The Prince and the Pencil Pusher: A M/M Superhero Romance (Royal Powers Book 7)

by Kenzie Blades

  I let my hand fall from his shoulder, wildly curious about the purpose of his visit. His intention to leave meant that he wasn’t there in any official capacity. And not once since I had started working for the ministry had he called on me at home.

  “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me that.”

  I swallowed around a question I felt sick to ask. “Is that even your real name?”

  I might have been offended by the way his eyes laughed at me for asking the question. The truth was, I was relieved to see the hint of a smile. It didn’t hit me until then that I was afraid, because however odd my strange exchanges with Zain, they had felt like ours. Now, the man who had provided the structure that defined my day-to-day had told me that everything was a ruse, which meant, by association, that things between us were a lie.

  “Yes. Zain Otxoa is my born name.”

  “Born to who?” I wanted to know. He still hadn’t answered my questions about the nature of his powers. In lieu of revealing more about himself, he’d instructed me to ask the Queen for explanation, which led me deeper into who I was myself, but which left plenty of unanswered questions about Zain.

  “Arroa and Arestuz Otxoa, a master craftsman and a farmer, a son and a daughter of the same.”

  “And their parentage?” I pressed in a way I hoped wasn’t altogether rude. But the not-knowing was awkward, at least as awkward as carrying on an interrogation in the jamb between the hallway and the door.

  “I am not a halfling,” he explained. “I’m something different…something far more rare.”

  “Well, then, Zain Otxoa, rarest treasure of the south, do come in.”

  After I invited him inside and closed the door after him, I took him in from behind, noting that he looked at least as tasty in casual clothing as he did in his work attire. He wore tailored shorts and a dark linen hooded shirt with drawstrings that made me wish the both of us away to a breezy day at sunset on the beach.

  “This is the first time I’ve seen you without your pencil,” I remarked and resisted the urge to ask him whether it was part of the costume.

  “It’ll be odd to be out of the office,” he replied. “You will be elsewhere these next weeks.”

  “I thought you were meant to train me.” I frowned at the notion that something in the plan had gone wrong. Would I alone be out of the office, or would both of us go off someplace? “The Queen has said that you are the best.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  The way he said it caused my heart to thunder.

  “This part is never easy—the deception…the betrayal. I don’t want to start things off on the wrong foot. I came here to see whether we couldn’t clear the air. The person I’ve been as I was ordered to groom you for this. Not all of it is who I am. I know you hate me. I was hoping we might start fresh. It’ll be harder if things between us are unresolved.”

  Things between us.

  I rolled the words over in my mind. Was there an us? There had to be. Or else he wouldn’t be here. Or, maybe clearing the air was just something that he did with all the other royals who he had trained. I wondered how many there had been.

  “I don’t hate you,” I admitted, a confession that hurt for how little I had done to prove otherwise. “I thought you hated me.”

  Zain blinked and frowned in surprise. “Why would I hate you?”

  “Maybe not hated me…just saw me for who I was. Inadequate. Disappointing. Unseeing of the value of anything you ever tried to teach me. I was a terrible pupil, yet you persisted in trying to show me the ropes.”

  Zain shook his head. His hands were in his pockets. He looked younger in these clothes and it occurred to me I didn’t know how old he was. Slightly younger than me, I had always guessed. I had always longed to know more about him, and now that I knew who he wasn’t, I was desperate to know who he was.

  “Not that you apologized,” he began. “But if you were to offer one, there would be nothing to apologize for. From time to time, I was an intolerable twat.”

  He gave a little smile and a familiar feeling welled inside me—the one that came forth when we dropped the adversarial vibe. I rather preferred us as frenemies.

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  “Now, we move forward and forget everything that was bad about before—everything that made us less than who we truly are.”

  With that, Zain started back toward the door. I wanted him to stay. I wanted for him to drink with me and tell me more. But I was still too raw to ask for any of that.

  “One more thing,” I offered instead. “Since it’s abundantly clear you know more about me than I know about myself, I think it’s time you started calling me Xabier.”

  Part III

  The Truth

  -

  Zain

  “Zain Otxoa arrives empty-handed?”

  Xabier was in good spirits when I strode into his office the next morning, looking only slightly rough around the edges for someone who had been worse for wear. He was dressed as deliciously as ever—gray slacks today and a light blue button down—but the slightest hint of dark circles under his eyes were a bit of a giveaway. His voice was deeper than usual. And rough.

  “One of the many benefits of your training. No signing approvals for the foreseeable future.” I replied. I mustered lightness to match his tone, a necessary attempt to set aside how it had been in his house the night before. For all the states that I’d seen him in, I’d never seen him drunk. My hubris that I knew him well from seeing him every day had clearly been an illusion. In all our two years working together, he’d never looked at me like that.

  He smirked. “I was certain there would be more.”

  For once he hadn’t had his back to me when I’d walked into the room. Eusebio had let me right in, seeming a bit bewildered to inform me that the Prince had been expecting me.

  “You are temporarily relieved of your duties. Duke Oleander will cover your shift for the foreseeable future, but he won’t know why.”

  Some of the humor on his face fell as he considered—for the first time, I was sure—that his scheme to install Duke Oleander would never be successful. At some point, he would have to be made aware of all this.

  “What shall we do then?”

  He had already been standing but he walked around to the front end of his desk, sat on the edge and extended his legs to cross his feet. There was a lightness about him that I had never seen and could only guess owed to the freedom of vindication. He finally knew the truth.

  Part of me felt lighter with relief from that burden. To feel better was why I had gone to him the night before, yet, when I awoke their morning, some part of me still felt sick. Known better to me than to anyone, the second coming of the Prince’s powers put my time with him solidly in the home stretch. This was the beginning of the end.

  “Do you have your security badge?” I asked.

  “My—“ he cut himself off and shook his head. “I think they issued me one, but…everybody knows who I am.”

  “Where we’re going now, security is high.”

  “This is one of the most secure buildings in all of Abarra.” He repeated a line that we tended to repeat at The Municipal.

  “Not if you don’t even need your security badge to get in,” I pointed out wisely. “And we’re not staying in the office building. We’re downstairs.”

  “Fucking unbelievable,” the Prince groused, taking in all his eyes could see with the wonder—and perhaps the terror—of a child in between the hippopotamus pool and the tiger cage at the zoo. “How is it that all of these people—and not I, the actual Minister—have clearance for this?”

  We had taken one of the secret passageways to one of the secret elevators that led to the subterranean headquarters for all covert operations. The intervenors took up the majority of the facility.

  “There’s a training center due west, almost at the ocean. You’ll go there, too, to hone your power.”

  Xabier spared me a glance. “
Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?”

  I shook my head as I let us into my real office—significantly more posh than the MLM office I inhabited upstairs. It even had false windows made of high-definition screens that made it look as if palm trees blew in the wind outside and that my office was just a stone’s throw from the beach.

  “Right now I will explain to you the whole truth of how all of it works.” I motioned for him to sit. The Scandinavian style white sofa was nowhere as stylish as his, but it was a good place for him to sit: next to the whiteboard that I would use to lay things out.

  He sat on the edge of the seat, body leaned forward, with his forearms propped on his knees, more eager in his attention than I had ever seen him. I felt twinges of excitement as well. This forbidden knowledge—the sheer brilliance of how the Ministry truly worked—was astounding. Though, tt would never received its due credit in the public.

  Without further ado, I flipped over the whiteboard, to the side where I had already mapped out how all of it was organized, color-coded, of course, in various marker,

  “According to the public,” I dove right into a speech that I had given before. “The Ministry has the standard three divisions.”

  The Prince nodded and rattled off what both of us knew for good measure. “The Department of Registries indexes what power is held by whom when royals come of age and monitors abuses of power. The Training Division provides mandatory course work on the responsible use of abilities. The Protectorate works in conjunction with law enforcement to respond to calls and to adjudicate abuses of power.”

  “Yet there is a fourth division.”

  I motioned to my chart, which had one parent box up top that said “Ministry” and four child boxes below it that had the letters R, T, P and I.

  “What does the A stand for?” the Prince asked, having already cited the R, the T and the P by way of his own explanation.

  “The I stands for intervenors.”

  The Prince blinked in a way that told me I would have to spell it out for him, even though he had seen it all in action before, himself. He had performed the role without even knowing what he had done.

  “Intervenors use powers to stop powers. Think about it, Xabier. It makes all the sense in the world.”

  He frowned for a moment, as if scanning his mind for examples to prove or disprove this assertion. “Royals use powers to stop powers all the time. My own twin cousins—the Princesses of Arroa—are quite adept at this. Marjorie can make everything wet, and Markena makes everything dry. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen them go head-to-head in a sandcastle competition.”

  “You said royals,” I pointed out, dropping another breadcrumb that would lead him to the big prize. “Yet, few royals work for The Ministry. No matter how useful their powers, you don’t see royals stepping forward to use them to keep the peace.”

  “Yet, Intervenors keep the peace,” the Prince said more than asked, following along on my logic.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “Indeed we do. And very few intervenors are royal.”

  The Prince raised his eyebrows at my use of the word “we.”

  “You are an intervenor,” he concluded.

  “Among many things.” I wove my head back and forth. “But I am also not a half-blood. I—and the few others like me—are something quite rare. Royal blood does course through my veins, but my common blood did not leave it diluted. By contrast, it has left me a devo: one with devastating power.”

  The Prince narrowed his eyes. “But that is not the working of things.”

  I shook my head. “Not the working of things according to what we tell the public. I motioned to the facts and figures part of my whiteboard, which held a pie chart applicable to exactly this.

  “Eighty-eight percent of the population is common. Seven percent is royal. It is widely acknowledged that some small percentage—let’s call it five percent is half blood. It is also widely believed—even by half-bloods themselves—that to be partially royal is to possess diluted powers. It is known that half-bloods rarely register and they are largely perceived not to be a threat.”

  “But your power is not diluted…” the Prince followed.

  I picked up a purple marker from the trough and drew over the half-blood section of my pie chart, changing the five of the five percent to a three. Then I wrote two percent next to a question mark and wrote the word skilled.

  “That’s what they call people like me—those of us who are certainly not of royal blood but who have powers that rival and best those of royals.”

  The Prince’s jaw stayed slack and he sat back in his seat and ran a hand through his hair.

  “So what you’re saying is that…some commoners have powers?”

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that. Some DNA analysis has been done. Those like me hold one thing in common: smaller amounts of royal blood from every major line. The half-blood child of a king is likely to be born with weakened powers. But as half-bloods breed with half-bloods, power builds up the other side.”

  The Prince gave a hard blink and stared at me with wide eyes. “And you?”

  “I’m what’s known as one-sixteenth. Half bloods up and down the line on both sides, from my parents, to their parents to their own. To the Queen’s knowledge, I am the only one. But don’t be fooled—those like me who are stacked even to the quarters or the eighths are quite powerful. For obvious reasons, those like me often choose to live under the radar. Some of us are called to serve.”

  Abruptly, the Prince stood. I had no notion of what he might do next. In my own experience, people dealt quite differently with shock. When his standing turned to pacing, I kept out of his way.

  “But the protectorate clean up incidents that have already happened. How do intervenors work if the system responds to calls?”

  “You saw it in action, yesterday, with the man and the glass. If intervenors are on site, they can prevent incidents in progress from worsening. The intervention division has planted undercover agents to do just that, as first responders. We do high-risk work as well—attend events where shenanigans are likely to occur. Our predictive algorithm rates them all. Our intel on the likelihood that a supo will strike is impeccable. ”

  At that moment, the Prince was pacing away from me, but rounded on me, his face pained as he spoke the only sensible next question loudly and in a panic.

  “Then why does The Ministry suck?”

  My own reaction in that moment surprised me. Emotion welled inside and the prickle of tears rose to my nose and the backs of my eyes, too mild for the Prince to see, but I knew.

  “Because we haven’t had a talent like yours in more than one hundred years. Intervenors can only neutralize powers in the moment—no matter how powerful these skills might seem. Only a person of royal blood—and not all royals at that—have powers whose effects can be used over the long term.”

  The Prince didn’t resume his pacing. I gave him time and watched in fascination as emotions I had never seen played over his face.

  “I’m to use my powers to permanently subdue the powers of other royals?”

  “Only the most dangerous ones, or repeat offenders that cause the most costly damage, and only with express approval of the queen. With your power, we can cut Level 4 and Level 5 incidents by more than ninety percent.”

  His voice was full of disbelief. “And The Ministry will cease to be a laughingstock?”

  “The Ministry—and you—will be revered.” I took a step toward him, unable to stop my beaming grin. “You will be the best minister who ever was.”

  -

  Xabier

  “Sorry about the hood. Security and all.”

  Zain’s first words as he greeted me at my chauffeured car was an apology. Security at Biarroa was something else. Designed to protect the identities of all involved—from the staff to the trainers to the devos themselves, hoods were worn at all times except in dormitories and when trainers and pupils were active in the training gyms
.

  “It does seem a bit extreme.” I spoke after I tore off the offending garment, certain that my face was red, and my hair tousled from having been confined to the rather impractical garment, a full-face balaclava that rather made everyone who wore it look like a thief.

  I blinked thrice in rapid succession. My eyes were adjusting to the light. The tint on the car windows used within the facility was dark. Disoriented as I took in surroundings that required explanation, I felt vulnerable then. I didn’t enjoy all of the secrecy—my fazed awakening to the notion that I no longer held carte blanche to a world I had always been told belonged wholly and entirely to me.

  “There are reasons,” Zain began. “Anyone who knows too much could be a target for kidnapping, or blackmail, or exploitation. Even worse, a turncoat could be a perpetrator of all three. The less that is known about who dwells here, the safer it is for all of us. Information is leverage. But it also means risk.”

  His words were gently delivered and I took them well. My hands were on my hips and I listened with a nod.

  “Tell me about this place,” I commanded just as gently as he spoken. “Not just this…” I motioned around the hangar. “All of Biarroa. I assume that I’m meant to know.”

  The training facility was 30km due east of Dulibre down an unmarked, unassuming and highly secured private road.

  “It’s ten-thousand square acres,” Zain began. “Forty kilometers square. Sixty percent developed. Training gyms just like this have been built and spaced out strategically throughout. When devos are learning to use their powers, accidents can happen.”

  “What of the other forty percent?”

  “The terrain on the developed land is varied—part of a deliberate design —the intention was to create space to hone and test as wide a range as possible of powers. Thousands of acres of land on the far eastern side will eventually be customized to test powers unforeseen. Each training gym is a little bit different because the needs of each trainee differs as well. This training hangar is a space that I designed myself. I won’t be the one training you, however, For the next several weeks, you will work with a skilled team of ten. This gym was built specifically for you. ”