The steel door opened painfully slow, and Katherine's heart was beating so loudly that she could hear it in her ears.
The person behind it came into view and it was someone that she immediately recognized and felt relieved to see.
"Jasper!" she shouted as she ran to hug the man with beachy blond hair and wild blue eyes.
His frantic eyes that had been searching for her found hers right before she crashed into him with full force.
"Oh, Katie, thank God," he whispered in her ear as he held her tighter than he ever had.
Jasper was Katherine's personal guard that she had been assigned when she was ten years old.
He came to the castle at the age of fifteen after he had been living alone in the woods as an orphan, and was taken in by the royal family and trained to be a guard for the princess.
With him only being five years older than her, the two of them practically grew up together, and Katherine had always considered Jasper more of a friend than a servant. She had always treated him like an equal, and she loved him more than she loved anyone.
No one knew her like Jasper did, and there was no one she trusted more.
For the last thirteen years, they were inseparable and always attached at the hip, but of course this morning had been the one day he had left her side so that he could go train the new recruits for the royal guard.
She made a mental note to assign someone else that job in the future so Jasper could be one less person for her to worry about if... when something like this happened again.
"Do you know where my mom and dad are? Did you see or hear anything on your way here?" she asked him as her voice slightly shook.
He stiffened in her arms and Katherine could feel that he stopped breathing. He pulled back and cupped her face in his hands.
He looked deeply into her emerald eyes and sucked in a breath before he said, "The rebels kidnapped your mom, Katie."
She pushed his hands off of her face and stumbled backwards. She shook her head and said, "No, that can't be possible. We have so many guards. How did they get her? No!"
Katherine walked over to the head guard who had been one of the ones to bring her to safety and she saw the sympathy in his eyes as she begged him, "Please, you have to get me in contact with whoever took her! I need to get my mom back and I--".
"We can't negotiate with the rebels, your Highness. And like we've said, there is no way to communicate down here. We have to wait for now," he had cut her off to say.
She felt the tears come and she pushed them back to appear stronger than she felt. "No! You listen to me! I need to get out of here!"
"We have direct orders to keep all of the royal family here until it has been determined that it is safe to leave, I'm sorry," he rebutted.
Before she could get even further in the poor guard's face, Jasper grabbed her arm and pulled her away so they could give the guard some space.
They took barely two steps before she turned her attention to her friend to try to convince him instead. "Jasper, please, we have to do something. I can't just stay here and wait."
"But you have to. This is where it's safe. You are no use to the Queen if you get taken too," he said as he stroked up and down her arms to soothe her.
"Please," she whispered as her head dropped in defeat. She knew he was right, and she hated him for it.
He pulled her into a hug and held the back of her head as she started to cry.
She wrapped her arms around his torso and clung to him. He was the only stable thing in her world at the moment, and she needed him with her.
Neither of them noticed as the other four guards watched the princess and her personal guard, all shocked at the bizarre relationship the two had.
Everyone in the castle knew that Jasper was more to Princess Katherine than simply her guard, but they all were noticing just how intimate they seemed to be.
Some chalked it up to the distress of the problem they were facing, and others assumed that the pair were secretly in love.
Either way, Jasper was the only one who could talk to her or touch her the way he did without consequences. And no one dared to comment on it or tell him his place in fear of the wrath they would face from the princess.
Once Katherine took a couple of minutes to accept the fact that there was nothing she could do at that time to save her mother, she realized that she still had no word on her father.
Still pressed against Jasper, she dared to ask him, "What about the King?"
"I don't know," he simply answered.
Katherine's heart dropped and she started to feel faint again.
"I think I need to sit down," she said, and Jasper walked her over to the couch where she could rest.
Once she was seated, he started to walk away, but Katherine grabbed his hand and forced him to sit with her. He did, and she rested her head against his shoulder as she continued to grip his hand.
The six of them waited, and waited, and waited. No one said a thing, and they all held still as can be.
The tension in the air only seemed to grow with the hours that passed as they waited for more guards, or the King, or even the Queen to join them.
But no one came.
Katherine felt more and more hopeless, and it was starting to dawn on her that she may have been the only one of her small family to escape.
"I just don't understand how the rebels breached the castle. We have the best security system in all of Titanus," Katherine said, not even realizing she spoke out loud.
The guards all shifted, pulled from their own thoughts, and they awkwardly looked at each other before one of them turned to the princess to say, "They must have infiltrated the castle staff somehow. We have a traitor among us, it's the only possible explanation as to how they know our soft spots and where to locate you and the King and Queen."
"How could someone have possibly done that? Like Princess Katherine said, we have the best security systems in place," Jasper leaned forward to ask.
"I don't know," one of them answered quietly before looking away again.
Jasper turned to Katherine to say, "I'll get to the bottom of this Katie, I promise. I won't rest until I do."
Katherine could see the passion in his eyes, and she squeezed his hand even harder to show her appreciation. "I'd prefer you let someone else do the digging. I need you with me, especially if my parents aren't here. There's no one else I trust as much as you."
He nodded, but she could tell that he would still investigate anyway. She sighed and gave in, "Fine. But you share with me everything you find out."
His eyes brightened, "Of course."
"It's been a long time," one of the guards noted, "we should venture out to see what's happening, but at least one of us needs to stay with the princess."
"I'll stay with her," Jasper immediately said. "Mark, why don't you stand guard on the other side of the vault door so you can inform us if anything bad happens, and the rest of you can go out and then report back to us within the hour."
The four guards bowed toward Katherine before they opened the door to the shelter and disappeared behind it.
The steel door clicked closed and Katherine sunk even deeper into the couch.