Date: June 2, 2440 Time: 10:30 PM CST
“I thought I’d find you here,” T’mari said gently, not entirely sure how to approach him now.
“I did invite you to dinner.”
“That was before you became a High Lord of the V’ren on a livestream broadcast across three systems.” Her voice was steady, but her hands betrayed tension. “I’ve never even been in the presence of one of my own household lords. And now I’ve spent the entire day beside a man who’s just become one of the 109 High Lords in existence. I’m not sure you even understand what that means.”
“I don’t,” Matt admitted. “Which is exactly why I need you. And why I’m going to miss your company.”
She gave a sad, breathless laugh. “You’ve already surpassed anything I ever taught you. When did you learn Old High V’ren?”
“I’ve been listening to your mythology,” he said with a soft shrug. “Your sagas remind me of the old stories from my own people—blood, land, loyalty, betrayal. I understand more than I thought I would.”
“You keep surprising me,” she murmured. She finally sat, slowly, carefully—trying to reconcile every cultural instinct that told her she had no right to remain in his presence. She still wanted him, fiercely, but any path to becoming his consort had just been ripped away. He now stood at a level of society that made her presence beside him a near-sacrilege. Pursuing him could destroy what fragile standing she still had within the V’ren.
Matt reached into his satchel and pulled out the T’all dagger, turning it slowly in his hands. The obsidian hilt caught the light, still tinged faintly with the blood he’d willingly shed.
“What do I even do with this? Wear it?”
T’mari shook her head, her voice low. “No. Display it. Proudly. You don’t need to proclaim your status anymore, Matthew. You’ve stepped into a tier where your very presence announces who and what you are. And that blade? It will make some Houses very nervous.”
“What does W’ren say?”
“That either you or K’Rem just solved the problem he’s been trying to fix for years.” Her voice shifted, more serious now. “Matthew, there’s so much more to this than you understand yet. The V’ren are not unified. They’re teetering on the edge of civil war. That’s why men like W’ren and K’Rem—men of honor—were sent out to govern colonies light years away. You’ve just placed yourself and Earth right at the fulcrum of a fracture in our civilization. Like it or not, you’ve become a galactic power.”
She looked away for a moment. “That livestream is already moving at FTL. Within weeks, billions of V’ren will have seen it. Many of them will cheer. Some will panic. And others will begin planning.”
Matt exhaled slowly. “That was always inevitable. They appointed me to a job no one wanted to admit mattered—precisely because no one trusted the other players. That made me the only one left. So yeah, I became what they feared most.”
He looked up at her, something bittersweet dancing behind his eyes.
“A redneck from Missouri who now holds the one ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all… one ring in the darkness of space to bind them.”
T’mari closed her eyes for just a moment, caught between grief and admiration, duty and desire.
Because the worst part of all?
He hadn’t even asked for any of it.
Matt knew there was no uncomplicated future—not with her, not with anyone. Gone were the nights he and his friends could just decide to head down to the river for catfish, or spend a day puttering around the farm. A man who’d lived simply all his life had just crossed into a place where nothing would ever be simple again. Every choice, every movement, would be filtered through the fact that he was now one of the highest-level leaders his world—or hers—had ever seen.
“Can we just pretend none of that happened until after dinner?”
“Of course,” she said, really wishing she could forget it. She would try for him, and for one last memory of what it was to be in his orbit. “What’s for dinner?”
