People expected High Street to be a riot of color and fashion, but it was a quiet little street with wide sidewalks and old brick shops with frosted-glass windows and understated black signage. These boutiques didn’t need to attract window-shoppers.
The first boutique worker took one look at my clothes and announced they were closed, despite the three other customers in the store. Ian bristled, but I just smiled and moved on. I was about to spend a mountain of credits—if they didn’t want my business, that was their loss.
The girl working the front counter at the third shop couldn’t have been more than eighteen, with freckled ivory skin and natural red hair. She wore a simple A-line dress that was the uniform of the boutique, but hers was in emerald green, which perfectly matched her wide eyes. She looked at me rather than my clothes. “Lady von Hasenberg,” she stammered, “welcome to Boutique Blanchard. How may we assist you?”
“I need a dress and everything that goes with it.”
“Right this way, my lady,” she said. She led me to a richly appointed sitting room, and gestured for me to have a seat on the upholstered sofa. “Madame Blanchard will be with you shortly. May I bring you some tea or coffee?”
“Tea with milk and two sugars, please,” I said. “And black coffee for my guard.” Ian glanced up in surprise, though I didn’t know if it was because I knew how he took his coffee or because I’d remembered him in the first place.
The girl bobbed a curtsy and disappeared behind a curtain. A few minutes later, an older woman glided into the room. Her graying hair was pulled back into a sleek chignon. She was impeccably dressed in slim trousers and a tailored jacket in a soft shade of blue that complemented her deep brown skin.
“Lady von Hasenberg, I apologize for your wait,” she said with a pleasant lilting accent. “I am Madame Blanchard, the owner. It is my pleasure to assist you. You need a new dress?”
“Yes,” I said. “At least one.” Her eyes lit up. “But time is of the essence. It must be ready today, preferably by the time I leave.”
She inclined her head. “What sort of dress are you looking for?”
“Devastating,” I said simply.
“Stand, if you please,” she said.
I stood and spun in a slow circle. This wasn’t my first time in a boutique, and making her circle me would just waste time.
“You are tiny,” Madame Blanchard murmured to herself. “The dress must not overpower you. But perhaps if others underestimated you, that would not be so bad, no? A dress is a weapon. I have just the thing.” She disappeared with a brusque command to strip.
Ian moved closer to the room’s entrance and turned away from where I stood without a word. I stripped out of my clothes with brisk efficiency. The girl returned with my tea and I sipped it for warmth while I waited. My stomach was still uneasy, but the tea didn’t make it worse. Perhaps I would be able to eat lunch.
Madame bustled back into the room, followed by another fair young woman in yellow carefully hauling an armful of dresses. The young woman hung the dresses on the rack and waited for direction.
“The silver, first, I think,” Madame Blanchard said. She looked at my bare feet. “Do you normally wear heels?”
“Yes. I’ll need a new pair.”
“Very good.” She murmured to her assistant and the girl disappeared, only to return a minute later with a box of heels in various heights, all my size. “Pick your preferred height and we will figure out the exact shoe later.”
I picked the height that I was most comfortable in. It wasn’t the tallest option, but I could move faster in these shoes. I’d give up the extra couple of centimeters of height for the ability to run.
Once I had the shoes on, Madame Blanchard’s assistant helped me into the silver gown. It was gossamer-thin and flowed over my body like water. Before the young woman had even zipped me into it, Madame Blanchard shook her head. “Take it off.”
Two more dresses suffered the same fate before we tried a dress in deep teal. It had heft from the intricately beaded bodice. The neckline plunged deep and a slit up the side rose from the floor to almost the top of my leg. The color made my skin look alabaster.
As I walked toward the mirror on the wall, my thigh flashed with every step. The dress enhanced my modest bust and made my figure look amazing.
“Stunning,” Madame breathed.
I turned in the mirror, checking the back, what little there was. The dress was open from my shoulder blades to the small of my back. If dresses were weapons, this dress was a grenade—designed for maximum damage and impossible to ignore.
I stalked toward Ian, swinging my hips. He glanced at me and froze. His gaze slid down my body like a caress before returning to my face. Desire heated his expression before he remembered to hide it.
“I will take it,” I said, turning to Madame Blanchard. I heard Ian suck in air as he caught sight of the back.
I also bought a more conservative dress in a dark gold that complemented my hair, slacks and a matching blouse, two full sets of undergarments, two beautiful half-face masks, and two pairs of shoes, which had to be sourced from another store. I added a generous tip to the total and directed that each young woman who helped should get 15 percent. Madame inclined her head in agreement.
The dresses were carefully folded and packaged while Ian went to wait for the transport. When I joined him by the door, he took the package from me. “Do you have everything you need?”
“I’m set for clothes. We won’t be allowed to take weapons into the party, but walking around Matavara unarmed is just asking for trouble. I have a few weapons in the supplies you pulled from Aurora.”
“Party invites include a berth in a secured spaceport adjacent to the venue. Guests are encouraged to remain within the confines of the property.”
“Do you have an invite?”
“Not yet. Do you?”
“No. My contact is in Matavara.”
“Absolutely not,” Ian growled.
I shrugged in indifference. “I’d rather not venture out into the city if we don’t have to but time is running out. We’ll barely have time to recon the party location.”
“You’re not going to be reconning anything,” Ian said.
Correcting him would just give him more time to argue, so I let the comment go. Our transport appeared outside and Ian ushered me out to meet it.
We returned to the spaceport, but rather than boarding Persistence, we boarded its mirror image, Fortuitous. All three High Houses had ships like these scattered across the universe to facilitate high-priority travel.
Two people, a man and a woman, stood in the cargo hold, blast rifles casually in hand. Both were tall and fit. The man had light brown skin and dark brown hair, longer on top than the sides. He was more heavily muscled than Ian, stopping just short of bulky. The woman had ivory skin and strawberry blond hair pulled up in a ponytail that reached past her shoulders. She was lithe, with the kind of supple strength that was easy to underestimate.
Ian clapped both of them on the back with a smile. “Thanks for coming,” he said quietly.
“Of course,” the woman said. The man nodded.
Ian turned to me. “Bianca, meet Alexander and Aoife.” He pronounced the woman’s name EE-fa, and he did it carefully enough that I knew it wasn’t a mispronunciation of Eva.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. Neither of them echoed the greeting, and they both stared coldly at me. Okay, then.
Clearly these two were not House von Hasenberg employees, which begged the question of where Ian had dug them up. I made a mental note to look into it, though Ian had been careful not to include their surnames.
Ian shot the two a warning look. A wealth of silent communication passed between the three of them as they all ignored me. I told myself it didn’t matter, but being excluded still stung, just a little.
I sank into my public persona as I looked around the cargo hold and pretended indifference. The cargo had been moved from Persistence, and an additional crate of supplies had been added. I moved toward the new supplies, but Ian cut me off. “We need to get in the air,” he said.
“I’m not stopping you,” I said.
“You should be clipped in on the flight deck in case we run into trouble after we jump to CCD Six.”
“You think someone will attack a registered House ship?”
“It’s a possibility. We don’t know what kind of defense the Syndicate has set up.”
“Ian, what’s in the crate?”
“Supplies.”
“So you won’t mind if I take a look?”
The muscle in his jaw flexed, but he ground out, “Not if you think it’s worth the delay.”
“You do realize it would be far faster if you just told me?”
Aoife and Alexander watched us with sharp eyes. They didn’t have the body language to indicate they were a couple, but they were comfortable with each other. They’d worked together for a long time.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Aoife said. “It’s a crate full of von Hasenberg prototype technology. Combat armor, weapons, et cetera.”
I raised an eyebrow at Ian. “There, was that so hard?”
“Aoife, get us in the air,” Ian growled.
She gave him an insolent salute and turned for the stairs. Alexander cast a suspicious look my way before following her, leaving me alone with Ian in the cargo bay.
“Nice crew,” I said.
“They’ll keep the ship safe and their mouths shut. And if things go poorly in Matavara, they’ll get us out.”
“Fair enough. Are the supplies for them, then? Because you know the Syndicate won’t let you within two kilometers of the party with prototype weapons and armor.”
Ian started up the stairs and I followed. “We don’t know where Ferdinand is being held or what condition he is in. If you fail to purchase him, we’ll have to break him out. That’s why Alex and Aoife are really here.”
“You think you can infiltrate a Syndicate compound with four people?”
“Three,” Ian said sharply.
Anger flared through the ice of my facade. “Oh, so you can defeat Silva security? Maybe Alexander or Aoife is a secret security specialist? No? Because I am. I’m one of the best systems crackers in the universe. That’s why I run circles around your security protocols and why House von Hasenberg has never been hacked.”
It was also one of the reasons Father was desperate to have me back, but Ian didn’t need any more reasons to send me home.
Ian spun around to face me. He was a step higher, so he towered over me, an advantage he used to great effect. “Can your precious security protocols prevent you from taking a blaster bolt to the brain? Taking you on a rescue mission into Silva’s compound would be like leading a lamb to slaughter. If it comes to that, you stay on the ship.”
Bright, furious rage turned the world red. “When you get caught, and you will get caught, I am going to make you beg on your knees before I get you out.”
“Dream whatever fantasy you want, love. I will protect you even from yourself, so stay out of my way and let me do my job.”
I’d never before been so tempted to punch a man in the balls as I was right now. I uncurled my fist, one finger at a time, and tucked the rage away, until I was outwardly as still and calm as a windless lake.
The floor picked up a subtle vibration as the main engine started. I stepped around Ian without a word and continued to the flight deck. The door slid open to reveal Aoife in the captain’s chair and Alexander in the navigator’s station. I took the tactical station and clipped in, leaving Ian to sit along the wall.
Fortuitous was a lightly armed and armored ship, designed to be able to defend against most pirates, but it was not a war machine by any stretch. We wouldn’t scratch a battle cruiser before they blew us out of existence.
The ship had already requested and received a jump point from the gate, so once we cleared the atmosphere, we could immediately jump to CCD Six. In half an hour, give or take, we’d be on the ground in one of the deadliest cities in the universe.
Fortuitous landed with a gentle bump, and Aoife immediately engaged the ground defense system. On the outside camera, the ship’s shield turned red and a red projection on the ground warned of the danger. At night, the whole area would glow red. It was subtler during the daylight, but still visible.
If someone ignored the warning and ventured into range of the ship, an audible alert would sound. Fail to clear the area and the ship would open fire. Using the system in a regular spaceport was a dick move; using the system in Matavara was basic common sense.
Any crew members who wanted to leave would have to carry a beacon to identity them as friendlies. So of course they were targeted as soon as they were out of the ship’s range.
I caught movement in my peripheral vision as Ian stood. “Aoife, you have the ship and Lady von Hasenberg. Alex, you’re with me.”
Ian left the flight deck without a glance at me. Of all the high-handed, arrogant . . . I clamped my lips together when I realized I was grumbling under my breath.
I stood and Aoife shadowed me. She was on bodyguard duty. “Fortuitous, where is Ian Bishop?”
“Request denied. You are not authorized,” the ship replied.
Well, I’d have to fix that, but first, I needed to find Ian. I turned to Aoife. “Do you know where they went?”
She shrugged.
Of course she did. I headed for the cargo bay, silent shadow in tow. If Ian wasn’t there already, he would be before he left. It would also give me time to look through the supplies that Ada had sent for me.
When I got to the cargo bay, Ian and Alexander were donning powered combat armor with the brisk efficiency that came only after doing it a thousand times before. I crossed to stand beside Ian. “Care to let me know what your plan is?”
He put on his helmet but at least had the consideration to leave the face guard open so I could see his hard expression. “Alex and I are going to secure an invitation to the party tonight. You and Aoife are going to stay here.”
“So you’re just going to leave the womenfolk behind while the big, strong men go off into danger?” I asked sweetly.
Ian’s fingers twitched as if he’d like to throttle me. Good, then the feeling was mutual. “No,” he said, “I’m leaving the most important asset behind with the best fighter after myself. I’m trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“The hell you don’t!” he exploded. He gestured to the barely visible bruise on my cheek, hidden under my makeup. “I couldn’t protect you from that, but I’ll damn sure protect you from setting foot in Matavara any more than absolutely necessary. We don’t need your expertise for this and the trip will go faster with the two of us than if we took you along.”
By his tone, I knew Ian wasn’t trying to be intentionally cruel, not like Gregory’s snide little comments had been, but the verbal dagger slid home anyway, laced with poisonous truth. I sucked in a quiet breath and closed my eyes for a heartbeat.
Gregory had taken so much from me that now I was considered a liability rather than an asset. Even after his death, the bastard still haunted me. Would I never be free of him?
I retreated from the hurt and pulled on my public persona, the icy shell as protective as the combat armor Ian wore. This time I vowed I’d make it stick.
“If you do not return before the start of the party,” I said coolly, “I will assume you have fallen. I will go to the party without you and without an invitation. Good hunting, Director Bishop.”
A range of emotions flashed across his face before settling on suspicion. “You’re going to stay here? Voluntarily?”
“Yes. Until the start of the party. Then I am going to leave, even if I have to go through Aoife to do it.” I shot the woman an apologetic look, but she just tilted her head with a smile, the first I’d seen from her. “I suggest you move quickly.”
Ian nodded and closed the face guard of his helmet. In the gray-and-black combat armor he looked massive. He had a blast rifle in hand, another strapped to his back, and two pistols in thigh holsters.
Alexander was outfitted with the same gear and impossibly huge. He moved lightly, though, the combat armor aiding rather than hindering. He and Ian visually checked each other to ensure the armor had sealed without gaps.
I mentally caught the signal from their internal com. I moved to the crate of supplies brought from Aurora while I shamelessly eavesdropped.
Ready? Ian asked.
Alexander agreed, then said, You should apologize to the woman.
Ian froze for a second. Why?
She’s hard to read when she goes all icy, but I think you hurt her. How would you feel if someone told you that you were a liability?
I paused at Alexander’s uncanny insight. I would be wise not to underestimate him just because he was big and quiet.
I never said that, Ian protested. Focus on the mission, not Lady Bianca. He turned on his external speaker. “Aoife, you’re on the door. Lock it as soon as we’re clear. If we’re not back in three hours, take the ship into orbit and await instructions.”
He’d just given me a deadline for overriding control of the ship.
As if he’d heard my thoughts, he turned his helmeted head in my direction. “Stay on the ship.”
He did not apologize.
“Until you return or the party starts,” I agreed.
The cargo door lifted and the two men jumped out, deciding not to lower the ramp. They landed with a muffled thud, but they were off and running a split second after they hit the ground.
The spaceport was littered with debris. Ian and Alexander hit the edge of our shield and a person popped up from behind one of the piles, leading with a blaster. The bolt deflected off Alexander’s armor. Ian shot the shooter before he could fire again.
Now that they were clear of the ship’s shield, individual shields shimmered around them. The shields were effective against energy weapons but wouldn’t stop projectile weapons. The physical armor protected against both, even after the shield’s energy was drained. The cargo door slid closed and Aoife holstered her blast pistol.
“Are you really better than Alexander?” I asked.
“Light-years better,” she agreed easily. “Alex is smart, strong, and inexhaustible. If you need someone to haul fifty kilos over mountainous terrain all day, Alex is your man. But I’m lighter and faster. As long as he doesn’t get close, I’ll dance circles around him. And I’m also a better shot, so he wouldn’t get close.”
“Are you two together?”
She laughed, a deep belly laugh that rang pleasantly through the cargo hold. “Alex is my brother,” she said.
I stared at her as I tried—and failed—to see the resemblance. She caught the look and clarified, “Adopted.”
Heat climbed my cheeks. “I apologize,” I said. “That was rude.”
She waved off my concern, then her gaze turned shrewd. “Are you and Ian . . . ?” She moved her hands together.
“No.”
“But you’d like to be.” She stated it as fact and I wondered at how broken my mask must be that a stranger could see through me in under an hour.
“I did, once, but he made his feelings—his lack of feelings—very clear.”
She made a little disbelieving sound under her breath but didn’t say anything else.
I turned back to the cargo crates. Ada had not been joking when she said she’d packed a little bit of everything. The combat armor took up a third of the crate. The other two-thirds were packed with weapons, clothes, and technology. On top of everything was the wrapped package of coffee and chocolate.
I opened the chocolate and broke off a piece. Synth chocolate never tasted right to me, no matter which recipe I tried. But real chocolate . . . real chocolate was a little piece of heaven. The square melted on my tongue like a delicious, sugary blanket.
After a moment’s hesitation, caused entirely by selfish greed, I held the bar out to Aoife. “Care for a piece of chocolate?”
“Real chocolate?”
I nodded and she took the bar from me as if it were made of gold. It might as well have been, based on the price. She broke off a square before handing it back. She nibbled a tiny bite.
“This is only the second time I’ve had real chocolate,” she said with a delighted sigh. “It’s better than sex.”
I hummed my agreement. It was better than bad sex, definitely. Good sex . . . well, I hadn’t had any of that in a long, long time, so chocolate had the edge, if only thanks to recent history. My mind flashed to Ian. I bet he’d beat chocolate. Too bad I’d never know.
I carefully wrapped up the chocolate and put it back in the crate. I couldn’t be trusted with it in my quarters, not if I wanted it to last more than a day. I left everything else, too. I had enough clothes already, and if I needed to be armed or armored, I could grab whatever I needed on the way out.
For now, rather than sitting on my hands, I was going to do some digital digging. Being on-planet would give me greater access to the local systems.
“I’ll be in my quarters if you need me,” I told Aoife.
She moved to the cargo bay control panel and brought up the outside video. “I’m going to keep an eye on the perimeter,” she said.
“Call me if you need backup. I’ve been trained with most weapons. I’m rusty, but I can shoot.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, but not unkindly.
I silently agreed. If I was the only thing standing between raiders and Fortuitous, then we truly would be in deep trouble.