Chapter 13 #2
Hounded might have been too soft a word. There were several points where I’d lost sight of them behind the crowd—a tough feat considering Soren’s big ass head tended to rise above most people. “I’m surprised Soren didn’t break a camera.”
“Almost broke a nose, I’ll tell you that much,” Soren grumbled, suddenly looking at his mug of coffee like it had said unforgivable things about Bellamy.
“Soren,” Bellamy said, reaching over to pry his death grip off the ceramic before he shattered it. “He wasn’t being that bad.”
Soren was entirely unconvinced. “He asked you about the fashion on Muli.”
“To be fair, it’s quite beautiful,” Esme said, fiddling with one of the necklaces she wore. One from Muli, and beautiful indeed. “And quite important to understanding their society.”
Soren nodded through a sip of coffee, his eyebrows pinching in a silent expression of eager agreement.
“It was the way he asked.” Likely vapid and discrediting Bellamy’s importance to our operations there.
“I never liked that guy. He’s the one that always tries to fly a drone outside of the Royal nursery to get photos of the newborns. ”
Soren and Bellamy laughed, a sound that had always sounded annoyingly melodic, like the Bond made their respective expressions of joy meld into a perfect harmony. Only this time, there was a different note, a low hum underneath the sound.
One that belonged to Freya, apparently.
“I assume that guy is well known in Florus?” I asked. No one, Freya included, knew much about her upbringing before she’d been shoved through the Bridge as an experiment, but they’d brought her out here from the capital.
Freya looked up at me, her expression pinching.
Nothing more than the tiniest little line appearing between her brows before smoothing out.
It was so fast, it was very possible I was imagining it.
Especially when her expression bloomed into a smile and she said with a breezy tone, “Not him specifically, but I remember people always freaking out about the Royals. I think I remember when Soren’s sister was born. Everyone was crying in the street.”
Soren’s smile was haunted, full of grief for the sibling he never got to see grow up.
“I’m surprised he didn’t try to sneak away to our room last night,” Bellamy said.
“They caught two stowaways.” Freya’s smirk was subtle, which for her meant she was deeply pleased with herself.
“Did they catch them or did you catch them?” Esme asked, directing a bright smile towards Freya. Another one categorized that I would be replicating.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know Esme’s smiles, I wasn’t that much of a blind asshole, it was just that I’d never realized how few of them—if any—had been given to me, how few I’d earned.
Freya answered with an even wider smirk. It was an old joke that she used to live in the walls of this place, somehow seeing everything without being seen herself. This temple was the longest home she’d ever known, though you could say the same about Muli.
“The reporters seemed more…feral than normal,” I said.
Though I’d never directly experienced the fervor with which the public loved paranimas, the Matches that came before us lived a life of infamy.
It was only me and Esme who’d been spared that treatment, not-so-subtly hidden away lest people start to doubt the strength of the Bond when we didn’t seem to be affected by it.
Bellamy breathed in, nodding, “My father—”
“I’m still planning a way to kill that guy.”
“—has come to his senses and realized offering my hand in marriage to someone other than Soren wouldn’t go over well,” Bellamy finished, shooting Soren a look that was closer to a smile than a glare.
Yeah, I didn’t think it would. If not because I was pretty sure Soren would burn down both planets before he sat by and watched Bellamy walk into a marriage she didn’t want.
Even now, the ceramic under Soren’s hand was groaning from the way he was squeezing the life out of it. He managed to maintain some deal of composure as he said, “There were cameras all over the place when we went back.”
“They caught a lot,” Bellamy jumped in, a small smile forming. “Apparently people are quite invested in us now.”
“And he’s not calling you back?” Esme asked. I barely had to spare her a glance to know where her mind had taken off too.
A very real world in which Bellamy and Soren were turned into weapons of propaganda rather than risking their lives on the front line.
“Word got to him about my injuries. No well wishes, mind you,” she said with a derisive chuckle, “But he is convinced that there is some sort of protection on my head. Soren’s too, probably. Some aversion to harming Royals.”
“But not blowing up our goddamn camp,” I said, though I agreed with Bellamy. That attack very well could have killed Bellamy or Soren. They hadn’t touched our hospital, which was either lucky or spoke to how well they knew the layout of our camp.
I favored the latter.
Bellamy nodded, folding her hands neatly over the table. “An escalation, even though our lives were spared. My father has shifted gears.” She looked down for a second, swallowing nervously.
Bellamy’s eyes stayed on the table, clearly trying to grab for some sort of composure. Soren took over, giving her the space she needed. “He met with us last night. Still threatening my life and that of my family if Bellamy didn’t comply with what he said, of course.”
At that, Bellamy snapped the handle clean off the mug she was holding. No one commented on the level of strength it took to do so.
“He clearly still wants to take credit for whatever happens in Muli,” Soren continued, seamlessly switching Bellamy’s mug with his own. “He feels Muli is getting bolder.”
Freya scoffed. Well, as close to the sound as she was capable of making. I’d heard her eviscerate people with words, rather creatively actually, but she’d never quite managed that distinct grating sound. “Like we couldn’t have told him that ourselves.”
Bellamy smirked, her head tilting to the side. “Gotta let him feel like it was his idea.”
“He wants to escalate peace negotiations,” Esme said, her eyes dancing all over the table like she could see the Emperor’s plans laid out before her. “Then he can take the credit for it. Do something no one before him was able to do.”
“Exactly,” Soren said with a tight nod. “If we can pull this off while he’s still the Emperor, even through Bellamy, it helps his cause.
” He paused, then laughed low when some though crossed his mind.
“Wouldn’t hurt if he could also get Ambrose Greene out of the way by marrying him off to the Princess. ”
The son of the next Emperor, technically, but Ambrose’s mother had passed on years back and his father was known to be battling a long-standing illness. One his aging body was not likely to fight off for much longer.
“We don’t know anything about her. She could already be married,” Esme said, somehow an understatement.
We knew little more than the structure of the Muli royal family.
A queen at the helm, a son and daughter under her.
Given the Prince’s antics around their military operations, everyone assumed he was older.
I’d always thought that it was risky to send the heir so close to enemy territory, but that was what Elijah was for, I guessed.
Everyone paused for a beat before Soren voiced what we were all thinking. “Something easily remedied. Especially if we can get close to the Royal family now.”
It would take little more than a slight of hand and her spouse would go crumbling to the ground in a heap of poison-loosened limbs.
“Does he know about the invitation to Muli?” Esme asked, and for a moment, I’d forgotten that yesterday morning, we’d been talking a terrified Muli soldier off the ledge.
Soren shook his head. “No, but he’d want us to go anyway. We know that we’d be stepping into more of a diplomatic role, but he specifically requested the two of you.”
Surely, he wasn’t talking about Esme. Surely, she had not caught the attention of the Emperor. Surely, my head was not about to pop the fuck off.
“Us?” Esme asked, blinking rapidly.