Strategic Affairs
Alexander
“Lord Stormwright, I’m sorry.” The pilot stood in the cockpit doorway, his rigid posture emanating anxiety. “The pressure seal is cracked, and the navigation array took significant damage. The plane needs significant repairs.”
After the disaster of the storm, the news didn’t surprise me. It was still hard to hear.
“Where can we land?” I forced myself to ask.
“Taormina, my lord. There’s a private airstrip fifteen minutes out. I’ve already requested clearance.”
Helena appeared at my shoulder. Her eyes were swollen, and her composure was holding together through discipline alone. “Taormina is House Dionysus territory. They provide hospitality to every House.”
They also had countless agreements with House Poseidon, many to supply Orion’s ridiculous parties. But we had no choice, not right now. “Fine. Land the plane.”
We touched down twenty minutes later on a strip of tarmac cut into the Sicilian hillside above the coast. The airframe groaned when we taxied, and a thin trail of hydraulic fluid leaked from the port landing gear. The plane was wounded. So was I.
A black Maserati was waiting at the end of the strip before the engines had finished winding down. Its driver bowed low and greeted us in smooth English. “Welcome to Taormina. My lord is already waiting.”
Helena and I got in the car without comment. The vehicle brought us up through the narrow coastal roads and into the vineyard country above Taormina. The volcanic soil of Etna turned everything lush and dark. Almost as dark as my mood.
The estate sat on the lower slopes, surrounded by terraced vineyards climbing the black earth in neat rows. Old stone and terracotta, draped in bougainvillea, with wide terraces overlooking the coast.
The man who met us at the door was already drunk.
He was tall and lean, with the dark purple-black hair of his House and wine-dark eyes. His open silk shirt showed a tattooed chest. A dark-haired woman clung to his arm like a limpet, and a willowy blonde lay on the nearby daybed, eating grapes.
“Lord Stormwright. Helena.” He spread his arms wide. His smile was warm and delighted, the smile of a man who found other people’s catastrophes genuinely entertaining. “We heard what happened. Terrible business. Truly terrible. I’m Lysander, and this is my home. Please, come in.”
Lightning crackled between my fingers. The overhead light in the foyer popped and went dark. “I don’t need your hospitality,” I said. “I need a boat.”
“A boat.” Lysander plucked a grape from the bunch in the blonde’s hand and ate it. “Into the Strait of Messina. During what my people are telling me was quite the supernatural weather event.” He chewed thoughtfully. “You’re ambitious, Lord Stormwright. I admire that.”
“I’m not here to be admired.”
“No, you’re here because your plane is broken and your Omega is in the ocean.
” He said it with a cheerfulness that tore a growl from my chest. The dark-haired woman at his side shifted away from me, but Lysander didn’t flinch.
“I understand the urgency. But the Strait belongs to Orion Maris. Sending a House Zeus Alpha into Poseidon’s waters on a borrowed boat would be a very entertaining way to start a war.
Entertaining for me, at least. Less so for you. ”
“Alexander.” Helena stepped between us. Her hand found my arm, and her grip beneath the gentle touch was iron. “Go to the terrace. Get some air.”
“I don’t need air.”
“You need to stop sparking before you set the vineyards on fire.” Her voice dropped low. “You are not helping Andie by throwing a fit. Give me twenty minutes. I’ll handle the arrangements.”
The lightning hissed between my fingers. Behind Helena, Lysander watched us with the bright-eyed attention of a man witnessing a drama he hadn’t had to arrange.
I looked past them both, through the foyer and the open doors at the far end. The Strait was visible from here. A dark blue line between the headlands, calm and indifferent beneath the afternoon sun.
Andromeda was out there.
“Twenty minutes,” I said.
Helena turned to Lysander with a shift in posture that was almost audible. The grieving mother vanished behind the House Hera diplomat. “Lysander, I need a secure communication line, a damage report on the aircraft, and a guest room that doesn’t share a wall with anything flammable.”
“My dear Helena, you wound me. Everything in this house is fireproof.” He offered his arm. “The wine cellars alone could survive a volcanic eruption. Come. Let me show you what Dionysus hospitality actually looks like.”
They disappeared into the house. The two women followed, the dark-haired one glancing back at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
I walked to the terrace. It was wide and stone-paved, shaded by a pergola heavy with grapevines. I gripped the stone railing and closed my eyes. The lightning bled from my hands into the volcanic rock, dissipating harmlessly into the earth.
I tried to think. Not react, not burn, not pour my power into the sky until the Mediterranean boiled.
Think. The way Nikos would tell me to think if he were here.
But every time I reached for strategy, I saw her instead.
Standing in the open doorway of the plane with the wind tearing at her hair.
Her eyes, clear and certain. The calm in her voice when she said his name and stepped into the air.
“He saved me before. Why not now?”
The words kept replaying. She hadn’t been raving. She hadn’t been curse-driven or delusional. She’d been lucid and deliberate, and she’d chosen the ocean over me. Over House Zeus. Over every promise and every sacrifice and every compromise I’d made to keep her safe.
I’d failed. The collar had failed. The Elara arrangement had failed before it began. Every strategy I’d deployed had either poisoned her further or driven her closer to the one Alpha who could offer what I couldn’t. Silence. Distance from me.
The railing was warm under my palms. Below, the vineyard workers moved between the rows, their voices carrying in the still air. Ordinary people doing ordinary work, untouched by the divine mess that had deposited a House Zeus Alpha on their terrace.
“You look like a man who has run out of plans.”
I opened my eyes. Julian Solaris stood at the archway that led back into the house. His blond hair was pulled back, and his pale blue suit caught the Sicilian light. His eyes shifted between blue and gold, too knowing, too clever.
“How did you get here, Julian?”
“The Council monitors significant atmospheric events in the Mediterranean.” He stepped onto the terrace. “A storm of that magnitude required attention. I was dispatched from Rome.”
“Dispatched. Not summoned. Not asked.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You came here on your own initiative.”
“I came because you need to hear something before you do whatever you’re planning to do next.” He stopped at a careful distance, close enough for conversation, far enough to be outside the range of an impulsive discharge. “And because I owe you that much, after Norway.”
That stopped me. I’d expected deflection, the usual Council doublespeak about neutrality and mandate. Not an admission.
“Norway,” I said. “Where you put me in a room with Orion Maris and let him take my measure.”
“Where I invited two representatives of major Houses to discuss the political landscape. Yes.” Julian’s tone was even, but something shifted behind his eyes.
Not guilt. Something adjacent to it. “I didn’t anticipate this outcome, Alexander.
I won’t pretend otherwise, but I also won’t pretend the meeting was a mistake.
The Council needed to understand where House Poseidon stood. ”
“And now you understand. He’s on his yacht in the Strait of Messina, and he has my mate.”
“Which is precisely the problem.” Julian clasped his hands behind his back.
“Andromeda jumped from a House Zeus aircraft without coercion. No Poseidon vessel was observed at the scene. The Italian authorities have classified it as a passenger emergency in severe weather. Orion chose the most volatile stretch of water in the Mediterranean to stage his storm. Any investigation will blame the geography.”
“So the Council does nothing.”
“The Council cannot authorize intervention in Poseidon’s domain without a real reason. Poseidon has trade alliances with too many Houses that depend on his shipping network. And if you tried to take it to a vote, it would fail before it reached the floor.”
I already knew that. This wasn’t really a problem the Olympian Council could help me fix.
“Then what was the point of coming here, Julian?” I snarled. “To tell me my hands are tied?”
“To tell you the rules.” His voice hardened. “If you act against Orion independently, you do so without Council protection or sanction. If you enter his waters and fail, no one comes for you. If you damage his holdings on land, you face sanctions and embargoes from every House in his network.”
“And if I succeed?”
“If Andromeda leaves Poseidon’s territory of her own will, the Council has no standing to intervene on his behalf. His sovereignty protects him only as long as she remains voluntarily.”
“Of her own will.” I tasted the words. “That’s what it comes down to.”
“That’s what it has always come down to,” Julian replied.
For the first time, I could see past his perfect composure.
Underneath it was the Alpha, the head of House Apollo, and the man who always seemed to find the best path.
“You cannot take her, Alexander. That is what every Alpha in her life has tried to do. The only way Andromeda comes back to you is if she chooses to.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
He held my gaze without flinching. “Then you learn to live without her.”
The vines above us shuddered as the lightning pulsed through the railing. Somewhere inside the house, glass shattered.
“Get out,” I said.
Julian held my stare for one more heartbeat. Then he nodded and walked back through the archway. His footsteps faded down the corridor, measured and unhurried.
I stood alone on the terrace and stared at the Strait.
Julian was wrong about one thing. I would not learn to live without her. The bond, incipient and cursed as it was, had woven itself through me in ways I hadn’t understood until the ocean had taken her from my sight. Living without her was not an option. It had never been an option.
But Julian was right about the rest. I couldn’t take her. I couldn’t fight my way across Poseidon’s waters. And I couldn’t sit on this terrace drinking Dionysus wine and waiting for someone else to solve the problem.
Orion Maris didn’t live exclusively in the ocean. House Poseidon had holdings on every coast in the Mediterranean. Shipping contracts, port authorities, commercial real estate, import licenses. Their wealth flowed through land-based channels that required banks and lawyers and permits.
Julian acted like this was an advantage for House Poseidon. But it was not. On the water, Orion was untouchable. On dry ground, he was as vulnerable as any other House. House Zeus could crush him with ease.
It wouldn’t be a rescue. It would be a siege. If I couldn’t reach Andromeda through the water, I would make the water the only thing Orion had left. I’d fight the way only a House Zeus Alpha ever could. And then I would wait for Andromeda to decide.
The railing was scorched where my hands had been. Two blackened imprints on volcanic stone. I looked at them for a long moment, and then I turned and went inside to find Helena.