“But I’m not making this choice in anger,” she argued calmly. “The dispassion works both ways, Bronse. It makes my motives in doing this really quite pure. More a matter of cause and effect than anything else. He has caused damage and pain. The effect should be an action that puts an end to that.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he warned her, “and somewhere in your head you know that. You know that you can’t make summary judgment. You don’t have the right! You may not even have all the information you need to make a proper decision.”
“But I have his own admission of guilt.” She gave a little shrug. “The solution is obvious.”
“Are you sure?” he asked her, trying for all he was worth to find the angle he needed to make her see reason. How was he supposed to influence a mind void of all guilt, all conscience, all measurable emotion?
Logic. Logic was the only way. And it had to be sound logic at that. She was far too smart for tricks.
“What if he isn’t the one behind everything?” Bronse posited. “Oh, I know he gave orders and he orchestrated specific crimes, but what if he’s not the top of the chain? What if he gets his orders from someone else?”
“Then that person should be punished as well.”
“But how will we know who that person is if you kill the only person with the answer?”
She hesitated, thinking for a moment. But only a moment. “There will be evidence. We will find out in other ways.”
“Are you really willing to take that chance? What if you’re risking other lives by making that choice so unilaterally?” Bronse prayed that there was enough of a conscience in her that she would care about the other lives.
“Fallon, you will read his mind and make certain that there are no others above him,” she commanded the Chosen One at her back.
“No, Rave, I won’t.”
Bronse could have kissed him. Fallon was devoted to Rave. He did whatever she asked. For him to tell her “no” had to be against everything in his nature.
“Why not?” she wanted to know, the curious tilt to her head making her seem so innocent in such a deeply macabre way.
“Because I won’t help you do something that’s wrong. Something you taught me was wrong. Because Bronse is right. As soon as you stop expending yourself, all of your conscience and guilt will return, and it will destroy you to know you’d done something so wrong. I won’t be a part of that. I don’t care how much this man deserves it, Rave.”
“Ravenna, let us go. We have enough people to keep control of the situation,” Bronse told her. “Let us do our job and let the penal system do theirs. And if you still feel like this later, if you still feel that he deserves to die like this, then you can always go back and do it. You know you’re more powerful than all of us put together. You can do anything you want.”
“That includes killing him now,” she pointed out.
“You could,” he agreed. “But don’t. I don’t want you to do it now. I want you to let us go so we can take these men off your hands.”
“And why should I do what you want?” she genuinely wanted to know. It was almost like talking to a child, except a child didn’t have the knowledge that she did, and a child was easier to reason with than she was right then.
“Because … because at any other time, you love me and respect me enough to know when I’m right about something. Just like I love you so much that I won’t let you do this.”
The gun lowered, and there was finally the registration of a fleeting emotion. It was surprise.
“What did you say?” she asked, her hand rubbing at her temple. Her head was starting to hurt. She didn’t realize she was overextending herself with every minute she stood there holding them all at bay. “You love me?”
“Yes. Very much. It’s something I’ve never felt before. I don’t think you have, either. But it’s important to us both, isn’t it?”
“That … that has nothing to do with this,” she insisted, turning the weapon back up toward JuJuren.
“Yes, it does. Because I’m going to find it really hard to love someone who would kill a man in cold blood, Ravenna. Think about it. You know me.”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly, “you always do the right thing. You wouldn’t kill without cause. But I have cause. What he does is wrong.”
“There are other ways to punish him for those wrongs. Take away his freedom. Take away his power. There are other ways. Ways that won’t cause damage between me and you.”
The weapon lowered again, and this time two sets of fingertips went to massage her temples. As he watched, small blood vessels were bursting in the whites of her eyes. She was going to burn herself out or have a stroke if she didn’t let up.
“That pain means you’re in danger,” he warned her. “You’re going to mess up your brain if you keep this up. Let us go right now, Ravenna. Right now!”
“Ravenna, listen to him,” Fallon spoke up. “He’s right. You can see he cares about you. You’re going to get hurt if you don’t listen to him.”
Ravenna’s chocolate dark eyes met Bronse’s, the puzzlement in her gaze growing.
“Okay,” she said at last.
She let go of her hold on the team so suddenly that they had to fight to keep their feet. Bronse grabbed the laser pistol from her, then jerked her against him, his strong body holding hers as she grew increasingly unsteady.
“Now,” he murmured softly into her hair, “let go of the others.”
He would never know if she let go because she was listening to him or because she passed out in the very next instant.
Bronse was pacing outside of the infirmary room when Admiral Greays came up on him, his gait officious and his expression grimly stern.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Bronse said honestly. “She was using her power and just collapsed.”
“Damn. Sounds like you were right about being careful not to break her. We’ve been working them all too hard.”
Bronse wasn’t about to disabuse the admiral of his theory. Whether or not it was the cause of Ravenna’s collapse, it was the truth. All of the Chosen Ones had been worked beyond their capacity. It may very well have had a hand in Ravenna’s collapse. But Bronse didn’t kid himself about the more serious cause of it. The telekinetic power she wielded was dangerous and poisonous. The side effects of its use were not worth even the smallest benefit it might provide. But others might not see it that way, so it was best they never know about it.
That was why he had been forced to ask Fallon to erase the memories of the men they had captured. Just the information in JuJuren’s hands alone was a dangerous prospect, never mind the other two prisoners who could blab it out to anyone who’d listen. Rave’s secret would stay a secret, and he no longer felt any anger and betrayal against her for keeping it to herself. He just hoped like hell that she could recover from this last display of it. What was more, he hoped she never had cause to use it again. As long as he was alive and breathing in the universe, he would see to it that she never did.
If only she survived this.
It didn’t even matter to him that Fallon’s memory rip had probably cost them valuable information that would lead to other names of other people who might be party to JuJuren’s crimes. It didn’t matter that he would never know why he’d been singled out for death by the man. All that mattered was that Rave would be all right. The Chosen Ones needed her. The Interplanetary Militia needed her. But more than all of that, he needed her.
He hadn’t been lying or telling stories to get his way when he had told her that he loved her. And it meant everything to him that in a mind where all conscience had been erased, that one statement had been able to take hold of her. It meant that it was important to her and that she felt the same way. He didn’t need to hear her say it to him. Just that single moment of hesitation had told him everything.
“Well, your mission was a success,” said Greays. “JuJuren is pretending he doesn’t know wh
at we’re talking about, but we don’t need a confession. We have more than enough evidence to see him court-martialed. I’m glad you got him. He was an ugly bruise on the good name of this militia.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bronse replied absently, pausing in his frenetic pacing to try to see past the hazed-over glass of Rave’s treatment room. They wouldn’t let him in there. They wouldn’t come out to talk to him until they knew for certain whether or not her brain was permanently damaged. They’d told him she could have collapsed from a stroke. Or a lot of strokes. They wouldn’t know until the scans were done.
He felt like he was going to drown. Every minute was clawing the breath out of his body. He didn’t care what he had to do, he was going to see that they made her better. He would force them to fix her. Or he would do it himself.
“You’re not as smart as you think you are, you know,” Greays said to him.
Bronse stopped short and stared at the admiral as Greays folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. “Sir?” was all Bronse could think to say. Had they found out? Did they know what Ravenna could do? Vivienne had scrambled all the security footage with just the touch of a hand, and there had been no other witnesses. Had the erasure not been enough? Had JuJuren said something?
“Oh, you’re very careful not to show it,” Greays mused, “but there are times when you can’t hide it no matter how hard you try.” The admiral cocked half a smile at Bronse’s blank stare. “The girl and you, Commander. You’ve got that kind of energy where you can touch each other without touching each other. The closer you get, the stronger the attraction. Why do you think I put you and Ravenna in housing together? It’s less of a distraction to have you close to each other than to have you separated.”
“And … you don’t object?” Bronse asked with surprise. “The way you treat her, I thought I’d end up in the brig for even thinking about touching her.”
“Not that that stopped you.”
“No, sir. Nothing would have stopped me,” Bronse agreed.
“I don’t approve of couples going out on-mission together.”
“I understand, sir.”
“But in this case I don’t see how I have much choice. Only your team knows about the Chosen Ones, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. I don’t need this becoming the worst-kept secret on the station.”
“No, sir. We don’t want that, either.”
“Good. And if she makes it through this, I’ll need to see some real dedication and professionalism from both of you or I will split you up.”
“Admiral Greays,” Bronse said, “if she makes it out of this, I’ll give everyone anything they want.”
As if on cue, the door behind Bronse opened and a senior-level medic came out of the room. He saw the drawn tension in the face of the man before him and quickly took pity on him.
“She’s awake. Speech is normal and—” But he was already talking to an empty doorway. The doctor chuckled and turned to the admiral. “Motor function is a little sluggish but otherwise normal. She has a hell of a headache, and she’s lucky she’s not a vegetable. I don’t know what went on in the field, but I’ve never seen a brain scan like that in my life. It was like she had hundreds of tiny strokes all at once all over her brain. How does that happen to a person?”
The admiral shrugged. “You’re the doctor, you tell me.”
Bronse walked into the room and saw two technicians fussing over Ravenna and the equipment they had monitoring her. She looked up to see him, her pretty eyes bloodshot and tired. The minute she saw him, tears welled up. He was by her side instantly, gathering her up in his arms and holding her against his chest as if he would never let her go.
“I love you too,” she rasped out, her voice thick and so weary that it broke his heart to hear it. “Thank you. Thank you so much for stopping me.”
“You stopped yourself, although I wasn’t going to let you do anything you’d regret. You know I don’t work that way. And I do love you. It’s the damndest thing, something so alien to me in so many ways, and yet it came so naturally with you. Only with you.” He pressed gentle kisses to her upturned face, then kissed her lips so gently that her numbed body could barely feel it. “You almost killed yourself, you know. I don’t think I need to tell you to never do that again. I don’t care how much you think you’re helping. The price you pay is not worth it. You got me?”
“Okay,” she sighed softly, burrowing her cheek into his chest. “Believe me, it’s the last thing I ever want to do again.”
“Can you give us the room?” he asked the technicians standing over her head. They seemed to hesitate. “I promise if she so much as blinks the wrong way, I’ll call you back in.”
“Just watch her speech. If she slurs, there’s trouble.”
The medics exited the room.
“Okay, we’re alone now,” he told her softly. “Which is good because I’m about to do the one thing I swore to myself I would never, ever do again in the whole of my life. I want you to know that, so you know just how important this is, okay? And I think I’m asking because you’re a little out of it and I’m not above using dirty tricks.”
“What is it?” she asked with a giggle.
“Will you join with me? Become my wife? I promise not to change a damn thing about myself and be exactly the same person you see sitting here today.”
She laughed at him. “Good. Because I wouldn’t want you any other way. Even if things change and we end up on separate missions all the time. I won’t care as long as we come home to each other and my family.”
“Our family is going to be huge,” he promised her. “I have a lot of uncles and cousins. You have a boatload of Chosen Ones. Holidays are going to be enormous.”
“I would really, really like that. But aren’t you afraid of what the top brass will say about it?”
Bronse kissed her softly, then gave her a sheepish grin. “We weren’t as clandestine as we thought we were. Greays knows. And he’s fine with it as long as it doesn’t interfere with our work.”
“I think it will just make it better.” She hugged him as tightly as she could. “I’m so glad I waited for you. Every moment of pain was well worth it. This was so worth it.”
He smiled into her hair, but then he sighed. “Your brother hates me.”
“My brother isn’t the one you have to worry about. You just worry about making me happy. I’ll take care of Kith.”
“How can I make you happy?” he asked, his smile almost wolfish as he kissed her cheek, her jaw, and then the side of her neck.
“You really want to know?”
“Always.”
“Get the medic. I have a bitch of headache.”
“Damn. Not even joined yet and you’re already using the headache excuse.” He chuckled.
She slowly wrapped one hand around his neck and then laid the other over his heart.
“You better do it or I’m going to tell you your fortune and it won’t be good.”
“None of that,” he said, grasping her hands and pulling them down to a safe place against his chest. “I don’t need my fortune told. I already know exactly how lucky I am and how happy I’m going to be.”
Read on for an excerpt from
SEDUCE ME IN FLAMES
by Jacquelyn Frank
Published by Ballantine Books
Her heart beat rapidly, her breath rasping in the back of her throat. What could it mean? What could he want? The same questions swirled around her head again and again as she strode through the palace hallways with an air of confidence she did not feel. There had never been a sense of confidence, a sense of security in her life. Even when her father had supposedly loved her, she had never felt that sense of cocooning comfort that a child was supposed to feel when in the presence of her protector.
She supposed his treatment of her these last years had proven her very intuitive, even at toddling age.
He had once professed a great love for her mother. There were those in h
er household who swore, to this day, that her mother had been the great love of his life. But then his eminence the emperor had tired of his favorite concubine. Some said it was because a newer, younger woman had caught his fancy. Others said her mother had overstepped herself with him one too many times, that she’d grown proud and arrogant, making the mistake of thinking that being the mother of his heir apparent made her as good as being empress.
Whatever the reason, Emperor Benit Tsu Allay had put down his common-law wife like a dog. Unafraid of the possible repercussions he might face at the hands of the Interplanetary Militia, he’d had her tried for treason, proclaiming her an enemy to his crown and a conspirator in a plot to have him killed. Her mother’s trial had been a whirlwind of, some said, preponderously damning evidence, spurious accusations, and one of the cruelest and most horrific executions in the history of their realm. Then, before she could understand that her mother would never touch her again, hold her or hug her, she’d been declared fruit of a poisonous tree and packed off into the back of nowhere where she had been languishing ever since.
More or less.
She’d been called into his presence twice since her exile at the age of four. Once when she was twelve and once when she was fifteen. Both times he had hurled accusations of treason at her, accused her of knowingly plotting with his enemies to overthrow him and take his throne. However, lack of evidence, or, perhaps more likely, his unwillingness to slaughter a child, had spared her life … but not before she had spent over a year each time in his prisons.
Then there had been silence. After some time, news had filtered down to her through her more trusted attendants that the emperor had sired a male heir. Her brother. And her only living sibling. This decided lack of proliferation the emperor had blamed on his weak-blooded concubines, however with medical technology at such an advanced state that in vitro could have been performed at any time with any viable uterus, it was widely believed that Emperor Benit was the one with the problem. But Benit wasn’t about to prove anyone right by having himself tested.
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