by Kit Rocha
“That’s fine,” Gideon said. “We need all the information we can get.”
“What do we do about the kid in the meantime?” Deacon asked.
“We watch him. Feel him out. I’ll let Isabela take the first run at him. Most people aren’t prepared for how devious she can be.” Gideon sipped his coffee and glanced around the room. “Reyes? You and Hunter should find a chance to talk to him, too. Flatter him as a fellow noble. Make him feel accepted.”
Reyes groaned, and Hunter elbowed him in the ribs.
“Reyes.” Gideon said it mildly, but it was still a reprimand. “You don’t have to enjoy your status, but it’s a valuable tool. Use it.”
After a moment, he relented with a shrug. “All right, all right. I’ll talk to my mother. She’s probably already running intel and surveillance ops that would make us weep with jealousy.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Gideon replied with a hint of a smile. Then he turned to Ivan. “Maricela’s safety is your only concern.”
It wasn’t just an order, it was a quiet declaration. Ivan didn’t have to give voice to the doubts in his heart for Gideon to see them. But his leader still trusted him with the most precious thing in his life.
Ivan swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
Laurel looked up from Zeke’s dancing holographic display. “Anything you want me to do? I mean, I’m nobody...but sometimes that helps.”
Gideon tapped his fingers against the table. “Watch him, especially when he doesn’t think he’s being watched. It’s hard for a Rider to go unnoticed, but if you can get an idea of who he’s talking to, what he’s doing...”
“You bet.”
“Good.” Gideon took a deep breath. “I want to believe this is just an innocent coincidence. But having the lost heir resurface a few weeks after someone attempted to eliminate the Riders? It would be reckless to disregard the potential danger. So if anyone does find something, no matter how small, you come to me immediately. At the first hint of trouble, I want my family out of here. I’ll deal with the political fallout later.”
And that was the Rios sensibility to the bone. Gideon would risk his own life for the sector, but that carelessness didn’t extend to the people he loved.
Unfortunately, in Ivan’s experience, Maricela felt the exact same way.
»»» § «««
The suite the Reyes family had offered Maricela was large and luxurious, with a parlor, a sitting area, and an attached bathroom. As she stared up at the murals on the ceilings and gilded cornices, she tried to calculate how many acolytes must have been shoved into much smaller rooms together just to afford her this extra space.
Ivan came out of the bathroom, running a towel over his freshly shaved face. Damp strands of hair stuck up in spikes, and he’d changed into loose jeans and a thin white T-shirt. He paused next to the bed, a sympathetic half-smile curving his usually stern lips. “Are you doing okay?”
The suite was big, but not big enough for the two of them.
Maricela swallowed a groan and sat up--no small feat, with the thick, fluffy duvet trying to swallow her whole. “I’m fine.”
He gave her a doubtful look before perching on the corner of the bed--something that might have been more intimate if the bed wasn’t so massive. “It’s okay if you’re not.”
“I’m just tired,” she confessed. “It’s been a long, weird day.”
“It has.” He rubbed the towel over his hair, which only served to dishevel it more. “Gideon’s going to find out as much as he can about this Lucas guy, see if we can figure out why he’s here and what he wants.”
“I don’t want to talk about him right now.” She needed to think about something else. Anything else. “What do you like to do? You know, when you’re not working twenty-four hours a day.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up again. “I’m a Rider. I’m always working twenty-four hours a day.”
She stretched out and nudged him with her foot. “You know what I mean. It can’t all be keeping the peace and polishing your knife collection--which you do a lot, by the way.”
“No, I don’t,” he corrected, straight-faced. “Sometimes I’m sharpening them.”
“They’re already sharp.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged and leaned against the bedpost. “The knives are my hobby. When I was a kid, there was a blacksmith who used to do knife throwing at all the street festivals. Mostly flashy tricks to attract attention so he could sell them his kitchen knives.”
“You mean Ed.” Just imagining the burly man’s infectious smile was enough to make Maricela feel a little better. “I love Ed.”
“He’s a good man.” Ivan tilted his head back against the post and closed his eyes. “I never had any money to spend at the fairs, so Ed brought me into his booth and taught me how to polish and sharpen the knives. He overpaid me, too, but it meant I had money to buy candy and presents to try to make my mama smile.”
Sharp, sudden pain twisted in her chest. “It wasn’t fair, what people did to the two of you.”
Ivan didn’t open his eyes, but his jaw tightened for a moment. “It wasn’t as bad for me,” he said quietly. “I was a kid, and people knew I was a kid. Maybe they didn’t help me as much as they should have, but they usually weren’t mean to me. But people were sure my mother had to have known something. That she couldn’t have lived in the house where the kidnapping was plotted and just...been oblivious.”
Nothing felt more helpless than understanding how your life could spin out of control with no warning. People needed to know that Ivan’s mother must have been an accomplice, because accepting that she honestly may not have known about the plot would mean admitting that the same thing could happen to them, and they would be powerless to see it, much less stop it.
“It wasn’t fair,” Maricela said again. “And it wasn’t her fault.”
“No.” He flexed his fingers and finally opened his eyes. “I don’t talk about it a lot because it makes me mad. My mother always had...moods. But they told her she was bad and told her and told her, and eventually she started to believe them.”
Maricela almost reached for him. With any of her other friends, she would have offered a hug or some other soothing physical contact to help ease the pain that old memories could carry. But that seemed dangerous here, with Ivan. She already wanted to touch him in ways that had nothing to do with comfort or friendly support. Crossing the line might prove a temptation too great for her to resist.
She settled back against the padded headboard instead. “I have another brother, you know.”
He tilted his head, one eyebrow raised. “Another brother?”
“I wasn’t an only child when my birth parents died.” How could her own family history seem so unreal, like she was talking about characters in a story instead of her own life? “They had a little boy before me. Relatives took him in, but they couldn’t handle a baby, so.”
“I didn’t know.” Ivan studied her, obviously hesitant to ask what was bound to be a personal question. “Have you met him?”
“No. I know that he lives in Sector Eight. He’s married. They might have kids by now.” She shrugged. “The idea of contacting him doesn’t feel right. What if he doesn’t even know I exist?”
“But you know he exists.”
“I do.”
“Do you want to meet him?”
“Yes and no.” How could she decide when she didn’t know if a meeting would cause the man joy or pain? “I’m not sure it’s worth the chance. What if he doesn’t even know about our birth parents? I could ruin his life, Ivan.”
“Maybe,” he allowed after a moment. Then he shrugged. “I’m not exactly good with family. I don’t know what I’d do. But anyone who wasn’t happy to get you as a sister would be a fool.”
Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away with a grin. “You’re sweet. Why does everyone else in this sector think you’re such a hard-ass?”
“Because I am.” He rocked to his fe
et and slung the towel over his shoulder. “I’m not sweet, Maricela, not even a little. I’m just telling the truth as I see it.”
“Then you’re biased.” She watched as he walked over to the sofa where the servants had left his bedding. It was only a dozen feet away, with nothing separating them. “Is this going to be weird? The sleeping arrangements?”
He paused with the blanket in his hands, his gaze sweeping the room as if looking for an alternative. “Will it bother you?”
She rolled to her side and propped her head on her hand. “Do you realize that when a question is tricky or delicate, you answer it with another question?”
His mouth opened. Closed again. His brows drew together in a frown.
“Uh-huh. It makes me wonder how different your answers would be if you couldn’t buy yourself enough time to consider them.”
“You want the truth?”
“Always. There’s no other reason to ask questions.”
Ivan’s sudden smile transformed his entire face. “I spent a bunch of years sharing a room with Reyes. I don’t care how weird it gets, it’s not gonna get Reyes weird.”
The words--and the smile--were irresistible. “Explain, please. Did he drag you headfirst into his debauchery?”
He snapped the blanket out and let it float down to cover the couch. “Maybe once or twice.”
Envy roared up inside her. He’d lived. For better or worse, regrets and all, he’d experienced things that she couldn’t even imagine.
All Maricela had ever done was exactly what had been expected of her.
She sank to the bed and went back to staring at the slightly garish ceiling. “How depressing.”
The springs of the couch creaking softly were followed by his soft sigh. “I know this is hard on you...”
“No, it isn’t.” People went through far more difficult things every day. She’d been through far more difficult things. “It’s stupid.”
“Stop it.” His voice was still low, but the lack of deference was new. He sounded almost firm. “You don’t have to do that all the time, you know. Shove down every bad thing you feel.”
She wasn’t sure about that. Some people struggled so hard, every day, and she had everything. She always had. She was a literal goddamn princess. “It’s indulgent. My life is nearly perfect. What more can I want?”
“It’s not a contest, Maricela. We’ve all got our own shit. Yours is different, and most people won’t understand it. And if you went around whining to refugees that it sucks having to have a bodyguard all the time, you’d be a pretty big asshole. But that doesn’t mean you can’t admit it in the privacy of your own damn bedroom. Just say it. It’s shitty not to have any freedom.”
She struggled back up on her elbows. “I have freedom--”
“You can’t even have sex with your boyfriend without a guard sitting outside the door,” he interrupted. “That’s shitty, Maricela. Say it. Say it’s shitty.”
There were a hundred things she wanted to say instead. That Colin Visscher wasn’t her boyfriend. That it wasn’t having a guard sitting outside that was the problem, it was having that guard be Ivan. That he didn’t have any idea about what she wanted, because what she wanted was a bunch of things he wouldn’t even let himself think about.
“You want to know what’s shitty?” The covers were so heavy she could barely lift them, but she needed something between them. Some sort of shield. “You kicked him out. There was no good reason for Colin to leave my bed that night, but you made him do it anyway.”
He was silent for a long time. The answer, when it came, was honest and blunt. “Yeah, that was shitty. Like I said, Maricela. I’m not sweet.”
“Right.” Maybe he was something else, something better and worse than sweet. Something Maricela could relate to, one hundred percent.
Maybe he was infatuated.
Chapter Eight
It was a perfect day to be outdoors.
Maricela stretched out on a padded blanket in the shade of a gnarled old oak tree, her eyes closed against the afternoon sunlight. Beams pushed through the branches and leaves anyway, turning the darkness behind her closed lids into a patchwork of dappled shades.
Laughter surrounded her. All the younger Reyes children--plus the little ones who had accompanied their families to the party--were tearing around the courtyard, their voices melding together into an unintelligible cacophony of noise.
It shouldn’t have been peaceful, not in the slightest, but it was. Maricela smiled and opened her eyes, shading them with one hand. “How can they have so much energy? I ate too much lunch, and now all I want to do is sleep.”
“Easy.” Grace sat a few feet away, barefoot in denim overalls, her legs crossed and a sketchpad on her lap. “They didn’t stop long enough to eat.”
“And some of them only ate dessert.” Nita’s skirt held a rainbow of wildflowers deposited by various children, and she was absently weaving the blooms into a crown. “We used to be worse. We’re just getting old.”
“Speak for yourself,” Maricela protested.
“What, about the old part? Or the misbehaving?” Nita flashed her a grin. “I remember the time you helped me replace all the sugar meant for the lemonade with salt.”
“I remember the lectures I got.” It didn’t matter that her momentary amusement over the prank had almost instantly turned into remorse at causing people discomfort. Isabela had taken her to task, admonishing her about the importance of trust and reminding her that the delicate balance of power in their sector could easily be upset. “Even Gideon didn’t think it was funny.”
“Neither did my mother, believe me.” Nita wrinkled her nose as she twisted two stems together. “My aunt wanted to wallop me. My mother made me write out the entire Reyes family tree twenty times to give me an understanding of the legacy I was squandering.”
Maricela’s mother probably would have smiled before quietly, gently chiding her. Of course, if Juana had still been alive to smile at her, Maricela never would have been acting out. And Isabela wouldn’t have been so determined to prove that she could manage her baby sister. And Gideon...
Well, Gideon might have laughed, after all.
She shook off the memories and sat up. “This is nice, isn’t it? Peaceful.”
“You mean the distraction?” Nita tied off her crown with a flourish and leaned over to drop it onto Grace’s hair. “I wonder how long the gossip can keep the other nobles busy. Maybe we’ll get a whole day or two.”
The crown slipped down over Grace’s eye, and she laughed as she righted it. “I swear, the way you two talked about this party, I thought it’d be hell. But so far it’s been fun.”
Because she wasn’t being stalked through the halls like a gazelle by a bunch of noble wildebeests. Maricela snorted. “Enjoy your relative anonymity while you have it, McKinnon. People will see you sitting here with us. And when they see our ball gowns and find out that you made them, then--”
“Then absolutely nothing will change,” Grace cut in with a shrug. “Jaden may have secured a temple commission for me because he wanted me to stay in One, but I highly doubt my brother ever intended for me to marry into nobility. He knew me too well.”
“It’s cute that she thinks that makes a difference.” Nita started in on her next masterpiece, her gaze focused on the bright petals spilling across her lap. “You won’t have it as bad as we do, because no one’s telling you that you have to marry one of them. But trust me, Grace. Gabe’s parents will send every cousin in the bunch past you at least once, just to see if they can woo you by promising to make you queen of a textile empire.”
“Never gonna happen.”
Isabela had staked out a spot over by one of the larger fountains. Lucas was sitting with her, no doubt answering her questions in between visits from the steady stream of people drifting past. Everyone was curious about him, sure, but they were more curious about how the royal family would receive a long-lost member.
If they would receive
him.
Nita caught the direction of Maricela’s gaze and leaned closer, lowering her voice. “So what do we think about him?”
“I don’t know yet.” It took actual physical effort for Maricela not to glance at Ivan, who was standing silently by the tree--just like he had been for the last hour. “But I’m not willing to discount him without a chance because his father did a terrible thing. What kind of person would that make me?”
“That’s gracious.” Nita paused and tilted her head, examining Lucas. “He’s handsome. And someone took the time to turn him out in style. How much do you think that outfit cost, Grace?”
“Hard to say.” She tipped her drawing pad up and rested her chin on the top edge. “It’s impeccably tailored, maybe even custom-made. That’s not cheap.”
“I was only five when the Prophet died. I don’t know if I really even remember him, or just the paintings.” Nita gestured over to where Gideon sat with his back against a tree, deep in conversation with Hunter’s father. “He looks like your brother, though, only younger and prettier. My mother’s probably already trying to decide if she can marry me off to him, or if that would seem like too much of a power play.”
Maricela wasn’t sure if she felt sympathy at his sudden infamy, or simply relief that the spotlight was off her, even if only for a little while. She decided to go with relief. She glanced over, found Ivan watching her, and winked.
His demeanor was usually so serious when they were out in public. But for a second, she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch up. And his eyes were warm, meeting hers with silent understanding, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
Her cheeks heated, and she looked away. Careful, Rios. She was walking a dangerous line, but it was so much safer to indulge in a tiny bit of flirtation when they were out like this. It had to be light, and it couldn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t anything like flirting with him while they were alone, when the tension between them twisted tighter and tighter, until it felt like the tiniest thing might make it explode.
A little girl with jet black pigtails and Nita’s big brown eyes stopped at the edge of their blanket, her shy gaze falling on Maricela as she silently held out a full white rose with red-tipped petals.