2024 AMC 8 Problem 17

A chess king is said to attack all the squares one step away from it, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. For instance, a king on the center square of a 3 \times 3 grid attacks all 8 other squares, as shown below. Suppose a white king and a black king are placed on different squares of a 3 \times 3 grid so that they do not attack each other. In how many ways can this be done?

\textbf{(A)} 20 \qquad \textbf{(B)} 24 \qquad \textbf{(C)} 27 \qquad \textbf{(D)} 28 \qquad \textbf{(E)} 32

Full credit goes to MAA for authoring these problems. These problems were taken on the AOPS website.