Blinking, unsure what to say, because none of this made sense, she felt him place a soft kiss on her mouth. It lingered, followed by another on her forehead, before he tucked her into his elbow and ordered the doors to be opened.
The small, plain room was crowded, yet heavy silence waited.
All this fuss for nothing but a cramped COM room?
Ancil was there, scowling. The set of his ticking jaw a clear threat. Other faces were familiar to her, Brenya having seen the men at the state dinner. The tense crowd each wore an embroidered coat; each had whatever hair they grew on their heads caught in a tight braid. All of them stared at her. Expectation, judgment, dislike, intrigue.
Brenya had nothing for them. No explanation. No apology.
They deserved nothing from her.
So her attention went elsewhere as Jacques led her to the center of the tight space. She observed communications panels far more advanced than any she’d ever seen. The layout of the instruments was complex, the interconnected workings of the machines outside her forte.
These weren’t like the glorious interworking of a clock. They were not engineering marvels. They were outside of her scope and training. Nothing like the controls of the ship she had stolen, there was no intuitive understanding of what those knobs and consoles might do.
It seemed a strange room for judgment and pomp.
A man cleared his throat. At her side, Jacques tensed in response.
Odd.
Yet it stole her attention away from the communications panel.
“Good evening, Brenya.”
That voice did not belong in that place with those people.
It certainly didn’t need to affect courtesy, as if the Beta who’d spoken possessed any measure of kindness.
Blood running cold at the sight of Ambassador Jules Havel politely nodding her way, Brenya refused to play whatever game this was. Voice cutting, she let him know exactly how she felt. “It is not a good evening.”
It had been one of the worst evenings.
How he had gone from starved, unwashed prisoner who’d had nothing but a bucket to relieve himself in, to a polished and finely dressed free man who appeared to command the room did not compute.
Looking upon him, knowing that he did not forgive, that his bitterness cost Annette and her child a chance for life, she saw nothing but a living amalgamation of her disappointment with the world. And Brenya let him know it when honey eyes met shocking blue.
With a dip of his head, it seemed the Ambassador agreed. “I know you are tired, and I concede that you are correct. It has not been a good evening for some.”
“That is enough, Ambassador,” Jacques growled in warning. “Brenya Perin has been brought as was requested.”
Smirking, Jules stared right at her. The unwavering void of him yawning open, as if he mentally flicked a finger for her to approach.
She did not.
Rooted, she stared right back at him, seeing all the way right into the emptiness of such a man.
It was from that place he spoke, honest in his evil. “Specific events of the evening, and fruitless attempts at negotiation by the leadership of Bernard Dome, have done nothing to spare you this moment.”
“I never asked you to spare me.” She had asked him to save Annette and her baby. “I begged you to spare my people. I offered—”
“Be quiet.” It was as if his order had come from inside her and not from the male’s lips. She jerked back from the force of it, pulling at the collar of her dress as if he’d stolen her breath.
Turning his horrible, burning gaze away, Ambassador Jules Havel spoke to the screens. “Chancellor Shepherd of Greth Dome, husband to Queen Svana, may I introduce my mate.”
How had Brenya not noticed what waited on the screens? Their display of a massive male practically blotting out the sun behind him. That there shouldn’t even be sun, because it was the middle of the night. That the insignia on the wall was in a language Brenya could not read, and that the man himself had similar black marks edging from his collar and up his neck as one Jules Havel.
She knew who this was. Titles meant nothing. Four words were enough to name him. “You destroyed Thólos Dome.”
Though his projection towered over the party due to the height of the screens, Brenya was certain he would tower over them in person as well. And he seemed pleased with her statement, though it didn’t show in his reaction. It was in the way he held her gaze—that he allowed her the time to look upon him and absorb all that could be measured from a projection. That she might memorize the color of the walls behind him. The simple lines of a functional desk so unlike the filigreed furnishings of Central. There was a lack of embellishment or ornamentation in the man’s clothes.