“Yes, yes.” Caleb brushed aside such matters with an imperious wave. “I’m sure Dr. Strange had many awful predictions for your future,” he said, calling Riccard Streng, Harrison’s spy master, by an old nickname. “I meant your next meeting.” Above the dark lenses, Caleb’s eyebrows waggled suggestively.

Which seemed at odds with the next event on Julian’s schedule. “I have a few hours before my meeting with Erik Sandoval-Groell. Whatever it is he wishes to speak to me about. I think he bullied his way onto my calendar after Harrison’s people shut the prince’s door on him. Is he here early?”

Caleb reached up with his free hand and lowered his sunglasses to the tip of his nose, peering over their upper rim. His hazel eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, but still sharp.

“No one named ‘Erik’ looks this good, Jules. And even if she is a handful—by all reports I’ve read, anyway—gender swapping her name does not appear to be among her faults.”

Jules? Julian stood.

Oh no.

Caleb smiled toothily. “First time I’ve met her, though I was in little condition to hold a long conversation. Father might pop a blood vessel when he learns she’s here.”

He might at that. Which was just one of many reasons Caleb enjoyed this. Julian glared at his cousin, made a show of straightening out the sleeves on his thick sweater, plucked the pilling from his cuffs. “Where is she?”

“Wandering the common room,” Caleb said. But he said it to Julian’s back, as he was already striding for the balcony’s French doors. “Do give her my best.”

Julian would give the woman something, all right. But damned if he could think of what, yet. The headache he had felt coming on after two hours with Riccard Streng now pounded in his temples. And he felt a stirring deep in his gut, hollowing him out. Reminding him of the vacant, sick feeling he’d had when Harrison spent those thirty long minutes berating Julian as he might a small child.

Seven years. As fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

She waited in the common room, all right. Kicking around like a caged animal. Testing the edge of every piece of furniture with the toe of her boot and leaning in at every window as if seeking an escape. Julian paused on the open stairs, leaning on the rail. Not yet noticed. Or ignored. He watched her toy with a table lamp. Nervously flicking it on and off, until the light bulb suddenly burned out with a flash and a fizz.

Typical.

“Calamity Kell.”

Her back still toward him, Julian saw her shoulders hitch with a silent laugh. “Don’t start with that again, Jules.”

She turned, and there was no mistaking the Nagelring’s “darling rogue” from the class of 3129 (and 3130, thanks to her suspension). The same gunslinger’s stance. The doe-brown eyes full of life and laughter, and curly, hazelnut hair highlighted (today) with golden tips. Callandre Kell wore leather boots and pants, and a baby-doll T showed under the unzipped leather jacket. Riding clothes. Julian’s sharp eyes found her full-face helmet sitting on the sideboard near the chalet’s large doors.

She was stunning.

She was trouble.

“I heard that you got married,” he said, pacing himself slowly down the stairs, “to a mercenary captain.”

Callandre nodded. “I did.” Shrugged. “Didn’t take.” A mischievous glint passed behind her eyes. “And you? No one to catch your eye yet? I hear things about a Sandra Fenlon.”

Julian shrugged. With Callandre, it spoke volumes he felt certain. “They all pale next to you, Calamity.”

This time she laughed out loud. The old joke between them. Fast friends. Inseparable for the ten months they’d known each other. And missing that vital spark of chemistry for anything but a platonic relationship. They’d tried to force it, once. It had been one in a series of shared disasters.

A merely large fire snapped and whispered in the great fireplace as the two of them began a slow-paced shuffle toward one another, as if drawn by gravity, and fighting it the entire way. “You know,” Julian said, “I’ve always wondered…” He ran fingers back through his reddish-blond hair.

“What’s that?”

“What I’d have to say when I met you again.”

She shrugged. The leather jacket was well-worn, rolling with her shoulders. “Well, you’ve had seven years to think about it.” Her tone wasn’t altogether friendly.

“I have.” He stopped with a wooden, straight-backed chair between them, wrapping his large hands over the backrest. “And do you know what I’d really like to do?”

“Bust that chair over my head?” she asked.

“After that.”

Callandre smiled, showing her teeth in a vicious smile. “Ain’t love grand,” she said.

And then she leaned forward, swinging up a large fist to smash Julian right on the jaw.

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

2 May 3135

“She actually hit you?”

Sandra Fenlon sounded two parts amazed and one part jealous, Julian decided. Waiting on the green marble steps of the Republic Cathedral in Paris, he stood an uncomfortable vigil with Sandra, Callandre Kell, Duchess Amanda Hasek and Caleb Davion. As well as a small retinue of aides and officers.

Caleb spoke softly with his aunt and Countess Tara Campbell, who had been in charge of the military escort to safeguard them from the Thonon chalet to Paris. The three passed time waiting for Harrison Davion to arrive by trying to pick out historical landmarks. The Eiffel Towers, of course, were easiest of all, dominating the skyline to the west, rising up above the Terran Mint and the block-long memorial to Richard Cameron. The New Louvre, Caleb claimed with an air of superiority, had beautiful spires as well, but was lost behind the cathedral’s massive bulk.

Julian would rather have been a part of their conversation.

“She did,” he admitted. Again. He straightened his uniform jacket with brief, hard tugs at the lower hem.

Callandre Kell smirked. She wore a spring dress today, very feminine, likely in an effort to soften Harrison’s reaction when the prince saw her with Julian. But the purple highlights dyed into her hair fought pretty hard against the attempt at convention. “How’s your jaw?” she asked.

“Hurts like hell.” At least the bruise was fading. Finally. It had gone from dark purple to a sickly green and finally, today, barely a pale stain of yellow. The swelling in his lower lip had only lasted a day. “I can’t believe you actually slugged me.”

“You just can’t believe I loosened a tooth.”

Julian smiled without any sincerity whatsoever. “I think the roll of silver kroners you had tucked into your hand played a small part in that.”

Sandra laughed. It was like hearing crystal chime. Light and airy, and full of ringing peals. She wore her ash-blond hair extremely long, down to her curvaceous hips, refusing to bend her neck to the current, shorter styles. Often, she pulled it forward over her left shoulder, letting it cascade down her front. Today, she wore it in a straight fall down her back, the better to show off her scoop-necked blouse and the necklace Julian had bought for her on a quick visit to Athens.

Caleb circumnavigated Terra for the romantic spots. Julian and Harrison had gone to visit the ancient birthplace of democracy. Lots of goats and crumbling stone to see there.

Worse, though, than any long day reviewing logistics reports while touring a few final crumbs of history, was the fact that Sandra and Callandre enjoyed each other’s company.