Page 14 of Alien Devil’s Crown

“Two things.” I’d carried the words for six years; they came out worn smooth.

“A seat at this table until the Conclave burns. Not asset, not cargo, not the woman in the guest cell who gets consulted. A seat. I hear what you hear, I argue when you’re wrong, and I’m standing inside whatever room it ends in. That’s the first.”

“And the second.”

“Soren.” It still hurt to say his name aloud after six years of mostly thinking it.

“If the vault has his service record, the real one, you will publish it. Publicly, on every channel the evidence of the coup goes out on, so that every being who learns what the Conclave did learns in the same breath the name of the guardsman who stood his post. He died loyal in front of the whole galaxy’s enemies. He gets to have done it in front of the whole galaxy.”

I stopped there. I was not giving him the rest of that history yet.

Rylos looked at me a long moment, red eyes steady. He considered both requests: the seat and Soren’s name.

“Done,” he said. He looked down the table. “You all heard her. Those are our terms.”

The pairs left together. When even the boar had been escorted out, Rylos asked me to stay. I didn’t mind being asked.

He reached to the end of the table and picked up the interpreter’s collar Brevan had built for my cover: soft black leather, a throat mic hidden under the seam, the clasp set at the nape.

“Brevan wants the fit checked before he finalizes the biometric profile.”

“Necessary?”

His eyes narrowed. “Entirely.”

I took the collar and turned my back to him. “Then fit it.”

He went very still behind me. I lifted my hair and bared the nape of my neck for him. He had spent two hours testing me. I could test him once.

He stepped in. Heat reached me before his hands did. One thumb steadied the leather at my throat while his fingers found the clasp, careful enough to be insulting. His breath touched the skin below my ear. The collar sat snug, not tight, and his hand remained at my nape one beat after the mechanism clicked.

“Do all Vinduthi run this hot?” I asked.

“No.”

The answer arrived too fast. I turned inside the narrow space he’d left and found him closer than the careful interval he usually kept, red eyes lowered to my mouth, fangs pressing visibly against a jaw he had locked.

“So it’s personal.”

“The collar fits.” His voice had dropped half a register.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“It was the only question I could answer.”

I touched two fingers to the leather where his thumb had been. “Then I’ll wait for the rest of the report.”

I walked out wearing the collar. I could still feel the heat from his hand at my neck. Behind me, the Architect stayed at the table without answering the question I’d actually asked.

RYLOS

By the second day of planning, the war room was buried in overlays, cover identities, and route options. I started assigning jobs.

“Brevan. You’re the front door.”

“I’m always the front door.” He had the delegation legend spread across a quarter of the table, ten identities deep already.

“Verratt Combine trade mission, tariff petition in hand, appointment secured through a lobbying office with a Verratt client file seeded last night. Directorate of Transit Compliance, public floor nine: a technical presentation on sealed freight containers. That gets ten bodies and the equipment cases through the public checkpoint. The blind corridor outside their demonstration suite is where we stop following the paperwork.