them back here? Hell, what if the Banol Kax find them and get inside their heads? They’ll know everything there is to know about us.”
“You think I don’t know that?” All those possibilities and more had kept her awake long into the night, talking it through with herself because there wasn’t anybody else she could use as a sounding board. “But think about it. If Dez orders their execution, he’ll be no better than Scarred-Jaguar, at least in the eyes of the winikin.”
“I don’t think…” But Sven trailed off. “Shit.”
“Exactly. He’ll be worse, even, because Scarred-Jaguar never actually used the death penalty. And you said it yourself—imprisoning them would be a waste of manpower. Worse, it could give them a chance to win over other rebels and stir things up, and we don’t have the time for that.”
“Some sort of stasis spell could work.”
“After you dropped a dozen winikin last night?” she said pointedly, then shook her head. “Even without that reminder of how easy it would be for you guys to overpower any one of us—or, hell, all of us—a stasis spell would come across as an abuse of power.”
“And Rabbit mind-bending them wouldn’t?”
“It’d be different,” she asserted, as she had done fifteen minutes earlier to Dez and Reese. “He’d be stripping them of their memories and implanting a cover story that explains where they’ve been for the past year. The trads will see it as punishment for them to lose their winikin heritage like that; the rebs will think the punishment is them not knowing to defend themselves—or how—when the end comes.”
He shook his head. “I still don’t like it.”
“I don’t see a better answer.” She shook her head as frustrated weariness started to encroach on the bravado she’d been channeling since she got to the royal suite. “If you do, bring it on.”
“Stasis. It’s neater, cleaner, and the winikin will get over it eventually.” He turned to Dez. “I’m taking the job. Which means I get a vote here.”
Fatigue took a backseat fast. “Wait. What job?”
Dez, though, got an ominous spark in his eyes as he zeroed in on Sven. “You’re sure? You’re really in?”
“One hundred percent.” He turned to Cara, and there was an implacable sort of wariness in his eyes as he said, “I hope you won’t hate me for this, and that we can figure out a way to make it work so things will be easier for you, not harder. I respect the hell out of you, both as a woman and as a leader… but everything inside me says that this is the right thing to do.”
“Okay, now you’re scaring me.” And not just a little. Her pulse thudded thickly in her ears and her stomach churned. “What are you talking about?” She turned to Dez, her voice threatening to wobble. “What’s going on here?”
“Things within the winikin are worse than any of us thought,” the king answered. “You’ve got factions within factions and your own people are trying to kill you. Now you’re asking me to give them weapons and autonomy, and let a couple of traitors go free because it’ll make you look like a leader.” He shook his head. “That’s a tough one to swallow, Cara. A fucking tough one.”
“If you were going to say no you would’ve done it already.” She hoped. He wasn’t just playing with her, was he, trying to make some other point she hadn’t gotten yet?
“I’ll give you what you want, on the condition that you accept a Nightkeeper liaison, a mage who will be right beside you every step of the way, helping rather than overseeing, but with veto power over your decisions.”
Cara’s heart stopped. Literally stopped. “A… what?”
“A Nightkeeper liaison.” Dez shook his head in sympathy, but said, “Sorry, that’s the deal. I need to know the winikin are under control, Cara. I can’t have this blowing up in my face. Not now. Trust me; you’re going to want to take the deal.”
This wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. Oh, gods. Her heart had started up again, but it was bumping off rhythm, fluttering against her ribs like it was trapped and trying to break free as the second shoe dropped. Sven had brought up the subject. He had said he would take the job. Which meant he had known about this. Worse, it meant he was the guy. Her liaison.
Oh, hell, no.
She was on her feet without having realized she had stood, though somehow Dez and Sven still seemed to tower over her, their presences expanding well beyond their physical bodies, part of the magic of the magi.
Refusing to feel puny, she balled her hands into fists and glared at the king. “What’s my other option?”
“I’d rather not go there. I hope you’ll take the offer instead.”
“But the politics—”
“Have to be secondary to the success of the war.”
“They…” Damn it. “You’ll be undermining me, crippling me as a leader. Worse, you’ll be running the risk of losing the rebels. We need them, damn it. They’re the younger generation, the fighters.”
“So you’ll find a way to spin it so they stay,” Reese put in. “Make this into a positive, not a negative, maybe even a concession you’ve squeezed out of the king.” That got a grunt out of Dez, making the queen’s lips twitch. She stayed focused on Cara, though, with eyes that weren’t unkind, but said simply, Deal with it.
“Not him.” She turned on Sven, teeth bared. “Not you.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness belied by the smooth shift of his bulky muscles and the aura of leashed wildness that surrounded him. “Think it through. Now that you’re wearing my mark, the winikin are going to put us together in their heads no matter what you say. Rather than trying to ignore it, let’s use it instead.”
It didn’t help that he had a point. “How long have you known this was a possibility?” Tell me you found out this morning, that it was a surprise to you too. Except that she’d been closeted with the king for an hour and Sven had just gotten out of bed. Maybe Carlos told him. Maybe…
“Since right after I came back.”
Fury pounded through her. “Five days ago. He talked to you about being the liaison five days ago, and you didn’t say anything?” Not even after they hooked up, after he’d told her he cared about her. Which made her wonder how, exactly, he defined caring. Was it when he was horny? When things were convenient? What?
“Originally, Dez asked me to take a good, hard look at the winikin right after Aaron’s funeral went so wrong. He was afraid it was an inside job.” When she did a double take, attention caught, he shook his head. “I didn’t see anything that made me think it was… but then again, I didn’t catch wind of what Zane and Lora were up to, either, partly because I didn’t like him to begin with, and partly because I refused to use you or Carlos for information.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But Dez asked me to keep things under wraps.”
Which had to trump her feelings, damn it. But that didn’t make it okay that he’d gone behind her back, or that he and Dez had been making decisions about her winikin without her knowing there was even a discussion going on. And Sven? Gods, she couldn’t work with him on a day-to-day basis. It would be… impossible.
“It’s a good offer,” Dez put in. “What’s more, it’s the only one you’re going to get, so I suggest you take it.”
In other words, she was getting a liaison whether she liked it or not; it was up to her whether it happened smoothly and with a prayer of spinning it to the winikin as a positive, or happened with her kicking and screaming, and making things even worse on the solidarity front.
“We can make it work,” Sven said quietly. “We know how to get along… we just haven’t had much practice over the past bunch of years.” And the damn thing was, he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable with the idea. He was acting like their teaming up was the most logical solution, like it should be on some late-night top-ten list of great ideas, despite their having all but agreed last night that they should steer clear of each other.
“For how long?” she asked, hating that the answer mattered too much. “A week? A month?”
“As long as you need me.” Which wasn’t really an answer, because undoubtedly he’d be the one to decide when that ended.
“I don’t need you. That’s the point.” Go away, she thought almost desperately. The longer you stay, the harder this is going to be. She didn’t want to get used to having him around, because it would only hurt worse when he left. She didn’t want to have him filling the shadow Zane’s absence would leave, didn’t want him beside her at meetings and strategy sessions, didn’t want him going over all her plans, arguing with her, throwing his weight around and making her defend decisions that should’ve been hers alone.… And if a small part of her
