Nudging Fate

by E. J. Russell

  Her eyes flew open and she bared her teeth as if she was about to take a chunk out of him. “What?” she shrieked. “You can’t—”

  “Madam.” Talus appeared at Andy’s shoulder. “You have been given your marching orders. You should leave while your dignity is still intact.” He paused, one eyebrow quirking up in a tink of metal. “Mostly.”

  She whirled on Andy, poking at his chest with one scarlet nail—which now more resembled a claw. “This is your doing. You interfered. I’m reporting you to Odin, you—”

  “That’s enough,” Con barked. “This is my decision, and my decision alone.”

  She snorted. “If you believe that, you’re stupider than I thought.”

  “That will do.” Talus took a step toward her. “You should retreat now before I am required to… take steps.”

  “Fine.” She tossed her hair one last time and marched out the door, then turned after she was in the hallway, a safe distance from Talus. “But you, you revolting, interfering aitcher—you haven’t heard the last of this. And neither have you, Rey, you—”

  “A threat against the prince, before witnesses!” Talus’s lips drew back in his battle grimace. “It is my bounden duty to administer justice.”

  Con lurched forward and grabbed Talus’s arm. “Talus. This isn’t the Middle Ages, and you’re not Artegall’s executioner anymore.” Con caught Andy’s wide-eyed gaze. “Quick. Get her back to her quarters and out of the Interstices as fast as you can.”

  Andy nodded, gesturing for Kjersti to precede him. “If you’ll come with me?”

  She shot him a scathing glare. “As if I’d go anywhere with you. I’ll see myself out.” She strode down the hall like a Valkyrie off to the battlefield.

  Andy smiled apologetically as he edged out of the room. “I’ll make sure she leaves. There’s a protocol to follow. Paperwork. That sort of thing.”

  “You shouldn’t have to interact with her after she was so nasty to you. What was that about?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, you know. Nine Worlds politics. What can I say? But it’s my job to make sure this contest runs by the rules, so I have to go.”

  Talus saluted, fist to chest. “I beg you will allow me to handle this, Sir Anders. I will rend the disrespectful wench—”

  “No!” Con and Andy shouted simultaneously.

  Andy patted Talus’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Really. I’ve got this. I’ll see you in the morning, Your Highness. Um….” He glanced helplessly at the staff, who all stood uncertainly next to the table set for two. “Enjoy your dinner?”

  Con started to reach for Andy and froze. I have no right. Yet…. “Won’t you stay and join me? I’d hate for this marvelous food to go to waste.”

  Andy bit his lip. “I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I don’t think it would be appropriate. I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning, though, to set you and Hashim off on your date. Have a nice evening.”

  Chapter Nine

  ANDY tapped his earpiece as he sprinted down the hallway toward the stairwell. “Smith. Brooke. I need you in our suite. Now.”

  “On my way,” Brooke responded. No answer from Smith, but he almost never left the suite since he bunked there. He probably had his mouth full of partially singed meat.

  What a nightmare. Andy had been sure Kjersti was about to out him as a norn to the prince. Maybe he ought to confess and defuse future time bombs—the candidate pool still had two citizens of the Nine Worlds who held the same anti-norn bias as Kjersti.

  Why why why had he allowed Mikos to talk him into taking point on this booking? Although Kjersti’s accusations were false—if you didn’t count the demise of several vases and the death and untold destruction of Forrest’s flower arrangements—the chances that anyone would believe Andy hadn’t nudged the prince’s fate just a little bit were nil if the prince’s eventual choice was unexpected.

  He frowned as he barreled down the stairs. Did the prince have such a history with Kjersti that she would have been his preferred choice if he hadn’t been forced into this artificial mating game? Rey hadn’t looked as if he was sorry when he kicked her to the curb, but that didn’t always mean anything.

  On the other hand, hadn’t Johan said something similar about being Rey’s obvious choice? Or was that Nils? Odin’s beard, he was losing it. Being able to remember these kinds of details was what made him good at his job. If he couldn’t maintain that….

  When he burst into the suite, Brooke was sitting in Smith’s chair, peering at the monitors. “Where’s Smith?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s out charbroiling an elk or something. What’s up?”

  “Kjersti has just been officially voted out of the candidate pool by Prince Rey.”

  Brooke’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Already? He’s not required to start culling the herd until after he’s had two dates with everyone.”

  “Well, apparently he had such a swell time with her today that he decided to fast-track her.”

  “The spa staff will be happy about that. She wasn’t the easiest guest to please.”

  “She’ll be even harder to please now that she’s in a raging snit—not that I’d ever be able to do anything to suit her. Could you….” He gestured helplessly toward the door.

  “Escort her out the Intergate? You bet. I’ll have the housekeeping staff pack up her luggage for later delivery.” She stood up.

  “Better take a couple of the security trolls with you. She’s showing distinct berserker tendencies. It’s not a good look on her.”

  “Got it.” She whisked out of the room.

  Andy trudged into the sitting room and collapsed at his desk. He had about a gazillion forms to fill out to register the prince’s decision and Kjersti’s exit. The documentation for anything out of the ordinary was a nightmare, including affidavits by all the EO staff that they hadn’t unduly interfered with anyone’s decision. That “unduly” was a gift from the gods, considering Andy and Brooke had flat-out perpetrated fraud, and implicated the rest of the staff by their silence. But nobody could say that the EO staff had instigated the first crisis. That was all Johan’s fault, with a little help from Tal—

  He bolted upright. “Crap!” He’d forgotten to file Johan’s official disqualification too.

  “So much for sleeping tonight.” Although lack of sleep was the least of his regrets. As he’d bolted from the prince’s suite, he’d entertained a vague notion—okay, not so vague—of returning and offering to conduct a post-rejection debrief over the dinner-for-two. If Smith had been here to expedite the paperwork, Andy would have probably done it too, no matter how ill-advised it was for his own feelings.

  I don’t care. He was upset. Ignoring a niggle of guilt, he tapped his earpiece in Smith’s call sequence. “Smith? Report?”

  Still nothing. Andy frowned, removing his earpiece to make sure it was still functioning. He’d never known Smith to be off-station, but he supposed there was a first time for everything. Technically, the prince’s date with Kjersti was supposed to continue over the next three hours, and would have been monitored by the waitstaff. If anyone was due a break, it was Smith.

  To heck with it. He’d avoid the temptation of dinner, but he’d finish the paperwork—he was good at his job, damn it—and then, if it wasn’t too late, he’d stop by and wish the prince good night.

  That was only polite after all.

  THE food was as exquisite as all the meals had been—at least Con assumed it was. He could barely force himself to take a bite, and Talus, of course, didn’t eat at all, so the chef’s efforts were wasted this evening.

  “Your Highness,” Talus said as the last of the servers wheeled their nearly untouched carts out of the room, “you should have eaten something.”

  “No appetite.” He sat on the edge of the sofa, propping his elbows on his knees, and dropped his head into his hands. “Oak and thorn, Talus, why didn’t Rey tell me about her? ‘We have history,’ he says, but clearly the kind of history is far more extensive tha
n I knew.” He jerked his head up, staring at Talus’s impassive face in horror. “Goddess, will it be the same with all the candidates? Will each of them expect to be the Chosen One?”

  “I couldn’t say, Your Highness.”

  “Please stop calling me that.”

  “Master Conall, then. His Highness has not been… discreet in the past, nor particularly discriminating. His choices are unfortunately coming home to roost.”

  “Yes, but they’re roosting on me, so Rey’s not learning any salutary lessons from them, is he?” Con leaped up from the sofa and paced to the windows, but the view of the lovely garden didn’t calm him tonight. “Aside from his behavior to me, he’s not treating the candidates well. Can’t you fetch him back in the name of justice?”

  “I cannot. The scales are not sufficiently tipped. For although his actions are not fair to you, the Queen’s are not fair to him. You freely agreed to the masquerade, and that spell, a spell of blood and family, overrules my authority, since I have neither.”

  Con turned. Was that sorrow in Talus’s voice? It was hard to tell, but his normal matter-of-fact tone was decidedly off. “There are other kinds of family than those we’re born into, and blood doesn’t equal affection. Look at Gloriana. Rey is her son, but I don’t recall a single time she’s shown the least hint that she loves him. For our entire lives, she’s seemed to resent him nearly as much as she resents me. This whole spectacle—the reasons for it and its results—are a perfect example of that.”

  “Perhaps. But it’s difficult for anyone to feel affection for someone from whom they fear retribution.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  Talus inclined his head. “That is because you are at heart a just and moral man, Master Conall. You have no fear that my ancient mandate will require me to separate your head from your body.”

  Con was surprised into a laugh. “I should hope not. But you’re not the hand of justice anymore. You haven’t been for centuries. I think you’ve earned the right to rest.”

  “I may be obsolete, but my nature hasn’t changed.”

  Con strode across the room and placed his hand on Talus’s shoulder, the chill of his metal skin detectible through the plain linen shirt he wore for convention’s sake. “Friends are never obsolete.”

  “Thank you, Master Conall. But perhaps you may change your mind when you see this.”

  Talus reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a wooden box, its lid carved with the oak leaf seal of the Faerie Queen. He opened it with a flick of his thumb. Inside, nestled in black velvet, was a ring—a heavy gold band set with a cabochon ruby the size of a wren’s egg.

  “The coronation ring?” Con recoiled, lacing his fingers behind his back as if the blasted thing might leap onto his hand. Considering it was older than Faerie itself, who knew what it might take into its ensorcelled head to do. “Why bring it here?”

  “Her Majesty instructed me to deliver it to you. If I can do nothing else in these days, I can at least serve as a messenger. Should I fail in an assigned task, I would be subject to my own punishment.”

  “She told you to deliver it to Rey, and I’m not him.”

  “She told me to deliver it to the prince, and as long as you wear his guise and perform his duties, you are the prince, Master Conall, whether you will or no.”

  “Shite,” Con muttered. “Well, at least close the bloody box. You know only the true prince can put it on. If I so much as touch it, I could dissolve like that impostor lady from your questing days.”

  “The false Florimel. Yes, that was quite a scene.” A sigh rattle Talus’s frame. “I must confess there are times I miss those days, even though they were a trifle chaotic.”

  “A trifle? Talus, you slaughtered whole castles full of people.”

  “Yes, but they were bad people.”

  “Well, nevertheless, I don’t want my disintegration to be a nostalgic bit of fun for you. We need to contact Rey and get him here now.”

  “How do you propose we do that when we don’t know where he is? Neither of us is a mage, to scry him out in a bowl of spring water.”

  “No,” Con said, a smile tugging his lips for the first time in hours, “but we have something just as good.”

  He strode across the room to where the cell phone sat on the sideboard. Andy had shown him how to return a call, and since Rey was so far the only one who had called him, it was easy to find the listing.

  He took a deep relieved breath when the ringing stopped after three peals and the quality of the sound changed.

  “Hello, this is Rey.”

  Con grinned at Talus. “Rey, it’s—”

  “Leave a message after the beep.”

  Con held the phone away from his ear and stared at it as a tiny cheep sounded. “What—Leave a message with whom?”

  Talus peered at the numbers counting up on the screen. “Normally you would leave the message with me, or a palace page. What message would you want me to convey?”

  “I’d want you to tell him to get his arse back before I’m forced to put on the damn coronation ring. Although since I’d disintegrate as soon as it touched my finger, at least I wouldn’t have to marry one of his disgruntled ex-lovers. If he—”

  The phone emitted another cheep and the numbers froze. Wonderful. He had no illusions about Rey suddenly showing up to rescue him from tomorrow’s date. Con loved his half brother, but knew Rey’s personality nearly as well as he knew his own. Self-sacrifice was not in his nature.

  Con hoped Rey hadn’t gone past the point he’d never gone before and decided that sacrificing Con was a reasonable price to pay for his own freedom.

  Chapter Ten

  WARMTH bathed his face, and Andy opened his crusty eyes, then squinted in the sunlight pouring in through the open curtains. “Ow!” He peeled his cheek off the keyboard, blinking blearily at his watch.

  “Odin’s beard! Seven fifty-three?” How had that happened? No wonder his neck was stiff and his mouth tasted like a raven’s nest. He needed to get cleaned up and consume at least a liter of coffee before he could face the day.

  He staggered out of the sitting room. Smith wasn’t at his desk, but his bedroom door was closed, which it hadn’t been last night. Should I text him? But why? Although Smith would be setting up the Intergate hops for the prince’s date with Hashim this morning—a personal tour of the Mt. Etna forge, conducted by Hephaestus himself—that wouldn’t be happening until noon. Might as well let him rest.

  In the meantime, Andy could get himself organized and check in with the kitchen. Lunch for a fae prince and an ifrit was a challenge that might strain even Chef’s abilities.

  He rushed into the hall and took the stairs up to his modest room on the third floor. Shower first. Then coffee. He stopped. Nope. Coffee first. Then shower.

  He called room service and ordered a carafe while he raided his closet for fresh clothes. As he pulled out a clean Enchanted Occasions blazer, he caught sight of the velvet tunic he’d worn the night of his dinner with Rey. It was exactly the color of his eyes. Had Rey noticed? He’d seemed to admire Andy, but the main thing, the perfect thing, about that evening was the way Rey had treated him—like someone worthy of interest, of trust. He hadn’t once looked at Andy as if he were an unexploded bomb.

  Although maybe he should have. The memory of the vases sacrificed to avoid the kiss under the tree made Andy cringe. They’d died for nothing too—the kiss had still happened later, and it had been just as devastating as Andy had feared.

  But whatever. With the real candidates back on deck—potential mates with the proper pedigrees to marry a prince—Andy needed to get over his crush and get on with his job.

  After he showered, shaved (not that he needed it, but it was the principle of the thing), donned his EO uniform, and consumed an additional two cups of black coffee, he felt ready to greet the day.

  As long as the day doesn’t include any more upchucking candidates.

  He checked his watch again. Eig
ht twenty-seven. Not bad. He was scheduled to meet with Hashim at eight thirty this morning to go over the agenda for the date. He could make it if he sprinted. Andy patted his pocket to be sure he had the correct interface talismans to allow Hashim and the prince access to Mt. Etna.

  He zoomed out his room and took the stairs two at a time, showing up outside Hashim’s door barely out of breath. My cardio workouts are good for something. As he raised his hand to knock, though, a series of muffled bangs and thumps sounded from inside the room.

  Hashim was in one of the fireproof rooms—only logical with any of the fire-natured races, but nothing prevented damage from good old room trashing and furniture flinging. He hadn’t gotten the impression Hashim was that volatile—cue the groans from the audience on that one—but apparently this cosmic dating game was bringing out the worst in everyone, Andy included.

  He took a deep breath and knocked. “Hashim. It’s Andy. From Enchanted Occasions.”

  The noise inside stopped, but nobody came to the door. Andy knocked again. “Hashim? I need to talk to you about today’s schedule. Could you open the door please?”

  For a moment, Andy thought nothing would happen. Then he heard halting footsteps approach over the tile floor. Yeah, no carpet or wood allowed in the fire suites.

  Andy braced himself, hoping that Smith’s witch-doctor or doctor-witch had some good burn remedies, just in case. But when Hashim opened the door, he didn’t look angry. He looked… wrecked, russet hair drooping into his face instead of dancing around his head like flames. His coal-black eyes were red-rimmed, and he smelled like a campfire that had been extinguished with a barrel full of water.

  “Hashim, what’s wrong?”

  He turned and trudged back to his sitting room where his suitcases lay open on the floor. “I am withdrawing from the contest.”

  Andy hurried inside, closing the door behind him. “But why? Is this because of the problem with the elixir? I’m so sorry about that. The perpetrator has been punished, I promise you, and Enchanted Occasions will provide recompense.” They’d bill it back to Johan, by the terms of the do-no-harm clause in the contract, and Andy for one would be more than happy to triple the charge.