22. The Necessary Evil
THE NECESSARY EVIL
The soup was creamy—too creamy for Melodie's taste, but Kalemon had insisted. A thick potato base laced with buttery quail eggs and earthy herbs from the royal garden, it was the first real meal she'd managed since giving birth. Her body still felt foreign to her, recovering in fits and starts.
She coughed once, then again, harder this time, as if her body were fighting to clear a blockage it couldn't locate.
Kalemon's hand darted forward, steadying her arm. "Careful, kid. Your body's still adjusting. You pushed a whole person out a week ago."
Melodie forced down another mouthful before setting the spoon aside, her breath rough. She sagged back into the pillows, exhausted but alert. Her dark eyes tracked the door, where guards stood posted outside. Always there. Always watching.
Kalemon sat on the edge of her chair, spoon turning circles in her own bowl. Her gray eyes flicked to the same door, then back to Melodie. "You need to eat more than that. Lord Talandros will have my head if you collapse."
Melodie snorted. "Malec's too busy threatening council members to worry about my soup intake."
"Fair point." Kalemon took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. "Though I'd bet money he's already mentally cataloging exactly how many spoonfuls you've had."
Despite herself, Melodie's mouth twitched. It was true. Malec had checked on her three times before leaving for the council meeting, each time adjusting pillows she didn't need adjusted and asking if she wanted different food.
The small smile faded quickly. Her fingers drummed against the bedspread, restless. "Something's wrong."
Kalemon looked up. "Besides being trapped in a palace full of vultures?"
“Surion.” Melodie’s voice dropped lower. “That little weasel is scheming. I can feel it. The way he looked at me when we arrived, the way he kept pushing Malec’s buttons during the greeting. He hates me. And he’s planning a move.”
Kalemon set her bowl aside and leaned forward. “You think he’ll try a move even after Malec forced the entire council to sign marriage documents, likely with blades at their throats?”
"Especially because of that." Melodie's eyes hardened. "Surion doesn't care about laws or contracts. He cares about power and profit. And I'm both."
Between them the air thickened with recognition — the kind that doesn't require language.
Kalemon exhaled heavily. "We really need that tracker in your bag."
Melodie's head snapped up, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten. "The outpost. The internment camp where Malec first caught me."
"Yeah." Kalemon's expression turned calculating. "If we had that tracker, we could locate portal energy. Find a way out if things go sideways, which it’s gonna!"
"It's not far from here." Melodie sat up straighter, her mind already working through logistics.
"It took us two days to ride there on horseback when Malec brought me to the Capitol that first time.
The commander's quarters—that's where they kept my pack.
Everything should still be there. The tracker, the scanner, the cellular device. "
Kalemon raised a brow. "And you think they just left it sitting around?"
"Malec kept it in the office he locked me in. In a chest in that huge armoire that had gold handles and metal frame." Melodie's voice carried absolute certainty.
Kalemon stood, pacing toward the window. The Capitol grounds sprawled before her, golden spires glittering in the afternoon sun. She studied them with the eyes of a soldier measuring terrain. "So what are you asking me to do?"
Melodie's dark eyes locked on her. "I'm asking you to go get it."
Kalemon turned back, her expression unreadable. "Just stroll into a military outpost and ask nicely for your bag?"
"I know the Awyan commanding there." Melodie spoke quickly now, urgency bleeding into her tone. "Malec's other cousin—Erolyn. From Leira's side. We became... friends, I guess you'd call it. He helped me several times. He's a good guy. He'll let you in."
"And how exactly is he supposed to know I'm coming from you and not some random Canariae trying to steal military property?"
Melodie's eyes flicked across the guest suite, taking rapid inventory, desperate for an option.
The room offered no trace of her belongings, nothing she could use as proof.
Then her attention caught on the leather bag resting beside the bed, the one Kalemon had given her and the servants had carried in from the carriage.
It was the bag that held the broken tracker.
She reached for it, pulled out a small dagger Kalemon had packed for her, and without hesitation, slid the blade under a thick coil of hair and sawed through it.
The four-A curl fell heavy into her palm.
Then, tugging the silver fox ring from her finger—the one Malec had given her days ago—she began braiding the hair tightly around the metal band.
When she finished, she pressed the makeshift token into Kalemon's hand. "Give him this. He'll know it's from me."
Kalemon raised a brow, skeptical. "How?"
"Because I'm the only one in this realm with hair like this. K, how many black people have you seen in this world?" Melodie's voice carried the weight of lived experience. "Four-A coils. No Awyan could fake it, and no other Canariae female has been at that camp. He'll know."
Kalemon's mouth pulled into a crooked half-smirk. She tucked the braid-wrapped ring into her cloak, then leaned back against the window frame. "You're sure about this?"
Kalemon blinked then, confusion creasing her brow as if she hadn't heard correctly. "Wait. Are you sure you want me to leave?"
“Yes!” Melodie hissed, her voice drawn thin with intensity. "Not forever. Just long enough to get back to Earth. Find my father—General Henry Jaxxon. My brother, Eron. Tell them I'm alive and that I need the unit."
Kalemon's breath caught, the weight of what she was being asked crashing over her like a wave. "You want me to bring the army?"
"I want you to bring the war."
Kalemon stared at her, struck wordless, eyes wide with the stunned brightness of someone forced to face the sun.
Gradually a grin unfolded across her face, wide and predatory, the sort that suggested bloodshed before the first blow was ever struck.
She rose abruptly, the chair scraping the rug as she crossed to the window.
Outside, the Capitol grounds unfolded in glittering gold beneath the afternoon light.
Kalemon studied the spires with cool calculation rather than wonder, her mind already dissecting the city as if it were a diagram, weighing distance, blast radius, and the quiet weaknesses hidden beneath its grandeur.
"Hell, yes," she whispered, breathless, almost reverent. "Hovercrafts... thermal rifles... cluster grenades... oh, it would be complete rapture to watch this pretty palace reduced to powdered stone."
Melodie narrowed her eyes, unimpressed. "Let's not go full colonizer here, K."
Kalemon turned, caught herself mid-rush, and barked out a laugh that was half-madness, half-exhilaration. "Right. Of course. Not a conquest. More like... immigrant justice. Rebalancing the scales."
"We start," Melodie said firmly, dark eyes sparking with defiance, "by rescuing me."
Kalemon nodded once, decisive and absolute. The fire in her gaze could have lit the drapes aflame. "And then we end with these pointy-eared sadists licking the mud off our boots."
Melodie smirked, placing her hand on her friend’s excited shoulder as she reminisce about genocide. "One revolution at a time, Doc."
Kalemon's grin only widened. She straightened her shoulders, jaw set, the air around her alive with renewed purpose.
For the first time in months, she wasn't just reacting to the world around her.
She wasn't surviving, drifting, or carrying out someone else's orders.
She was planning. Scheming. Melodie had given her a mission—no, a future.
And Kalemon would see it through, even if she had to level kingdoms stone by stone, palace by palace, until it was done.
The chamber door opened without a knock.
Melodie didn't react, but her shoulders stiffened slightly, her spine straightening beneath the loose tunic she'd changed into.
She sat cross-legged on the floor beside the low marble table, foreign Awyan playing cards spread before her like constellations.
Their intricate symbols gleamed faintly in the candlelight.
Two young handmaids sat across from her, their expressions caught between nervous politeness and genuine amusement as Melodie explained the rules of a human card game she was trying to teach them. One giggled softly as she arranged her cards, clearly losing but enjoying herself anyway.
For a fleeting moment, the room had felt almost normal. Almost safe.
But when Malec entered the shift was immediate.
His presence filled the space like a storm crossing the threshold.
Pale tan eyes swept the chamber, cataloging guards, shadows, and handmaids before settling on Melodie with an intensity that pushed everything else aside.
Relief moved across his features, subtle but unmistakable.
Her presence alone was enough to tell him what he needed to know: she was safe, and she had kept her promise to remain.
The handmaids stood quickly, nearly toppling their cards in their haste. They bowed low and darted from the chamber, skirts whispering across the stone as they disappeared under a hush of silence.
Melodie set down her cards and rose slowly, brushing off her trousers. Her face was calm and neutral, but her expression softened when she saw him. “That was fast. I figured council meetings with you lasted at least four hours of yelling.”