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.
In some private, dangerous corner of her heart, she knew that if Lucan bounced her from the Order, she would continue to fight. She would still want justice, vengeance against the rebels who had upended her world when they took Kellan from it. She didn't know how far she would go to right that wrong, but it terrified her a little to consider it. Her hatred ran too hot, had scarred her too deeply.
Her blades felt cold, tooled hilts biting into her palms. She flipped the daggers around in her fingers and slid them home into their sheaths on her thighs. "Anyway, I leave in a few hours, then it's on to meet my fate in D.C.," she told Nathan. "I should head to bed, try to get some sleep before I go."
"Mira," he said as she started to walk away from him. She didn't want to talk anymore. Didn't want to think about what waited for her at the end of her journey in just four days' time, nor where she might go from there. "Mira, stop."
She paused, swiveled around to meet her dear friend's sober gaze.
"Be careful," he said, eyes holding her in an unblinking stare that seemed to penetrate right to the core of her. "The line you're walking is thin enough. Do this right. You're too good to give up now. Don't give Lucan any more reason to cut you loose."
"There's nothing to worry about." She forced a mild scowl and lightly shook her head, deliberate in her misunderstanding. "I'm on babysitting detail, not a mission. Nothing's going to go wrong."
Chapter Four
THAT SAME MORNING, ADHERING TO THE METICULOUS instructions she'd received from Jeremy Ackmeyer himself, Mira arrived at his home in rural western Massachusetts at precisely 9:00 A.M. The house was large but minimalist in the extreme. No perimeter fence, no elaborate gate or layer of guards to shield the reclusive genius. Just an expressionless single-story block of white concrete, angled rooftop solar panels and steel-louver shaded windows, sitting on a broad knoll in the middle of a na**d five-acre parcel of ruthlessly trimmed lawn.
Even without a gate or guards, to Mira, the house seemed more a prison than a place someone would call home - even an odd duck like Ackmeyer.
The germophobe scientist didn't want her coming inside the house and potentially contaminating anything but had stipulated he'd meet her in the garage below and proceed directly into the car to depart. She dutifully rolled up the long driveway to the underground parking garage as she'd been instructed and braked at the electronic access panel in front of the closed door of the bay on the right.