Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aiden wanted to slip out to the patio to sit next to Evelyn.
He wanted to distract her from her pain, coax out one of her breathtaking smiles and enjoy the night sky together.
But he knew better than to intrude on her privacy when she’d just found out her agency had, once again, been ripped away from her.
Besides, answers lay inside this living room.
“I get why you wanted the princess off ice,” Veselko said, pretending to remove dirt from under his nails with the tip of his knife. He never had dirty fingernails. “And to an extent I get why you hired us. But there have to be better-equipped teams out there.”
“I don’t get it,” Nannette said. “You know where there are other blood relations. Presumably, they were easier to get to if you have an existing network on the ground.”
“Two reasons,” Corvinia said, raising fingers in the air as she ticked off her points.
“One — everyone on the ground has completely compromised their credibility. If I want the public to get pissed enough to rise up and support a change in power, the person in the seat can’t be one who’s been participating as Emil’s willing puppet.
Two — we get enough eyes on the reality of how badly Emil has violated the terms of the treaty he signed with Evelyn, the GPC will have to get off their asses and intervene. ”
Aiden snorted at this. He had never seen the GPC do a damn thing to help in any ongoing planetary conflict that didn’t involve strongly worded letters and a new shipment of medical equipment to stave off criticism.
Vinnie turned back to Veselko “I agree, there are more. . . efficient crews. I could have hired the Witch. The Twins.” Aiden wasn’t sure the woman picked up the nearly imperceptible twitch of Veselko’s eye at the name, but she had to see him automatically shift to rub his shoulder.
“They’re pricier, but they get results.”
“At the cost of whomever they have to kill or crush on the way,” Lillian said. “Ruthless efficiency tends to be just that.”
“Your crew understands subtlety,” Corvinia said with a nod, before she took another sip from her mug.
“Subtlety can’t be the only reason you picked us,” Aiden said.
He had the distinct impression that Corvinia was debating how much of her plan to unveil to them.
“You can lay your cards on the table, and we can try to help you, or you can pay up, and we’ll be out of your hair.
” He hoped he delivered the lie well. There was no way he’d let Evelyn deal with this alone.
He’d have to be dragged out of the house kicking and screaming.
She sighed and put the mug back on the coffee table. “Since Emil took control, I’ve been slowly forming a team of people with a wide array of extrasensory talents. One of them is . . .” She cleared her throat. Clearly uncomfortable, her next words were close to a whisper. “A precognitive.”
Aiden’s stomach dropped. He’d known from the beginning that things had been off with this stars-forsaken gig, but he’d ignored his gut in favor of the big payday.
Of all the possible motivating factors Vinnie had been operating under, a precognitive spy feeding her information had not made the top ten.
My mistake for trying to stay grounded in reality.
“You hired us because a fortune teller told you to?” Aiden asked, disbelief tinging his every word.
“Precogs aren’t fortune tellers,” Corvinia said, a bit defensively. “They don’t use parlor tricks or run cons. They can’t get blanket predictions about the future.”
“Sounds like a lonely talent to have,” Nannette said. “No one likes a know-it-all.”
“It can be extremely isolating. If one cannot control it, flashes of the future can be extremely random and upsetting, especially for children.”
“And your precognitive asset saw us rescuing Evelyn?” Aiden wanted to be clear on this point.
Corvinia nodded. “He did. He didn’t know who you were but he gave me a picture-perfect description of you, Aiden. He described you to me a week after our first meeting. Once I knew it was really possible and not just a pipe dream, I activated my agents on Bauder to get the plans for the station.”
“Why all the secrecy?” Lillian asked.
“I’m a creature of habit,” Corvinia said with a shrug, “and obscurity is a hard one to break. I was told that messing about with foreknowledge of the future can sometimes skew the results. You may wind up in the same place but with a worse path to the outcome than you could have had. I wanted Evelyn safe.”
“If she doesn’t want to be a part of your revolution, are you really going to let her go?” Veselko asked.
“She was always my favorite niece, you know. She was so deeply unhappy on Tanalia. Never got the chance to embrace her talent. Just wanted to be lost in a book.” Corvinia went to run her hand through her hair, then seemed to remember it was in a fancy updo and adjusted her tie instead.
“She’ll be in danger if she comes to fight or if she decides to take off.
If she comes back, I think we can plan to keep her reasonably safe, if not completely happy.
I don’t know how happy she will be on the run for the rest of her life. Or Emil’s.”
Aiden noted that she had managed to completely avoid answering the question.
“Reasonably safe?” Elenor asked. “Define reasonably? The girl’s going to have a huge target on her back.”
“They’ll want her alive,” Tariel said. “Alive and well enough to Amplify.”
“Not good enough,” Aiden said. A flash of something like pride, or maybe satisfaction, crossed Corvinia’s face, but it was gone again in an instant.
Never play cards with this woman.
“It’s not ideal, but alive is generally considered better than dead,” Corvinia said.
“They want to keep her as a fucking battery! She’s not a magical juice box they can suck on whenever they need a boost.” Aiden wanted to hit something. He almost went and punched the wall, but he didn’t want to leave a hole in Evelyn’s plaster.
“And when my plan works, they’ll never have the opportunity to use her or anyone like her ever again.”
“You seem confident,” Tariel said. “Is that born of precognition or bravado?”
“What do you think?” Corvinia asked. Tariel rolled his eyes.
“Let’s hear it then,” Veronique said. Aiden had almost forgotten about her down on the floor. She reached across the space and commandeered the mug from Corvinia, taking a swig out of it before handing it to Aiden. “Sip. You look like steam’s about to come out of your ears.”
“It’s pretty simple, really. I want to use videos of Evelyn to spark revolutionary outrage.
A combination of security footage, archived shots of the planet, and taped speech.
When the people on the ground are sufficiently riled and causing enough of a diversion for the guards Bauder has positioned on planet, the soldiers I have stationed in Emil’s Tanalian bases take control.
We subdue the soldiers he’s counting on for reinforcements and send Tanalian loyalists in their place.
Then we just slide her into the Senate, she asserts control of the government, and we have our planet back. ”
“Oh, super simple.” Aiden sneered. “How does she assert control, Vinnie? Ask politely?”
“She has to confirm her lineage with a simple blood test in the Senate chambers and publicly declare her lack of confidence in Hubert’s ability to rule. It’s only been done once before, and the tech is woefully outdated, but it’s all quite quick. Emergency measures are meant to be swift,” she said.
“Are the people willing to fight?” Tariel asked.
“My folks on the ground say that the time is right. This isn’t the Tanalia their grandparents tell them about at night. They want the planet they were supposed to inherit.”
“And Emil is supposed to, what, not send out more reinforcements from Bauder as soon as he realizes what’s happening?” Aiden asked.
“He’s installed a very sophisticated shield around the planet — all his planetary assets, colonies. I’ve secured a worm to inject into the system to keep his ships from crossing the borders he’s so helpfully erected for us.”
“I see about a dozen holes in this plan,” Nannette said.
“Broad strokes.”
“You’re being awfully forthright,” Lillian said. “Don’t loose lips sink ships?”
“She wants us to help,” Aiden said, eyes narrowed.
He saw all Vinnie’s pieces moving across his mental chessboard.
Even if they didn’t have every detail of her plan, she had neatly stacked the deck in favor of Tanalian freedom.
Cause planetary chaos, light a dozen fires at once, and slide in the new monarch while the military was too busy trying to save its own ass.
The only piece she hadn’t secured was Evelyn.
“Veronique to coach Evelyn through the videos. Lillian to hack them into the system. The rest of us to transport her back and keep her under the radar until the time is right. Kill some time picking up some weapons, supplies. Correct?”
Another reason not to hire Anika Kahn’s crew. They don’t have our skillset.
He almost laughed trying to imagine Ivan trying to direct Evelyn through a propaganda ad.
Corvinia nodded. “There were many reasons your crew was the logical one to go with. My man just confirmed my intuition.”
“Never been approached to work a political coup before,” Veselko said. “Could be interesting.”
“We’re gonna have to marinate on this, Vinnie,” Lillian said, rising from the loveseat. “This is a big fucking ask.”
“I’ll make it worth your while. You know I’m good for it. A century of compound interest has given me quite the war chest.”
“Speaking of expenses.” Elenor rose from the loveseat and reached into her blazer pocket, pulling out a stack of receipts bound together with a thick rubber band. She set the papers on the coffee table. “Had to get your girl some clothes and such.”
Corvinia nodded at the receipts. “Another reason I’m glad to have hired you for this job. The Witch’s crew would have just chucked her in a cell for a week.”
“Evelyn’s a nice girl. We’re very fond of her. She deserves better than to be a pawn or a prize,” Elenor said.
“I agree.”
Aiden watched as the rest of the crew took Elenor’s declaration to be their exit line. They stood and walked to the door. He stayed perched on the arm of the sofa, staring out the sliding glass door at Evelyn.
“She may have embraced her talent more than you realize, Vinnie. She’s strong as hell. Supercharged my telekinesis in a crazy way. We wouldn’t have escaped the medivessel if it weren’t for her.”
Corvinia gave him a sad smile. “Aiden, the royals all have two talents. That’s what sets them apart. Evelyn’s never minded helping others. It’s what she does. It’s her other talent that she’s never embraced.”
Aiden felt like she’d splashed him with a bucket of cold water.
All the time he’d spent thinking about Evelyn over the past few days — her dry sense of humor, her subtle, ever present strength, the intelligence that gleamed from her sad hazel eyes — he’d completely glossed over the fact that the royals were dual talents.
The importance Emil had placed on her Amplification had overshadowed that fact.
Thinking back, he remembered that she had mentioned it at dinner, but had brushed past it so quickly, he had assumed it was unimportant.
Psychic talents were a dime a dozen on Tanalia.
What would she possibly refuse to embrace?