Sweep of the Heart (Innkeeper Chronicles #5)(15)

He terminated the connection.

“I can’t ask you to do this,” Sean said. His face was completely neutral.

“Wilmos would do it for either of us,” I said.

Sean’s stone face didn’t fool me for a second. My parents were missing. Their entire inn had vanished in an instant with them inside it. The house, the guests, the garden, everything was gone, and only an empty lot had been left behind. Nobody had any answers. Nobody could even hazard a guess as to what happened. The uncertainty of not knowing was awful.

I’d been looking for them for years, and I would never give up. They were out there, somewhere, waiting to be rescued. I knew exactly how Sean felt, and I would do almost anything to spare Sean what I had gone through.

We had a location. We had to try.

“Will Caldenia be a problem?” Sean asked.

“Absolutely.” And I had no idea how I would even broach the subject with her.

We thought about it some more.

“I’m going to get him out,” he said.

I shook my head. “No, Sean. Not you. Us.”

“One of us will need to stay at the inn.”

“If they just wanted just you, they could have grabbed you during any of the outings you and Wilmos went on. They want me, or possibly both of us. We will go together. But first, we’ll have to pull off this nightmare event.”

“Nothing can ever be easy,” he said.

“Nope. We can’t even just walk into a trap like normal people. We have to work really hard first.”

He laughed, a quiet wolf chuckle.

I raised my hand. “One vote for yes. Any opposing?”

“We haven’t done anything dumb or dangerous for almost six months.” Sean pushed away from the wall on which he was leaning, walked over, and kissed me. “Let’s do this.”





“It’s a spouse selection,” I explained.

We sat in the kitchen, Sean and I on one side of the table, Caldenia and Marais on the other, with Orro on the end, on Sean’s right.

“It involves a powerful head of state,” I continued. “The spouse selection is very complex. The choice of the candidate depends on the genetic traits the spouse can offer, on what faction they represent, and on the political benefits that match will bring.”

Marais frowned. “But they are all the same species, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Sean said.

“It’s an old, established practice.” Caldenia waved her hand. “With the genetic science available to those with enough resources, gender and species don’t matter. As long as there is enough compatibility, you could marry a whale, Officer Marais. They would splice the DNA together into an offspring with the desired genetic traits and let the child mature to term in an artificial womb.”

Marais shook his head. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

“It’s not about comfort but survival.” Caldenia bared her sharp teeth. “I carry the genetic roots of seven species in my body thanks to some long-term planning by my ancestors. They have served me very well.”

“The selection has been narrowed down to twelve candidates from one hundred and five,” I continued.

Caldenia’s eyes sparkled.

“Twelve is a lot,” Marais said.

“You have your two or three favorites but keep the others in the running for political considerations,” Caldenia explained. “And for the spectacle. There must be pageantry, after all. Spouse selections are greatly entertaining. A well-timed spouse selection followed by a lavish wedding can often quell civil unrest before it has a chance to explode in your face.”

“The ruler has an issue,” I said. “The prospective spouses-to-be keep killing each other.”

Caldenia leaned back and cackled. “This is absolutely delightful.”

“Apparently, it wouldn’t be problem under normal circumstances,” Sean said. “However, their religious leader is at the end of his life. He must find a suitable candidate to whom he can transfer his holy gift before he expires. Random murder interferes with that on a psychic level, and by law, he is required to be present for the entirety of the spouse selection.”

“I love it.” Caldenia grinned.

She would be a lot less happy in a minute.

Sean kept going. “They’ve tried everything to secure their premises, but each candidate has twenty retinue members, and they keep nuking each other in elaborate ways. They need a safe ground.”

Orro raised his hand and counted on his claws.

“We’re it,” I said. “If we can help him get to the altar, he will give us access to the special portal and their abandoned mining outpost on Karron, so we can go look for Wilmos.”

“What were they mining?” Caldenia asked.

“Fuel for a weapon,” Sean told her. We had done some research. “They mined a bunch of it and then decided the weapon was too inhumane to be used.”

Caldenia raised her eyebrows. “It broke.”

“Probably,” I said. “The point is, we have no other way of entering that planet.”

“How many?” Orro asked. “How many beings total?”

I tried to sound upbeat. “Three hundred. The ruler’s retinue, the candidates and their escorts, and the observers. A lot of powers in that region of space are sending diplomats to see what will happen, since the marriage will affect the balance of power.”