by V. St. Clair
She couldn’t help it. As applause broke out, she made eye contact with Topher. He was breathtaking in his dark suit, looking stoically back at her and clapping along with the rest. She blinked and looked away from him before it became obvious she was staring.
People immediately began funneling through the doors at the back of the room to proceed to a second ballroom for the food and festivities. Jessamine looked around at the displays at the far side of the room, which showed hordes of people on the lawns and in the streets of downtown Silveria, already cheering and partying.
Well, at least I can say there was a big turnout at my wedding.
Her sister ran up to hug her and tell her she did splendidly and that the event was going perfectly so far. Jessamine appreciated the support, especially because Shellina was terrible at lying and would have blabbed about how poorly she had done if she really thought it true.
Given the number of people in the room, it took surprisingly little time to move everyone to the second ballroom, though she detected more of Shellina’s party planning at work. If her sister applied herself to troop movements as much as she did to party logistics, they would never lose a battle again.
I should suggest it to her someday…
Shellina and Topher preceded them into the next room, where applause broke out once more as people sat at tables full of covered dishes, waiting to eat. Jessamine allowed Darius to lead her onto the dance floor, since their job would be to dance first and eat later, and they made their way through a generically appropriate song she didn’t know the words to.
The father-daughter and mother-son dances were omitted entirely, since Jessamine refused to let any other man stand in place of her father for the event and it would have been odd to have Darius and his mother dancing while she sat on the sidelines, so instead they went to their seats at the high table to begin dinner.
Shellina sat between her and Topher, which made conversation nearly impossible given the general noise in the room, and Jessamine continued eating when the two of them rose to dance with the other family and close friends of her and Darius.
It’s tradition, Jessamine told herself as Topher guided her sister effortlessly around the dance floor. It doesn’t mean he likes her. Shellina laughed at something he said and Jessamine blinked and turned to a small pile of congratulatory notes beneath her plate. It was tradition for people close to the bride to leave business-card-sized notes with advice or congratulations on it to be read at dinner.
She flipped the first over and read the brief note from Hanna, telling her what a remarkable woman she had grown into and nearly causing her to tear up. The next was from Shellina, congratulating her on her marriage. Setting them to the side, she grabbed a third card and flipped it over, narrowing her eyebrows when she saw it had been typed and not hand-written.
Tick tock. Your days are numbered.
Jessamine blinked and carefully set the card down on top of the others, making an effort to conceal her surprise as she scanned the room. No one looked particularly interested in her, though she didn’t really expect the culprit to be standing nearby, watching her read their threatening note.
Not too many people could have had access to my notes before they came here. It would have to be someone fairly close to her, someone with access…
Definitely a Major.
“We can dance again, if you’d like,” Darius offered, startling her. Jessamine had already forgotten he was sitting beside her.
“Oh—actually I wanted to go say hello to people and thank them for coming. Maybe later?”
Darius looked vaguely disappointed but said, “Of course. Should I join you?”
“If we split up we can cover more ground,” she offered pragmatically. “We should try to network with as many people as possible while we have everyone in one place.”
“Right, of course.” Darius nodded, rising to his feet. “Later, then?”
“Yes, we’ll dance later.” Jessamine forced a smile, which seemed to cheer him slightly, and then walked off in the opposite direction.
Now committed to greeting as many people as possible, she smiled and approached Assemblyman Harold and his family.
“I’m glad your family could attend.” She shook everyone’s hand warmly, including Harold’s six-year old daughter, who looked flabbergasted at being greeted by the Vicereine.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the worlds, Vicereine,” he assured her. “Spectacular affair, by the way; the Vicerina has really outdone herself on this one. It’ll be the talk of the city for years to come.”
“Oh—yes, Shellina always does excellent work when it comes to planning events. I’m thinking of making her a general strategist for our troops,” Jessamine joked.
“HA!” Harold laughed, slapping a knee and startling his wife. “She’s been dying to makeover the uniforms for years now. We’d have the best-dressed troops of any planet in the Alliance, and we would always be on time to each engagement.”
Jessamine smiled and turned to Harold’s daughter.
“How about you?” she asked politely. “Do you want to be a soldier when you grow up?”
The girl floundered for a moment under the pressure of answering the Vicereine, glancing to her mother and father for a cue before responding.
“I—I want to serve the Augenspire and maintain order and civility, like my father before me,” she replied carefully.
Jessamine frowned, wondering what the girl would say if she hadn’t been coached mercilessly by her parents on the socially-correct response.
Feeling rebellious, Jessamine said, “Oh, I see. Personally, I wanted to be a space captain when I was your age. I always pretended I could find the secret to getting us off of Elaria, and I would travel the universe making contact with other colonized planets.”
Shocked, the girl released her mother’s hand and gave Jessamine her full attention.
“You did? But you were already a Vicerina…”
Jessamine shrugged. “If I had really felt strongly against inheriting the Viceroyalty I could have passed it to my sister and gone on to do something else. For a while I wanted to be an elarium miner—the caves sounded fascinating to me. Then it was a terraformer, then a botanist, and then I realized I could be all of those things as a Vicerina and stuck with it instead.”
“What do you mean? I thought you just did meetings and fighting all day.”
“Ha! Sometimes it feels that way to me, too. But if I want to tour the elarium mines, all I have to do is ask. If I want to study botany then classes will be made available to me. If we had a way to get off of this planet, I could commission a rocket to take me into space as well. It’s all about choices.”
The girl seemed to consider this very seriously for a moment and then admitted, “I want to be a singer and a dancer, like the ones who put on plays at the Tetra. My mom and dad took me to see a play there last month and it was amazing.”
Jessamine smiled and said, “I’m sure if you put your mind to it you will make it happen. Let me know if you ever need my help and I’ll see what I can do.” She winked at the girl and shook hands with her once more before moving on to the next group.
There were thousands of people moving throughout the space, and fifteen minutes elapsed in which Jessamine didn’t see a single person she knew, which was equal parts thrilling and alarming. She saw Topher dance once more with Shellina, and later he looked like he was arguing with Hanna about something, but then she lost sight of him.
He still owes me a dance.
Jessamine was trying to work her way subtly towards him without making it appear he was her target, though she kept getting pulled into conversations with other well-wishers and brown-nosers along the way.
“Vicereine,” a female voice said quietly, though for some reason Jessamine heard it clearly through all the other conversation around her. She turned quickly, startled to see Risa Vorhees staring timidly back at her, fidgeting with the emblem around her neck and ignoring the people nearby
who stared at her.
“Risa!” Jessamine exclaimed, not because she was excited to see her as much as she was pleasantly surprised to find Gifted people at her wedding.
“Um, sorry to bother you on your wedding day, but I don’t really see you very often and I just—I wanted to apologize for being rude to you before.” She barely spoke above a whisper, faced flushed in embarrassment.
This wasn’t at all what Jessamine had been expecting from Risa, who seemed determined to hate her since before they even met.
“Oh—then consider it a thing of the past. I’m glad to see my orders are actually being followed and some Gifted are being allowed inside. Do you know any of the others in here?”
Risa looked around to make sure they weren’t being overheard.
“A few. Most of us had to stay in the outdoor party.”
Jessamine scowled and said, “There is still so much work to do to unite our people.”
Still trying to make amends for her earlier behavior, Risa said, “This is more progress than we’ve seen in centuries. We—well, most of us—know that change doesn’t happen overnight, but we believe you’ll keep your word and make things better for us.”
If I can avoid the assassins long enough. Jessamine glanced around the room, wondering which of the people in it was still trying to kill her.
Jessamine thanked her and turned to see if Topher was still near the dance floor, but she wasn’t able to find him in the crowd. Frowning, she began to walk around in search of him, deciding enough time had passed that it wouldn’t be inappropriate for her to seek him out for a dance.
After fifteen minutes of searching she found Gareth instead, almost walking right past him because he looked so strange out of uniform. She wondered how many of her Majors and Minors she had mistaken similarly, and whether the ones who were working against her would use it to their advantage tonight.
“Gareth, there you are. I almost didn’t recognize you in a suit,” she approached him, relieved at the sight of a friendly face in the wake of her chilling thought.
“Reya says I clean up well, though I personally think I look more dashing in my heavies. They give me broader shoulders.”
“They give everyone broader shoulders,” Jessamine laughed. “Even Reya looks like a Titan with her armor on. I’m just glad I ran into you in all this chaos.”
“It’s no coincidence. A few of us have been watching you all night.”
“What? Really?” Jessamine was momentarily diverted from her task of finding Topher.
“Of course. We split the room into sections before the reception started and we each have an assigned area. If you wander through my space, I’m supposed to stay inconspicuously nearby in case any trouble arises and you need help. Lorna’s been tailing you for forty-five minutes straight; you stayed in her area forever.”
“How did I miss Lorna for so long?” Jessamine immediately began looking around in all directions, but couldn’t see her. Lorna was tall and beautiful and usually immediately identifiable in any room of people.
“You’ve had other things on your mind, and there are a lot of people here to get lost in. That’s why we’ve taken on the task of being your eyes and ears for you tonight, so you can rest easy and dance.”
“Well, I certainly appreciate you all taking it upon yourselves to watch out for me. I’ve actually been a little unnerved tonight by the number of people I don’t know and how hard it is to recognize people I do know in the middle of this horde. And me in a useless silk dress, of all things.”
Gareth grinned and said, “From what I hear, flaunting scars is becoming all the rage now that you’ve set the trend. Talk about flipping a giant middle-finger at the terrorists who couldn’t take you out.”
“I’d think you all would be horrified at me prodding the hornet’s nest of people who want me killed.”
“Oh I’m horrified, to be sure. But personally, I admire your nerve, so the extra effort on our part is worth it.”
“Since you’re here, and presumably have a way to communicate with the others, do you know where Topher is? He owes me a dance, but I can’t seem to find him.”
Gareth’s warm expression closed off quite suddenly and he said, “Uh, he had to step out.”
“Step out?” Jessamine asked, confused. “You mean he went outside?”
“I mean he left,” Gareth said bluntly, looking like he would rather be anywhere else on the planet than breaking this news to her.
Jessamine was so stunned, she wasn’t sure she actually understood his words.
“He…left?” she asked softly.
“Don’t worry, Excellency, he wasn’t part of the security detail since we knew he’d be tied to the Vicerina most of the night,” Gareth rattled off nervously, looking desperate to escape. “So you’re still covered from a—”
Jessamine wasn’t even listening to him anymore. Her heart seemed to have fallen straight into her stomach like a block of lead. The one thing she had been looking forward to in this whole ghastly day—the one thing that was supposed to distract her from the absence of her mother, her father, the people trying to kill her, and the pressure of ruling an entire planet…and he just left?
Tears came to her eyes on a wave of sadness, the force of it threatening to crush her. She blinked to force them back, taking a step to one side to steady herself.
“I’m sorry,” Gareth mumbled. “I didn’t talk to him, so I’m not sure why he left. I just heard he was tired and wanted to get some rest.”
The wave of emotion was choking her, the effort of fighting it becoming unbearable.
I can’t fall to pieces in front of all these people…
“Get—me—out of here,” she spoke through the tightness in her throat, her voice sounding weak, pleading.
Gareth raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth just as someone took her arm from behind and said, “There you are. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see you again tonight.”
Jessamine turned to face her husband, trying frantically to wipe the emotion from her face and from her heart.
“Darius,” she managed to get the word out calmly enough, though her face must have still showed something of her feelings because he narrowed his eyebrows and said, “Are you alright?”
Jessamine looked back at Gareth, only to find that he had disappeared. She would have to manage this on her own.
“Yes—I’m fine,” she assured Darius. “I have a headache, probably from all these hair ornaments, but Gareth brought me some medicine.”
“Oh, I wondered why he looked so worried.” Darius looked relieved to have a simple explanation. “I’m glad to see our Majors are so caring.”
Our Majors. The thought struck her bizarrely, though she knew she needed to get used to the thought of Darius as a Viceregal.
He isn’t evil or sinister, she assured herself. It’s just new. You’ll get used to it in time.
“Well, I was going to ask you to dance,” he continued. “But if you’re not feeling up to it…?” he let the question hang in the space between them. Jessamine was acutely aware of all the eyes on her, of people in this very audience who might be watching for signs of weakness, for something they could exploit.
“I’m beginning to feel better already,” she insisted, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. “Let’s dance.”
She took his hand, relieved at how calm she sounded as they stepped onto the dance floor, determined not to let her eyes stray from his face. If she let herself look at the crowd she would doubtless just search for Topher, and it would make her miserable all over again when she couldn’t find him.
She barely pushed down the thought of him as Darius touched a hand to her waist, guiding her in a smooth rhythm.
“You know, when I heard you were wearing a backless dress I wasn’t sure what to think,” he said. “But the scars actually aren’t as bad as I thought they would be. The surgeons did a good job at minimizing them.”
Jessamine’s smile didn’t falte
r as rage flared up inside of her.
“I would have worn a backless dress if they were a hundred times worse,” she assured him. “I am not ashamed of my scars.”
He looked slightly stunned at her take on things, some of the arrogant, irritating Darius she had loathed from the beginning of their acquaintance making itself visible again.
“Most women want to look pretty at their wedding.”
“Most men have brown hair.”
“What?” he asked in confusion.
“Sorry, I thought we were taking turns making stupid generalizations about entire groups of people,” she rattled off sweetly. Darius’ cheeks flushed in annoyance and his grip on her waist tightened slightly.
Before they could exchange any further barbs, someone approached them and said, “Excellency?”
“Reya,” Jessamine turned to her, abruptly releasing Darius and ending their dance, desperate for escape.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but something urgent has come up that you need to know about.”
Darius made to follow them, but Reya cut him off with a, “Vicereine’s ears only, I’m afraid.”
He frowned down at her and said, “I’m a Viceregal.”
“By marriage, yes. Jessamine is the ruler of Elaria, and this is a top-secret matter which I do not currently have authorization to share with you. If she changes your security clearances, I will, of course, abide by them.”
Darius looked expectantly at Jessamine as though she would chastise her Major on the spot and insist he be told everything. It was with bitter satisfaction that she said, “I will evaluate your security clearance at a later date. For now, come, Major, and report.”
They walked away from an indignant Darius, moving out of immediate earshot before stopping to talk.
“There isn’t really anything urgent going on,” Reya confessed immediately. “Gareth called me and said you required an extraction.”
