Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Two dead, ten injured, in Isle of Man plane crash.
Nikolett studied the news headline. Such simple words for such a traumatic event.
The pilot and Tobias, one of the Spartan Guard, died in the crash.
Tobias had run into the cockpit to help the pilot when the onboard electronics suddenly failed.
Together, they’d managed to crash-land the plane on Dreswick Point—a tiny bit of land that stuck off the south eastern coast of the Isle of Man.
The crash was the result of every electronic system in the plane going dark at the same time.
While the emergency lights had come online after a moment, the main onboard computer hadn’t ever come back.
The pilot and Tobias got the landing gear down, but the place they landed was far from flat.
The wheels broke off, leaving them to skid along the rocky soil, the plane ripping apart around them.
With no way to steer, the pilot and Tobias had been unable to avoid a massive rocky outcropping.
The front of the plane hit it, crumpling the cockpit and killing both men inside.
That was also what made the plane tip up at the end.
“Tobias was thirty-nine,” Eric said softly when he looked over her shoulder at the headline. “He was going home to be married in six months.”
Spartan Guard only served until they were forty, at which time they went to their home territory and finally got married.
“The pilot had two kids,” Nikolett said as she scanned the article, though she’d learned that particular horrible fact yesterday.
The crash was two days ago, and this afternoon, for the first time, neither the authorities nor any doctors needed them for something.
She and Eric were two of the ten who were counted as wounded.
Eric had a whiplash concussion.
Her injury predated the crash, but the authorities had seen the blood that covered her—her wound had come open, the temporary stitches ripping—and shipped her off to the hospital too.
The frazzled A she put it away.
Now, for the first time, they were going to have a meeting to discuss what had happened, and what to do next.
Nikolett let herself be selfish, leaning into him. “Eric, I’m tired.”
“You aren’t sleeping, are you?” He kissed the top of her head. “Sit this one out and rest. I’ll—”
“I don’t mean I’m tired and need to sleep.” Though she did. “I mean I’m…I’m weary.”
She’d never felt like this before—truly and utterly defeated.
Maybe because she knew that her time with Eric was limited. Maybe because some part of her wondered if she should have gone with Gus, and in doing so protected Eric.
She was going to lose him anyway, and more than likely, this meeting was the beginning of that end.
They met in the Great Hall of Triskelion Castle, taking the winding route through the massive stone building from his apartment to the large hall.
Instead of a small table, as there had been when they met here with Colum and she laid out all the reasons she and Colum didn’t have to marry, this time there was a large table.
Nikolett stopped short, shocked by what she saw.
Leadership from each of the nine territories were present at the meeting. Either an admiral, vice admiral, or security minister.
“Why are they here?” she whispered.
“Because we were attacked.”
“That’s why they should stay away. What if—”
“I didn’t order this. Everyone showed up. Asked what they could do to help. What we needed.”
A swell of emotion made her throat tight. If she’d told someone what Gus said, maybe they wouldn’t have come. Maybe they wouldn’t be trapped on this island with her and Eric and Gus.
“Nikolett, breathe.”
“How did they even get here?”
“Ferry from Dublin. The archive security has been massively upgraded and we used it as a secure stopover.”
Nikolett looked at Eric, his face so beloved, and her heart started to break.
This was good; maybe it was better if it broke bit by bit, splitting along the crack he’d already made in it. It might hurt less if it happened slowly rather than all at once.
Concern etched his features as he studied her, but he tugged her into the room, pulling her to stand by the head of the table. By his chair.
Then Eric, in front of powerful, influential people from each of the nine territories, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Nikolett savored it, not caring if they had an audience. It might be the last time he kissed her.
When she finally opened her eyes, she stared into his beloved blue gaze then forced herself to look away and scanned the table. There were a few surprised faces, a few smiles, but most of them looked…relieved.
“Finally,” Antonio, admiral of Rome, grunted.
His sister, sitting beside him, snickered. Though she held no formal title in a territory, she’d been raised at the right hand of power, and Eric occasionally appointed her as his stand-in.
Eric held a chair for Nikolett, and she sat. Then he planted his hands on the table and leaned forward, looming over the table like a warlord ready to examine a battle map.
“Who is he, and how do we find him?”
Sadly, it wasn’t as simple as asking a question, because no one had the answer.
Half the table didn’t even understand the question.
They were here because someone had sabotaged a plane of Masters’ Admiralty people, killing one of their own.
It took half an hour to catch everyone up on what they knew about the Spaniard, and what had happened over the past few days.
Every time it veered into conjecture, someone yanked it back.
“We’re starting over with facts only,” Grigoris said when he stopped Regina at one point.
Nikolett stayed quiet, listening. She kept her expression neutral when they discussed Angus McAngus and the chance meeting in the coffee shop.
When the facts were laid out, it seemed pathetically obvious that Gus agreeing to meet in Paris right after the Spaniard accepted the job should have triggered alarms. It was too coincidental.
She ignored the way attention slid to her and then away as they very gently discussed that Nikolett’s date was not a ruse to gather information about a suspect.
She’d been considering him as a potential husband.
She could have wept with gratitude as Regina made it sound like after the date, she was immediately suspicious of Gus, and therefore created a secondary trap by luring him to her hotel room a few days later.
Regina didn’t say anything that wasn’t factually accurate, but she made it sound much more logical and reasonable than it had been.
No one but herself, Eric, and Gus, knew they’d been discussing a poly relationship before Grigoris darted him like an escaped zoo animal.
They were working in reverse chronological order from the most recent events to their first known interaction with the Spaniard, and finally reached the beginning.
“He told Vadisk ‘say hello to your admiral’ which we now know means Nikolett,” Grigoris said as he finished explaining what happened in Crimea.
Everyone nodded in agreement. It would be easy to stay silent and let everyone operate under that false information.
“No.” It took all her courage to say it. Even more to hold herself still as attention shifted to her.
“Based on something the Spaniard said to me, I believe that first remark wasn’t in reference to me. As Grigoris pointed out, there was some ambiguity with the Russian grammar.”
She could feel Eric looking at her, but ignored him, instead rising to her feet.
“Who was he talking about?” Raphael asked.
Nikolett locked her knees—she was starting to shake. “He was talking about the admiral. The fleet admiral.” She finally looked at Eric. “He was talking about Eric.”