“Is this seat taken?”

Professor Lock smiled graciously as he eased himself into a pew next to a rather large lady wearing a wide-brimmed, peach-colored hat. Westminster Abbey had never looked so resplendent. Every inch of gold and silver shone bright. The checkered marble floor sparkled, and swathes of red velvet cascaded from the balconies above the expectant congregation. Lock loved this place. And yet he doubted that the other guests, fussing with their ties and hats and reading their programs for the tenth time, realized that beneath the vaulted ceilings and towering columns, what they were really surrounded by was death. The bones and ashes of kings, queens, priests, and poets lay interred in the stone all around them. These ancient walls would see more death before the day was out, of that he was certain.

Lock slid his hand into his waistcoat pocket and felt for the smooth, pebble-sized object sewn into the seam. It had been easy to smuggle it through the metal detectors operated by the dozy police officers at the entrance. Even if they had found it, would they have recognized what it was? A dull, green emerald of average size, just one more jewel amid a sea of gems twinkling from hundreds of necks and hands today. They couldn’t possibly have known it was part of Alfred the Great’s original crown, the relic Lock was so close to reassembling for the first time in a thousand years. And when he did … Well, there would be time for that later. Now he had work to do.

The emerald would tell him when it was close to the final piece of the lost crown, wherever it was hidden. It had led him the same way to the fragments at Stonehenge and Edinburgh Castle, pulling like a magnet, yearning to be reunited. He had tried to find the last piece once before, during the coronation rehearsal, but the Abbey was a big place and he had run out of time. However, more research had yielded a clue—like arrows pointing the way. Now he was sure he knew where to look. He just had to get close enough at the right moment.

Lock slipped out of his seat and made his way toward a shadowy alcove. He had dedicated his life to studying history, but today he would be making it. Soon there would be a new ruler of these islands. Soon the kingdom would kneel before a new master.

Alfie was close to panic. He had to talk to Brian and the Lord Chamberlain. He needed to warn them. Richard was walking into a trap. The Black Dragon—Lock!—was waiting for him, and for all Alfie knew, he might have the final piece of Alfred’s crown in his possession already.

“I don’t understand it—why isn’t Brian answering his phone?” asked Alfie, frustrated.

“I told you, sir,” replied Jim or Jeff, flustered by having to interrupt his chip-eating. “The Abbey is locked down for the coronation—all mobile devices checked at the door. But if you’d care to give me a message, I could try to get it to him after the ceremony … ”

Alfie glanced at the TV and saw his brother walking out of the palace and stepping into the Gold State Coach. He prayed the yeoman warders could protect him. But how could they when they had no idea what was coming?

“You need to take me to the Abbey.”

The flabby bodyguard almost choked on his cheesy puffs and proceeded to list the reasons why this would be impossible. No one was expecting Alfie; there would be no security team in place; he’d sort of promised he wouldn’t go, so it was bound to cause a fuss. Plus traffic into town would be murder. It was no use; Jim or Jeff clearly wasn’t going to help him. Alfie forced a smile and apologized, making an excuse about the pressure of the day getting to him, and walked out. He bounded up the stairs to his room. There was one other person he could try.

He just hoped she was still talking to him.

Hayley was in her bedroom at her gran’s flat, zipping the last of her clothes into an old suitcase. In the living room, Sandra, her perky social worker, was perched on the sofa watching the coronation on TV.

“Hayley, you should see this! The new king’s on his way!” she shouted.

Hayley lugged the case out of her room. Sandra had arrived earlier that morning to get her. She’d asked lots of questions about where Hayley had been the past few weeks, but Hayley hadn’t told her anything.

“Ready when you are.” Hayley dropped her case down and stood in front of the TV.

“Don’t you want to watch this?” Sandra asked, craning her neck to see the screen. “It’s history.”

Hayley shook her head. “Nah. Not really my thing.”

Outside the tower block, Hayley carried her suitcase past Dean Barron and his mates, who were clustered around his lime-green Peugeot hatchback, cranking bass-heavy hip-hop out of the oversized speakers.

“Don’t forget to write!” Dean shouted to her, snickering.

“Just ignore him,” Sandra said helpfully.

Hayley’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out and her heart skipped a beat—IRON EAGLE flashed up on the screen. Hayley answered, but the beats from Dean’s stupid car were so loud, she had to strain to hear what Alfie was saying. He was both jabbering too fast and whispering—not a great combo. Something about the Black Dragon, the Abbey, terrible danger. One thing was clear—he needed help, and fast.

Hayley made a snap decision. “Hey, Dean?” The boy racer had just enough time to look up at her before he caught the full weight of Hayley’s suitcase in his stomach as she swung it forward, knocking him over. Hayley jumped into the Peugeot and cranked the ignition.

“Alfie? Be there before you know it,” she shouted into the phone before hanging up and slamming the car door closed.

Sandra was running toward the car, shouting and waving her arms, but Hayley threw the hatchback into reverse, over-revved the engine, and shot backward, mounting the curb with a loud crunch.

Now Dean was running at her too. “Please don’t hurt my car! Please don’t hurt my car!”

He was actually crying.

Hayley ground the gears and shot forward, speeding past him. Soon all she could see in the rearview mirror was a shocked Sandra staring after her, while Dean jumped up and down, screaming like a toddler. It was an image she would treasure for years to come.

I seriously need to invest in a rope ladder, thought Alfie as he lost his grip on the drainpipe and fell into the flower bed outside his bedroom window.

As far as he knew, Jim or Jeff was none the wiser. He was probably still slumped in front of the TV, stuffing his face. But just as Alfie leapt over the low wall onto the street, he found himself face-to-face with his startled bodyguard, who was paying a pizza delivery guy. Luckily for Alfie, his reactions were faster. He streaked past, and by the time the lumbering bodyguard had carefully placed his pizza box down and taken up the chase, Alfie had a healthy head start. Mind you, he wasn’t going to get that far unless Hayley came through …

SCREEEEECH!

A lime-green Peugeot veered onto the sidewalk and stopped about an inch from his legs. Hayley poked her head over the steering wheel and took her hand off her eyes. She beamed, evidently pleased she hadn’t hit him.

“OI! COME BACK!”

Jim or Jeff was wheezing down the hill toward them, with what was left of his career flashing before his eyes.

Alfie ducked into the passenger seat. “Nice wheels. Drive!”

The road was quiet at first, which was good because Hayley liked to use all of it. She tried to reassure Alfie that she’d driven a car before, although that was in a car park, for about five minutes, and she’d still managed to hit a post. The GPS barked directions as they sped into Central London.

“You don’t want to be king. You do want to be king. Make up your mind, mate!” yelled Hayley over the angry beeping of car horns.

“It’s not that,” said Alfie. “But what you said before—you were right. I chickened out and ran away and now Richard’s in danger and it’s all my fault.”

“Still, I was out of order,” replied Hayley. “You were doing your best. I wouldn’t want to be a princess in a million years—”

Alfie pointed, alarmed. “Car, car, CAR!”

He squeezed his eyes shut as Hayley swerved around a slow-moving car in front of them, tires screeching.

“Maybe we should talk about it later?” gasped Alfie, as the GPS told them to make a U-turn, which Hayley did, narrowly missing a tree.

“You might be dead later, especially if the Black Dragon’s really there.”

“Yeah, unless your driving kills me first!”

They just had to get close enough to the Abbey for Alfie to reach his brother, but they couldn’t afford any delays. They might be traveling faster than Richard’s horse-drawn carriage, but he was supposed to be on the roads and they weren’t.

“Diversion!”

As they skirted around the side of Regent’s Park, the GPS was telling them to go straight, but a bored policeman was casually waving cars left. Behind him lay a closed-off road—the road through Soho, toward the river and Westminster Abbey.

“We have to go through!” shouted Alfie.

“I KNOW!” screamed Hayley.

She hit the horn, which, being Dean’s car, was of course a customized one, and sounded like a bugle playing a cavalry charge. Hayley threw the car onto the sidewalk, around the shocked policeman, and past the barrier.

That was when they heard the first sirens. Blue lights appeared behind them as not one, but three police cars hurtled around the corner. Tourists screamed and dropped their flags as they fled from the path of the wildly swerving car. Hayley leaned hard on the horn, while Alfie waved people out of the way. The heavy whump-whump of a police helicopter arrived overhead, and more police cars joined the chase.

As they streaked past roads that led to the parallel Embankment, Alfie caught a glimpse of the Gold State Coach. They were going to make it! Smashing through another set of barriers, they found themselves spinning onto Whitehall, stunned crowds gawking at them from either side. They were ahead of Richard’s coach now, with a clear run to the Abbey at Parliament Square.

In theory.

In practice, they now had ten police cars on their tail and two helicopters hovering low, shouting something like “Stop or we open fire!” Oh, and the men with swords on horses. The Blues and Royals were galloping up on either side of the car, swiping at the windows with their ceremonial blades.

SMASH! The back window disappeared in a shower of glass.

“Can’t they see who you are?!” yelled Hayley.

“I told them I wasn’t coming!” replied Alfie.

Suddenly a police officer in riot gear appeared at the side of the road ahead of them and rolled what looked like a long gray hose across their path. The wheels imploded as they hit the sharp points of the “stinger,” and Hayley finally lost control of the car. They spun several times and came to a halt less than two hundred yards from the entrance to the Abbey, where a rather astonished bishop was clutching a hymnbook to his chest like it was body armor.

Alfie and Hayley checked themselves for injuries, but they were both in one piece. For now. Police officers and secret service personnel surrounded the car, pointing their guns and yelling for Alfie and Hayley to show their hands. For a moment Alfie thought they might shoot them before they’d had a chance to surrender. But then Brian came running forward, waving for the security teams to “Stand down!”

The bodyguard leaned into the car and smiled sarcastically. “Alfie! So glad you could make it.”

The crumpled spoiler fell off the back of the car and clattered to the ground. Several miles away, watching on TV, Dean Barron let out an anguished cry that led to several neighbors calling the police to report a distressed animal loose on the estate.

“Impossible! Utterly impossible!”

The Lord Chamberlain was pacing the annex to the Abbey. Alfie had told him everything as fast as he could—what he’d found beneath Professor Lock’s study, his suspicion that the final piece of Alfred the Great’s crown was here, somewhere in the Abbey, and that the Black Dragon—Lock—planned on finding it. Brian immediately briefed his team with a description of the professor, but so far no one had found him; he was not in his allocated seat. LC insisted that they had already checked the Abbey—it was one of the first places they had looked—the last crown fragment couldn’t be there.

“You must have missed something,” said Alfie.

Outside, Dean’s battered car was being loaded onto a recovery vehicle. Soon the road would be cleared and the delayed Gold State Coach would arrive, carrying his brother.

“You have to warn Richard. Is he ready?”

LC and Brian exchanged an awkward glance. Hayley, sitting nearby and nursing a sore ankle, gasped.

“Oh my God. You haven’t told him, have you?”

Alfie’s blood ran cold. “WHAT?!”

He slumped down on a stone ledge. His poor brother had no idea he was the Defender.

“How could you do that?” Alfie shouted at the Lord Chamberlain.

LC took Alfie by the arm and walked him into a deserted cloister. “I believe there is a reason you were born before your brother.”

“It was ten seconds, LC!”

“Ten seconds, ten years, it doesn’t matter.”

Alfie shook his head. “You’ve seen how rubbish I am at all this stuff.”

Now it was LC’s turn to shake his head. “I see a young man who is blind to his true potential, just like Alfred the Great was, a thousand years ago. Alfred was only a young man when he became king. He thought he might rule for a few weeks at most. But he took up that duty and, in the years that followed, he achieved more than he had ever thought possible.”

Brian and Hayley appeared at the end of the cloister. LC spoke again, his voice low and urgent.

“The reason I am so hard on you is not because I don’t believe in you. It is because I do—very deeply. I want to see you become what you were born to be. It is your destiny to rule, not Richard’s. Call me old-fashioned—”

“You are. Very,” said Alfie.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in the line of succession. You were always supposed to rule, whether it’s for a few decades or a few hours. You are King Alfred the Second. Who knows? One day, they may even call you Great.”

A fanfare sounded from outside the Abbey. The crowds cheered as Richard stepped out of the carriage into the sunshine. It was time to crown a new king.