Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Colum: Which accent is sexier: Irish or French?
Franco: For the sake of our friendship, I’m not answering that.
“ W ho’re you?” Colum demanded as the video call connected.
The man on the screen sighed. “Hello, Colum. I’m Sebastian. We’ve met. Several times.”
“Ah, right, then.” Colum had met Sebastian, but he’d been expecting Franco.
Sebastian’s gaze shifted, and Colum assumed he was looking at Xavier and Annie, seated on either side of him, all of them facing the laptop on the coffee table.
“Annie.” Sebastian inclined his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m one of the Grand Master’s counselors.”
Colum felt Annie go still next to him as she processed that. He knew the person she’d been in contact with was female, but he wasn’t sure if it was Juliette herself pretending to be a counselor or Rose.
“And I hear you saw my brother recently.” Sebastian’s formal expression relaxed into an amused smile.
“He makes an excellent waiter,” Annie agreed. “And it’s nice to meet you, Sebastian.”
Colum put the pieces together and sat back. “The room service waiter was a Trinity Masters’ member.”
“Yes.” Annie’s lips twitched. “Hotel room service doesn’t deliver pot brownies.”
“They should,” Xavier drawled.
“Anyway,” Sebastian said. “Another one of the counselors asked that I call you with an update. To be clear, this is not a briefing so that you can use the information to hunt down the source of the attack. This is informational only. Your job—your only job—is finding the rest of the manuscript.”
“Would this other counselor be a man named Franco?” Annie asked.
Sebastian sighed, staring directly into the camera. “Colum.”
Colum was both irritated and embarrassed. He shoved Annie’s knee with his own, and she muffled a laugh. “It’s mad that the Trinity Masters insist on all this secrecy. Everyone knows who our admirals are, and knows who the fleet admiral is.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t your last fleet admiral murdered?” Sebastian’s brows rose. “In his own home? And half your admirals got blown up?”
“Sure, but it’s going to sound bad if you say it like that,” Colum protested.
“You’re taking too long,” a new voice said.
The video spun dizzyingly, and Franco’s smiling face filled the screen.
“Franco!”
“Colum!”
Colum grinned at the sight of his friend. “How’re you getting on?”
“I’m good. Well, actually I’m annoyed because hubby won’t let me come chase the manuscript with you.”
“Why not?” Colum would love to have his friend along on this adventure. Though… Colum looked first at Annie, then at Xavier.
Maybe he didn’t want Franco here. It would mean losing the intimacy of it being just the three of them.
“Some espionage thing.” Franco shrugged negligently. “Not that interesting. But guess what I found?”
“What?” Colum leaned in, excited to hear whatever it was.
“ Geography .” Franco grinned.
“Carnegie?” Colum asked, eyes widening.
“Yes.”
“But what about Quadrupeds ?”
“Not yet, but I think I know where to look!”
“What the fuck is this?” Xavier muttered in English, his accent making it sound cute.
“I think it’s code…” Annie replied slowly.
Colum glanced left, then right. Xavier and Annie were looking at him, Xavier with amused concern, Annie with amused fascination.
He turned his attention back to Franco. “Insider?”
“Isn’t it always?” Franco started, but a hand covered his mouth.
Devon leaned down, saying something in a low voice. He wasn’t actually in camera, but Colum knew Franco’s husband well enough to recognize the voice, and the shiny mixed-metal, three-band wedding ring on the hand covering Franco’s mouth—a match to the one Franco wore on his ring finger. Juliette wore hers on the middle finger of her right hand, because publicly Franco and Devon were a couple, Juliette just a good friend of theirs.
Annie leaned forward, shoulder bumping his, her eyes narrowed in concentration. “I think I know that voice,” she said, seemingly to herself.
“Franco.” Sebastian’s voice came from off-screen. “Did you interrupt the call just to chat with your bestie?”
Franco, who was still looking up at Devon, shifted his attention to the side even as Devon’s hand fell away. “No,” Franco protested. “You were taking too long.”
“You have yet to say one thing about the Oscar Wilde case,” Sebastian pointed out.
“No, no, no,” Xavier said, turning the laptop so his face was in the center of the screen. “First, you tell me what you were saying to Colum.”
Franco blinked several times, and Colum did the same, staring at Xavier. The other man had sounded both protective and possessive.
“Stolen rare books,” Franco said, still looking nonplussed.
Xavier turned to Colum, one dark brow raised. “You steal books?”
“No!” Colum insisted.
“Well, there was that one time,” Franco said.
“Oh right. But I’d hardly be counting that.”
“Colum,” Xavier barked.
“What are you on about?” Colum snapped back.
Annie’s gentle hand—that could gently pop a man’s eyeball with a thrown knife—landed on his shoulder.
“Can you, quickly, explain what books you and your friend are talking about?”
Colum nodded, then shot an accusatory glance at Xavier. “All you had to be doing was ask.”
Xavier slumped back on the couch, one arm thrown over his face.
“They get worse,” Sebastian called out from the computer speakers. “Trust me.”
Colum turned to Annie. Together, he and Franco told her about the theft of several rare books from a Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Among those stolen were a rare copy of Ptolemy’s Geography , and John James Audubon’s The Quadrupeds of North America .
“Ah.” Annie’s lips curved in a soft smile. “Which is why you said ‘geography,’ ‘Carnegie,’ and ‘quadrupeds.’ It was less of a code and more shorthand.”
“Yes,” Colum confirmed. “The Ptolemy in particular was notable.”
Once more, the video whirled and then Sebastian was on screen. “Is anyone still interested in hearing about our investigation into the other party looking for this manuscript?”
“Please,” Annie said, winking at Colum. She leaned forward, looking across Colum at Xavier, who was still slumped, eyes covered by his arm. “We might have lost Xavier.”
“Let’s start with the attempted break-in in Dublin. According to the information given to us by the Masters’ Admiralty, they found the assailant, thanks to facial recognition based on images from a security camera several blocks away. The man has been arrested for theft several times, including once as part of an organized crime ring that robbed jewelry stores, but has no connection to the Masters’ Admiralty. After being questioned by members of the Masters’ Admiralty, he revealed that he was hired to do the job, but the contact information he had for his employer led nowhere.”
Xavier sat up as Sebastian talked, his arm brushing against Colum’s.
“What about the financial transaction?” Annie asked. “I’m assuming he got paid some up front.”
“Digital currency. We couldn’t track it.”
“What was he meant to do?” Colum asked.
“Did he know what he was sent to steal?” Xavier added. “Was he specifically looking for a manuscript? How was it described?”
Sebastian’s expression sobered. “Actually, he was looking for you . Both of you.”
Colum frowned at the screen. Right now, their camera was showing him and Xavier.
“Us?” Colum said, pointing to himself, and then Xavier.
“Yes. He was supposed to go after Xavier first and had an address of a private residence in Dublin.”
Beside Colum, Xavier’s face drained of color. “My friend, I have to let them know. They may be in danger?—”
Sebastian held up his hand. “Apparently, whatever the location was, the hired thug didn’t want to go there, which is why he went after Colum first.”
Colum snorted. “Xavier was staying in the Liberties.”
When no one responded to that, Annie patted Colum’s shoulder. “No one knows what that means.”
“You risk getting your face rearranged if you try anything in the Liberties.”
“Bad part of town?” Annie asked.
Colum shook his head. “No, but anyone from the Liberties wouldn’t be putting up with that kind of thing.”
“Either way,” Sebastian went on, “the man’s instructions were to go to that address, ‘question’ anyone there about Oscar Wilde, and take anything they had that may have belonged to Wilde or someone he knew.”
“What about me? What about the archive?” Colum asked.
“Same instructions—question anyone inside about Oscar Wilde.”
“How did they get those addresses?” Xavier asked, face still stark.
“We’re looking into that, but our cyber investigation hit a snag. While trying to track both the interaction with the thug hired in Dublin, and the initial dark-web inquiry about how much an undiscovered Wilde manuscript would be worth, our cyber expert’s system was attacked. The attacker managed to shut down their entire system and infect it. They ended up burning the hard drive.”
“Wiping it?” Annie asked.
“No, physically burned it,” Sebastian said with a grimace.
Franco piped in from off-screen. “Killed it with fire. It was dramatic.”
A cold feeling had settled in Colum’s gut. “He wasn’t planning to break in and search for the manuscript. He was going to break in and torture people for information.”
Annie grabbed Colum’s hand, squeezing tight.
“And the man last night had a gun,” he added.
Sebastian acknowledged that. “We don’t know what your attacker from last night’s orders were. Once we do, we’ll follow up.”
“Whoever is instigating all this doesn’t have any clues about where to look for the manuscript,” Annie said. “But they’ve figured out that either Colum or Xavier have clues as to where the rest of the manuscript is.”
At the word “clues,” Xavier flinched.
“They’re not chasing the manuscript,” Annie reminded them. “They’re chasing us.”
“That’s our conclusion too,” Sebastian agreed. “Which means you three now have a security team.”
Colum let his head hang, processing.
Annie started asking questions about their security that would have made it very clear she was far more than an art expert if she hadn’t already confessed her past. Colum’s thoughts had turned inward until he heard Sebastian say, “No, you won’t see them.”
“What?” Colum asked.
“We’re going to have clandestine security,” Annie said. “We won’t see them, which means anyone following us won’t either.”
“But they’ll be close enough to stop us from being shot?” Xavier asked, then grimaced. “Or having a knife thrown in our eye?”
“The security team will be close enough to step in if you’re attacked,” Sebastian answered.
“Not stop the attack,” Franco called out. “We probably need you to get jumped at least once more, so we can figure out who the bad guy is.”
Xavier fell back against the couch, muttering.
“I don’t want to get jumped,” Colum said. “More importantly, I don’t want Annie throwing knives.”
“Into eyeballs,” Xavier added.
Franco leaned in, the upper half of his face taking up the whole screen. “He’s really stuck on the eyeball thing, isn’t he?”
“It was gross,” Colum said in Xavier’s defense.
“The point is,” Sebastian all but shouted, “Annie is capable of holding the line long enough for your security people to step in.”
They talked for a few more minutes, telling Sebastian that they didn’t know where they were going next, so they would be staying in New York for a few days. Xavier shifted uneasily during that part of the conversation, while Annie shot him periodic irritated smirks.
Colum rose as the video call ended, headed for the bedroom with his phone.
“Colum?” Annie called out.
“I need to talk to the fleet admiral.”
Colum slid into the bedroom and called Eric.
Eric stopped at the edge of the cliff, panting. Behind him, two members of the Spartan Guard also paused. Tobias was an avid runner, so he kept jogging in place as Eric braced his hands on his knees, bent at the waist as he tried to catch his breath. He much preferred strength training to cardio, but he knew the running was good for his stupid heart.
His stupid, broken heart.
Regina, the captain of his guard, was standing several feet away, pointedly ignoring him as she adjusted the laces of her running shoes. In the past, she would have been standing beside him, chatting or making fun of how much noise he made while running—he was a big guy with heavy footfalls.
But Regina was pissed at him and had been for weeks. She maybe even hated him.
That was okay; Eric fucking hated himself right now.
Far below, water crashed against the cliffs. A fine mist of ocean spray blew across him, adding saltwater droplets to the sweat already coating his skin.
Eric took a step, and both guards lunged for him, Regina managing to grab his arm.
“I wasn’t going to jump,” he said, half amused.
Regina immediately let go of him as Eric sat, lower legs and feet dangling over the edge of the cliff.
“That ground might crumble,” Regina said. “Leaving you to fall to a watery grave.”
Eric leaned forward, looking down. Hopefully that hid his relieved expression that Regina was talking to him. “There’s a bit of a beach. I’d probably land there.”
“Very well, if the ground crumbles you can lay in a broken heap on the sand until the tide hauls you out to sea and you drown.”
Eric and Tobias both looked over at Regina.
“Jesus, Regina,” Tobias said.
Regina stared them down, her disgust with Eric plain in her expression. Eric wanted to say something, maybe justify himself, but instead looked back at the horizon, his jaw clenched.
He’d made the right decision that day in the Long Room.
But no matter how much he believed that, no matter how many times he reassured himself that he’d done the only thing he could do, regret and pain burned the place behind his ribs where his heart had once been.
Late at night, he lay awake in bed, staring up at the ceiling as he remembered the look on Nikolett’s face when she realized what he was about to do.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t do this.”
“No, Eric.”
The quiet way she said it hurt worse than the fight that followed after the meeting, when she’d dragged him into a back room.
“You fucking coward,” Nikolett snarled, as she slammed the door closed. Eric turned, ready to fight with her, but the tears in her eyes stopped him. Fuck. He needed her angry, not hurt.
“Nikki—” He reached for her, but she slapped him, hard.
“You miserable fucking coward,” she snarled, even as tears slid down her cheeks. “I knew you were going to do this.”
She was right, and this wasn’t the first time she’d called him on his unspoken plan to place her in a trinity marriage. To make sure he couldn’t touch her by marrying her to someone else.
Eric slowly turned to face her once more, his cheek burning. He wished she’d hit him harder. Maybe hard enough to knock him unconscious and put him out of his misery.
“Admirals have to be married,” he ground out.
“Don’t try to justify this with rules. You don’t have the balls to marry me, so you’re ? —”
Something in him snapped. Eric grabbed Nikolett, forcing her back against the wall, pinning her shoulders. He loomed over her, and some dark part of him wanted to see a hint of fear in her. All he saw was pain, held back by the thinnest veneer of rage.
“I’m poison,” he snarled, even as he lowered his face to hers. “You can’t fucking see it, but I can.”
Unexpectedly, she softened. “I’ve survived worse than a little poison.”
Eric rested his forehead against hers. “But what if you don’t? What if someone tries to kill you, and I can’t save you.” The words tore out of him, ripping something deep in his chest.
“Oh, Eric,” she whispered softly.
Fuck, he was going to kiss her. Worse, some stupid part of him was seriously considering taking it back. Undoing her marriage so they could be together. Truly together. He wanted to wake up beside her and sneak out of bed to make her coffee, before they put their heads together and solved whatever ridiculous mystery or crisis plagued the society that day. He wanted to sit on the couch beside her and fold laundry, then take her walking along the cliffs while the sky raged and the sea churned.
And after a few months or years of that, however long fate gave them, he’d stand over her dead body and mourn her after an assassin’s bullet or a killer’s blade ended her life.
Eric lifted his head from hers, leaning back, though he kept her pinned to the wall.
The soft hope in Nikolett’s eyes died as she studied his expression. For a moment, her face crumpled in terrible sadness, and Eric’s chest lurched as he fought his own need to howl out his grief for what could have been.
“Please, Eric,” she whispered. “Please. I lo ? —”
“No, Nikolett.”
The finality in his words hardened her expression.
“Coward,” she repeated.
He released her, not denying her claim. “I’m the fleet admiral ? —”
“You’re—”
“—and I don’t have to justify myself to you.” He pinned her with a stare, letting his anger with himself and the world show on his face. “And you do have to obey. You’re married.”
Anyone else would have crumbled under the force of his anger and command. Nikolett wasn’t even fazed. She was so fucking perfect for him.
“There was no ceremony,” she said immediately. “And I won’t do it. Admirals have the right to choose their own trinity.”
“The ceremony isn’t necessary, and all trinities, even those admirals choose for themselves, are subject to my approval.” Eric had to pause to swallow. Each word hurt. “The stipulation on the archivist for the Trinity Archive needs him married to an admiral. You’re the only unmarried admiral. This isn’t a direct attack on you ? —”
“Bullshit. If you hadn’t already planned to marry me off, or if I’d already been married, you would have had to find another way to make the new archive work. But you’re a lazy fucking coward.”
The venom in her voice was almost a relief because it was easier than the hint of tears that had been there before.
“As of half an hour ago, you’re married.” Eric swallowed hard against the knot of emotion that was trying to choke him.
“Married to your brother!” Nikolett threw an arm out. “You can’t stand the idea of another man touching me any more than I can bear the idea of another woman with her hands on you. So you married me to your brother, knowing I won’t fuck him.”
“He isn’t technically my brother.”
“Technically,” she sneered. “You want to talk about technically? Technically, he’s the archivist and has to stay in Dublin. I’m the admiral of Hungary. That man you just made my husband? I’ll barely see him, certainly never live with him.”
Damn her, she was right. When Hande insisted Colum be married to balance the power of the new archive, he’d seen it as fate forcing his hand to do what he’d sworn to do months ago—marry Nikolett to someone else.
He wanted to say she was wrong. That he had only noble reasons for creating this trinity. But she was right. He didn’t expect her to be a true spouse to Colum, and he couldn’t imagine introverted Colum developing any kind of real relationship with in-everyone’s-business-all-the-time Nikolett.
“And Sarah?” Nikolett went on. “She’ll end up as my bodyguard more than my wife. Which you know.” Nikolett’s smile turned cruel. “It never works for a knight to be married to an admiral, does it? The knight ends up trying, and maybe failing, to protect their spouse. Their admiral.”
It was a cruel low blow. Both Eric’s wives from his first trinity had been murdered. He hadn’t been able to protect Dahlia from being appointed admiral—a job that had pushed her into a constant state of near panic. And then, he hadn’t been able to stop her from being murdered by someone not even associated with the Masters’ Admiralty. He’d been reeling, forced to step into the role of admiral of Kalmar after Dahlia’s death. Then Trina was assassinated by someone who didn’t agree with her politically.
As a knight, he should have been able to protect his admiral. As the admiral, he should have been able to protect a member of his territory. He’d failed both times.
Becoming the fleet admiral hadn’t made him any better. Everyone he loved still died.
Josephine. Merely thinking her name pierced him more painfully than being shredded by a million shards of glass.
The only ones he had left to protect were Colum and Nikolett.
The fact Nikolett—who knew the depths of his guilt and grief—had thrown that in his face told him exactly how deeply he’d hurt her.
“Is that your plan, Eric?” Nikolett’s voice was a cruel purr, but there was a slight catch to it. “To make sure I end up alone, because you refuse to be anything but alone?”
“Enough, Admiral Varda.”
She let out a vicious laugh. “I’m the admiral now, am I? I wasn’t when you were broken and needed someone to hold you, was I? Then I was Nikki, and you were happy to take the comfort I offered. Happy to touch me in almost every way a man can touch a woman.”
Nikolett pushed off the wall, stalking past him to the door. But she stopped, shoulder to shoulder with him though they faced opposite directions.
“I’m good enough to fuck, to be your emotional support, but not good enough to love.”
Eric’s eyes closed, his heart breaking. “Nikki, no ? —”
“Go to hell, Eric, since you’ve made sure we’ll both spend the rest of our lives there anyway.”
Eric’s phone buzzed in his pocket, blessedly jerking him from the memory.
Standing up—which made both Regina and Tobias reach for him in alarm—Eric started walking back to Triskelion Castle. He finally looked at the screen, froze, then answered.
“I want you back in Dublin immediately,” he barked. He’d heard about the attack in New York just before he went on this run, and it had taken everything he had to be hands-off and wait for Colum to call him.
“Hallo, Eric,” Colum said, voice resigned. “And no, I won’t be doing that. I’m guessing you heard what happened?”
“Someone is after you. Fuck that manuscript and get back to the safety of the archive.”
“The archive that was almost broken into?”
“They wouldn’t have actually gotten in, and I upped the security.”
“No.”
“No what?” Eric growled, phone creaking as he held it too hard.
“No, I’m not coming back to Dublin to hide in the archive.”
That surprised Eric. Not Colum’s refusal. The contrary fucker loved to say no. It was Colum’s use of the word “hide.” It felt like a soft acknowledgement that he’d been hiding from the world, from life, since his sister’s murder.
“The Trinity Masters are putting security on us.”
Eric listened as Colum told him about their investigation. Colum’s enthusiasm was a relief, but the inflection in his voice when he talked about Xavier and Annie…
Fuck.
Colum, who was married to Nikolett and Sarah Ritter, had feelings for Xavier and Annie.
And again, fuck.
Colum, whom Eric had been desperately worried about for years because he isolated himself, may have finally found the people he could be happy with—and Eric had locked him into a loveless, lonely marriage.
For half a second, he tried to gaslight himself into believing that maybe Colum and Sarah would fall in love, and Sarah would give up being a knight and move to Dublin with him.
Do you want that for Colum, or because you can’t stand the idea of anyone, man or woman, touching Nikki?
Eric swallowed that, forcing himself to concentrate on Colum. They talked for several more minutes, and when they hung up, Eric hurried back to the castle, barely noticing his guards at his heels.
He’d done the only thing he could do when it came to Nikolett. Her alive and hating him was better than her with him and dead.
But Colum…
Colum had a chance to be happy.
But even if Eric hadn’t wanted to marry Nikolett to someone else to protect her from him, there was the issue of the new stipulation about the archivist. Colum had to be married to someone in Masters’ Admiralty leadership, and Nikolett was the only unmarried admiral.
Eric sat down at his desk, staring at nothing. He’d thought getting the Trinity Archive, which Colum had been talking about for months, would make him happy. It was the only thing Colum had seemed excited about since Josephine died.
But based on that call, Colum was in a place, emotionally, where he could fall in love. How the hell was he going to fix this to give Colum the chance at happiness he deserved?