by Elin Peer
At first it had seemed like a miracle that the ruler, Khan Aurelius, allowed me a chance to prove that I could do it. But after a year at the academy, I knew that he had only agreed because he felt certain that I wouldn’t succeed.
My first twelve months as a recruit had been hellish, and every week felt like running an obstacle course trying to deal with whatever absurd obstacle the headmaster, teachers, or classmates came up with to make me quit.
They cheated and never played fair and so I adapted and became good at being sneaky myself. Like the time they created a test that required height and would be impossible for someone below six feet to finish. I couldn’t let that stop me, and luckily, I succeeded in convincing Hanson to let me sit on his shoulders. It wasn’t hard when I pointed out he could say he’d had his face between a woman’s thighs.
I counted the days until the twelve months were over and I finally moved from the academy to Station Seven in the third district where I would get six months of practical experience.
None of the policemen wanted me there, but my mentor Leonardo da Vinci was a high-ranking inspector and everyone knew that he had been appointed to look out for me and that he took his role seriously. It was obvious that Leo resented the role as my mentor, but the request had come from Commander Magni Aurelius, and no one refused a direct order from the brother of the ruler.
Leo came up with a strategy to keep me from getting close to danger by assigning me the task of sorting unsolved cases in a dusty archive room in the basement. For five weeks I’d been down there six to seven hours a day, and the isolation and boredom were driving me insane. My only escape was fight training four times a week with the others at Station Seven.
Today was Friday, the only day without fight training, and feeling extra frustrated, I went upstairs to complain to Leo about the mind-numbing work he was having me do.
“I’m not learning anything, Leo. How am I supposed to pass my tests if I haven’t done any real police work?”
As always, Leo felt no need to explain himself, and when an important call came, he pushed his chair back, got up, and gestured to some of the others that they needed to move.
“What’s going on?” My eyes were darting around the police station, my heart rate picking up as I sensed the suppressed excitement from Leo.
“The Huntsmen found Hannigan and they are waiting for us.”
“Can I come?”
“No. This is a serious police matter. You stay here and focus on the task I gave you.”
“But, Leo, sorting irrelevant files in the basement has nothing to do with real police work. I would much rather come along and see you in action.”
He was already walking away, signaling who could come and who couldn’t. Two of the men close to us looked as disappointed as I felt.
Hannigan, the man the Huntsmen had found, was believed to have killed three men in one night two weeks ago. He’d been on the run ever since and his capture was exciting to all of us.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” I called after Leo, but he didn’t look back and just threw an answer over his shoulder.
“Stay here, Raven. It’s a fucking order!”
I made a mocking facial expression but was smart enough not to mouth back.
Station Seven fell quiet the minute Leo and the other lucky officers left.
Monroe, another young officer in training, looked over at me and the small smirk on his face annoyed me. “What are you looking at?”
Monroe stood by a large screen where documents from the case he was working on were open. “Shouldn’t you be down in the archives?”
“Shouldn’t you shut your mouth?” It bothered me that he got to be involved in real police work while all I got to do was categorize boring and inconsequential cases of first-time theft and fraud.
Walking with clattering steps like I could stamp out the unfairness of it all, I left the large room and took the back stairs down to the basement.
Cursing in a low mumble, I returned to the four large piles I had already made. The cabinet in front of me was just one out of twenty-two cabinets and it was still half full.
According to Leo’s instructions, I had divided the cases according to the level of crime and number of years the case had been unsolved.
He was just trying to find a way to keep me busy and make his life as my mentor easier, but it was pointless work. Leo had no intention of opening up any of these cases, and the worst part was that they were all digitized anyway. Why anyone insisted on keeping paper copies was a mystery to me, and the best explanation I could come up with was that it worked as a punishment to crush a person’s soul.
Picking up a handful of the files that I hadn’t yet looked through, I scanned the first page in one of them. “Theft of drone.” I placed it in the pile with the lowest priority.
The next one was a case from 2407 of assault, but the accuser had been drunk and didn’t remember any details about the man who allegedly attacked him and broke his nose. A forty-one-year-old case like that with no clues to work on was destined to stay archived.
With a sigh, I placed it on top of the last file and scanned the next one.
The category of the case had me frowning and reading aloud: “Death by suicide – huh!”
This case had been filed in the wrong place, but one detail caught my eye and made me stare: the name of the young woman who had died. “Dina Aurelius.”
With my head still in the file, I walked over to sit by a desk, my index finger trailing over every detail of the file to confirm my suspicion that this woman was related to our ruler.
Name: Dina Aurelius
Closest family: Daughter of Marcus Aurelius and Erika Aurelius. Sister of Khan and Magni Aurelius.
Date of birth: February 3rd, 2400
Date of death: March 18th, 2415
Status: Married
Cause of death: Suicide by fall from window.
I sat back in my chair, a small triangle forming between my eyebrows as I wondered why I had never heard about a sister to Khan and Magni.
Mila, my best friend since childhood, was the adopted daughter of Magni and because of that, I’d been a regular visitor at the Gray Manor, which housed the ruling family. I couldn’t recall seeing a picture at the Gray Manor of a sister.
According to this file, she had been dead for thirty-three years. Another glance at her status had me swallowing hard. Fifteen years old and married. Intellectually, I knew it had been the norm back then, but it was disturbing to think that a young woman seven years my junior had been married.
There weren’t many details in this file, but my fingers began tingling and my head was popping with questions. What if Dina didn’t jump from that window?
What if she was pushed?
Maybe it was my bored brain looking for an escape, but I was convinced that I might be looking at a murder mystery. If Leo wouldn’t allow me to get close to any action, then maybe I could solve this old case on my own. Who better to find out what happened to Dina than me? After all, no other police officers had the connections to her family that I had.
I didn’t need more arguments than that to decide that this was going to be my private investigation into the possible murder of Dina Aurelius. It was a golden opportunity to show all the people hoping for me to fail, that I was born to fight crimes and solve murders.
CHAPTER 2
Best Friends
Raven
“Mila, honestly, this room is as good as the last one. Jonah won’t care one bit.” I was following Mila around at the Gray Manor as she was trying to decide which room to pick for her friend Jonah. “He’s only staying a few days, so why does it matter?”
Mila gave me a patient smile. “It might not matter to you or him, but it matters to me. I want every guest to feel welcome.”
We were now in the hallway on the third floor and I pointed from one door to the other. “They’re all the same. It’s what, eighteen guest rooms and the only difference is the col
or of the walls?”
“That’s not true at all. Some of them have a better view. Some of them are slightly bigger, and one had the carpet replaced last year because of water damage. I want Jonah to feel comfortable here.”
“Why is he coming again? I feel like he was just here.”
“That was two weeks ago, and he’s here to discuss some political matter with Lord Khan and Pearl.”
“What political matter?”
Mila shrugged. “It’s something about the new public transportation system that Pearl is working on, I think.” She opened a fifth door, turned on the lights, and looked around. “I’ll give this room to Jonah. It faces the garden and he liked that the last time he visited.”
I sighed. “Fine. Now, can we focus on me for a moment? I told you something important happened at work today.”
“Yes. But you didn’t say what it was.”
“Because it’s top secret.”
Mila gave me a troubled look. “Then maybe you shouldn’t tell me.”
“I have to because it involves your family.” Grabbing her left hand, I pulled her to the edge of the bed and sat down. “Mila, do you know that your father had a sister who died?”
Mila blinked her eyes before nodding slowly. “Yes, I’ve heard of Aunt Dina. My sister is named after her.”
With eagerness in my voice, I squeezed her hands. “Tell me everything you know.”
“Okay.” Mila’s eyes went to the ceiling as if she was remembering details from the past. “My dad told me about her years ago. He was only seven when she died and it sounded like it was a traumatic experience for him.”
“What happened?”
“Dina and Magni were close. She would sing to him, play with him, and teach him things. He has few memories because he was so young, but he told me that the last time he saw her was at her tournament. Dina picked a large warrior whom she married, and less than a week later she was dead.”
“Did Magni tell you how she died?”
Mila brushed her hand over the bed cover and looked down. “Erika told him it was an accident and that Dina fell from an attic window, but Magni doesn’t believe it.”
My eyes widened. “He doesn’t?”
“No, he said that Dina was far too sensible and careful to fall out a window.”
“I found her file at work today.”
Mila was quiet, waiting for me to continue.
“Cause of death said suicide, but what if it wasn’t? What if her husband killed her?”
Mila jerked back her head. “Why would he kill her? He fought for her. She was his bride.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she refused to have sex with him and he got furious.”
“Yeah, but Raven, if he was mad that she wouldn’t have sex with him it wouldn’t make sense to kill her. You would think that he’d force her instead.”
I wiggled my finger in front of my face. “Maybe he did force her. Maybe that’s why she ran up to the attic and when he came for her, she had nowhere to go but out the window.”
“So, you think she really did kill herself?”
“Maybe she didn’t intend to. Maybe she thought she could crawl to safety and get away from her abusive husband.”
“You don’t know that he was abusive.”
“True, but don’t you find it suspicious that she died only a week after marrying him?”
Mila pushed up from the bed. “Yes. And, so does Magni. He told me that he would like to know what happened to his sister, but it’s been decades and the husband died right after she did.”
“What do you mean?”
“According to Magni, his father Marcus went to investigate and he ruled it suicide, but still the husband was found dead a few days after her.”
“Aha!” I joined Mila by the door. “That has to be proof of foul play. Two young people don’t just die.”
Making sure to turn off the lights in the room before we exited, Mila agreed, “No, they don’t. So, what do you think happened?”
I straightened up. “I’m so glad you asked that question. Since the husband is dead it has to be one of three scenarios. Either it was murder-suicide, murder-murder, or suicide-murder.”
Mila raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
“It would be murder-suicide if the husband killed Dina and then committed suicide out of guilt. But if the husband murdered Dina and Marcus then murdered him, it would be murder-murder, right?” I paused only long enough to suck in air. “But there’s also the possibility that Dina committed suicide and that her father blamed her husband and killed him for it. That would make it suicide-murder.”
Mila was walking at a slow pace when she tilted her head to one side. “Hmm, yeah, but I guess we’ll never know.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m going to investigate, Mila. Don’t you think Dina deserves for the world to know the truth about her death?”
“To be honest, I don’t think most people remember that she lived.”
With a hand on Mila’s arm, I stopped her. “We know she lived and now I want to know how she died.”
For a moment she watched me as if waiting for me to break into one of my signature laughs, but I was serious.
“Okay. And how are you going to investigate her death more than thirty years later?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like it, but my logic tells me to follow any clue I can find.”
“All right, and were there any clues in the file?”
“No.”
Mila walked on. “It sounds like it’ll be a short investigation then.”
“We can’t give up this easily. There are people in your family who knew Dina. One of them must have information about her death.”
“I told you everything that my father told me. I don’t know anymore.”
“Okay, but Khan, Magni, and Erika would know more.”
“That’s right, but who says they’re willing to talk about Dina now?”
Mila had a point, and either way, I couldn’t just waltz in and ask the ruling family to answer my questions. “It would be so much easier if I had the same kind of access to them as you do.”
“You mean because I live here at the Gray Manor?”
“Yes, you see them all the time, and they’re your family.”
“I don’t know, Raven. They treat you as family too.” Mila looked thoughtful. “Remember when I suggested that you should stay here while you work at Station Seven?”
“Yes.”
“Well, didn’t you say that you felt a bit old to be living with your parents? I mean, you know there are plenty of empty rooms here and that you’re always welcome.”
A smile grew on my lips as a thought formed in my head. “Living here would give me a better chance of asking questions and finding clues.”
Mila returned my smile. “You know I’d love to have you closer, and I’ll find you a nice room close to mine.”
As we walked down the hallway, I linked my arm with hers. “Will you make sure I get a nicer room than Jonah? You know, because I’m your bestie.”
“I didn’t think something as mundane as a room mattered to you. Didn’t you just tell me they were all the same?”
“It doesn’t, but I know it matters to you. If you give him a nicer room than me, I’ll know that he has taken my spot as your closest friend.”
“Raven.” Only Mila could say my name like it was a protest against my craziness.
“No, Mila, I’m warning you, woman. If you like Jonah, you’d better give me the nicest room because otherwise I’ll challenge him to fight for the spot as your best friend, and we both know I’ll whip his ass.”
“I doubt Jonah has ever fought in his life.”
“Then I’ll battle him the Motlander way.”
“With words?”
I raised my thumbs. “I’ll declare a thumb war and defend my rightful spot as your best friend.”
Mila’s sweet laugh had always had a calming effect on me and I
smiled back at her.
“You know I love you, Raven.”
“But do you love me more than Jonah?”
“Where is this coming from? I’ve known you for a decade while Jonah and I met less than a year ago. Besides, he lives in the Motherlands.”
“I know, but anyone can see the two of you are like magnets and he makes you laugh.”
“Jonah is easy to be around and I enjoy his company, that’s all. You make me laugh too.”
“Hmm… admit it, he’s your new girlfriend.”
Mila stopped and took my hand. “Raven, just because I love you doesn’t mean I can’t love others too. I have infinite love in my heart and I don’t rank my friends from best to worst.”
Tilting my head, I squinted my eyes. “Fair enough, but if you did, I would be on the top, right?”
Mila’s melodic laughter filled the hallway as she walked on with one word hanging in the air. “Obviously.”
CHAPTER 3
Keeping in Shape
Leo
I had never spent as much time in the gym as I did after Raven became my mentee. The woman was relentless and kept a rigorous training program. Technically, no one asked me to supervise her while she worked out, but her preferred method was fight training, and I figured that my presence would deter any of her opponents from getting too rough with her.
In the beginning, none of us eighty-five men at Station Seven would spar with her. Not only was it ingrained in us from early childhood never to touch a woman, we also had strict laws that could put our lives in jeopardy if we overstepped our boundaries and touched a woman without her permission. Those laws had been lifted when it came to Raven’s fight training, but the thought of hitting a woman was so alien to us that no one wanted to do it. Raven didn’t give up, though. Being resourceful and sneaky, she played mind games with young Monroe until she riled him up enough to fight her.
As an opinionated rookie who felt entitled to respect, Monroe wasn’t popular among us experienced policemen. After Raven lost to him in her first fight, she was able to persuade some of my colleagues to train with her under the pretense that she needed their help to beat him in a future fight.