2026-04-30 18:43:54
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062 Riddled With Holes
Juliet Forbes was lying in broken glass with Jack Hardy's arm still behind her head."Jack," she said. "What are you doing in Sparta? I got your letter—"Bullets ripping through concrete echoed in the distance.Jack raised his gaze on instinct. His eyes moved over the hall in short flat passes, up to the terrace, along the third tier, back down the aisle, and they did not land on her face once."Look at me. Talk to me. Don't pretend that we are strangers"Jack stood up off her and turned away. "You are mistaken, ma'am. I'm not who you think I am."Juliet got her hand up to catch his sleeve, but he was already three seats away, going up the aisle with his shoulders square and the dark glasses back on.Jack Hardy saved her life and then walked away pretending she was a stranger."Juliet! Oh God, Juliet."David Cross climbed out from between the seats with dust all down the front of his jacket.Dean Drummonds got up from under a cocktail table by the rail, on his hands first, then his kn
061 Banned
Morgana let the noise run until it wore itself out, and then she let it run a little longer."Sparta City," she said.Ninety thousand people went quiet so fast that Jack heard a glass being set down four rows away.Her voice through the system was low and unhurried, and it did not rise at any point in the next four minutes."Selena Hart crossed a continent to sing in a city your governments have spent thirty years telling you is dangerous."She paused."She is still alive. Do thank her on the way out."The hall laughed. Forty million people in the streets laughed with it."My son is in the glass box above this stage. He is nine, he has waited two years for tonight, and he has not sat down once."Something almost warm moved under the veil and did not reach any further than that."My daughter is with him. Be kind about the crying. She is very young and the song was beautiful."Jack stood against the wall by the door with his arms folded and let all of it go past him."Forty-one countrie
060 The Festival
Jack Hardy had taken the worst post at the Sparta Festival on purpose.He stood at the far end of the rope line in a black suit and dark glasses. Forty other men were spaced out along two hundred yards of carpet, dressed the same way.Selena Hart's security channel was live in his ear."Post four clear," one of her men said. "West gate quiet.""Copy." Jack went back to reading faces.He had put his second on the stage detail and taken the arrivals line himself for one reason. Every face entering Sparta City's biggest night walked past this post, and a man in a dark suit standing at a rope is furniture.Forty thousand people were packed against the crowd barrier behind him, screaming at every car that rolled onto the carpet."She's choosing a husband tonight!" The girl at his elbow had her phone up over her head. "Juliet Forbes! In front of the whole world, before the charity auction!""Nobody picks one at a music festival.""The broadcast said it twice!"Jack kept reading faces and le
059 Crystal Ball
Selena hooked her arm through Jack's like it belonged there. Sunglasses, a hood, a scarf over half her face, she was in disguise so that fans wouldn't recognize her."If you're meeting a woman on a hill at six in the morning, I have a right to see her."Jack didn't answer that. They were most of the way up the eastern hill when he stopped walking.Selena bumped into his shoulder. "What?"He was looking past the rooftops at the crown of the hill, where a column of smoke was climbing into the morning sky. It was coming from exactly where he was going.Jack broke into a run.St. Mirabel's stood at the top of the hill behind a rusted iron gate, three stories of gray stone, and the whole eastern face of it was burning. Flame came out of the second-floor windows in long orange tongues.Two fire trucks stood in the lane with their hoses up, and the water arced into the building and turned to steam before it reached anything.In front of the doors, an old woman was fighting four men. She was
058 Fifty-Eight Seconds
"Checkpoint South, respond immediately! Confirm the Selena Hart convoy has NOT been touched!"The radio on Brakus's shoulder shrieked with static and a voice that drained the color from his face in a single second. Colonel Dray Vance. Garrison command.He fumbled the handset to his mouth. "Colonel, sir—we were conducting a routine inspection—""An inspection?!" The voice rose to a bellow that echoed off the blast walls. "You dim-witted, gold-skimming disgrace of an officer! That convoy travels under the Mayoress's personal protection!""Lady Morgana's own son and daughter are Miss Hart's biggest fans in the world—the young lord Kaiser has attended every livestream she has ever done! If so much as a suitcase in that convoy is scratched, Her Excellency will have your skin flying from that gate as a flag, and mine hanging right beside it! Do you want Sparta to lose face in front of Miss Hart's hundred million followers?!""Now escort them into the city with full honors! The Mayoress requ
057 The Gates of Sparta
The tour bus rolled through gray hills in the early light of dawn, and Sparta City rose out of the mist ahead of them like a fortress that was only pretending to be a city.Watchtowers stood along the ridgelines. Anti-air batteries had been dressed up as public sculptures, though they fooled no one who knew what to look for. And around the whole metropolis ran a wall that had no business existing in the modern world.Jack studied it all through the tinted glass from the last row of Selena's private cabin—at least until a familiar weight landed softly in his lap.Selena had crawled across the seat and deposited herself against him, legs folded beneath her, the silk robe she wore doing the absolute minimum required of it. She smelled like vanilla and expensive trouble."Chief of my security," she purred, walking two fingers slowly up his chest. "Do you have any idea how long I've waited to have you contractually obligated to stay within ten feet of me at all times?""Within reach of you,
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