Chapter 13 #3
Tristen looked at Evra. “And you?”
“I am not wanted by any law enforcement agency.”
Tristen did not look terribly reassured. He returned his attention to Nyx. “You didn’t mention that two-thirds of your friends are criminals. Me even leaving Earth puts me in enough danger, and you want me to travel with people who are already wanted by the Council?”
Nyx gave him her full attention. “Literally everything we are going to do is illegal, and you already kill people without compunction. We aren’t going to be traveling by traceable means, and Kaden and Morgen have been successfully staying off the radar for a long time.
If your mother’s on their planet, going there to find her won’t be a problem because their mother isn’t going to turn them in. ”
“Their mother?” Tristen asked in confusion, looking between Kaden and Morgen.
“He’s adopted,” Morgen and Nyx said in unison, pointing at Kaden.
“Okay.” Tristen rubbed at his temples. “And your mother is going to stop everyone else from alerting the authorities how, exactly?”
“I’m now technically only at risk of being arrested if I’m found off my planet,” Morgen said.
“Since when?” Nyx asked.
“Since my mother has been waging legal warfare ever since this mess started, and was finally more or less successful a few months ago. I was never charged with anything initially, only grounded from riding the ley lines. They don’t have any proof that I actually did that.”
“Have you forgotten how we met?” Nyx asked. “They sent me to track you down, and then after the Arkadia incident I had to lie to them and claim you escaped after I apprehended you. That kind of confirms you were there.”
“Or, as Mother eloquently argued on my behalf, it proves you thought you apprehended me, but as you’d never met me before, you could have been mistaken.”
“And the Council just said ‘Okay, great point, your son is cleared of all charges’?”
“Not exactly. But I am rather well-liked back home, and with the number of people willing to claim I’d been there the whole time—one of them being the Station Guardian willing to claim I hadn’t gone through his Station—the case was becoming a public annoyance for them.
Raveras is an important trade partner for the Council, and Mother is at the helm of that trade.
“Between that and, I suspect, a certain someone else’s involvement behind the scenes, the Council dropped the charges.
Against me and Maruca, since there isn’t actually a law against going to Arkadia without permission, and there’s only a law against leaving it if you’ve been legally sentenced there, which she wasn’t.
“Unfortunately, they never reversed my grounding sentence, which means I still can’t travel the ley lines, but since we won’t be returning by conventional means, that won’t be an issue.”
“And your mother couldn’t do anything for you?” Tristen asked Kaden.
He finally deigned to add a single syllable to the conversation. “No.”
“What the hell did you steal?”
Kaden shrugged.
“Allegedly steal,” Nyx said.
“It is not only theft he is charged with,” Evra said.
“He is wanted for breaking into the All Council’s vault and high theft of an undisclosed artifact of significant importance, yes.
But also desertion from the Enforcer ranks, engineering the only mass prison break in Arkadia’s history—destroying access to a ‘vital incarceration resource’ in the process—and instigating civil war on Kyvren by freeing its exiled people. ”
Nyx blinked. She’d never actually heard all his charges listed out before. She also hadn’t realized they’d dumped Kyvren’s civil war on his lap.
“That’s…a lot,” Tristen said.
“And it’s not true,” Nyx argued.
“Some of it is true,” Evra said.
Nyx glared at her. “It’s called context and nuance. And,” she said, this time to Tristen, “if you recall, I told you he”—she pointed at Kaden—“is the reason Tobi has the closest thing to a normal life he can have.”
Tristen looked at Evra.
“That,” the said grudgingly, “is true.”
Tristen stared longingly at the whiskey bottle but didn’t reach for it. “You’re positive it’s not going to be a problem?” he asked Nyx.
“It won’t be a problem,” Kaden said. “Because I’m not going to Raveras.”
“Oh, you most definitely are,” Morgen argued. “Mother wants to see you, and since we have her”—he pointed at Nyx—“there’s no reason you can’t get on and off planet without being seen, so it won’t cause any issues.”
Kaden gave him a look that said, in no uncertain terms, that he was not going. This sparked a counter look on Morgen’s face that Nyx had never seen before. It was determined and unyielding and looked out of place on him.
“Kaden,” Morgen said clearly. “You are going home. You are going to let Mother see that you are, in fact, actually alive and that Maruca and I have not been lying to her for years about your continued existence to spare her feelings. You will do this of your own volition or so help me I will tie you up and drag you there.”
Kaden didn’t look like he liked it. But he didn’t argue any further.