Chapter 2 #2
“Often.” Dr. Mata tipped his hand side to side in a “maybe” gesture. “That’s an umbrella term that covers many things. The way each of us deals with trauma experienced in adulthood is different, and the way we process it is also different.”
Eric opened his mouth, closed it. “She sent me her therapist?” He couldn’t decide if he was pissed, outraged, or appreciative.
Dr. Mata laced his hands together. “Do you know what happened to Juliette and Devon?”
Yes, he knew what they’d gone through when some nut job Bible thumpers learned just enough about the Trinity Masters that they’d managed to kidnap Juliette and Devon. They’d left Franco, assuming he couldn’t be their third because he was Hispanic. Because why not throw in a little racism.
Eric had done what he could to help find them, and heard from Colum some of the details of what they’d been through. The group who took them assumed Devon was the Grand Master—because of course it couldn’t be a woman—and tortured Juliette to get Devon to talk.
They’d been through hell and come out the other side.
“Yes,” Eric said simply. “I know.”
“Then you know that all three of them experienced significant emotional and physical trauma. It could have severely impacted not only their marriage but their ability to function, their outside relationships.”
“But it didn’t because you fixed them?”
Dr. Mata cocked his head. “I didn’t fix them because they weren’t broken.”
“Well, there’s your problem. I’m broken.” Eric was trying to make light of it, make a joke so that he could ease out of this.
“I very much doubt that.”
Eric snorted. “Ask anyone. I’m broken.”
Dr. Mata’s expression didn’t change. “I’d rather ask you. Why do you feel you’re broken?”
Eric opened his mouth to say something dismissive. To thank Dr. Mata for coming all this way but he needed to leave.
That’s what Eric intended to say, but what came out was, “I’m not sure I loved my wife, Dahlia.”
He’d never said that out loud before. He barely let himself think it. But the past few months had left him feeling raw. The midday nightmare hadn’t helped. Eric’s defenses were down and the words slipped out.
Dr. Mata nodded once. “Let’s talk about that.”
Elena slid her safety glasses up onto her head as she set aside the oscillating orthopedic saw she’d used to cut off Nikolett’s cast.
Nikolett grimaced at the smell as Elena pulled the pieces of the cast apart. “You only had this on two weeks.” Elena started cutting the inner padding with safety scissors. “Trust me, it could be much worse.”
Nikolett leaned back on the new padded exam table that had been installed while she was at Triskelion.
Normal people didn’t have small medical suites in their homes, but Elena was tired of having to use Nikolett’s office as a makeshift exam room and surgical suite.
Two rooms on the second floor—the private part of her home—had been retrofitted to Elena’s specifications.
Nyx, Nikolett’s vice admiral, was leaning over Elena’s shoulder, studying Nikolett’s leg with interest.
“Is it supposed to look like that?” Nyx asked.
“What?” Nikolett leaned to the side, trying to see what she was looking at. Mostly she tried not to look at the slightly curved, horizontal wounds on either side of her calf, because seeing them invariably dragged up the memory of that moment when the bear trap snapped on her leg.
Elena brandished the safety scissors at Nyx. “Back up, and stop saying things that make her worry.”
“I’m merely asking a question.”
“Is there something wrong with my leg?” Nikolett asked a bit desperately. It looked like it was healing. Though wait, was the skin a little puffy around the sutures? Was that a sign of infection?
“No. It’s healing nicely.” Elena shifted to look at the matching wound on the inside of her calf. “I’m glad you came back when you did. I wouldn’t want that cast on for any longer than it was.”
“Much longer, and we would have had to come get you,” Nyx added.
Nikolett leaned her head back. “Please promise me that you won’t take any aggressive action against the fleet admiral.”
Grigoris, Nyx’s husband and the security minister of Hungary, opened the door midway through Nikolett’s words. Maxim followed him in, carrying something bulky and wrapped in paper under one arm.
“If he takes you prisoner again, we will come for you,” Nyx declared, a dangerous light in her eyes.
“Let’s not be the spark that lights a civil war.” Nikolett grimaced a little as pain twinged up her leg, though she refused to look at what Elena was doing. She briefly related her conversation with Xavier about what that civil war might look like.
Nyx and Grigoris shared a grim look.
“We need to strengthen our alliances with the other territories, including Ottoman.” Grigoris rubbed his neck. “If it comes to war, I want to know who will be on our side, either because we’re allies or because they don’t like the fleet admiral’s power grab.”
“We need to prepare a strike team specifically to take out the Spartan Guard,” Nyx countered.
“There are nine guards, plus the fleet admiral. Yes, there’s the backup Spartan Guards in training, but it would take them at least several hours to get from Stranraer in Scotland to the Isle of Man.
That means we need a team capable of neutralizing ten people in one hour or less. ”
When Nyx stopped talking, everyone looked at her with various degrees of alarm.
“Why are you here, in my exam room?” Elena finally said. “Go away. All of you.”
“I asked Nyx and Grigoris to be here,” Nikolett said over everyone’s protests.
“I can go,” Maxim said, his brow lined. He was partially deaf and she knew everyone talking over one another like this made it hard for him to follow conversations.
“Wait, no, you’re the only other person who should be here,” Elena said. “Do you have it?”
Maxim passed her the long paper-wrapped bundle.
“Nyx, Grigoris.” Nikolett waited until they had her attention. “We’re not going to attack Triskelion, even if Eric does something stupid. We’re not going to be the reason the Masters’ Admiralty goes to war.”
Grigoris nodded reluctantly, but Nyx merely stared at Nikolett.
“What we are going to do,” Nikolett declared, “is eliminate the source of the problem.”
Maxim’s brows rose slightly. “You want me to kill the fleet admiral?”
“What? No,” Nikolett said at the same time Nyx asked, “Can you?”
“I could.” Maxim shrugged. “I might not survive if the Spartan Guard come at me in force, but the fleet admiral would be dead.”
The idea of Eric dead made Nikolett physically sick. “We’re not killing him.”
“Let’s keep that as an option of last resort,” Nyx countered.
Grigoris’ head was bowed to hide his grin.
Nikolett seriously considered thumping her head against the seat in exasperated frustration, but thought better of it when she remembered Eric doing the same thing.
“We’re eliminating the source of the problem,” she said instead. “Which is me and Eric.”
Nyx crossed her arms. “Nice try, we’re not killing you.”
“Nyx, I’m not suicidal. I mean, my relationship with Eric. That’s the problem.”
No one argued that point. Everyone except Elena had, at one point or another, been in the room when she and Eric fought or caught a glimpse of her and Eric being intimate.
“What do you need us to do, Admiral?” Grigoris’ calm tone seemed to settle everyone.
Nikolett raised her chin. “It’s time for me to get married.”
Nyx’s eyes went wide, and Elena looked up from the weird blue thing she was now fitting around Nikolett’s leg.
“As admiral, I get to choose my own trinity.” She grimaced. “Pending the fleet admiral’s approval, since that’s the condition for all trinity marriages.”
Everyone who married in the Masters’ Admiralty had to go to the Isle of Man to get the fleet admiral’s approval of their marriage.
It was just a formality, because most marriages were arranged by the territory admirals.
The fleet admiral usually got involved only when inter-territory marriages were arranged.
“What I need from you is help identifying likely candidates.”
For once, even Nyx looked surprised.
Elena grinned ear to ear, the open-pattern 3D-printed cast half fitted around Nikolett’s lower leg. “You realize what this means, don’t you?”
“No…” Nikolett glanced from her to the odd cast and back.
Elena finished buckling the 3D-printed cast that looked like the mesh bags onions came in, then clapped her hands. “The Bachelorette—Masters’ Admiralty edition!”
“Have you thought about our conversation regarding love?” Dr. Mata’s voice was slightly elevated to be heard over the wind whipping up the cliff.
Eric nodded. “Yes.”
“Anything you want to share?”
“I did love her. Love Dahlia. But it wasn’t the same way I loved Trina.”
“There are types of love—familial, romantic, platonic—and even with one type, say romantic love, there is a spectrum.” Dr. Mata held his hands out, indicating a range, then spread the fingers of his right hand.
“Over here, we have that seemingly all-consuming love often referred to as new love. Or actively being in love.”
Eric bent his knee, resting his elbow on it. All-consuming love. Being in love. He knew that end of the spectrum, because he was living in that hell.
He was in love with Nikolett, and that meant not just worrying about her safety every second of every day but simply…missing her.
He wanted to see her. Talk to her. Wanted to hear her tell him about her day, or explain how and why he was fucking something up. He found her scolding him unexpectedly arousing, given he would have sworn before now that wasn’t one of his many kinks.
Dr. Mata wiggled his left hand. “Here we have a more mellow love. Still romantic love, but not as obvious as on the right.” He dropped his hands. “One end or the other isn’t more valid.”
They’d discussed this in depth during that first conversation which had unexpectedly turned into a multi-hour therapy session.
At first, Eric had balked, not wanting to let go of his guilt over “not loving” Dahlia.
He stayed up half the night, thinking back on his marriage in a way he hadn’t in years.
The sky had been light with dawn before he finally went to sleep, his body feeling bruised from the reflection and remembering.
At least he hadn’t had a nightmare.
That bruised feeling had yet to go away, probably because he hadn’t let Regina lock Dr. Mata in the dungeon.
“I loved Dahlia, but wasn’t in love with her.
” Eric leaned back on his hands, the sparse grass and rocky soil damp under his palms. “Maybe it was because we—Trina and I—didn’t live with her.
Maybe it was because I always felt like a bit of a brute when it came to sex because she was nervous no matter how gentle I tried to be. Not that we had sex that often.”
“Obviously I can’t diagnose her, but it sounds as if your wife Dahlia was experiencing agoraphobia and mysophobia.”
Mysophobia—the technical name for germaphobia. He’d just learned that yesterday.
Eric nodded, eyes closed and face tipped up to the sun. They’d talked extensively about his first marriage over the past two days. Eric had told Dr. Mata things he’d never said out loud before.
He hadn’t even realized how deep his guilt about his feelings toward Dahlia ran, and how attached he was to that guilt, until they talked about it.
Dr. Mata was sitting on the ground beside him, and Eric appreciated that the other man hadn’t balked about walking along the cliffs or sitting on the sea-spray damp ground. Now, Dr. Mata leaned forward and twisted to make eye contact for his next words. “Tell me how Dahlia died.”