God, if it would? For a brief, sharply desperate moment, she wondered what she would be willing to sacrifice to have Kellan alive again. Nearly a decade without him, and she still ached to see him, to touch him. Pathetic, how deeply she longed for that. Some stubborn piece of her still clung to the hope that this was just some awful, cosmic mistake that had to be corrected soon and then everything would be as it should be once again.
Right. Pathetic.
“When do you return to Montreal?” Nathan asked, a welcome break from her dark thoughts, drawing her back to reality. Which wasn’t much brighter at the moment.
“I don’t go back. Not for a while, that is.” She slanted him a rueful glance. “I’ve been summoned to D.C. for an in-person Council review with Lucan and the other Order commanders. Where, I’m all but sure, I’ll be asked to step down from my post as captain. Webb’s standing in as my replacement. Lucan’s decision. He’s already sent the team back to base without me.”
Idly, she traced her thumb over the scrollwork of one of her hand-tooled daggers—a gift from Nikolai and Renata, who were the closest thing to parents that she’d ever known. The blades were fashioned similarly to the ones Renata wielded so beautifully, but this pair had been designed especially for Mira, presented to her on the day she was promoted to captain.
The hilts of her two daggers were carved on each side, etched by the same artisan, bearing the same words that graced Renata’s four: Courage. Sacrifice. Honor. Faith.
She’d never felt more unworthy of holding them.
Nathan eyed her in grave silence, and even though he spared her from his opinion on the matter, she could tell that he understood as well as she did that her position with the Order was tenuous at best. She’d been exiled to a kind of no-man’s-land, not fully yanked from her footing but cut adrift just the same.
“Has a date been set for your Council review?”
She nodded. “Four days from now, just before the GNC peace summit begins. But my demotion starts immediately.” Adding to the sting of her censure, she had also been relegated to a special assignment that was anything but special. “I’ve been drafted into nanny detail for one of the summit’s award recipients. Some egghead recluse named Ackroyd or Ackerman.”
“Ackmeyer,” Nathan corrected. “Jeremy Ackmeyer. The human is a science wunderkind, Mira. Eccentric, but brilliant. Ackmeyer holds patents on everything from textiles and plant genomes to solar energy.”
She acknowledged with a mild shrug. “That’s the guy. Genius or not, apparently he spooks at everything, including his own shadow. He’s also related to one of the GNC’s directors. Lucan said the Order had been asked to provide personal escort for Ackmeyer from his home in the Berkshires down to the summit, make sure he arrived in time to accept his much-hyped award from Crowe Enterprises.”
She could hardly keep from rolling her eyes at the thought of being part of Reginald Crowe’s circus sideshow, even if her role was being forced on her. Although Lucan hadn’t framed the assignment as punishment, Mira knew it was his way of ensuring she had her hands full—of tasking her with something menial that would keep her out of trouble and off the streets—until such time as he was able to deal with her personally and decide her fate within the Order.
Nathan considered for a long moment. “It could be worse. You can’t have fallen too far out of Lucan’s regard if he’s still willing to keep you in play with a solo mission.”
She exhaled a humorless laugh. “This is hardly a mission; we both know that. And the only reason I’m solo on it is because Ackmeyer insists on daytime travel only. That automatically rules out ninety-nine point nine percent of the Order’s membership, unless they want to risk ashing themselves along the way.”
Ackmeyer had other requirements for his escort to the summit as well, phobias about mass transit and airborne diseases that restricted him to traveling by car—brand new, of course, the interior vacuumed extensively and scrubbed from top to bottom with disinfectant. He demanded no more than four hours of drive time per day, yet he refused to stay in public lodging. Which meant by the time they reached Washington, an eleven-hour drive would take more than sixty, all of it spent together in the close confines of the car.
No wonder Lucan had assigned Ackmeyer’s safety to her. Any one of the warriors she knew would likely strangle the oddball human before they reached the southern Massachusetts state line. She hoped like hell she wouldn’t be tempted herself. If she stood even a slim chance of salvaging her position within the Order, delivering a throttled guest of honor wouldn’t be the best approach.