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Dawn broke before the three of them finally allowed themselves to sleep. Sylvia was the first to succumb. He and Hugo stared at her peaceful face for a few minutes, then Hugo gave him a wide smile, flipped onto his back, and was away in seconds.
Lancelot held on a little bit longer, gave himself time to memorize their faces, the soft sounds of their breathing as they slept.
He would need those memories to get him through the lonely nights he was facing until they could all be together again.
Chapter Thirty
Two days later, Hugo locked himself in the library. Not that he expected anyone to interrupt him. The fleet admiral had invited Sylvia, after she commented on the photographs in his chambers, to take a closer look while he told her about his travels. The years between Eric’s stepping down as admiral of Kalmar and his being forced into the role of fleet admiral were a bit of a mystery. Hugo would pump Sylvia for information later.
Unbeknownst to his lovely wife, Eric had extended the offer as a way of distracting her while Hugo attended—via Skype—a meeting with the librarians. Hugo was grateful for Eric offering the invitation. With the Masters’ Admiralty once more reeling from an attack, plus having to handle the cover-up from the bombing—which had been blamed on domestic terrorists—the days since their marriage had been spent alternately trying to help with damage control, or staying out of the way as the Spartan Guard scrambled to secure the Isle of Man.
Yesterday, Lancelot had left, returning to London to take up his sword and the duties of a knight, leaving Hugo and Sylvia sequestered in the safety of Triskelion Castle.
He opened the laptop and logged in. He was in the castle library which had a dedicated hardline internet connection. Hugo looked down at his notes as the program rang Josephine’s Skype account.
The bomb that had destroyed a large section of the airport had been in a car, and the driver had died in the blast. They had nothing but some contaminated DNA to work with for identifying the driver.
Best-case scenario was the mastermind had sacrificed one of his Bellator Dei bombers in order to take out Alicia and those she’d talked to.
Worst case, the bomb had been created by someone besides the driver, put in the car, and the driver had been merely a pawn.
Sylvia had written beautiful obituaries for the fallen guards.
It was strange to think he’d been at a meeting of the librarians not that long ago. Before Lancelot and Sylvia had entered his world. A lifetime had passed since then.
The call connected, and two windows popped up. Josephine waved enthusiastically and grinned in one. Behind her was a wall of books. Like him, she was in a library, but she was in the world-famous long room at Trinity College in Dublin.
Dublin was neutral territory within the Masters’ Admiralty. It didn’t report to the admiral of England, despite being physically within that territory. That, plus Josephine’s connections, got them after-hours access to the library, and was why the librarians had been meeting there since James had come up with the idea of creating the think tank of scholars. There was no shortage of brilliant people in the Masters’ Admiralty, but the knights, security officers, and admirals were at war on so many fronts, they didn’t have time to look at the issue of the mastermind academically.
That was where this think tank—code name librarians—came into play.
There were six members, four of whom were together. James, Cecilia—a financial analyst by profession, but a specialist in the history of the Masters’ Admiralty, Josephine, and Karl were at Trinity College, and leaned into camera range to wave. The sixth member was, like Hugo, calling into the meeting. Nyx Kata was a religious scholar. While Hugo knew he was quite intelligent, people like Nyx made him feel stupid.
Nyx, who usually wore a distant, thoughtful expression, looked grim. That was in part thanks to the bandage that covered the right side of her face. She’d been briefly taken captive by one of the mastermind’s lackeys. She’d ended up with her face sliced open, and a stab wound in her abdomen that had nearly gone septic. She was still recovering from the ordeal, but was no longer in the hospital in Bucharest. Hugo didn’t actually know where she was—the wall behind her was textured white, and golden light hit the undamaged left side of her face.
“Nyx,” he said in greeting.
“Hello, Hugo.” The words were slightly muffled as she tried to talk without opening her mouth.
“How are you?” Josephine asked him. “How was your mission?”
“It ended up with the Isle of Man airport getting blown up,” James pointed out.
“This is not his fault,” Karl protested. Karl had also been kidnapped by the same man who’d harmed Nyx, a serial killer controlled by the mastermind. Karl had been rescued by Antonio Starabba, the principessa’s brother. Antonio was the acting admiral of the territory of Rome. Karl had been there when the Villa Degli Dei had been destroyed by a bomb. The similarities to the bombing in Rome and what had happened on the Isle of Man left no room for doubt that they were both orchestrated by the mastermind.
“I got married,” Hugo said.
There was a beat of surprise, and then everyone started talking at once.
Hugo watched with amusement as James wrested the computer from Josephine and politely, but forcefully, told everyone to shut up. “Hugo. Tell us everything.”
Hugo leaned back in his seat and told the story of traveling to the U.S. with Lancelot, meeting Sylvia, and the subsequent kidnapping and gun battle with Alicia. If he’d had time, the tale could have taken all day, but his marriage, his falling in love, wasn’t what this meeting was about, so he kept it short, finishing with, “We think the mastermind was hoping to take out everyone who talked to Alicia with the bomb. The fleet admiral thinks that Alicia was right, and the mastermind is a member. Worse, we think one of our previous hypotheses was right—not only is the mastermind a member, but a powerful enough member to maybe suppress the information we got from her if most of us who knew what she’d said were dead.”
“Powerful,” Nyx said. “You think he’s someone with considerable power within the organization.”
James cursed. “One of the vice admirals? One of the admirals?”
“How did they know when you would arrive on the Isle of Man?” Karl asked.
