Jacinda's Challenge (Imperial 3)

  “Do it, but I want that package waiting for me in my personal quarters by the time I return.”

  “It will be done, Sire.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  “Yoo-hoo… Jacinda...”

  The high-pitched, scratchy voice had Jacinda cringing slightly. She should have known her luck couldn’t hold out forever. That she’d managed to get into her house the night before and then out again this morning without Madame Nitzschke catching her had been a miracle, but now it was time to face the music. Turning, she forced a smile on her face.

  “Hello, Madame Nitzschke. How are you this beautiful day?” Jacinda watched as her neighbor came teetering up the sidewalk. Jacinda tried not to shudder at the outfit her meddlesome neighbor was wearing. It was one of her ‘signature’ outfits, that had never been in style, even though Madame Nitzschke seemed to think it had. A knee-length, multicolored skirt with vertical stripes over leggings that if you looked at them too long gave you vertigo. Her shirt, while black and white had horizontal stripes with dots splattered in-between them. Her outfit was completed by a wide-brimmed, straw hat with a garden of artificial flowers banded around it and short-heeled, ankle-high, red boots on her feet.

  Madame Nitzschke had been a fixture in their neighborhood since before she and Stephan had purchased their home. She was the only child of an Assemblyman that had met the ancestors before Stephan had become one. It was rumored that her life mate had been killed while serving in the Coalition, in a surprise attack by the Regulians along the border. Because of it, she had never had a Union. Instead, she’d made it her life’s work to know everything about everyone in the neighborhood.

  “It could be nicer. It’s too cloudy.” She put a hand on the top of her hat, keeping it in place as she squinted up at the half-dozen, fluffy, white clouds floating across the sky. “Looks like we might have a stoirme.”

  “Really?” Jacinda glanced up not seeing a single stoirme cloud.

  “Yes. I’m glad to see you are okay, Jacinda.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, because you just disappeared there for several days.”

  “I didn’t disappear, Madame Nitzschke. I went to visit my sister in Kisurri.”

  “Really?” Madame Nitzschke’s tone let Jacinda know she didn’t believe her. “Without telling anyone?”

  Jacinda had to bite her tongue to stop from telling the old biddy to mind her own business. In her heart, she knew Madame Nitzschke was actually concerned and that her nosiness came from being lonely.

  “I did tell someone. I told Myesha.”

  “But not your son.”

  “No, Madame Nitzschke, I did not call my son to tell him where I was. I am a grown woman and don’t have to account for my comings and goings to anyone.”

  “He came pounding on my door in a panic.”

  “Danton did no such thing!” While Jacinda was willing to humor Madame Nitzschke to a point, she wouldn’t let her outright lie. “You were walking by as Danton was leaving. He told me so when he called me on my comm.”

  “Well he was in a panic and I can understand why with the men you ‘entertain’ in your home, especially that last one. My goodness, he barely looked older than Danton. You should be ashamed of yourself, Jacinda.”

  “Excuse me!”

  “You heard me, young lady. You were the wife of a well-respected Assemblyman. You owe it to him and those who supported him to make sure your actions are above reproach.”

  Jacinda felt her face flush and her blood begin to boil. That this self-righteous old… That she felt she had the right to judge her. “Madame Nitzschke, I understand and sympathize with the fact that you have no family of your own, that you have nothing better to do with your time than interfere in other people’s lives. But it does not give you the right to judge me, or whom I see. I thank you for your concern, now if you will excuse me, I was on my way in.” Spinning around, Jacinda walked away before she said something she would regret.

  Jacinda barely stopped herself from slamming her front door. How dare that condescending, old biddy think she had the right to tell her who she could ‘entertain’ in her own house. Not that she ever did. It had taken nearly five cycles after Stephan died before she had even considered dating again, let alone ‘entertaining’ a man. Not that there hadn’t been offers.

  It seemed there were many men who thought that as a widow she would welcome their subtle, and not so subtle advances. She hadn’t, not until Oran Halloran. Oran had been an old family friend from the House of Healing. A few cycles older than her, they became reacquainted when he traveled to Pechora for a business meeting. Oran was also a widower and his business brought him to the city every few weeks. Slowly they had begun to see each other, both tentative about starting a new relationship. It hadn’t lasted long. After just one night of intimacy, six moon cycles into the relationship, and it had ended. It had felt terribly awkward to Jacinda and while they occasionally still had dinner together, neither of them had wanted to pursue the relationship further.

  Her second attempt had lasted longer. With a man Jacinda thought she could spend the rest of her life with. Paul had been a quiet, unassuming man and after Stephan, Jacinda thought that was what she wanted. She’d been wrong. She found herself bored and unchallenged. Paul had been a nice enough man, but he wasn’t someone she wanted to spend the remainder of her life with.

  After she’d ended it with Paul, she’d sat down on the bench Stephan had placed in ‘her garden’ as he liked to call it, and really thought about what she wanted for the rest of her life. It had been an enlightening experience for her, because it was only then that she had fully realized how many of her wants and needs had become a reflection of Stephan’s. It hadn’t been something he demanded or something she’d done consciously, but still it had happened.

  They’d been a cohesive unit doing what was necessary to forward what they both wanted, but when she’d thought back about it, Stephan’s needs had always been the ones that took the forefront. With their children grown, Jacinda had wanted them to start traveling more. She wanted to enjoy her husband without the constraints brought on by him being an Assemblyman.

  Stephan had promised that he would start taking more time off and that they would travel, but something had always come up. A vote he just couldn’t miss. A committee he just had to chair. A ball they just had to go to. And in the end, it had been that ‘just’ that had caught up with them.

  Jacinda had loved her life with Stephan. If she could, she would change nothing about it except for the way it ended. But now… it wasn’t the way she wanted to spend the rest of her life. She wasn’t going to be a replacement as she would have been for Oran and she wasn’t going to settle, as she would have with Paul. She was going to live what remained of her life exactly the way she wanted.

  Frowning, her thoughts returned to Madame Nitzschke’s final words. Who was the ‘younger’ man she’d been talking about? Searching her mind, she began to laugh. Praise the ancestors, the old biddy was referring to Deffand, the Captain of the King’s Guard. Still laughing, Jacinda moved away from the door.

  ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

  Barek entered his private rooms in the King’s Wing and immediately saw the package sitting in the center of his desk. Dropping the files from his latest interview with Gad Stannic on a corner, he rounded the desk, never taking his gaze from the package. Sitting in his chair, he continued to stare at the package for several minutes before slowly reaching out to pull it toward him.

  Turning the envelope over, he saw that its seal was still intact. Deffand had kept his word, not that Barek had ever truly doubted it. Deffand had always been a man of honor. Reaching into his desk, he pulled out a thin blade. Slowly sliding it under the seal, he broke it then set it aside as he carefully tipped the package’s contents onto his desk.

  The memory foil Jacinda had spoken of was the first thing to skitter across the desk followed by a facedown stack of visuals, many more than Barek had e
xpected. Picking up the foil first, he held it between his thumb and forefinger trying to imagine what wonders it held before carefully putting it in a drawer of his desk for safekeeping. Gathering the visuals into one pile, he turned them over and a girl he had never seen before looked out at him.

  She appeared to be about fourteen cycles in the visual and she was making funny faces for whoever was taking the visual. Her head was tipped to the side with her tongue sticking out and even though both her brown eyes were looking at the tip of her nose, you could see the sparkle of laughter in them.

  As he studied the visual closer, he realized he recognized where she was, in a dorm room at the Academy. Even without the caption below, there was no mistaking that drab, gray, wall color or the smallness of the room. Introducing myself to my new roommate it read. Carefully, he set the visual to the side and picked up the next.

  First day of classes. This one read and it showed two young girls, this time they were standing tall and proud in their academy uniforms. It was easy to tell who was who for the taller girl on the right greatly resembled Jacinda while the shorter one could only be his mother. Barek’s eyes greedily traveled over her, taking in the darkness of the hair that hung down, just touching her shoulders. Barek ran a hand through his own hair. It was thick, full and wavy, a little longer than regulation, but he knew if he could touch his mother’s in the visual it would feel the same.

  A small smile touched the corners of his mouth as he found something he and his mother had in common. His smile grew as he continued through the visuals. Each one had some humorous comment about why it was being taken and Barek felt like he was getting to know his mother as a person for the first time, watching her grow older. His hand stilled over the next visual and he felt his heart beat harder.

  His father’s face took up half of the visual, the top of his head cut off. His mother’s took up the other half, the top of her head cut off too as if one of them was taking it. But it was his father’s expression that captured Barek’s attention this time, for he had never seen it on his face before. It was happy, carefree joy, the kind of feeling Barek wasn’t sure he had ever experienced before. His father’s eyes sparkled in the visual and no one seeing him would doubt, that at that moment, he thought his world was perfect.

  Barek noted how the visuals began to change after that, rarely was there one of his mother that didn’t include his father, but she seemed happy. Especially in the one of her gazing up at Jotham, even Barek could see the love shining in her eyes. She had truly loved his father.

  The last visual had him frowning. It didn’t belong. His eyes traveled over the half dozen rows of visuals laid out before him on the desk’s surface before returning to the one in his hand of the Michelakakis family. It had been recently taken at Victoria’s Union and he remembered how beautiful Amina had looked that day.

  Amina… he let his eyes travel over her smiling face. She was so young… too young.

  “Barek?”

  His father’s voice had Barek quickly slipping the visual into a drawer before he answered. “In my office.”

  Jotham entered Barek’s office and froze. What he’d come to talk to his son about disappeared from his mind as he saw the visuals lined up across the top of Barek’s desk. Slowly he moved forward, his gaze greedily taking in his late wife’s face.

  “Where did you get these?” he whispered.

  “From Jacinda Michelakakis, she got them from her sister.”

  “Palma,” Jotham supplied the name.

  “Yes.”

  “She and Lata were roommates for all six cycles they were at the Academy.”

  “So Jacinda told me.”

  “Jacinda?” Jotham lifted his gaze from the visuals to frown at his first son. When had his son become familiar enough with Jacinda Michelakakis to use her first name?

  “Yes. I literally ran into her in the Assembly Hall. We talked for a time and she offered to obtain these for me.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Barek frowned at his father’s question.

  “Why would she offer to do this for you? What did she want in return?”

  “Nothing. Jacinda said that she and my mother had been friends, even before she was an Assemblyman’s wife and Mother was the Queen. She told me that Mother loved to take visuals and that she would have shown me these herself had she lived, that it was the least she could do for her friend.”

  Jotham said nothing, just reached down and turned the visual of his and Lata’s faces around so it was upright to him. He could remember when this was taken. They’d been alone in Lata’s room, something they were never supposed to be, but William had helped him sneak in that night and then out again before the dawn. He hadn’t realized Lata had given Palma the visual.

  “You snuck into the girl's dorm?”

  Barek’s shocked question made Jotham realize he had spoken out loud and Jotham felt his face start to flush.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I was in my last cycle at the Academy. Graduation was just weeks away and I would be leaving to serve in the Coalition. Palma was gone for a few days and your mother and I didn’t want to be separated.”

  “You and she…”

  “That is none of your business, Barek,” Jotham told him gruffly before relenting, “but no. Your mother was only sixteen cycles at the time. She was too young and I would never have pressured her like that. We had plans…” he trailed off.

  “What were they?”

  Jotham smiled at his son, but there was no happiness in it. “We were going to travel the universe together. Your mother couldn’t wait to get into space, it was her life-long dream to see other worlds, to see Carina growing smaller as we left and then grow larger when we returned.”

  “Why didn’t she ever get to?”

  “You know why, my parents died.”

  “But that didn’t mean she had to give up her dream.”

  “You think I would let your mother go into space without me? Do you realize what could have happened to her out there without me?”

  “Yes. I believe I do, but that is not what I meant. Why didn’t you let her experience those things when she was the Queen? You could have taken her into space. Let her experience her dream.”

  “When there was no heir?” Jotham’s gaze hardened as he looked at his son. “The House of Protection had already been thrown into turmoil because my father had yet to give me any actual responsibility and your mother….”

  “What about her?” Barek demanded

  “Barek… you have to understand… or maybe not because I never did. My mother, Queen Johanna, never reached out to Lata. She never tried to ease the transition for her. My mother… she never believed Lata was my life mate. She wanted me to choose one from a strong bloodline. Lata’s family… they were… are good, strong people but they were too… common for my mother. It’s not something she ever verbalized, but you better than anyone understand that what we don’t say is sometimes more important than what we do.”

  Barek was silent for several moments thinking about everything his father had just told him. He wondered if his father realized this was the most personal conversation they had ever had about their family. “Why not later? After I’d been born?”

  “At first because Lata needed to fully recover. Then she refused to leave you, and then…” Jotham truly looked at his son, at the man he had become and knew he had to tell him the truth. “Then there were rumblings of a challenge… because of Lata’s heritage.”

  “Who would dare?” Barek demanded, enraged at the thought.

  “It matters not. We silenced them.”

  “By mother again giving up her dream.”

  “For the moment, yes. I promised Lata that we would go off planet, that I would do everything within my power to see that she achieved her dreams….”

  “And then she died.”

  “Yes.”

  The word was torn from Jotham and Barek couldn’t doubt his anguish. Barek slowly began t
o gather up the visuals from his desk, looking at each one with new eyes.

  Jotham watched his son gather the fragments of his mother’s short life and Jacinda’s words suddenly resonated within him, and he realized she was right. He had significantly harmed not only his Queen with how he handled his loss, but also his son.

  “There are albums of visuals, you know.”

  “What do you mean?” Barek’s hands stilled over the last visual on his desk.

  “Madame Michelakakis was right. Lata did love to take visuals. It was what she wanted to be for the Coalition, a visual historian, not unlike what Kyle Zafar does. Since it wasn’t ‘suitable’ for a Queen to take visuals as she met the people, she instead took them of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “Yes. I don’t think there was a day that passed that she didn’t take a visual of you.”

  “I’ve never seen them.”

  “My fault.” Jotham looked his son in the eye as he admitted his failing. “I didn’t react well to your mother’s loss, Barek. Every visual I saw of her… or that I knew she took…”

  “I understand.”

  “No. You don’t. And I hope you never do. To know, I failed her in so many ways.”

  Barek saw the pain that filled his father’s eyes and didn’t know what to say or how to ease it.

  “I always thought I would have the time to make it up to her.” Slowly he handed the visual he still held out to Barek. “To show her that I understood what she had given up… for me… but I didn’t.”

  “Would you have done it differently? If you could?” Barek took the visual from his father’s hand. “Would you have changed anything?”

  “Only the ending,” Jotham whispered. “I will find the albums for you. Your mother would want you to have them.” Turning Jotham left the room.

  Chapter Six

  For the third time in less than two weeks, Jacinda found herself in the Public Wing of the Palace. This time on the arm of her son as he led her to the Ball Room and she could feel the muscles in his arm tensing with each step they took.