My purse and a large, unfamiliar pack sat in the middle of the bed of the first bunk on the left. There were a half dozen crew quarters on this level with a shared bath at the end of the hall. Ian would be in the captain’s suite upstairs, which meant I wouldn’t be tempted to find out how he looked without a shirt. He might be frustrating and infuriating, but damn if he didn’t cut a fine figure.
And desire could be a useful weapon, but one best wielded carefully.
I went through my bedtime routine, then sat cross-legged on the bed in my makeshift sleepwear. Ian hadn’t grabbed any loungewear, so I’d scrounged up an oversized shirt from the wardrobe that at least covered my underwear.
A scan for trackers and bugs in the room came back clean. Ian hadn’t picked this room because he’d bugged it. Huh. Trying to figure out his reasoning made my head ache worse, so I chalked it up to a fluke and moved on.
I carefully set up my most secure network connection. Once I verified it was secure and my traffic was being obfuscated, I logged in to my Fenix account in HIVE with my smart glasses. I had a message from Nadia. She said she had the information I requested and that it was extremely time sensitive. The message included a link to a secure repository that would only unlock once the fee had been paid.
She wanted twenty thousand credits. I laughed at her audacity. The woman knew how to drive a hard bargain, but her information had always been worth it.
I paid the fee.
The unlocked message confirmed that the Syndicate party was happening tonight in Matavara and that Riccardo Silva would be in attendance. He was one of the younger sons of the main branch of the Silva family. I had not dealt with him before, but rumors indicated he was hotheaded, impulsive, and cruel. He wasn’t the last Silva I’d want to deal with, but he was pretty far down the list.
The message also had a line on a contact in Matavara who might be able to procure an invitation with the right incentive. I copied down the info and sent a note of thanks to Nadia.
I had HIVE transport me to my safe house and went through the entry ritual. The cozy library living room appeared, now with a warm fire and darkness outside. The time here mirrored Universal.
Lili Hu sat curled up in one of the overstuffed armchairs by the window. Petite, with straight dark hair, her avatar looked exactly like she did in real life. She had decided to stay in her position, now that she had a support network and the option to leave. It turned out that her husband wasn’t abusive, just neglectful. It was still painful, but not dangerous.
She smiled at me. “I was hoping to see you,” she said. “I left you a note, but wanted to chat in person, too.”
“Lili, how are you?”
“I am content,” she said. “But I am sure you are in a hurry, so we will skip the pleasantries. You need to know about Silva, correct?”
I moved and sat in the chair across from her. “Yes, specifically Riccardo, if you know anything.”
Her lip curled. “Do you have another option?”
“No.”
“Too bad.” She closed her eyes and gathered her thoughts. “Riccardo thinks he is the smartest person in the room, and the worst part is that he is often correct. It’s made him overconfident. He hates to be proven wrong.”
I didn’t ask her how she knew. Lili was part of a lower house that allied with us, but they had shady dealings just like everyone else in the ’verse.
“Do you have any specific information on him that I can use for leverage?”
“No. I’ve only met him once. He can be very charming, but watch him. He’s like a cat, waiting to pounce. And he likes to play with his prey.” She shivered at some remembered horror. “Be careful.” Her expression went distant. “I must go, but leave another note if you need more info.”
“Thank you, Lili. Stay safe.”
“You, too.” She faded from the room.
I checked the board while I pondered her words. She hadn’t told me much more than I already knew, but perhaps I could make it work. I had a few notes, but no one had any better information than I’d gotten from Lili.
I logged off, shut down all of my secure connections, and tossed my com on the nightstand. I removed my glasses and rubbed my eyes. It felt like I’d been awake forever. A peek into my purse revealed Ian had left the silencer. For once, something was going my way.
I double-checked that the manual lock on the door was set, then I climbed into bed and turned on the silencer. I would be able to hear physical noises from outside the silence field, but right now, blissful, perfect silence echoed in my mind. I sighed in relief. Six hours of silence sounded like the best thing ever.
I closed my eyes and dropped into an exhausted slumber.
A knock on my door dragged me from sleep. I fumbled for my com and checked the time. I’d been asleep for less than thirty minutes. I dropped the com back on the nightstand.
“This shit has got to stop,” I muttered to myself. I needed rest, dammit. Louder, I called, “What do you want, Ian?”
He knocked again and I remembered I was in a silence field—he couldn’t hear me. I rolled out of bed and crossed the room. “What do you want?” I asked through the door.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes?” It came out a question because why wouldn’t I be okay? “Is something wrong?”
There was a long pause.
I unlocked the manual lock and opened the door. “What?”
Two things occurred to me as Ian’s eyes slid down my body: he wasn’t wearing a shirt and I wasn’t wearing any pants. Ian Bishop was built—defined chest, six-pack abs, and sculpted arms. He was muscled more like an athlete than a bodybuilder and the effect was devastating. All of that exposed, slightly sweaty, tanned skin conspired to short-circuit my brain.
I wasn’t wearing heels and the top of my head just barely came up to his chin. I could step into his arms and curl up against his chest and have someone hold me for a second. The temptation was so strong that I swayed toward him before I got myself under control.
He smelled of sweat and warm skin, and I could feel the heat radiating off him. He had on a pair of workout shorts and running shoes. I blinked at his chest as I tried to figure out what was going on. “Ian,” I said slowly, “why are you knocking on my door half naked?”
My brain was all too happy to provide some suggested reasons and associated activities. I curled my fingers to stop myself from reaching out to see if his chest was as firm as it looked.
Ian’s eyes remained glued to my bare thighs. He shook his head, a barely there movement that made me smile. I wasn’t the only one affected. He dragged his gaze up to meet mine. “You didn’t see the news?”
I blanched, all thoughts of sexy time forgotten. “Ferdinand?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “No, sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I haven’t heard anything about Ferdinand.”
I left the door open, retrieved my com, and shut off the silencer. Once the com connected to the network, it rang with an emergency message from Benedict.
“Is Benedict okay?” I asked while the message loaded.
“Yes,” Ian said, but there was the slightest hesitation in his voice.
The message from Benedict was short and blunt: Father is sending me to NAD Seven to oversee building a forward base. I know you’ll blame yourself, but don’t. We all knew it was only a matter of time. I wanted to you to hear it from me first; I’ll post on the group channel tomorrow. I leave in three days. I will message you when I can. I hope you find Ferdinand.
Fury boiled through me and I clenched my fists to prevent myself from doing something cathartic but unwise. Nu Antliae Dwarf Seven was the sole von Hasenberg planet in the disputed Antlia sector. Father was sending Benedict to the front lines of the war with House Rockhurst.
I closed my eyes against the furious, helpless tears that threatened and inhaled deeply through my nose. Benedict would be fine. He would. He knew how to take care of himself, and he had a battle cruiser full of von Hasenberg soldiers who were fanatically loyal to him. As much as Father wanted to punish me, he wouldn’t risk Benedict’s ship unnecessarily. He would send a battle fleet with him.
It was a pretty lie, but the front lines were lethal, and a House son was a very tempting target, battle fleet or no. Nothing broke morale faster than killing off a leader. I’d already missed so many years thanks to Gregory, and now Benedict might be lost to me forever.
A sob lodged in my throat at the thought of never seeing my twin again.
Benedict and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but we always had each other’s backs. Father had tried to break our twin bond when we were young. He had failed, in part thanks to Ferdinand’s subtle interference.
And now I missed both of my brothers. Grief cut like a knife, slicing through my armor to pierce my heart. I tried to hold myself together, but the heartbreak was too big, the anguish too strong.
My brother, my twin, could die and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it except stand here and try not to bawl like a child.
“Are you okay?” Ian asked again.
“No,” I said because I’d promised him honesty. And because he’d known the news would upset me and he’d come to check on me. Warmth sparked, a tiny flame in a sea of sorrow.
“Can I do anything?”
I barked out a bitter, watery laugh. “Do you know how to stop a war between High Houses?”
“No,” he said after a short pause.
“Then there’s nothing you can do.” I sighed. I felt like I’d aged five years in the last five minutes. “I knew one of us was going to have to go, and Benedict makes the most sense tactically, now that Father banished Ada. I’m just glad it’s not Catarina, though she’s probably next on the list.”
We were all on the list when it came down to it. Ferdinand was the safest, as the heir, and while he was missing, Hannah would be relatively safe, despite her resolve not to inherit the role. But Father would fling the rest of us at the front until we won or no one was left to send.
I sent Benedict a quick reply, letting him know that I expected him to stay in one piece. There was so much more that I wanted to say, so many things we needed to talk about, but I sent him only the most important: I love you, baby brother.
The fragile grip I had on my emotions wavered. My breath hitched. I was approximately thirty seconds from a meltdown. “Thank you for letting me know,” I said to Ian. I backed into the room and gripped the door.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”
I desperately wanted to ask him to come in, to find comfort in touch, but our relationship wasn’t like that and I still had to work with him in the morning. It would cause more problems than it would solve, so I shook my head and gently closed the door.
The tears came and a sob worked its way past my control. I muffled it with my hand and retreated to the bed. I curled up facing away from the door and buried my head in a pillow. Only then did I let the sorrow spill out.
The door opened.
I held my breath and pretended I was invisible.
Footsteps approached. If he sniped at me right now, I would kill him dead. Sorrow could flash into fury at the slightest provocation and I would welcome the fight.
“I know you don’t like me,” Ian said quietly, “but I’m the only one available and I don’t think you should be alone. Tell me to go and I will.”
I didn’t trust my voice, and now that he was here, I didn’t want him to leave. I said nothing.
Ian moved quietly as he sat on the floor and leaned back against the bed. The room was pitch-dark, so I could track him only via sound. Once he stopped moving, he disappeared from my mental map. Having my back to a threat made me twitchy, so I rolled over onto my right side, facing him. I trusted the darkness to hide my tears.
I had learned long ago how to cry silently, but it had been over a year since I’d needed to and I was out of practice. I sucked in a quiet breath through my mouth and let the tears stream down my face into the pillow.
“When I was a boy, I lived in a group home,” Ian murmured. His voice was unexpectedly close, but facing away from the bed.
“I was a scrawny kid,” he continued. “Smaller than the other boys my age and underfed. I was picked on by the bigger, meaner boys, so I learned to fight well enough that they stopped bothering me.”
Cocooned in darkness, with Ian telling me a story from his childhood, I could almost believe this was a dream. That Benedict wasn’t really being sent to the front lines and that Ferdinand wasn’t really missing.
“One day, I came across three older boys who had cornered a younger girl. I would’ve left them to it,” he said, shame coloring his voice, “but she looked at me with these huge brown eyes full of terror and I just couldn’t walk away. I could fight, but I was badly outnumbered and outmuscled. The three of them kicked my ass. I was laid up in bed for two weeks. The girl escaped.
“Every day for those two weeks, she would sneak into medical and sleep curled up next to me. I think it made both of us feel better.”
“What happened to her?” I whispered.
“I don’t know. She disappeared after I was released from medical. I looked for her, but she had vanished.”
I reached out, intending to touch his shoulder, but I found the back of his head first, resting against the bed. The smooth strands of his hair slid through my fingers like water, a temptation I didn’t need. I shifted until my fingers just brushed his shoulder. His skin was warm and solid and real.
“When I was eight, Father decided it was time I learned to fight compromised,” I said. My voice was thick with tears and I stopped to clear my throat. “My self-defense tutor recommended against it, but Father was not swayed. Ferdinand and Hannah had learned at eight and so would I. He had the doctors inject me with a weaponized virus designed to defeat the nanobots in my blood. It worked far better than anyone expected. I could barely move.”
I’d never been sick before and it had been terrifying. I swallowed the remembered horror and continued, “Benedict was injected at the same time, but he responded normally with a relatively mild illness. He sailed through his trials while I struggled to barely finish. He helped me where he could, but tests were individual except for the final one.
“For the final test, we had to fight each other. Benedict threw the match, despite me begging him not to. Father punished failure, but he punished insubordination more. Benedict disappeared for a month. When he came back, he was colder, harder. But whatever happened had honed his resolve and he threw every match after that, until Father finally stopped pitting us against each other.”
“Then Benedict won in the end,” Ian said.
“He did, but he paid a dear price. He never spoke of what happened whenever he was taken away, but he always came back colder and sharper.” And having had my own share of “reeducation” time, I could well imagine what he’d gone through.
“Benedict would tell you that the result was worth the price.”
“He would and he has.” I sighed. “Ferdinand did the same thing, as did Hannah. Then we all did it for Ada and Catarina. The result is worth the price, but that doesn’t remove the guilt. Benedict gave up little pieces of himself to save me.”
“Do you begrudge Ada and Catarina for the pieces of yourself you gave?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then believe that Benedict doesn’t begrudge you, either.”
“Easier said than done,” I murmured.
“I know.”
We lapsed into silence. I’d learned more about Ian in the last ten minutes than I had in the eighteen months he’d been my bodyguard. He’d shared a story from his childhood to make me feel better and to distract me from my worries.
“Thank you, Ian,” I whispered.
“You’re welcome.”
I drifted off to sleep, still bound by the fragile connection of my fingers on his shoulder.
When I awoke, Ian was gone. Last night was a hazy memory, as ephemeral as a dream. Had he really come into my room to make me feel better or had I imagined the whole thing?
I checked my com and the message from Benedict was all too real. Ian could’ve used Benedict’s deployment as an excuse to send me home, but instead he’d come to check on me and offer comfort. The man was a walking contradiction.
I showered and dug through the bag of clothes Ian had packed for me. As expected, he’d only packed what was in my closet, which was entirely utilitarian. These clothes would be perfect for fitting in on Matavara, but not so good for dress shopping on High Street.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other option because from what I’d seen, Ada’s supplies in the cargo bay included more of the same—she had outfitted me for combat, not shopping. I dressed in sturdy black pants, a short-sleeved gray shirt, and heavy boots. Any shop that turned me away didn’t deserve my business in the first place.
The mess hall was a medium-sized room on the middle level, just down from the crew quarters. A food synthesizer and recycler were set into the back wall and the rest of the space was filled with two white plastech tables surrounded by chairs.
Ian sat at the near table, wearing a near match to my outfit. It was still disconcerting to see him in something other than a suit—it made him more human. He had a plate of what appeared to be eggs and bacon in front of him, along with a cup of coffee.
I nodded at him, wary, but he just nodded back and continued to eat his breakfast. Some of my tension drained away. Perhaps he wasn’t going to mention my meltdown.
I crossed to the food synthesizer, a small rectangular box that ran off the ship’s power. It converted energy into matter and could make nearly any food in the ’verse, assuming you’d bought the recipe. The Consortium strictly controlled both the recipes and the technology because synthesizers were one of the core technologies that made life easier, and the Consortium wanted everyone to know exactly who had provided that benefit.
And who could take it away.
I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, so I needed to try to force something down. After falling asleep without restarting the silencer, my head ached. I could feel the signals of Honorius pressing against my skull.
I settled on a cranberry scone with jam and a cup of sweet, milky tea. I preferred coffee, but sometimes my stomach reacted better to tea. Having been raised on freshly prepared meals, I thought synth food tasted slightly weird because the recipe in the system didn’t match what our chefs had prepared. The difference was less obvious with simple foods.
The synth dinged when my food was ready. I opened the door and pulled out a plate with one perfect scone and a steaming cup of tea. I carried my breakfast to the small table Ian occupied.
“Good morning,” I said. “Are we in Honorius?”
“Yes, we landed last night. We berthed next to our new ship. The security team will transfer the supplies once we leave. Do you know where you want to go shopping?”
“High Street. The boutiques there should have what I need, though we may have to try a few before one lets me in.” At Ian’s raised brow, I waved a hand at my clothes. “I don’t exactly scream Consortium royalty in this getup and High Street boutiques are notoriously elitist. You don’t need to go with me.”
“But I will,” he said, iron in his tone.
“Suit yourself.”
I broke off a piece of the scone and slathered it in jam. I needed the calories however I could get them. The smell turned my stomach, but I forged ahead. Sometimes the nausea was a false alarm. I ate a second bite and my stomach rolled. I sighed and sipped my tea, hoping the warm liquid would settle the queasiness. It did not. I pushed the plate away, aware of Ian’s sharp gaze following the movement.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided,” I said.
“Did you eat dinner last night?”
I’d promised him honesty, but answering the question would just lead to more questions. “Did you?”
“Yes, I had a protein shake. Now stop trying to avoid the question.”
“I did not eat dinner. I wasn’t hungry.” Not a lie.
“You need to eat more.”
No shit, detective. I barely stopped myself from saying the words out loud. “I eat what I can. My stomach has been weak lately.”
“Since when?”
Since my husband injected me with experimental nanobots and fucked up my life. “It is not your concern. It doesn’t affect my ability to do my job or find Ferdinand.”
“Your safety is my concern. If you pass out from hunger—”
“Give me some credit, Director Bishop,” I said, my voice cold. “I’ve never passed out from hunger, nor have I come close. If it becomes a concern, I will let you know. Until then, I would appreciate it if you would leave it alone.”
His jaw flexed, but he held his silence.
I finished my tea, forced down one more bite of scone, then dumped my dirty dishes in the recycler. It would break them down into energy that could be used by the ship or the synthesizer in the future.
“I’m ready when you are,” I said.
Ian drained the last of the coffee from his cup and put his dishes in the recycler. “Lead the way.”