Page 51 of Valor’s Flight (The New Protectorate #5)

Chapter Thirty-Two

She honestly didn’t expect Debbie to say yes. It wasn’t that she sought out failure, but it didn’t seem likely that her first attempt at getting them a vehicle would work. Alashiya thought she’d at least have to haggle more.

But Debbie didn’t blink when she made the request. The old woman had only given her a disinterested look, her watery blue eyes illuminated by her tablet’s screen. “Sure, but what’d you need it for?”

Setting the paper bag of plums on the shop’s counter, Alashiya tried not to show how nervous she was.

How exhilarated. Her head had been full of happy little bees the entire walk to town.

They buzzed so loudly, it was hard to focus on anything else.

She wondered if Debbie could see her nearly vibrating as she stood there.

Am I really doing this?

The thought was too hot to touch. She shied away from it instantly, but that didn’t stop her from forging ahead.

“I need it for work,” she lied. It surprised her how easily the fib came to her. “You know I take commissions for a shop in New York, right? Well, they asked me to go in. I know I could take the bus, but it’d be so many connections that it’d take me a week to get there.”

Debbie looked away from her screen, startled. “You ever been anywhere ’sides Birchdale?”

“No.”

“You goin’ by yourself?”

Alashiya’s palms began to sweat a little. Smoothing them against her skirt just below the counter, she answered, “Yes. I’ll only be there a couple days. I doubt I’ll want to stay long.”

The hook in her chest tugged sharply in the direction of her land. Toward him. It was like everything inside her balked at even the thought of separation.

Debbie grunted and narrowed her eyes. “I don’t like you goin’ by yourself, Shiya. These are dangerous times. What if something happens to you? Or the car? Mike’ll be a pain to live with if you mess up one of his shit-cans.”

Alashiya knew all about Mike’s obsession with collecting what could only generously be called cars. It was why she’d asked Debbie in the first place. They had at least a dozen, and some of them even drove.

But that wasn’t what caught her attention. Brows furrowing, she asked, “What do mean by dangerous times, Debbie?”

“Don’t you watch the news?”

The buzzing in her head was beginning to die down. An awful sort of quiet took its place. “No,” she admitted.

One of Debbie’s weathered hands, the nails yellowed by tobacco and veins winding like snakes across the brittle bones, flipped the tablet around.

She placed it on the counter between them.

“Extremists.” She drew out the word with great relish, like she was about to launch into one of her recaps of the soap operas she normally watched.

“Some crazies in Glory’s Temple tried to take over the Elvish Protectorate a few weeks ago.

Last month? Something like that. Same day a bunch of leaders were attacked. ”

Debbie leaned forward, her voice lowering.

Her eyes gleamed with the maniacal sort of glee she normally reserved for the reveal of an evil twin plot line.

“It’s all connected. Queen Sigrid’s death, Glory’s Temple, Lee Seymour.

And Taevas A?daja— I think he was the brains behind it.

He’s been missing since the solstice, see?

This theory that he’s been kidnapped? Please.

No one else was kidnapped. They were all attacked.

My money’s on him being the leader of the conspiracy, and when it went to dog shit, he disappeared to cover his tracks. ”

There were no more bees. No more exhilaration. There was only silence as Alashiya slowly dropped her gaze to the glaring brightness of the tablet’s screen.

A familiar face stared up at her. It was a beautiful photo.

He stood on the steps of some grand building, dressed to the nines in a navy double-breasted suit, his hair swept back behind his horns and braided by his ears.

Sunglasses with hot pink lenses obscured his eyes, but she’d recognize the lips, the hard line of his jaw, the arch of his horns anywhere.

Even in the photo, surrounded by what appeared to be important people, he radiated the kind of power that made everyone else look small and colorless in comparison.

And he was wearing her work.

It might’ve been invisible to anyone else, but she remembered the crisp white shirt beneath the suit.

She didn’t often do whitework — embroidering with white thread on white fabric to make subtle, almost invisible designs — but she wanted a challenge, so she’d sewn the waves of an ocean she’d never seen with her own eyes onto Adon’s shirt.

The man in the photo couldn’t have been more different from the one who’d lived in her home the past week. But they were the exact same. There was no mistaking it. No disbelief. Alashiya stared at Taevas, at Adon, on that screen and felt the world give way beneath her feet.

She believed him. Mostly. But it was still deeply jarring to see it there. To look at his photo, to see the tattooed dragons standing guard just behind him, to look into those shiny sunglass lenses and know.

Good gods, he really is who he says he is.

A part of her was glad she’d never bothered to seek out the news before then. If she’d known that her Adon was the leader of a territory… Well, she had no idea what she would’ve done differently, except maybe shrivel up in abject humiliation at the thought of fantasizing about him.

“He’s always looked too smug to me,” Debbie sniffed, breaking the spell that shock had cast over Alashiya. “Just look at that smirk. He’s plotting something right there!”

“No, he’s not.” The words came out quick and sharper than they should’ve. He’s a good man, she wanted to rage. He’s good and kind and patient. He might be a pain in the ass sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

Fortunately, Debbie didn’t appear to hear the real heat in Alashiya’s voice. “Ugh, you girls are too easy. A nice jaw and some money. That’s all it takes. Don’t you see that’s how they get you?”

Alashiya glanced down again, her attention drawn irresistibly to the web page Debbie had been scrolling through. It was hard to keep her attention away from the photo, from the proof — not only that he was who he said he was, but that he was her Adon.

The photo was part of an article, she realized.

With a nervous, unskilled touch, she scrolled up to see the headline.

Another picture popped up, this one of a wizened dragon in a dark suit addressing an audience of reporters.

His face was grim and somehow familiar, though she had no idea how that could be.

ISAND STILL MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD: UNITED CONGRESS URGES DRAAKONRIIK TO HOLD SPECIAL ELECTION, REFUSED AGAIN—

“We won’t appoint a new Isand until a body is found,” Constantin A?daja, First Advisor to the Isand and his paternal uncle, told the world at the latest press conference. “Or until we have no other option.”

A month has passed since Taevas A?daja’s disappearance and the outside pressure for the gap in leadership to be filled, even temporarily, continues to grow. Following the assassination attempts on all the leaders of the UTA, the need for stability is rapidly growing.

Sophie Goode, leader of the Coven Collective, still hasn’t made a public appearance after her release from the hospital, and the Orclind is in official mourning following the death of Queen Sigrid.

Fearing what could become of the Peace Charter if stability isn’t found quickly, many powerful voices in the United Congress are calling for someone — anyone — to replace Taevas A?daja, filling what could potentially be a devastating power vacuum in the second wealthiest territory on the continent.

Alashiya couldn’t read more. Her gaze skipped like a broken record needle over the words, blurring them. A part of her wanted to keep reading, but she couldn’t stomach it.

This is my fault.

All that suffering, all that worry. Her stomach curdled. She knew she’d been selfish, keeping him with her. It didn’t matter that he’d consented to it. She knew that he wouldn’t leave without her, and she’d used that to play house with him.

It was all so abstract. A part of her hadn’t grasped, hadn’t believed that it was real. She’d waved off the realities of him being exactly who he said he was. If she couldn’t wrap her head around it, living in the fantasy was easier. Being scared was easier.

Alashiya pushed the tablet back to Debbie. She thought her voice would be croaky, but it came out deathly calm when she said, “I’ll be fine in the city. I just need a car.”

“You got a valid license?”

“Yes. I updated it last year.” She was good about things like paperwork and taxes and such.

It was all part of keeping her world stable, her land protected.

If she slipped up on something like her license, it was a slippery slope to making a mistake that might get her whole world ripped away from her.

“All right, I guess. You stop over at my place and talk to Mike. Tell him I said you need the blue car. It’s one of the good ones. If he’s a dick about it, come back and get the bat.”

She shook her head. “Thanks. I’ll head over there now. Enjoy the plums.”

Debbie grunted, her attention already back on her tablet, on Taevas.

It was a deeply bizarre, almost out of body feeling that came with knowing Debbie was aware of the man that had been her secret for so very long.

Even before he crashed into her barn, he’d been hers.

She never talked about her clients with anyone in town, never mentioned her imaginary husband.

But they’d known him. They’d known him far better than her.

She had just opened the door when Debbie called out, “You see any extremists in the city, run ’em over!”

“Will do.”