Alien General's Bride (Brion Brides 3)(51)

“I missed this,” she said, “I like your armor too, but I saw you first in this.”

“Then I will wear it for you until another war calls,” Diego said, kissing her hair.

Daylight was shining through the trees, casting them in green and yellow light. No one else seemed to be around, and while a part of him wanted to hold Isolde even closer, it also felt good to simply be with her, walking with her under his arm, her head rested against his shoulder. It felt natural, even for a fierce Brion warlord, to want a haven in the midst of the storm that was the Brion way.

With the jacket, all troubles came. Just as the world seemed to be completely still around them in its green idyll, the damned collar started beeping.#p#分页标题#e#

Isolde’s laughter echoed back from the forest. “I swear, Diego, I love you in this jacket, but that collar has to go…” she said. Diego kissed her in response, glad she hadn’t lost her smile to all the death she had witnessed.

“Report,” he sighed to the collar. “This better be worth the interruption.”

“It is the Galactic union  ,” the comm sounded. “They have decided to keep us in the union  . We are preparing to leave Rhea. Briolina calls us home to celebrate and Senator Eleya has a lot of duties ahead of her.”

Diego and Isolde were quiet for a long minute.

“Did I not say we would set it all right,” Diego said then, kissing her.

“Didn’t I say the world must have ended,” Isolde shot back, smiling and perfect in his arms, as she was supposed to be.





EPILOGUE

Isolde



Go to space, Isolde thought. It will be fun.

A weight she hadn’t even noticed on her shoulders suddenly seemed lifted. With the Brions and the GU and galactic war a very real option, she hadn’t even noticed when it had become her natural state to constantly be scared. With the announcement, the world seemed colorful again, a place where she saw a future.

With Diego.

That was pretty much the beginning and the end of it all. So some things hadn’t been much fun in space, like people trying to kill her and all that, but some things had been oh-so-very-nice on the other hand. Her life on Terra seemed to have been someone else’s, now that Isolde thought back on it. She was walking with her gerion in an amazing alien forest while the Triumphant made preparations to return home to Briolina. Soon they’d have to board, but for a short while, the ship could do without its commander.

She had done all she could. So she didn’t get to be a researcher on Rhea, since her presence was also not advised due to her, ahem, connection to the Brions. Someone else would do the work of mapping out the planet, inventorying its resources and starting to put them to use. Someone else would see to the locals and that no injustice was done to them. She wouldn’t be a part of that team now. Her team was dead and so was her future on Rhea. She had a better one now.

At least Isolde got to see the beautiful world, and Diego had promised her that they’d come back as soon as they were able. Isolde would have liked that – she truly did want to come back, once Rhea was no longer the center of all the problems in the galaxy, but rather a means of fixing them. But at least she had avenged her research team. Those who’d given the orders were dead, at least most of them. He who had done the deed was certainly dead, confirmed to have been one of the generals who had fled to Rhea with Eren. Faren had killed him.

So what if he hadn’t done it for justice for her team. They’d all kept their reasons, and Isolde felt like she had no one else to hate for what had happened. Maybe it was all the death she’d seen. For a while, she’d had enough.

Isolde knew she’d have to send agent Perkins – or whoever the Palian truly was – a thank you note or something, because even if he hadn’t brought the decision for peace around single-handedly, he’d surely helped. Slowly and surely, she was beginning to believe in fate, after all. So many things had happened on Luna Secunda that proved significant to her future.

For her to have asked just agent Perkins for help, for the Palian to summon a Brion ship to help her against all reason, for that ship to belong to Diego… Isolde shuddered to think what would have happened if she’d done even one thing slightly differently.

In Diego’s arms, she no longer wanted to even think about the possibility of never having met him. She was with her gerion now, where she belonged. On Terra, people believed in love at first sight and got butterflies in their stomach when they fell for someone, but Isolde had scored the ultimate dream – her love at first sight was real, unbreakable and her butterflies wouldn’t go away.

She composed a last imaginary letter.

Dear professor Nagasuke,

Never mind all my previous letters. I am happy, that is all. Thank you for sending me to Rhea.

Isolde

---

Back on the Triumphant, when Diego had gone to see things over as they left the system, Isolde went to search for Eleya. Ever since the execution, even in her own daze of happiness, in the back of her mind she had been worried about her.

She found Eleya looking at Rhea growing smaller on the screens in the same hall where she’d seen the planet the first time. The senator stood alone, away from the others. Isolde hesitated for a moment, but decided to see if she was fine. If she was going to get yelled at, that was that.#p#分页标题#e#

Eleya didn’t yell at her. She smiled sadly in welcome and resumed watching Rhea. Isolde wondered if the planet would ever stop conjuring up certain emotions for them. For Eleya, it would always be the place where Eren died and peace was gained at last, and for Isolde it was the place she had been trying to get to for so long, but had to leave almost as soon as she’d arrived.

“I nearly lunged, you know,” Eleya said when they’d been silent for a while. “I almost threw myself between Diego’s sword and him. All those years of avoiding him and loathing him, undone in a second as I saw his eyes. They were so sad. He truly believed I would try to stop Diego.”

Isolde hadn’t the slightest idea of how to respond to that, but Eleya didn’t seem to expect her to say anything. “And then it was over,” she continued, standing straighter again. “And I could remember again. The kind of monster he was, the things he did. How he managed, for a while, to fool even me into disobeying the Elders. The moment he was gone, I no longer felt sorry for him. I no longer felt anything for him. I… was free.”

When Isolde looked at her, there were tears in the senator’s eyes. Not tears of remorse, but tears of joy. “I am free at last,” Eleya repeated, her voice shaking with happiness. “I am not a general any more, but I can do my service to the Elders and I am no longer bound to him. I am free, truly free.”

Isolde smiled in return, happy to see her delight.

“Besides,” Eleya added. “The generals still have to obey the senators, now that we are back in charge. Which means I get to tell Diego and Faren what to do. I am not entirely sure yet, but I think it might be even better than being a general myself.”

They shared a laugh at that, so loud they drew weird looks from the Brions walking by, but it had been a good day for both of them, so they didn’t care. Instead, Isolde decided to resume the task she had started on Briolina, of making friends of Diego’s friends. Besides, she liked them. So they drank alios and had Urenya check it for poison. Then they settled into a discussion on who might be Eleya’s next gerion and Deliya’s first. The names of the other generals came up a lot.

Eleya said she would love to be Faren’s gesha, but fate didn’t always give the Brions what they wanted and more often what they needed. Isolde never let Eleya forget that when they’d asked her about Atren, she’d smiled and said, “He is handsome, of course. And a good fighter. But he’d better grow balls or Faren will eat him for breakfast the next time he shows up with the hull of his ship still reading the Fearless.”

Later in secret, Isolde told Diego about that comment and got to experience the first moment of her general truly, freely laughing at something. She felt so sorry for Atren afterwards.

The day they arrived back on Briolina was like night and day compared to the last time Isolde had been there. Her first impression of the planet had been hostile and unwelcoming, soon proved wrong, but this time they were welcomed back like heroes. Not only that, Isolde still remained the first non-Brion gesha and got a lot of attention for it.

The Elders had asked about her too before they returned to their sleep and had promised to think about this new possibility. No one questioned her legitimacy as Diego’s gesha. She liked that. It was such a sacred part of their lives that even the fact that she was human didn’t bother them. They just thought it was interesting.

For a while, they stayed on Briolina, setting things right as Diego had said. Isolde found herself suddenly put into the position of spokesperson between Briolina and the GU, but also between Briolina and Sphere. Eleya created a new position for her to have official support for all she said and Isolde, who had never imagined such a use for her studies, went to work on mending the most messed up bundle of relations in the galaxy.