Chapter 4
The Casino’s main hall had been cleared and lit for council.
There were no decorations except the battered oil lanterns hung from the brass brackets where chandeliers used to be.
Every other light came from the glass globes on the side tables or the big iron candelabrum at the hall’s west end, where the windows let in channel wind and the raw smell of sea.
It wasn’t beautiful, but it worked. The old floor shone under the lanterns, bare except for benches and chairs scrounged from Avalon’s hotels and the yacht club.
I took my place at the front, standing behind the single wide table we’d pushed into place as a makeshift podium.
On my left was Gascha, arms folded, her face all business but her floppy ears half-tilted to pick up every sound.
Joy stood close to my right, her hands tucked in the pockets of a faded green shirt, shoulders squared and eyes watching the benches.
In Casey’s absence, she’d stepped up, and I could feel her steadying the room.
Joanne was a step further down the arc, her gaze fixed on the French engineers at the back.
Taylor, William, and Nolan stood half a step behind, silent and attentive, as a support team should.
The benches filled by the minute. Ci Dyn took up the whole right side, some in chairs with others sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Their postures were upright and still, but the ears told the real story, swiveling for every little sound.
The Fatu Hiva women, most of them topless, wearing short skirts, and clustered together by the east wall, whispered among themselves and stole glances at the Shima escapees, who sat in a loose group by the window alcove.
Gerard and Roux, the Frenchmen, had claimed the last row, backs to the wall, arms crossed, watching everything and saying nothing.
Lyubor entered last, her platinum hair lit up by the lanterns, three other elves trailing in her wake.
Two slid onto benches without drama. The third, a younger woman with dark eyes and a braid down her back, planted herself behind the last row, arms crossed over a forest-green vest and jaw tight enough to cut wire.
She didn’t need to say who she spoke for. The room caught it anyway.
Akia sat cross-legged near the wall, writing in a notebook with a pencil nub.
She watched everything and wrote nothing for a full minute, then started sketching a diagram of the table layout, labeling each side by group.
Autumn was nowhere, but I’d seen her in the halls that morning.
She’d smiled and told me she had fairy work to do, and I’d believed her.
When she didn’t show up, I wasn’t concerned.
I let the room get quiet on its own, just a long minute of restless feet and coughs and the sound of the surf through the broken glass. When it got still, I said, “Let’s get started.”
A few heads nodded, and the silence thickened.
“Welcome, everyone. There’s no formal vote tonight,” I said. “Every voice gets heard. I’ll make a decision when I’ve heard enough. That’s the rule for this room.”
Gascha nodded without looking at me. Joanne didn’t blink. The rest just listened.
I started with the subject that had every mind in the room cinched tight for the last day: the status of the mission.
“As of about an hour ago, Emma and Casey’s team are safe,” I said, letting my voice ride low and even.
“There’s a clear wind, the ocean is calm, and their progress is steady.
They are outside all immediate risk. We have reliable contact, and as of now, nothing has changed that. ”
The shift was physical, not just in the air but across the floor.
Shoulders dropped, chins came up, a slow-release tension that left the benches creaking and a few women close to smiling.
Patty, the black-haired Ci Dyn who looked more human than any of them, exhaled through her nose, slow and deep, like she’d been holding her breath since breakfast. Near the back, a human woman rescued from the Shima, I think her name was Morgan, with dark hair wrapped in a red kerchief, muttered what sounded like a prayer, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” a whisper to herself but audible to everyone within a five-bench radius.
I let it run. The collective relief was almost a taste, bitter and warm on the tongue.
When the room settled, I said, “We’ll keep tracking them as they go.
The weather looks good for the next four days.
If that changes, you’ll hear about it here first.” I let my hands rest on the table.
“That’s all we have on the mission status.
If anyone needs to check the log, the board’s updated every morning. ”
I waited. No one said anything.
“We know why the team went,” I said. “We know the risks, too. Some of you signed the list for family,” I nodded to the cluster of Fatu Hiva women, “others for information or a shot at a fresh start. The details are on the board. I won’t repeat them.
But I will clarify for anyone who hasn’t caught the logic of it: Newport’s mage council is hostile to men.
Openly, violently so. Any attempt to send a male into their perimeter would have been a suicide play.
Casey’s team is an answer to that. If you don’t like it, we can talk alternatives after the mission comes home. ”
I heard the first woman clear her throat. “When,” she said, not loud but clear enough to cut. It was Judy Hampton, the one with the sandy blonde hair and the chest that made it impossible for her to hide. Her voice cracked on the word. “When will we know, if any of them—”
“When Casey’s group is close enough to land and secure,” I said. “Then you’ll know. I’ll make sure of it.”
She nodded. Her hair moved like a flag when she did it, but her face was steady.
Next was a voice from the left, almost level with the front table.
“How long will the whole thing take?” Umetsu Misako, the tiny Japanese one with a dark bob and a face like she hadn’t aged a day past high school.
She was more direct, barely waiting for me to finish before she added, “If it goes the way you expect?”
I did the math and made it public. “Depending on the winds, six days at minimum, maybe nine. Longer if there’s trouble.
” I let my eyes move across the benches.
“They know the way. They’re careful, and Emma’s—” I almost said supernatural, but caught myself, “—she’s got every incentive to keep them alive and moving. That’s her pack on board.”
A third voice, a little sharper, cut in from the Ci Dyn group. “If the team is lost? Or if they’re caught?” The speaker was not one of the higher-ranked, but her ears were forward, and her accent had a bite.
“If they’re lost, or if they fail, we regroup. There’s a contingency in place,” I said. “But for now, nothing points to that outcome.”
Joanne, who’d been silent, spoke up without raising her hand. “Everything we know about the council and its rules comes from Taylor. It’s not a bluff. Men aren’t welcome. James made the right call, as hard as it is. There’s no secret way in that anyone knows.”
A few heads nodded, and the room moved closer to consensus.
Joy watched the flow but didn’t say a word. She never did in these meetings unless she had to, but I could feel her tracing every question and answer like she was rehearsing how she’d repeat it to the ones who didn’t make it to the hall.
Gascha’s ears stayed locked forward, her tail stilled against the bench. She was watching the energy of the room, not the words. Her mind ran a commentary on every question, measuring risk and tallying who sounded panicked and who had reason to.
I kept my answers short, and I didn’t elaborate unless they made me.
Most people in the room were satisfied. A few had more to say, but their questions didn’t surface yet. For now, the mission’s status and the logic behind it were on the table and done.
That left space for the rest of it: the unsaid, the mental rush of things people won’t say in front of two hundred others, but can’t keep off the surface of their minds.
Across the benches, I caught the edge of an elven woman’s daydream, not words but a sharp, bright pulse: her own body naked, my hands gripping her, the oddity of a half-elven child in her arms. She wondered if the hair would be white like hers or dark, and how angry her father would be.
The logic in the thought was as strong as the embarrassment.
“He is strong for a human,” the thought went, “and if anyone can seed the future, it should be the strongest.” She almost blushed, but elves rarely betrayed their thoughts on their faces.
It was in the pulse, the microsecond of heat, then a wall of composure again.
Joanne, farther down the table, watched Nolan Roux as he fussed over a loose thread on his sleeve.
“He isn’t James,” her mind said, “but he’s got the patience to do a thing right, and he won’t stop in the middle.
” The mental image of Nolan bending her over a barrel in the dry dock was clear, sharper than any words she’d ever said out loud.
Then her eyes drifted to Teva, who was talking to no one and thinking hard about the next meal she would make, and Joanne’s mind ran a quiet experiment: “Could I get both at once? Would they even want it?” Her mind ran a fast parallel: “I bet an elf would, though. I should ask Lyubor what she thinks.”
The Ci Dyn beside her, a grey-furred girl with cropped ears and a tight, pretty build, had her mind fixed on pups.
Not as an idea, but as a vision: six or seven, tumbling on the Casino floor, some with James’ eyes, some with her ears, all chasing each other and making the air alive with the sound of play.
She wondered if I’d like to have a whole litter, if I’d watch them, if I’d choose a favorite.
The image was clear and bright, and so open that it made my heart pound a little faster. I didn’t show it.