by Ashley West
It was definitely not a question, and she nodded weakly.
His grin just widened. “Good. Because I’m not done with you yet.” And when he moved back up to kiss her again, she didn’t resist, tasting herself in his mouth with a little thrill that already proved she was going to be fine with going again.
After all, she could see how hard he was and could feel the heat of his erection when it pressed against her. Her legs were still open, and she wanted everything else he was going to give her.
She couldn’t remember who’d said it, but she’d heard somewhere that sex was very good in a crisis, and she found that she had to agree.
A week passed quietly enough, and then two. Even though Stephanie was well aware that they needed to be on their guard and that something bad could happen, she had to admit that it was one of the nicest stretches of time in recent memory. She went to work and did her job and then she met Draco at the museum when her shift was done and took him around to show him things that she thought he would like. What made it especially wonderful was the way he seemed to enjoy learning about new things, so Steph felt like she wasn’t wasting her breath when she explained something in detail.
He traded her knowledge and information about his home for information about hers and they both kept their eyes and ears open for the ones who were after the blade.
Plintos conducted his investigations back on Aldara and told Draco that all he knew was that there were at least four of them who had broken into the palace and that they were dangerous. The guards had been taken out, as well as the servants who had been in a position to see anything, and at least two of them had been killed in the attack, quiet as it was.
Draco seemed unsettled after that conversation, and Stephanie had rubbed his shoulders and kissed him until he smiled for her.
“Sorry,” he’d said. “I’m just… This isn’t good. How could no one had seen anything?”
“There’s still no idea who these people might have been?” Steph had wanted to know.
“None,” was the answer, and they’d both spent some time sitting in silence after that, consumed with their thoughts.
Stephanie was just beginning to realize that she should probably go through with her plan to tell Nate and Simone that they might want to increase security when she got a phone call from Nate one night after she’d already gone home.
Draco was there, sitting on her bed and carding his fingers through her hair when her phone rang.
She reached for it and frowned when she saw who it was. “Nate?” she said when she answered.
“Steph, oh my god. There’s something… Something happened.”
Her eyes widened, and she sat up, pulse racing. “What do you mean something happened? What happened? Is everything okay?”
“Honestly I don’t know what to make of it. I was about to put the blade away for the night and head home, when...and I know this is going to sound crazy, but it started...glowing.”
“Glowing?”
“Yeah. I don’t mean like how it’s been shiny and reflective since we got it. I mean there was a glow, Steph. It started in the runes and then spread to the whole blade and it was as bright as a fluorescent light for about ten minutes. It’s dulled now, but there are these occasional flickers, still.”
He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, but Steph was at a loss. Draco hadn’t said anything about the blade glowing, and even now he was looking at her curiously. It hit her all at once that Nate’s help might be useful for whatever was happening, so she made a decision.
“Nate? I think there’s something we need to talk about.”
Chapter 7: Explanations
The first thing Draco did when Steph got off the phone and explained what was going on to him was call Plintos.
Well, alright. That was the second thing he did. The first thing was wish that Plintos himself had come to Earth to deal with this because it was much more in his realm of experience than it was in Draco’s.
But when he looked at Stephanie sitting there looking anxious in just a t-shirt and her underwear, he decided that he couldn’t be too upset about being sent here.
Then he called Plintos.
As expected, his friend didn’t look any better than he had the last time they’d talked, and Draco watched him rub his face as he explained what Stephanie’s friend had told her.
“Glowing,” he said flatly. “And you heard this from a human?”
“Yes. He’s in charge of researching the blade while it’s at the museum.”
Plintos snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that’s going well for him.”
“Plintos, don’t. They’re doing the best they can. It’s not like they have any experience with things like this.”
His friend looked at him for a long moment and then sighed. “You know, I didn’t send you there so you’d become their champion or fall in love with them. You have a job to do.”
Draco bristled at that for some reason. “I’m doing my job, Plintos. You said to call you as soon as there was more information. There’s more information, so I called you. You don’t have to get snippy about it.”
“Alright, alright,” Plintos said, holding up a hand. “I’m sorry. And at any rate, I think the glowing might be significant.”
From her spot on the other side of the bed, Stephanie snorted dryly. “You think?” she muttered under her breath, and Draco shot her a look.
“Significant how?” he asked Plintos.
“I think perhaps it’s reacting to the proximity of the other Artifacts,” he said. “This will be the first time in a very, very long time that they’ll all be on the same planet. I think whoever took the other two has finally made their way to Earth.”
Silence followed his pronouncement, and Draco let out a low breath. “And we’re still no closer to figuring out who or what they are.” It wasn’t a question because he already knew the answer to it.
“No, we aren’t,” Plintos confirmed. “I don’t understand how no one saw anything, but apparently they didn’t. We’re doing this blind, it would seem. You’re doing this blind. Do you have a plan?”
Draco glanced at Stephanie again, and she nodded encouragingly. “The beginnings of one. Stephanie wants to tell Nate the truth about the blade. He was already sort of joking about there being no way that the blade could be something made on Earth, and he was the one who saw the glow. She thinks that she can bring him around and maybe get him to amp up security or even let us take the blade.”
“Take it where?” Plintos wanted to know.
“Back to Aldara,” Draco said. “The point is to keep it from falling into enemy hands, right? Then whoever has the other two will have to follow us. This shouldn’t go down on Earth. The humans don’t have anything to do with this.”
“They should have kept their hands off the blade,” Plintos protested.
“It’s not like they brought it to their planet, Plintos. They didn’t ask for this, and it’s not their fight.”
“Fine, fine. You’re right.” Plintos sighed heavily and then nodded. “Do it. It does seem like the best course of action now. These...whoever they are, are obviously dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as they’d be if they had all three of the Artifacts.”
“That was my thinking,” Draco said. “I’ll keep you informed, Plintos.”
The king nodded and then disconnected from the call, leaving Draco and Stephanie alone again.
“Well,” she said. “He seems nice.”
Draco laughed at that and shook his head. “Plintos is under a lot of stress right now. He’s usually much more pleasant to talk to. Now. When are we going to have this talk with your friend?”
As soon as possible was the answer to that question, and so Draco met Stephanie at the museum after closing the very next day and together they made their way to what Steph called the lounge.
Nate was there drinking coffee as usual, and he looked up when they entered. “Steph, it’s about time. What did yo
u want to talk about? Who’s this?” He frowned, looking at Draco.
“Nate,” Steph said, voice gentle. “There’s some things you need to know. Remember when you said that the blade was almost like something from another planet?”
He nodded, looking confused. “Yeah, I remember that.”
“Well… It turns out you were more right than you know about that. In fact, you were completely right, as it turns out.”
“What? How would you know that?” He looked back and forth between them.
Stephanie gestured to Draco. “Because this is someone from that planet who came here looking for it. Draco, this is Nate. Nate, Draco. He’s from the planet Aldara, and it turns out that the blade is one of their artifacts.”
Nate stared at the two of them for a long moment, and Draco half expected him to burst out laughing and accuse them of playing some kind of trick on him. It would make sense, considering the absurdity of their claims and how they might sound to someone who had never known about life on other planets. Instead he swallowed hard and dropped heavily into a chair.
“Are you serious?” he rasped. “We have something from another planet in our museum? We’ve been touching and handling something that came from another planet?” He glanced up at Draco. “You’re an alien?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” Draco said mildly. “But the answer to all of them is yes.”
He seemed stunned, but he nodded in the end. “My god. So...why tell me this? I’m guessing there’s something more going on?”
Ah, a smart human. And Plintos had been so doubtful that there were any at all on this planet. Draco nodded and explained as quickly and thoroughly as he could, grateful when the interruptions were kept to a minimum. For the most part, Nate just listened, but he had that wide eyed and eager look on his face that Steph sometimes got when he was telling her about things from the other planets he’d been to, and he could see why the two of them got along so well.
When he was done, Nate sat back in his chair and let out a low breath. “Alright, so we need to beef up security for sure then.”
“Yes,” Draco agreed. “And be willing to part with the blade if necessary.”
He made a face at that, but nodded. “Alright, that’s fair. And I know it’s going to be necessary because the whole reason you came here was to get it back.”
“Point,” Stephanie replied softly. “The hard part is going to be explaining what happened to it. Clive is going to have a fit.”
“Simone is going to have a fit,” Nate added. “But there’s nothing for it. Just...let me know what needs to be done, okay?”
Steph nodded and smiled at him. “Thanks for understanding,” she said. “You’re taking this all much better than I did.”
Nate snorted at that, glancing between the two of them. “Well, I can see that there are probably a few reasons for that.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair and then got up, going back over to the coffee maker to put on another pot.
Draco was just going to considering suggesting they leave since they’d done what they came to do when Nate turned back around and speared him with a thoughtful look. “Do you want to see it?”
After all the time they’d been talking about the blade and someone taking it and what needed to be done, Draco had almost forgotten that he hadn’t yet seen it. It had been right in this building the whole time, close and somewhat out of his reach. He’d been planning on getting Steph to show him, but Nate seemed eager enough to help this happen, so they went with him.
Stephanie held out her hands for something before they went in, and Nate hesitated and then shrugged. “I don’t think we really need them, do you? I mean, the thing survived space travel and has been buried for hundreds of years. I don’t think a little oil is going to mess it up now.”
She seemed taken aback at that, but then she nodded and Nate let them into the room where Draco assumed the blade was being kept.
He watched as the researcher unlocked a safe and then drew out the blade, wrapped in a light cloth. It was placed on the table in the center of the room, and Draco waited with bated breath while the cloth was pulled back to reveal it.
And there it was. The third Artifact. Draco had expected it to feel somewhat less exciting to just be shown it than to find it on his own, but that wasn’t the case. That familiar tingle was there at the base of his spine, and when he held his hand out over the blade, he could feel the power and energy pulsing from it.
How could they ever have just assumed that this was some ordinary weapon? Ordinary was probably the wrong word, since it had belonged to Cillidan, but none of them, save Plintos who always knew everything, had even imagined that it would be a weapon capable of destroying one’s enemies.
Carefully, he touched the cool metal of the blade, fingers tracing the runes etched right into it.
“Long live, oh king of kings,” Stephanie said in a hushed voice from behind him, and Draco smiled, turning his head to nod at her.
“That’s right.”
Nate looked like he was bursting with questions, but he kept respectfully silent while Draco acquainted himself with this piece of his people’s history.
“Plintos should be here for this,” he murmured when he finally pulled back, glancing at the humans in the room. “It’s...this is a big moment for me, of course, but it would be even bigger for him. He’s a king, after all.”
Stephanie smiled and stepped forward to take his hand. “He’ll get to see it. You’re going to take it home before it’s all said and done, you know.”
Draco nodded at that. “You’re right.”
And while that had always been the goal and the purpose of this trip, now he found that there was something bittersweet about the thought of leaving. While he was always pleased to go home to Aldara after a long stint exploring somewhere else, he’d never had such a tempting reason to stay longer before.
He knew he had to go back, but he was very much going to miss Stephanie and her bright personality and the way she just…made him feel good.
But there was no use worrying about that for a bit. After all, they were still no closer to finding out who was behind all this, and for the moment, things were going to stay as they were.
Chapter 8: The Plot Thickens
“Sometimes I want to punch Plintos right in his stupid face,” Stephanie groaned as she lifted her head to look at the clock on her bedside table. As she’d expected, it was a hideous time of the morning, hours still before she had to get up and get ready for work. Everything in the house was silent, and she and Draco had been sleeping, curled around each other.
So of course it made sense that Draco’s comm device had started up with its annoying trilling sound, shattering all that peace.
Draco groaned and reached for the noisy little thing, swiping his finger across the screen and staring at it blearily. “He’s a king,” he mumbled, smothering a yawn with one hand. “You can’t hit him.”
“Just try and stop me,” she grumbled and put her face back in the pillow.
“I can go out into the other room and take this if you want me to,” Draco offered.
Stephanie shook her head and sighed. “No, that’s okay. It might be important.”
Considering the situation they were in (and the fact that Plintos didn’t seem to have a sociable bone in his body from what she could tell), she would have been hard pressed to believe that Plintos was going to call just to say hi.
Of course she was right.
In lieu of saying hello, Plintos got right to the point. “Draco, this is bad.”
“What’s happened now?” Draco demanded, sounding more awake than he had just a second ago.
“We found out who it is. Who stole the other two items.”
“What? How?”
“That’s what you’re worried about right now?” Plintos asked. “A child saw them. Well, sort of. We’ve kind of hand to piece together the information, which is why it took so long. But it all makes sense now, and it’s bad.�
��
Stephanie pressed herself closer to Draco in that moment, offering him her support.
“Tell me,” Draco said.
“Triptherus,” was all he said, but the expression on Draco’s face was clear enough to prove that it was bad indeed.
“What’s a Triptherus?” she asked, leaning closer until she could see Plintos’ face on the screen.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh good, you’re here. A Triptherus is one of the more...over evolved races that call this quadrant home.”
“Over evolved?”
“Yes. There’s no real explanation for why they are what there are. Deadly fast, able to almost melt into the shadows at will. Perfect for stealth. The child who saw them claimed the shadows were dancing right before the attack.”
Draco swore under his breath. “Triptherus,” he agreed. “Why in the world would they want to attack us?”
“It might not be about us,” Plintos said. “They might just want the weapon. For all their power and skill, there aren’t very many of them, are there? I don’t think they can reproduce anymore.”
“Something to be grateful for,” Draco put in.
“Yes, although if they get the weapon, they’d be even more powerful and deadly than they already are. And if they get it on Earth…”
Stephanie didn’t need him to finish that sentence and neither did Draco, it seemed. “Right,” he said. “So what’s the plan now?”
“I need you to buy me some time,” Plintos told him. “Enough that I can get the guards prepared for...whatever might happen. It’s been too long since we’ve had to defend ourselves, and I don’t know if we can…” He trailed off.
“We can,” Draco said firmly. “We’ll do what we can from here, and then I’m coming home. You won’t be facing this alone.”
Plintos nodded. “I know. Thank you, Draco.”
It was the first time Stephanie had heard genuine affection or feeling in Plintos’ voice when he was talking to Draco, and she bit her lip, thinking hard while they continued their conversation. When Draco disconnected from the call, she looked at him. “What does a Triptherus look like?”