Chapter 58
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Things were going exactly according to plan.
Corvinia was sequestered on her ship, orbiting a moon a short jump from Tanalia.
The worm had been injected into the system when the Dawn’s jump ship had appeared in the Tanalian square.
She adjusted pins on her map, removing red ones from strongholds that had already succumbed to the rebellion’s efforts.
Emil really had established a stupid number of military bases on Tanalia.
With any luck, he would be too distracted trying to capture the queen to notice that his soldiers on the ground had been systematically subdued by her sleeper cells.
Men. Dangle something shiny in front of them, and they could be lured into just about any trap.
Her communications panel beeped. Right on time. She pressed the button to accept the transmission, continuing to collate the data on her map as she received real time updates.
Lillian’s face filled the screen. She was calmer than Corvinia had expected her to be.
Most people would be at least a little disheveled-looking if their spouse had been kidnapped in the middle of a coup attempt.
Lillian had been monitoring the comms back on the Dawn and likely had to listen as her wife and child fell unconscious.
Had surely heard the arrival of the soldiers that no doubt had scooped them off the floor and placed them in custody before they’d released Evelyn from the main chamber.
Yet Lillian was poised, seated behind her communications center without a curl out of place.
Corvinia respected that. The woman’s dark eyes gleamed in the glow from her viewing screen, a hard, determined sheen.
“Vinnie,” she said. “You’re aware of the situation.”
Corvinia nodded. She pushed the now irrelevant pins into the middle of the Eastern Sea and turned all of her attention to the woman on the other end of the transmission. “Tactically, this was the right move.”
“Fuck your tactics. My wife and kid are now hostages, to say nothing about the woman you consider your own niece.”
“It’s temporary. A foreseen circumstance that has been navigated around. Mathias is on his way right now to spring them from the cells.”
“So, you’ve just subjected all of us to a mind fuck? A little trauma to spice up a Tuesday?”
“Precognition is a tricky specialty. If you mess with the variables too much, things blow up worse than they would have initially. You know this.”
“I know you claim this to be true.”
Corvinia raised an eyebrow. “Point made. You have nothing but my reassurances to go on.”
Lillian leaned into the camera until she filled the screen, and Corvinia suppressed a shiver at the cold fury in her eyes. She forced herself to look straight at Lillian. Never shirk your responsibilities.
“Well, then, if you have absolute certainty that your brilliant plan is going off without a hitch, you have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if Elenor or Aiden is hurt in any way, my new life’s purpose will be making yours miserable.
You think Tanalia under Emil was a bad scene?
Wait until I’m done with your planet. People seem to think that because I’m less likely to stab someone in the face, that I’m the nice one.
I’m not.” She examined her cuticles. “Suffering can last much longer than a knife wound if you’re willing to be creative enough. ”
“Message received.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said, before casually adding, “If you’ve fucked up, and Evelyn gets hurt, I will personally hold you down while my wife sticks sharp skewers into every portion of your soft tissue that can accommodate one.
I’ll nurse you back to health without the aid of any pain medication.
And then, I’ll give you to Aiden. He’s got the best of both of us, you know. Far more creative than I am.”
The screen went black. Corvinia walked across the room to her bottle of single malt scotch and poured two fingers into a glass. She sipped it, then went back to her map.
She’d spent years plotting out the course that would lead to Tanalian freedom.
Corvinia had plowed through piles of legal documents, treaties, constitutions.
Had marveled that so many planets had allowed archaic laws to stand throughout the ages.
The longer she’d planned, the less pure her intentions had become.
She’d shifted her focus from rescuing her people to securing their revenge.
Was she unforgivably cold for committing to this course of action? Maybe.
But she also knew that Evelyn would never be capable of killing Emil Bellica if she didn’t have something worth fighting for, and that was exactly what she needed the newly crowned Queen of Tanalia to do.