Rhian

When I first met Michael, I decided straightaway I’d like him. I could’ve listened to the rumours calling him bossy and a bit of a whore. I could’ve listened because they were true. But Michael was a charming son-of-a-bitch. Good-natured. Clever. He laughed when I nearly broke his nose. It was a safer time around when we first met. There wasn’t a whole lot for Amali soldiers to do apart from train. Some were shipped around the territories as escorts and guards for the wealthy and whatnot. But the Assembly weren’t about to waste a man like Michael on a bunch of nobles or some shady organizations. They gave him the best training, and the best education, raising him right up for something important and dangerous. I had no choice but to eventually come to terms with Michael dying. I’d already dreamed up the ten thousand ways it could happen. I’d already practiced living as though it had, but he was worth it. Michael Reider made life less boring.

“Michael, I’m so bloody bored,” I said. “What good is having my punishment revoked if I haven’t got anywhere to go?”

To set the record straight, having my landlock lifted was a surprising side-effect of winning the trial after that whole business with the asylum.

“You could clean your room. There’s three days, at least.”

Clean was a lot like silence. Fuck silence.

“So, I’m not going back,” Michael said. “To Endica.”

“Can’t say I’m disappointed, but why not?”

Michael couldn’t say much more than that. Our professional lives came with a lot of secrecy, and that was all right. ‘Course, I’d always ask. Bits and pieces, fodder for my conspiracies and all. But never mind.

Knocks are a lot like footsteps. You can tell a lot about the way a person knocks, and this particular knocker had been standing around a while. Their raps were quick, quiet, almost like they were hoping they could take them back. (They couldn’t.)

I wasn’t planning on opening the door, so Michael did it for me.

It was Adeline, and she was looking a lot like the time I caught Michael with his hands in his pants.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

“Goddess,” she said. “It cannot be.”

“Oh, it is,” Michael said. “But you can call me Michael.”

I probably groaned.

Michael stepped aside, and I waved Adeline inside.

“Good seeing you, lass. What can we do you for?”

“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “And to give you something.”

Adeline trotted her way across the room, random doohickey in hand. She dodged all my filthy whatnots along the way.

I liked free things a lot more than I hated thank-yous.

Turned out, the circular doohickey bestowed upon me was one helluva free thing. Timepiece on one side, compass on the other. When Adeline popped it open on its hinges, I looked back at myself in a pair of compact mirrors.

She wasn’t kidding around. It was practical. I like practical.

“Right,” I said, turning the doohickey over in my hands. “That’s thoughtful of you.”

“Wait, where’s my present?” Michael asked.

“I wasn’t aware you’d be here, Commander Reider, Sir, otherwise I would have—”

“Ignore him,” I said.

“No, no. Otherwise you would have what?” Michael winked, and the lass turned about six shades of pink.

I remember feeling a bit embarrassed for the both of them.

It wasn’t long afore there were more knocks on the door—louder, more confident.

I couldn’t be bothered answering that time, either. Michael was more than happy to, and this time it was a messenger. He had a message. Imagine that.

“Rhian Sinclair?”

“Coming, coming.” I didn’t bother dodging my filthy whatnots.

I should have been nicer to the man who was about to make my dreams come true. Soon as I saw it, I knew what the messenger held in his hands. Orders. My chance to get off that stinking isle and back to work. I snatched the papers up right quick, squiggled an “S” in the ledger, and closed the door.

I’d barely broken the seal on the envelope when it happened again.

Knock, knock, knock.

This time, I swung the door wide open. “Amalia’s ancient arsehole, what now?”

It was still the messenger. He had another message.

“Michael Reider?”

Look, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since I first started writing, and I reckon this is where the story really ought to start.