Page 112 of Smuggler's Beauty

Play it all the way through.

Corrie would give her the advice she’d parroted to Nannette yesterday. It was one of the better tools she’d equipped Evelyn with as a child. It was now looking like one of the only ones she could employ until her feet touched back down on Tanalian soil.

Her time on theRising Dawnwas coming to an end. She could feel it in her bones. In a matter of hours, they’d be enacting the next phase of Corvinia’s plan.

It hurt her heart to think about the slow eradication of everything that made Tanalia home, but it also sparked a perverse sense of pride in her that the people were finally willing to push back against the slow press of Emil’s authoritarianism.

If they failed, she didn’t think she could live with the consequences. Wouldn’t. A cool acceptance flowed over her, the knowledge that she wouldn’t be returning to that medivessel ever again.

If she borrowed some of Aiden’s borderline delusional optimism and believed that the plan would work, then what? She’d walk into the Senate and activate the device that wouldconfirm her eligibility to enact the clause. Fine. That was easy to figure out.

Imagining everything after that made her skin crawl. Evelyn knew her father’s days were filled with meetings, mornings spent negotiating petty squabbles and signing off on fund distributions. Afternoons off-site, Amplifying the field or mind that needed the most help that day. Evenings were for his wife. Hubert Alpertti defended this sacred time fiercely, but even his insistence that it not be encroached upon was regularly tested.

Her sisters had both devoted most of their time to the maintenance of the planet’s needs, their own passions relegated to bi-monthly weekends, their spouses infinitely patient.

Dread pressed down on her as she thought of her future life on Tanalia.

She needed to pivot. Evelyn could see herself never getting out of bed again if she stayed trapped in this mindset. She’d spent plenty of time thinking about how she didn’t want her life to look. What was the point of saving the planet if she couldn’t run it in a way that allowed her to maintain a shred of sanity?

A way that let her get the things she wanted. A free Tanalia. A life lived absent of the shame in her inherent skills that had been baked into her for decades. Aiden.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Aiden had spentthe last hour organizing supplies for the trip down to the planet. Satisfied that the jump ship was as stocked for the coming mission as it was going to get, he glanced at the time display on the view screen. Lillian had programmed them all with a running countdown to their departure for Tanalian airspace.

He poked his head into his quarters and heard the shower running. Noting that the painkillers and the coffee were missing from the bedside table, he opted to let Evelyn steep in the shower alone. He doubted getting railed with a hangover was a super pleasant activity and knew her well enough to know this was a wound she’d prefer to lick alone. Stomach grumbling, he made his way to the kitchen.

Veselko was humming to himself, an upbeat earworm they’d picked up from Evelyn’s media collection that Aiden recognized. He was chopping vegetables, making sure the prep for dinner was finished well before anyone would come into the kitchen. He liked repetitive tasks like this. Chopping carrots. Knitting. Anything that let his body relax into a motion that would allowhis mind to wander through a problem. The mundane version of Aiden’s own affinity for spinning objects in midair.

Aiden watched as Veselko scraped chopped carrots into a bowl and started on an onion. Not wanting to startle the man when he held a knife — he’d only made that mistake once; luckily they’d managed to reattach the fingertip seamlessly, medical adhesives and nanotechnology were always worth the money spent in such cases — Aiden cleared his throat.

“What are you prepping for, a potluck?”

His friend grinned and shrugged as he started on the onion.

“Mirepoix goes in everything, Aiden. It can’t hurt to have it on hand.”

Aiden shook his head as he opened the door of the fridge. He extracted a bottle of soda lodged behind a tower of small containers and cracked the seal. He’d always appreciated Veselko’s streak of optimism. Aiden couldn’t count the number of times his friend had reassured him that things would work out.

If coming home to an abusive father every day hadn’t shaken that faith out of the man, Aiden didn’t know what would. Then again, things did work out for him there, too. When Aiden and Veselko became friends at eleven, somehow the elder Fedorov’s knees both wound up broken the day after Elenor had taken Veselko home for the first time.

She refused to answer how that could have happened. “Must be clumsy,” was all she’d say, and then change the subject, or invite Veselko to stay for supper or to visit the colony on Sirius Seven for the summer with them.

So maybe he had a point, after all. Things did always work out for him, eventually. Even when everything seemed to be going wrong — like winding up with several hundred yards of expensive alien wool — he just smiled and kept plodding along tosee what fate would spit out next, convinced it would be for the best.

“Uh, so you know how you get space anxiety? What’s that like? Because I have a bad feeling I can’t shake, and I don’t know if I need to find an antacid or if I just need to relax about tomorrow.”

Aiden did a slow blink. He recapped the soda bottle and pulled out a chair. “I take it you have some misgivings about this plan.”

“I mean, as far as plans go? I don’t know that it’s any worse than any other plan we’ve committed to. Half the time, they consist of you or Veronique putting on some sort of disguise and walking into someplace with a snooty attitude that gets people to leave you alone, lest you start shrieking for a manager.” He delivered the last few words in a shrill imitation of an upper-class matron.

Aiden leaned back in his chair, balancing on only the back two legs. “Never underestimate how much folks don’t want to deal with difficult people.”

“I don’t. And I see the point of pretending to be press, to get Evelyn’s actions in front of as many eyes as possible,” he said, sliding the chopped onions into the bowl with the carrots. “I just can’t let go of the feeling that something’s going to go wrong.”

“It complicates things trying to keep Evelyn’s actions completely above board. A more stacked deck would calm my nerves a hell of a lot,” Aiden said. He wobbled back and forth on the chair. “Letting Vinnie do all the shady stuff while we keep the optics on Evelyn pure as driven snow is uncomfortable for all of us.”

“At least I’m not the only one, then,” Veselko said. He found a lid for the cut vegetables and slung the bowl into the refrigeration unit. The bowl fit just fine if he angled it and propped up one half on a bottle of ketchup. Aiden was alwaysamazed at the manner in which Veselko managed to arrange items without anything toppling over.