as he was ordered.

The men were assembled in the main hallway, but they weren't fast enough. Joseph had left rough directions with one of the men, and had jumped in a car and taken off. He had caught his watch in the glow of the lights.

Forty-five minutes.

As he pulled out of the palace gates, he noticed the clock on the dashboard. It read ten minutes faster than his watch. He spoke into his headset,

"Somebody tell me what time it is." He demanded. Three different people responded. The car was right.

Thirty-five minutes.

Joseph jumped on the gas pedal. He had to make it in time. As the countryside flew by outside the window, Joseph drove mechanically as a wave of memories and thoughts assaulted him. He had asked her to marry him a few days ago. She hadn't answered him yet, asking that he let her sort things out with Mia first. As always, everything else took a backseat to Genovia. Each day that went by with no response, and no discussion about the issue, made him more anxious as to what her answer might be. He had a more important reason to be anxious now.

Twenty minutes.

And he was not quite to the halfway point of his journey yet. More memories came flooding back to him now. Memories of a Christmas morning spent in her suite laughing and talking like old friends over hot chocolate complete with candy canes. Rupert's funeral, and then Phillipe's. The two weeks he had gone with little to no sleep every night, just to make sure that he was near her.

Fifteen minutes.

Five more to the woods, then eight or nine to the cottage; oh God, what if he didn't make it? He thought of happier things, or tried to. San Francisco, and Mia's coronation as princess, how happy she had been that night. Truly happy, for the first time in months. There was hope again. Joseph urged the car faster, thankful that the roads were dry, and that no one else was out and about this early in the morning.

Ten minutes.

His mind stumbled over memories from earlier that night. How many times had she begged him not to leave? But he hadn't listened to her. And now…well, best keep driving and not think of that. Slowing only slightly as he entered the woods, he expertly maneuvered the car around the twists and bends in the room.

Five minutes.

By his estimation he was still a mile from the cottage. He sped up, skidding around corners but managing to keep the car under control. One slip and it would all be over.

Four minutes.

He turned the last corner and the cottage came into few in the distance. It was on the other side of the large fields that Rupert had hunted deer in, when he had come here to get away.

Three minutes.

He could see lights on inside the small structure. The sky was a pale blue color now, a small bit of pink appearing if one looked hard enough at the eastern horizon.

Two minutes.

Slamming the brakes on, Joe stopped in front of the house. He jumped out of the car and ran for the door. Shades had seen him pull up and opened the door.

"What's going on?" he asked, bewildered?

"Where's Clarisse?" Joe cried.

"In the garden, with Olivia." Shades replied, the panic in Joe's voice frightening him.

One minute.

"Joe?" Mia asked, but he was already running through the house.

"Stay back!" he ordered, hearing their movements behind him.

They did, but not very far.

Bursting out the back door and into the garden, he immediately spotted Clarisse pulling dead branches off of a row of hedges. Olivia glanced at the sky and moved toward her.

Dawn.

Joe sprang forward, shouting "No!" as he lunged for Clarisse, knocking them both to the ground behind the hedges and covering her with his own body, and not a second too soon. In the doorway, Mia screamed as Olivia exploded with the morning sun.