33. Eros

I watchAtlas tumble over internal ideas about my sister. This keeps expanding.

"I will contact them." He nods, but he doesn't move, and we all stare. "Now?"

"That's perfect." Sunshine smiles at Atlas. I don't want her to, but he clamps his eyes shut and nods.

"Do you have a terminal? I don't have my block. I've been using an older?—"

"Is this yours?" Forrest pulls a block out of the bag.

Atlas frowns. "Yes." His eyes flick up and down over the Stele governor. He doesn't ask him if it was scanned. The Stele governor didn't do it, but I did. It was the first one we did, so I could show them how to use the equipment. I didn't think we would find anything on it, and we didn't. He might not be much of a king, but he's also not hiding anything.

His fingers fly over his block. "There. I've sent a message to the Kraken king that I would like to talk to him. I haven't dispatched the sub yet anyway. We've been busy with other things."

"Thank you," Michio says, walking beside the curtained window. "And now, about bringing in the Braesen governor..."

"Yes, well, that's not something we can do quickly, is it? Nothing in government is the same as battle. It's slow and plodding."

Holter stands. "Yet it is still a battle and must be fought and planned out, line by line, with speed."

"Yes, I suppose you're right." Atlas gestures to Michio and Forrest. "I'll remove the two of you from the missing list. It's up to you to say where you were." He moves to the door when it opens. "And Nico is where?"

I tighten my core. We have to tell Atlas. One, it is illegal to lie to the king. Not that I haven't done it before. But he's going to help Marina. And two, if we are going to bring down the Braesen, he's going to need all the information. "Nico's gone to Braesen to talk to someone, a former crewmate."

"He went to Braesen during the lockdown. Using one of these?" He pulls the missing disc from his pocket. I'm off my game. I hadn't noticed he had taken it.

"Yes," I answer.

"And who is this crewmate?"

"Teneric Course," Holter answers. "We talked about Teneric the other night, when you were asleep," he tells Annabelle.

"The governor's brother or cousin? I don't know his family very well," Atlas says.

"Brother, the oldest one," says Holter. "Lifetime military male. He served with us on board the Centauri. Nico presented him with his thirty-year pin before he left the service."

Atlas focuses on Holter. "A real old timer, then."

"He was a good soldier. He had a fluke injury retire him from service in the Viking Battle." Holter stares at the king.

"Not even calling it by name anymore, Hero of Hestert?tten?"

Holter's eyes widen. If I've learned anything about my pod mate in the short time we've been together, it's that if he never heard that title again in his lifetime, it would be too soon. "He was a good warrior. A noble male of few words."

"So nothing like his brother, then."

"Correct," Holter grunts.

"All right then. I'll wait. I've got something I can do now that I have my block back." His eyes drop to the bag on the floor next to Forrest. "And I'll be taking that, thank you very much." He takes the bag and carefully empties it onto the table. "Damn, how many are in here?"

"Forty-five. There were fifty-three before we removed ours and yours."

I cock my head. "Have you done the calculations on how many were in the chamber that day?"

"Eighty, so twenty-seven missing. The missing twenty-seven might be of importance. Or if the original thief didn't take them, it could be because they didn't think there was anything to gain from those blocks. Either because the owners are innocent or because they are working with them." Atlas stacks the blocks and tablets back in the bag.

"Or because he simply didn't get around to it," Sunshine says.

"The other possibility is they didn't bring one. If I had damning information on my tech, I wouldn't take it. The governor of Braesen's block isn't here. It's one of the reasons we compiled a list," I say.

"A list?" Atlas rearranges the blocks in the bag.

"Yes, of those we saw but whose blocks aren't here." I pull up my tablet, showing him the list of those whose blocks we thought might be missing.

Atlas grunts and pulls up a list of his own. "There. I've sent you the official attendance and locker list."

I smirk. A few minutes later, everyone gathers around my tablet.

Atlas grunts. "Well, that doesn't tell us much, now does it? It's all over the board from definitely guilty of something to I would more likely suspect my grand dame of robbery."

"I've met your grand dame. She's terrifying. That doesn't say much for the other names on the list." Eros smirks.

Atlas's block dings. His forehead furrows as he looks at it. "Not the Kraken king." He walks to the other side of the kitchen. "Give me a minute. You should work on this list. I think it holds the clues for the answers we need." He's focused on his block.

"He's right," I say. "I don't know many on this list. Not in detail. Let's split it and do some work on it. Sunshine and I can work together?—"

"I'll work on my own," my brother says. That doesn't surprise me. The fact that he was working with Forrest at all is a little shocking. I doubt he'll ever mate. He likes being by himself. In fact, most days I assume he would have preferred to have been an only child.

"I'll work with you, Michio." The stern look on Castor's face says he's not going to take no for an answer.

"Fine." Michio moves over to Castor.

"Holter and I will make a good team," Forrest says.

Holter's eyes widen at me. Yeah, I'm going to pay for this later, but I don't care. Any second I can work with Sunshine on anything makes the day a heck of a lot better.

I divide the list into thirds. "Want to work in the bedroom?" I ask Sunshine.

"No," Holter barks.

"Fine. We'll take the library." I take her hand and help her off the sofa. "Let's go work together in the other room. Do you have your fancy block? Let me have it."

She hands it to me. A few punches of my tablet, and I have her block unlocked to its full potential again from its throttled state.

"Let's go." I wiggle my eyebrows at her.

"Keep the door open," Holter shouts.

"It's going to get too noisy." I shut the door with as much of a solid click as the panel will allow.

"We're going to work, Eros." Sunshine has her fists on her hips, and when she stands like that, all authoritative and demanding, it makes me forget about anything but her.

"Sure we are. But first I'm going to kiss you."

"Eros," she growls and cocks her head.

"Sunshine." I cock my head right back at her. "Give me your lips and we can get to work."

"Fine." Her hand wraps around my neck, and our lips clash together. Every brush of her lips is like the first time for me. I will never get enough of this mermaid. I am completely addicted to everything about her.

When she pulls her head back, I'm drunk. "You taste so good."

"I taste like canned fish stew."

"Never."

She scoffs.

"You're fresh fish stew."

"I don't know which is worse, but thank you." She laughs. "Now work. But before we start the list, I have someone else I want to look into."

"Who's that, Sunshine?"

"Calvin Degree, I want to know where he lives and if we can go talk to him."

A quick search finds an address in Braesen. They have crazy names for their apartments. Goblin Shark is the name of his apartment.

"Goblin Shark? Sounds spooky."

"Yeah, weirdly, there's not much else about him. But I think we're right. We need to pay Calvin a visit."

She's disappointed, and I am too. "All right, then which of the names are we going to investigate first?"

"How about this merman from Seolfor? I don't know anything about him." And after thirty minutes, I decide I'm better off than I thought. I know I was reckless in my youth and am paying for it now, but if I could go back and do things over, I wouldn't have taken any of the safe paths this snooze-fest took. I need a good, long, twenty-hour nap after reading up about him.

"There is no way this male has anything to do with anything. Good or bad." Sunshine purses her lips.

"Agreed. Next up is a Vitrom male. This should be more interesting."

"There's nothing here either," Sunshine says after reading his entire military record.

"But I learned something."

"What?" Sunshine's eyebrows raise.

"That not every Vitrom male is evil."

"You didn't really think they were, did you?"

"Of course not." I nod convincingly to her. "Okay, here's one, a Glyden clerk."

"Okay, let's do it."

Like we've been doing, I start with the schooling while she works on the trail of employment records. I can't help taking stolen glances at her over my tablet.

"You're paying attention, right? Just because someone is Glyden or Zaffiro doesn't make them innocent."

"Yes, I'm paying attention." I stare at her a little longer.

She makes a face at me and points to my tablet. "Eros, to your tablet, not me."

"You didn't mention what the letter said."

"No, I guess I didn't. I want Nico and Holter to be able to read it in private. It's hard enough knowing that their mother was assassinated, but knowing that she suspected it was coming? I want them to hear it in her words, not mine. But she loved them, and that's the best part. Having the written proof. I mean, I have memories of my mother, and I know she loved me. But I would give anything for a letter like this. Then again, my mother didn't die because of some large conspiracy but rather a drunk driver at a stoplight. So I suppose she had no reason to stop and tell me in writing what she felt. She thought she had years left—my whole life. I've spent weeks, maybe a few months full of hours, wondering what she would have done about my uncle. If she would have stood up to him where my dad didn't. If she would have found a way to extract Marlee and Blair from his clutches and get him off the farm, away from us all. But we'll never know." She shakes her head. "We need to work."

"I am working."

"Right, well, prove it. What have you learned about him so far?"

"He's boring like all the others."

"What's his name?"

And I draw a blank. "Windsow Winters."

She glances at her block and back at me. "Windsow Winters? I've been looking at Winsor Winters."

"That's what I said." I smile at her over the top of my tablet. I know this is important, and I don't mean to be flippant.

"It's not what you said. No, back at it." Her knee bumps the side of my leg under my uncle's small old table. My dick is instantly hard. "I didn't mean to do that. It's not some signal for you to slack off."

"All right, Sunshine. I do like it when you get all bossy." I dig back into Winsor's childhood. And it's not a great one. His parents had only two children. They were never awarded any geminae, which was a pretty good sign that things weren't all flowering anemones and pink coral around the pod. In fact, after dear Winsor's birth, two of his fathers died. The other two seem to have had a stable relationship with work. And when he wasn't even in secondary school, his mother died as well from an accident where she was working near the shield.

I look up, and Sunshine has a shocked look on her face. "What do you have?" I ask.

"It's not good. His levels are barely high enough to hold most jobs. He's bounced around with a lot of manual labor jobs. Though now he has the best job he's ever had. Omada driver for long-range public transport. He's been there a few months. Why was he even there?"

"His childhood sucked rotten shrimp shells."

"This is the kind of male that could easily be bought."

I scroll through why he would even have had an invitation. "Found it. One of his deceased fathers was the cousin to the current governor."

"That's a minimal tie at best to be invited to Veneratia, don't you think? By that standard, the whole city could be sitting in the gallery of the Maelstrom."

"Indeed, but still, I think we have a suspect."

Sunshine pulls her chair closer to the table. "But that doesn't mean we can stop here. We need to keep looking at the rest of the names."

"Agreed."

We're on the second-to-last name when the door alarm on my tablet rings.

"It's Nico."

"Nico!" Sunshine rushes out of the library into the living room.

"Let me unlock and open the front door, Sunshine."

Atlas comes in from the kitchen as Nico steps into the apartment. Sunshine throws her arms around him and kisses his cheek. He pulls her into his side.

"You went to talk to an old crew member who you think had access to something on the Braesen?" Atlas goes right at it. But then, why shouldn't he? The time for subtleties is over.

Nico's eyes narrow at the group of us. "Yes. Teneric Course. Haden's eldest brother. He had a lot to say, but he didn't know everything. There's still more that I have no idea about. But basically, he said his brother asked him to steal tech from the lockers. Teneric refused, and he assumes his cousin agreed since he's on the deceased list." Nico glares at Atlas, his face stoic. "And..."

"There's more?" Atlas leans in, arching an eyebrow.

"Yes. Teneric confirmed the Braesen are researching mermaid fertility on their own. In a secret lab under their main dome." Nico crosses his arms over his chest.

"These are the same labs you were talking about earlier?"

We all nod.

Atlas purses his lips. "Not sharing scientific advancement is against the law; but conspiracy to steal from other governors and bring down the government center will need to be dealt with first. This is all madness. It's like a trident through the heart. A dome I've thought of as a friend and ally is keeping secrets. Do you have anything else to add?"

"I would need to know what I'm adding to."

"He knows everything we knew since I last saw you." But not actually everything. "But there's more." I turn to Sunshine.

Her eyes widen. "You're sure?"

"What exactly did you fail to mention before?" Atlas stands to his full height.

"I found notebooks from Nico's mother, Richeal Callis. She was a scientist working with others in the science domes."

Atlas nods. "I didn't know that."

"Yes, she left a series of notebooks written in a code that a regular block can't analyze. But with some tech from Eros's uncle, I was able to find a note that she wrote in the later section. Hold on, I'll go get it, but I want Nico and Holter to read it first. Can you come into the library with me?"