She Who Woke Among Eternity

Des sat at his desk, fingers running wild over the keyboard as he wrote what must have been the hundredth message in the past hour. This job was never easy, and keeping on top of everything was a challenge like no other. He had been doing this for long enough to happily retire a century ago, and he should have. The only problem was that he didn’t fully trust anyone else to take on this role. The pressure of this role was immense, and he had seen it break people. He didn’t want to put people through that if he could still take the punishment of this job.

Admittedly, there had been one up-and-coming person he felt could take over in a decade or two, but she got critically wounded in the field and her cover was almost blown. She rightfully decided it was time to go back home and put this life behind her. He cracked a small smirk thinking about her, realizing that not only was she so lucky to be alive, but she was lucky enough to have the sense to stop, unlike him. What a fool he was to still be doing this. What a fool to still be doing this for far longer than a human like him should even live. What a fool he was to not even have the sense to make himself look older.

With a tap, the message was finished and sent off, and he ran a hand through his brown hair before leaning back in his chair. The lumbar cushion conformed to his back, which made him chuckle. That damn cushion had been the most reliable person he had ever worked with. A knock at his office door pulled his attention away from his reliable companion. “Come in.”

The door slid open to reveal one staffer holding a large folder. “Director, these are those extra files on the expedition crew, just like you asked.” He opened the folder. “Helk Crevest, his sister Aresa Crevest, Bethany—”

“I remember the names,” Des said with a genuine smile. “Thank you, Jepson.” In a fluid motion, he reached out before pulling his arm back, successfully moving his sleeve out of the way of his watch. Checking it, he said, “If you don’t hurry, you’re going to be late for your date with Sest.”

“I don’t like that you know that I’m going to be running late,” Jepson said as he walked over and handed the files. Though his words held some sense of seriousness, it was a well-known jest between the two.

“Last time you were late for a date with Sest you—”

“Yes, I remember very well, thanks to you never letting me forget.” Jepson smiled. “Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to be late for a date, and if I am, my boss is going to get very upset with me.”

Laughing gently, Des took the files. “Then you’d better hurry.” As Jepson left, he set the files down on the side of the desk. He already knew Bethany very well, so there wasn’t much need to look over her files, but he couldn’t have people knowing he already knew her that well. The other two he had heard a good bit about through Bethany, but that mostly related to their work with her on excavations. Well, maybe he had heard a little too much about Aresa…

A small beep rang through the small bone-conductive speaker, neatly hidden behind his ear. There were many sounds notifications could make, but that specific beep sent a chill down his spine. Surely he must have been mistaken. There was no way he would hear — a new beep had him rushing to stand up from his chair. Hitting a switch on his desk, the windows of his office suddenly turned opaque, and a piece of spellwork hidden in the floor activated, cutting off all sound and information from leaving the room. All except for the few direct connections to less than twenty people in the galaxy.

Running over to an unassuming display cabinet on the wall, he opened its glass doors, giving him access to all the little trinkets inside. Tipping one over, it revealed a small hologram emitter. A holo-screen appeared, revealing a red, blinking word: Growl. “Drak me,” he said with wide eyes. She was out of the game, though. They had covered all ground around her cover, and she was meant to be gone. There was only one reason she would call; her cover had been blown. Immediately his mind started running through every scenario he could imagine. This was bad. Hitting a small button, he answered the call. Agent codenamed Growl appeared on the holo-screen, but the rabbit beastkin’s real name was Mable. She was in a dark place, and Des could barely see her, but he could immediately hear her sobbing.

“Growl, are you made?” he asked, getting right to the point. Her sobbing only got worse, but in the darkness he could see her shake her head. For some reason that only made him more scared. What other reason could she be calling him like this? “Then what’s goi—”

“R-reg-gent.”

Des’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t know about the expedition. Sure, plenty of people knew, but he had done so much to make sure only the people who needed to know knew about that. He wasn’t going to beat around the bush. “How do you know about the regent?” He suddenly remembered that Mable’s childhood nightmare were ancients and specifically regents, so maybe her excessive sobbing wasn’t fully indicative of the real trouble.

“You a-already know a-about it?! You k-know about it a-and didn’t t-tell me?! In m-my native?! I was y-your best a-agent and you j-just didn’t tell me about the d-draking regent living at my u-uncle’s junk yard?! My dad’s b-been spending h-his days there!”

Des stared at her, more confused than he had ever been. “Mable,” he said, breaking a barrier he really didn’t enjoy breaking. She was the best of the best, though. Drak, he wanted her to take his place, eventually. “I need you to tell me where you are, and whether you are safe. Then we can talk about the regent.”

The sobbing didn’t calm down, but she spoke in a much calmer voice. “Breker delt calf,” she said, giving him the true all-clear sign she wasn’t in danger. “I’m at my dad’s house, on my home planet Bryst, in the city Crescent. I’m in my closet that I secured for communication 14 vol ago.”

“You secured your own childhood closet for high-security communications?” Des already knew this, but he needed to keep her calm and talking about something that didn’t trigger the child’shood fears. In the back of his mind, he started trying to work out what she was talking about. “How’s your dad feel about that?”

“He doesn’t know anything. Except that there’s a draking regent living with my uncle!”

He took a deep breath as a chill ran down his spine. Mable was talking about a second regent… This could be a very big problem, but most certainly not as big as most people thought it could be. “Alright, I need you to tell me from your perspective what happened and what you know. Calmly.”

It took a few seconds of Mable getting some sobs out before she spoke again. “My uncle found a lost ‘girl’ in space and adopted it as his granddaughter. My dad has been helping them fix its antique ship, but he’s terrified of it. He drank himself to sleep one night because of it. I went to visit and see what was going on, and they brought over this antique automaton and I tried to shut it down. It didn’t, then it insulted my clothes, and then stormed off. Then it freaks out and starts tearing its own face off.”

“Did you say anything else to this automaton?” Des knew very well how much Mable hated automatons, and it was maybe the only part of her he didn’t like. Mostly because she couldn’t restrain herself around them, which led to problems. Thankfully, most things didn’t involve automatons anymore, but when it did, Mable could have problems. He took her hesitation to speak as confirmation. “What did you say to it?”

“I called it an automaton playing Kenana dress up because it was wearing clothes for some reason.”

“Did that upset it further?” She hesitated again, and he sighed. “Did this person only start freaking out after you continued to call it and treat it like an automaton?” Again, the hesitation from her upset him. Mable really let her hate for automatons blind her, because if it didn’t shut down at the paradox that clearly meant it wasn’t an automaton and she should have recognized that. “Why were they freaking out?”

Quietly Mable said, “Because it was upset that everyone it had ever met treated it like an automaton and tried to shut it down.”

Des did his best to hold in a sigh and his mild upset. If this really was a regent, this was probably the worst way to have them introduced into the alliance. Even if it wasn’t really a person with a soul, regents were above the paradox and probably didn’t like being treated like some automaton. “Then what happened?”

“My dad and aunt took me aside while my uncle tried to calm down the thing. They told me ‘Avalyn’ wasn’t an automaton but a person and a child. That it passes the whole Kren’s Test, including that it has a soul.”

Another chill ran down Des’s spine. As far as anyone was aware, regents were just ancients’ automatons with sentience but no soul, so not a real person. If they did in fact have souls, it had monstrous implications for what the people of today had done upon finding a regent once before. Even worse implications for what they had planned for what could now be considered a literal unborn child. That was, of course, if this Avalyn was an actual regent.

“I didn’t believe them, but my dad and aunt were fully convinced. Then they told me about the stuff it could do, and I started getting really suspicious it was a regent, but then they told me it was from a species called Vysven. I was relieved and was thankful that they didn’t say Kestevk but they then told me that’s a mistranslation. Ancients call themselves Vysven and Kestevk just means first in their language or something like that.”

The sobbing started getting worse now, and Des was just growing more and more concerned. He could accept that they had mistranslated something. There were probably thousands of things they believed about the ancients that were wrong. “Did you believe them immediately?” She shook her head. “You believe it now?” She nodded. “What did they say to convince you?”

“Nothing; it’s what I saw that convinced me.” She could barely get the words out again, and this time Des gave her time and quiet to get a hold of herself. “My aunt looked back into the hangar to see if its face was healed, because apparently it heals metal somehow. She got really scared and then so did my dad when he looked… I had to look, but I regret it so much. I looked in and saw a draking ancients goddess.” The sobs grew almost hysterical. “A living ancients goddess cradling the regent like a draking child!”

Des took a deep breath through his nose, doing his best to steady his fast-pacing heart. A living ancients goddess had such very dangerous potential. This was not a contingency Des had ever even so much as mused out of pure fantasy. Where did he even start to plan on how to handle this? “Do you know which goddess it was?” That was a stupid question considering everything he had just learned, but his planning mind was trying to at least have some semblance of a concept of this goddess.

“Eternity or something like that. She wore a mask.”

Today was not a good day… There was only one ancients goddess that wore a mask as far as he was aware, and she was not a good god. With a deeper hope than he had ever felt, Des hoped they were wrong about the beliefs they had about this ancients goddess. “Did you talk to this goddess?”

“No, but I talked to the other that showed up.”

Des was starting to sweat now. “There’s a second ancients god alive?”

“No. It was a human goddess, I think.”

Des held his breath for a moment. He fingers clenched tightly. “Was she navy colored?” Mable nodded and Des let out a sigh. “Draking giff…” That was a massive relief, but filled him with a lot of anger. She should have warned him, but at least this meant he wasn’t dealing with two regents. “What did she have to say?”

“That this regent isn’t just a regent, but Eternity’s demigod child.”

More anger flooded Des. “You shouldn’t have told me that, Mable.” That anger wasn’t just directed at mable, but at Nevella too. She of all people should have known not to say that out loud.

“It’s a draking machine, Des! A demigod murder automaton!” She yelled defensively.

“Avalyn is a person, as terrifying as that might be. She is not a murder machine.” Now Des worried how he was not only going to contain all of this, but how to contain Mable with this information.

“Those things killed an entire system!”

For the first time in a long time, Des hesitated. There was a way to calm Mable, but it wasn’t something she should know. If Mable was openly this afraid of Avalyn and he said something that calmed her but had to be kept secret, Mable wouldn’t then be able to openly act differently. Maybe with time she could do what she did so well and lie and meld to fit the role that was needed, but… Des took a second and just stared at the sobbing woman and accessed. He didn’t hear the words she tried to say as he tried to quantify how dangerous Mable could be with her intense hatred and fear of ancients. This was too close to home for her. Her family was involved with this.

Nevella was going to owe him big time for handling this.

“—can’t keep this a secret. The galaxy needs to kn—”

“That story is propaganda, Mable.”

She froze. No more sobbing. No more tears. Mable sat there quietly. “What?”

“The story about a regent killing a system is propaganda. It never happened. There was an incident where a regent was discovered and then was dissected alive. The result of which was a world being destroyed, but it wasn’t even a populated world. The only casualty was the regent. In fact the regent saved the scientists that dissected them.”

Mable just stared at him unblinkingly with her ears fully propped up. “What do you mean its propaganda?!”

“It’s fake, Mable, and now you are one of six people in this galaxy that know that truth.” There was some part of him that recognized that if this Avalyn decided to openly live amongst the people of the Alliance that having this information become public might not be the worst thing. That had to wait while he still planned on how to move forward.

“Why would you make propaganda like that?! What’s the point of making such a horrible story like…” Her words faded as realization came over her face. “So that people like me would have this exact reaction and immediately report a regent to the highest possible authority.”

Des nodded. “It wasn’t originally propaganda, and the story originates from before the Alliance was even formed. But the story grew with each passing generation and became grander. The people who knew the truth kept it hidden, as this was around the time the Yechun Empire was discovered. We knew how powerful a regent was and wanted to ensure if another was discovered that we would get to them first.” He shook his head. “You could make the argument that not keeping it a secret would have been better, but that poor decision was made well before my time.”

There was silence between the two for a long while. “I’m not going to be able to act differently in front of my dad…”

Nodding again, Des said, “I know, but I know how you are with automatons, let alone ancients, and I didn’t trust you to keep Avalyn’s existence a secret unless you knew the truth.” It was hard to admit, but it was the truth. It hurt him how genuinely hurt Mable looked from his words. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

She shook her head, and the tears started again. It wasn’t long before her head was in her hands with her ears flopped down. “I think I’ve just ruined my dad’s relationship with my uncle and aunt… I begged him to never go back…”

“I’m sorry, Mable.” He took a few seconds before he said, “I know you don’t like lying to him, but maybe you can over time pretend to be more calm about it around him.”

Mable didn’t look up from her hands. “How did you find out about Avalyn? That guy my aunt used to date at the testing site?”

“From you,” Des answered honestly, causing Mable’s ears to shoot up. Now he had a new problem to worry about, with another person knowing.

“What?” Looking up from her hands, her eyes went wide. “There’s a second regent?”

“Thankfully, I believe the two we are talking about are one and the same.” If Nevella was involved, then he was positive Avalyn was the ‘unborn’ regent in the ancients ruin she found. At least he was fairly confident it was her and not her daughter who found it, as was what most people thought.

Mable let out a sigh, wiping tears from her face. “I just wanted to go back to a small planet life, and now I have to deal with a resurrected species…”

“I’ll handle it, Mable.”

“I’m the point of contact between you and Avalyn. I’m in the best position to handle this. Even if I do hate it…” The last words came out quieter than the rest.

“No, you’re not.” Her ears twitched in confusion. “Nevella is.”

“Who?”

“The human goddess. You can go back to just spending time with your dad and not have to worry about this again.”

Wiping the tears from her face, she asked, “I know you’re a big name, but do you even know a god personally?”

Des stared at the hologram for a moment. It was impossible that Mable would be unaware that he had served in this role for longer than a human should rightfully live. That didn’t mean she knew the truth, as there were a number of ways to extend a life. Most weren’t pleasant and often involved deals with people you shouldn’t be making deals with. He could also have been lying about being human altogether. The real question was whether she was fishing for information or keeping up the appearance that she didn’t know the truth, as the question itself was a reasonable question to ask when dealing with gods. He smirked, knowing that if Mable was as good as he knew her to be, she was very well aware of the truth.

“I have my ways of getting in touch with gods when I need to. I know how to get this goddess’s attention.”

Mable nodded, not continuing down this line of questioning. A muffled voice came from the background of Mable’s call. “My dad is calling me. I have to go.”

“Stay safe, Growl.”

“I have no plans on doing anything more than my simple, small planet job. Goodbye, Handler.”¹Spy X Family

The communication ended with no fanfare, and Des wasn’t sure he believed Mable. That only made him smile. “Drak me,” he said, closing the cabinet and walked to the edge of the room. He grabbed one of the few chairs in the room and pulled it over to the other side of his desk. Casually, he sat back down in his own chair and opened a drawer. It took a moment of searching before he found the small idol he was looking for.

To reach Nevella he could always just message her on her companion, but she wasn’t likely to see the message as soon as he wanted to talk to her. Setting the idol down on his desk, he clapped his hands together before closing his eyes. With his thoughts on her, he spoke. “Nevella, I need to talk to you urgently. It’s about the regent your daughter is setting out to find, but I understand if you are too busy spending time with the regent Avalyn and her ancients goddess mother then maybe it could wait a moment.” Unclapping his hands and opening his eyes, he leaned back in his chair and waited.

“I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that bunny!” Nevella said as soon as she appeared, a minute or so after Des had finished praying to her.

“You shouldn’t call rabbitkin bunnies, cousin.” Technically, they were second cousins, but no one ever bothered making such a distinction and instead just called everyone cousin.

“Don’t you dare call me cousin, Des!” Nevella shouted. “You only call me cousin when you’re up to something I don’t like!”

Des raised his hands, not having expected Nevella to come in so hot and angry. “You’re right,” he conceded, already realizing that he had let his own anger at her control what he said in the prayer. There had been many a game night where Des had pushed Nevella to far and calling her cousin like he did those nights wasn’t helpful. “I’m sorry, Nev. I’m not trying to upset you, or do something you don’t like.”

“Really? You just prayed to me to tell me I just blabbed about the most important secret in the galaxy to one of your damn fucking spies!” Tears were appearing in the corners of her eyes.

“Nev,” Des said, standing up from his chair. He didn’t like seeing her like this. “I may not have gone about this the right way, but this is most certainly something I need to be involved in. Regardless of whether or not you like that.”

Nevella covered her face with her hands and paced for a few seconds. “Fuck, I messed this up so bad,” she said with tears in her voice, right before plopping herself down in the chair Des had provided.

With ease, Des pulled his own chair out from around the desk and placed himself down in it right next to Nevella. “While I can’t deny that you outed someone as a demigod, you didn’t fuck this up, Nev.” He sighed and placed a hand on her knee. “Can I trust you with a secret?”

Pulling her hands away from her face, she revealed tears running down her cheeks. Nevella didn’t meet his eyes and said, “I don’t know. Can you? I just outed someone…”

“I don’t think you’re going to make that mistake again anytime soon. If there’s one thing I have learned about you over our many vols playing games, you rarely repeat your mistakes.”

“Maybe the only problem is you’re always five steps ahead of me in every game.”

He shrugged before pulling his hand away. “It’s what I do best, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do the right things. You’re right, the rabbitkin is one of mine, but she’s retired and I’m going to personally beg you not to out her. She’s earned her peaceful small-planet life many times over. I found out about all this through her, and even if you hadn’t outed Avalyn, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would have found out everything I could all on my own.”

Nevella sighed, “There isn’t a secret in the galaxy anyone can keep from you.”

“Someone’s got to do that dirty work.” He felt a lot better now that Nevella appeared to have calmed a little. “I’m hoping that by reaching out to you, I’m showing I want to do this, at least in most part, the right way. I don’t want to go in hot with the spying if I can go through family that I can trust.”

Looking down at her knees, Nevella said, “I promised Eternity I wouldn’t tell anyone… If I talk to you, I’ll be breaking that promise. I really don’t want to break my promise to her.”

Des nodded and leaned back in his chair. “I can go about this in my own ways, but if we want to be technical about this, you didn’t break your promise, and since I already know so much, you wouldn’t be breaking it by giving me clarifying information. I know that probably doesn’t ease your mind, but sometimes breaking a promise to someone can be better for them than keeping it.”

“You’re just trying to get me to talk.” Nevella wiped some tears from her face.

“I’m in a situation I had never even so much as mused as a damn fantasy just to have fun. I won’t lie, I’m desperate for more information because I want to do this right, Nev. Right now, you’re the best chance I have at not drak this up.” Normally, Des wasn’t one to swear much, unless the matter was serious, and he hoped Nevella could pick up on that.

Nevella was quiet for a long while, occasionally wiping stray tears from her face. “I don’t want to fuck this up either…” She didn’t say anything more.

Maybe he needed to come at this with a different approach. “Can I ask some questions that aren’t in direct relation to Avalyn and Et-er-nity? Did I say that right?”

“Yes, and sure.”

“Does Bethany know?”

“No,” Nevella tried to say plainly, but she couldn’t hide the worry in her voice. “I don’t know what to do about that. If I tell her not to go to the crash site, then she’s going to know something is wrong, but letting her go there to find nothing is still a risk.”

“She is a demigod, Nev, and the one person in the galaxy with a direct line to you. Also, Aresa has special forces training.”

“Does she really?” Nevella said, finally looking up at Des. “Bethany never told me that about her girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend? Are they finally official now?”

Nevella sighed and leaned back in her chair. “No, I wish they were. I don’t understand how they can just keep dancing around saying they have feelings for one another for nearly a damn decade. They own a house together, for fuck’s sake!”

“Has Aresa met you yet?”

“No, Bethany is too afraid to admit to being a demigod. I think she’s worried she’ll lose all the credit for her work if she’s found out to be my daughter.”

That wasn’t terribly surprising. Many demigods felt that way when their line of work was related to what their parents were the gods of. “Even from Aresa? I would think even if they aren’t officially together yet that Bethany would trust her enough.”

Nevella shrugged. “Maybe it’s just one of those things that gets harder to admit the longer you keep the secret. I think she should tell her. I would love to actually meet her and not just watch without them knowing.”

“I think you’re right on it getting harder the longer the secret’s kept, but it’s Bethany’s choice at the end of the day.”

“You’re right.” A silence filled the room for a short while before Nevella said, “What do you want now that you know Eternity and Avalyn exist?”

“Why would I want anything?”

Frustration grew back on Nevella’s face. “Avalyn is the most advanced piece of technology and magic in existence, and could change the war with the Yechun Empire. She could change the tide of any conflict, ever. And let’s not even get into what a living ancients goddess is capable of doing.”

“While that is very true, I personally want to keep Avalyn and her mother as far away from any conflict as possible. In fact, I would prefer to keep their existence a secret, at least for the moment. Besides, isn’t Avalyn still only a child too? It would be incredibly irresponsible to send her into conflict.”

The surprise on Nevella’s face was plain to see, but relief quickly overshadowed it. For as tricky as Des could be, he didn’t openly lie to family, especially about matters of great importance. “You really want to keep their existence a secret?”

Des nodded enthusiastically. “I’m not sure how our society would handle this revelation, especially the news that regents are living people with souls. I’m worried that even knowing that people would do a lot to get their hands on a regent.” There was a moment of silence as the weight of Des’s words settled on the two of them. After a moment, Des sighed and looked down at his hands. “Honestly, I’m rushing into talking to you, Nev. I got frustrated that you hadn’t given me a heads-up about something this big, and I didn’t reach out to you as I should have. I’m sorry.”

A small smile crossed Nevella’s face. “Thanks Des. I made a promise not to tell, but the thought of telling you had crossed my mind a few times.” The smile faded. “I actually even slightly brought it up to them saying you might be able to help with getting Avalyn some identification documents. I didn’t give too much away of who you were or what that would mean.”

Looking up, Des raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“I did say that I didn’t think you could legally keep all this a secret.”

A smirk crossed Des’s lips. “Nev, do you really think I, of all people, couldn’t find a loophole to keep them a secret?”

“Can you?”

Leaning back in his chair, the smirk on Des’s face turned into a smile. “Let’s see.” He looked up to the ceiling. “Bryst is 70ish light-years away, so that would take me about eight and a half rotations to get there.” He nodded and looked back down. “That’s more than enough time to find a way. Already have a few ideas bouncing around in my head.”

Now it was Nevella’s time to smirk. “Why would it take you so long to get there? Couldn’t you just ask your dad to take you in a matter of minutes? Hell, I could take you there right now.”

Des shivered at the thought. “No, thank you. I despise the way gods travel.”

“But it’s so fun. You can go see distant stars and planets in moments compared to rotation.”

“And I will happily spend my time on a ship going as slow as I need to,” Des said confidently.

“You’re no fun.”

“That is something I have heard from you many times on game nights.”

“It’s true.”

He smiled at her. “Alright, I have a timeline and a few ideas for a plan, and you haven’t had to break your promise.”

The smile on Nevella’s face became less teasing and more loving. “Thank you, Des.” The smile faded for a moment. “There is one thing I would like to clarify to you, though.”

The expression on Des’s face became more serious. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Nev. I can find out all this on my own.”

Nevella nodded. “I know, but this is important. While Avalyn is only half a hept old, she is an adult. Regents are born as full-grown adults, and from Avalyn’s perspective, she lived into adulthood in a simulation before actually waking up in reality. I just don’t want you eventually meeting her and treating her like a literal child. From my brief time with her, I don’t think she enjoys being treated as a naive child, even if her simulation didn’t really prepare her for what reality is like.”

“You didn’t have to tell me that, Nev, but thank you.” That would alter the way he planned on interacting with Avalyn upon actually meeting her. It was also relieving, but it made him want to ask many more questions.

“I’m just clarifying something that your spy should have been able to tell you, so I’m not breaking my promise.”

That put a smile on Des’s face. “Alright. I will keep that in mind.”

“Is that all you need from me?” Nevella asked.

“For now. Thank you again, Nev. Sorry for not reaching out to you in the best way.”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have screamed at you for calling me cousin.”

Des shrugged. “Honestly, I deserved that. Sometimes I need someone screaming at me to know I’ve taken something too far.”

“I bet you get a lot of that,” Nevella said with a teasing smile.

A smile crossed his face. “You wouldn’t believe how loud admirals can scream.” The smile faltered for a moment. “Don’t tell them about me yet.”

Nevella’s smile faded. “I think they’ll want to know someone else knows about them.”

“If you tell them now, either they’ll think you broke the promise, or realize it was Mable and I don’t want her exposed. Let me figure out my plan on what to do and how to ensure both of their safety before I come to meet them on my own. If either of them are upset that you knew about this and didn’t tell them, blame me, because I am the one asking you to keep quiet.”

Nevella said nothing as she thought it over. “You would really take the fall on this?”

Des nodded. “I realize this is probably your biggest and wildest dream come true, and I’m not going to mess that up for you, Nev.”

“Thank you.”