THE WORLD WANTS IN
Dallas — The Bus. That Night.
Nobody talked much on the ride back to the hotel.
Gideon drove. The highway was dark and wide and empty enough at this hour that the bus moved through it like something with purpose, which was the best he could offer them. Purpose. Forward motion. Getting from one place to the next.
In the monitor on the dashboard, he could see the front lounge. The band was there, all five of them, plus Samantha, plus Sidney. Nathan had come back from the secure line call looking like a man who had run a very long distance in a very short time and was still catching his breath. He'd sat down without speaking and nobody asked, because they could all see it in his face.
Galena knew. That was what his face said. Galena knew and Aelin was already in motion.
Jace sat with his forearms on his knees, looking at the floor. Samantha had her hand on his back, not rubbing, not patting it, just present. Resting there. She'd learned a long time ago the difference between comfort that helped and comfort that interrupted something a person needed to move through on their own.
He was moving through it.
Gideon watched the road and listened to the silence and understood that this was a kind of family meeting, the kind where nothing needed to be said yet because everyone was still absorbing the same thing from their own angle. He'd been in enough operational debriefs after bad days to recognize the shape of it.
Let them sit. They'd talk when they were ready.
It was Erik who spoke first, which surprised him slightly. Erik was not usually the first to speak.
"The crew," Erik said.
That was all. Two words. But the room heard the whole sentence inside them: the crew is going to be out of work and it's not their fault and somebody needs to think about that.
Kavanaugh, who had ridden the bus for the first time tonight and was sitting in the second captain's chair looking like a man reassessing several life choices simultaneously, looked up from his notepad. "I'll handle it. Paid leave for the full duration. We have the resources."
Erik nodded once. Satisfied.
"How long?" Connor asked.
"That depends on what we decide," Jace said. He raised his head. His expression had the settled quality that decisions had once they'd been made quietly, without announcement. "We need to go to Aelin."
Nobody argued.
"All of us?" Samantha asked.
"All of us," Jace said. He looked at her. "You're not staying behind."
She held his gaze, then nodded.
"Gideon too," Jace continued, and he tilted his head slightly toward the driver's seat, knowing Gideon could hear every word. "This is the trip we talked about. The Archives. You've been briefed on Aelin but you've never been. It's time."
In the driver's seat, Gideon kept his eyes on the road. He felt something settle in his chest that he didn't have a word for yet.
"I'll be ready," he said.
Sidney cleared his throat. "The official statement for the tour pause is safety concerns following the public disclosure. That's true, it's sufficient, and it's the only thing we say. No timeline given. Dates will be rescheduled."
"The switchboard," Kavanaugh said, and the dryness in his voice suggested the word did not adequately capture what was happening to the hotel switchboard. "I'll need two additional staff just to manage the message volume. Every television network, every newspaper, every radio program in the country. Talk shows. The evening news. International press." He paused. "And… other calls."
"What other calls?" Ricky asked.
Kavanaugh looked at his notepad. "Nikki Sixx called. Tommy Lee called. Kevin DuBrow called. Kip Winger called. Gene Simmons called." He paused. "Dolly Parton called." The lounge took that in differently than the others.
"The Oath," Nathan said quietly.
"They're worried about us," Connor said. It wasn't a question.
"They understand what's been exposed," Nathan said. "Better than most. Galena said the Aelinian Intelligence reports are already coming in. People are digging. Aelin. The Veil. The Prime Minister. Those words are in newsrooms, in government intelligence files, in wire room dispatches across every major city in the world." He paused. "The CIA has already sent a formal inquiry through diplomatic channels."
Silence.
"Of course they have," Jace said. Not angry. Just certain.
"What do we tell them?" Ricky asked.
"Nothing yet," Jace said. "That's Galena's call and the Congress's call, not mine alone. Not until we've been home." He looked around the lounge. "We do this right. We go to Aelin. We sit with our people. We hear what they want. And then we decide together."
The bus moved through the Texas dark, carrying them toward whatever came next.
Gideon drove.
* * *
The Phone Calls
The calls had come in through the night and into the next morning, routing through the hotel switchboard faster than the front desk could write message slips. Kavanaugh appeared at the suite door at seven a.m. with a legal pad so dense with handwriting it looked like a ransom note, his pager clipped to his belt and vibrating with the quiet persistence of a man who had not slept.
"Nikki Sixx first," he said, handing Jace a slip with a phone number on it. "Use the suite landline."
Jace took it. Dialed.
Nikki picked up on the first ring.
"Jace." His voice had an edge that wasn't anger, something more like the edge of controlled concern in a man who had been sitting with it all night.
"We're okay," Jace said.
"All of you?"
"All of us."
A breath on the other end. "Good. Good. That thing Voss said, about Aelin. About the Veil. Is that..."
"I know," Jace said.
"What do you need from us?"
"Right now, nothing," Jace said. "Stay quiet if anyone asks you about Aelin. You don't know anything. You've never known anything."
"Done," Nikki said immediately. "And when you're back from wherever you're going, because I know you're going somewhere, you call me."
"I'll call you," Jace said.
Tommy Lee's call was shorter. He'd already talked to Nikki and the worry had transferred intact, not processed, just transferred, and what came through the line was the voice of a man who needed to hear that they were actually okay and wouldn't quite believe it until he did. Jace told him twice. Tommy said alright in a way that meant he was going to call Nikki back and report in, and Jace let him.
Kevin DuBrow called from somewhere loud, Jace could hear the background noise of what sounded like a rehearsal space or a studio and Kevin had clearly stepped out to make this call. He and the rest of Quiet Riot went back further with Battle Cry than almost anyone, back to before the powers, back to the early days when Battle Cry were five guys in a van who happened to become something more. Kevin's concern had the texture of someone who had watched the whole arc and understood what it had cost.
"You should have told me it was that bad," Kevin said. "In '86. You should have said."
"We handled it," Jace said.
"I know you handled it. You always handle it. That's not the point."
Jace was quiet for a moment. "I know," he said. "You're right. I'm sorry."
Kevin accepted that the way old friends accepted things, without needing it elaborated on. "You need anything, you call. That's what this is for."
The call with Kip Winger was quieter, more careful. Kip had a kind of intelligence that moved slowly and thoroughly, and he'd clearly spent the night thinking rather than reacting.
"The Veil mention," Kip said. "That's the one I'm worried about. The ransom demand specifically. Someone organized enough to make that kind of demand is someone with information and infrastructure. That's not nothing."
"No," Jace agreed. "It's not."
"Is there anything the rest of us should be doing? Watching for?"
Jace thought about that. "Watch your own circles. Anyone asking unusual questions about us, about the amulets, about Aelin. Anything that feels like someone fishing for information rather than just being curious."
"Considered done," Kip said. Then his tone shifted, not lighter exactly, but warmer. The concern was still there, just making room. "Also. We've been working on something. For when you're back on the road."
"That's a yes," Jace said.
"We're still deep in the album," Kip said. "Videos to plan, the whole circus. But when you're coming through, we're making time. We made up our own drinking game."
"And," Kip added cheerfully, "no powers. None. You guys have to be normal, pathetically powerless humans like the rest of us. We're done watching you sit there looking fine while we end up wearing house plants."
Jace laughed. It came out of nowhere and it felt good. "It was a fern," he said.
"It was a house plant," Kip said firmly. "We'll see you on the road, Jace."
"Consider it a date."
"Jace, I'm sorry this happened. The way it came out."
"Thank you. That matters."
Gene Simmons called in the afternoon. Gene's version of concern was not the same as other people's version of concern, it came wrapped in a directness that could read as blunt if you didn't know him, and a strategic intelligence that was already several moves ahead of the immediate crisis. He had questions about the security implications, about what the public disclosure meant for the Oath holders, about whether there was anything KISS needed to do differently going forward. Practical questions, all of them. That was Gene. Jace answered what he could and told him to sit tight, same as everyone else.
"You've complicated things," Gene said at the end. Not accusatory. Just observational.
"I know," Jace said.
"Good," Gene said. "Means you did it on purpose. I can work with that." He paused. "Take care of your people, Jace."
"Always," Jace said.
The call from Dolly came last, which Kavanaugh had listed at the bottom of his notepad with a small star next to it that he hadn't explained and didn't need to. Jace sat down for this one. Pulled the chair close to the landline the way you did when you knew you were going to need to be still for a few minutes.
She picked up before the second ring.
"Honey," she said. That was all. Just that one word, in that voice, warm and certain and entirely without pretense, and a knot in Jace's chest loosened in a way it hadn't through any of the other calls. Dolly Parton was forty-one years old and she had a way of making a twenty-eight-year-old man feel like someone was looking after him for a minute. He hadn't realized how much he'd needed that until it happened.
"Hi, Dolly," he said.
"Are you alright? Are all your boys alright?" The way she said your boys, like she was asking about his children, not his bandmates, was completely natural for her. That was how she saw it. Five young men she'd taken into her heart, and she wanted to know they were safe.
"We're okay," he said. "All five of us."
A breath on the other end. Then: "I watched it happen. The whole thing, on the television. I couldn't…" She stopped herself. "I'm not going to pretend I wasn't scared for you. For all of you."
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't you apologize to me," she said, and there was a gentle firmness in it that reminded him of every good mother he'd ever seen in action. "That's not what this call is. Jace, I found out more about what happened in '86. Reading between what Voss was saying and what I already knew. What Connor went through. What you went through. What Ricky had to endure…and what Nathan and Erik went through, too." Her voice caught slightly. "I didn't know it was that bad, sweetheart. Nobody told me it was that bad."
Jace was quiet. There was a quality to Dolly's concern that made it nearly impossible to deflect the way he deflected everything else. She wasn't a peer checking in. She wasn't a fellow Oath holder processing the situation. She was a woman in her forties who genuinely loved these boys and was hurting for them, and that landed somewhere different than anything else had.
"We handled it," he said finally. His voice was steady. Mostly.
"I know you did," she said. "You boys always do. You've always been so strong. Every one of you. That's what breaks my heart a little bit, if I'm honest with you. That you always have to be."
He didn't have an answer for that. She didn't wait for one.
"And the island," she said, softer now. "Your people. I keep thinking about them. With everything coming out the way it did, are they going to be okay? Are you going to be able to protect them?"
This was the question that had lived in Jace's chest since Dallas. The one he'd been carrying under everything else, under the press response, under the switchboard that hadn't stopped, under the weight of not yet knowing what his people wanted. Dolly asked it the way she asked everything: plainly, warmly, without any angle to it. Just genuine love and genuine worry, from someone old enough to have seen enough of the world to know what exposure could cost.
"I'm going to do everything I can," he said. "That's the honest answer. Everything I can."
"That's all any of us can do," she said. "And it's enough. It has always been enough with you, Jace. Don't you forget that."
Then, because she was Dolly Parton and this was simply who she was: "Now. Have you eaten anything today? Have any of those boys eaten anything?"
Jace laughed. It was a different laugh than the one Kip had gotten, quieter, more tired, stripped of everything but the genuine relief of it. "Yes ma'am," he said.
"I mean it," she said. "You make sure they eat. You make sure you eat. I don't care how much is on your plate right now, you still have to eat off a real one."
"I will," he said. "I promise."
"Good," she said. "You call me when you're settled. I don't care what time it is. You just call."
He sat with the phone in his hand after she hung up. The weight of the last three days was still there. It wasn't lighter. But something about being mothered for five minutes by Dolly Parton, being called honey and sweetheart and told to eat, had set something down inside him that he hadn't known he was carrying separately from everything else. The exhaustion of never being the one who got looked after. She'd seen it. Of course she had. That was Dolly.
* * *
The US Government
The call from the State Department came through Kavanaugh's office line at ten in the morning, which meant someone had been awake very early making decisions about how to approach this.
The man's name was Hargrove. His title was something in the middle of the State Department's organizational chart that meant he was senior enough to make this call but not so senior that it was a declaration of intent. A feeler. Carefully calibrated.
"Mr. Kavanaugh," he said, "I'm calling on behalf of the State Department to express our concern for the safety and wellbeing of the members of Battle Cry following yesterday's disclosures. We'd like to discuss what protective resources we might be able to offer."
Kavanaugh had Jace in the room. Jace had asked to be there for this one.
"Mr. Hargrove," Kavanaugh said, "we appreciate the call very much. The band is grateful for America's concern and for the protection that American law enforcement provided during the 1986 incident. On American soil, we would be very glad to discuss any additional protective measures the State Department feels would be appropriate."
A brief pause. "And regarding… the other matters raised in the public disclosure? The references to Aelin, the governance structure."
Kavanaugh looked at Jace. Jace gave a slight nod.
"For anything that touches on matters beyond American jurisdiction," Kavanaugh said smoothly, "the appropriate contact would be the Prime Minister of Aelin. We would be happy to facilitate that introduction when the time is right."
Another pause. Longer this time. Hargrove was recalibrating. "I see. And when might that time be?"
"Soon," Kavanaugh said pleasantly. "We'll be in touch."
He hung up. Looked at Jace.
"Smoothly done," Jace said.
"I've been doing this for twenty years," Kavanaugh said, and went back to his legal pad.
* * *
Aelin — The Portal. Three Days Later.
Gideon had been through a portal once before, briefly, as part of a security exercise. He had not enjoyed it. He had not said so, because Marines did not say so, but his body had registered a strong opinion about being disassembled and reassembled in a different location.
This one was different.
Ricky opened it with the ease of someone who had done this ten thousand times, a doorway in the air, the shimmer of something that was not quite light and not quite sound but had properties of both, and beyond it the green and gold of Aelin in the early morning. The air that came through smelled like salt and pine and something else that Gideon had no name for but that felt, inexplicably, like arriving.
He stepped through.
The portal closed behind him.
He stood on the grass of Aelin and looked out over a landscape that existed nowhere on any map he'd ever studied, and felt the sensation of a man whose understanding of the world has just been required to expand.
He expanded it. He was a Marine. You adapted.
"First time?" Ricky said beside him, grinning.
"First time on Aelin," Gideon confirmed.
"Wait until you see the castle," Ricky said.
* * *
Aelin — Nathan and Galena
Nathan found Galena in her office in the Parliament building, which was exactly where he'd known she'd be. The office had three walls of windows overlooking the harbor and one wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and Galena Dallenger was behind her desk with four reports open simultaneously and a cup of tea that had gone cold sometime in the last hour.
She looked up when he came in.
He crossed to her and she stood and they put their foreheads together, and the word came quiet and certain between them:
"I see you."
They stayed like that. Just that. Three days of it held between their foreheads, acknowledged, shared.
Then she pulled back and looked at him properly, her grey eyes moving across his face with the efficiency of someone who loved him and also had a nation to run.
"You look tired," she said.
"I look terrible," he corrected.
"You look tired," she repeated firmly, which was Galena's way of saying I love you and I refuse to agree that you look terrible even when you do. She sat him down in the chair across from her desk and sat back in her own and laced her fingers together. "Tell me what Voss knew."
"More than he should have," Nathan said. "The Marks briefed their people well enough. Voss knew the word Aelin, knew the amulets connected to it, knew there was a Veil, knew the ransom demand included dropping it. And he knew your title."
Galena's expression didn't change. "The Intelligence reports have the same picture. The exposure is… significant but not catastrophic. The Veil holds. Our location remains protected. What has been lost is deniability."
"Aelin as a word is now in the world," Nathan said.
"Yes." She looked at the harbor through the window. "The question the Congress will ask, and the question Jace will need to answer for the people, is whether we acknowledge what Voss said, or whether we continue to say nothing."
"And if we say nothing," Nathan said, "the speculation fills the silence."
"Which may be worse," Galena agreed. "Particularly given the songs. Shadowlands has already done half the work of telling the world something horrible and real happened to Battle Cry. Voss provided the other half. The world is not going to simply… move on." She picked up her cold tea, looked at it, set it back down. "The people need to vote on this. That's non-negotiable for me. This affects every person on this island."
"Jace will want that too," Nathan said. "You know him."
She smiled slightly. "I do. How long before he's ready to address the Congress?"
"Give him a day," Nathan said. "He'll want to walk the island first."
Galena nodded.
* * *
Aelin — Jace Walks the Island
He went alone, which Gideon allowed only because Aelin's own security was comprehensive and because Jace had asked with a quiet insistence that made it clear this was not negotiable.
He walked through the market quarter first, where people recognized him and the recognition had a different quality here than it did anywhere outside Aelin. In America he was a rock star. In Aelin he was their king, and also one of their own, and also the man whose face they'd watched grow up from a boy born on this island into someone who carried their name across a world that didn't know they existed.
Until now.
He stopped at a fruit stall run by an older woman named Marta who had known his mother. She looked at him, then came around the counter and put her forehead to his.
"I see you," she said. "We see you, Jace. We know what you've carried."
He had to stand very still.
"I see you," he said back. "I'm going to need your voices. All of you. Before we decide anything."
"You'll have them," she said simply.
He walked on. The harbor. The residential quarter. The training grounds where Sidney had put him through his paces a hundred times, where the grass still showed the worn paths of decades of footwork. The memorial at the edge of the old district, where the names of past Guardians were carved into a wall of white stone.
Seamus Greene's name. His predecessor. The Guardian before him.
He stood there for a while.
Dave got you through the first half, Gideon had told him. We're here for the second.
He thought about that. About what the second half meant now. About the word Aelin sitting in newsrooms and government intelligence files and on the desks of people he'd never meet. About Marta pressing her forehead to his like it was the most natural thing in the world, which here it was.
About his people, who had lived behind the Veil their entire lives and were now, for the first time, known to exist.
He straightened. Rolled his shoulders. Turned back toward the castle.
He had a Congress to address.
* * *
Aelin — The Congress
The Aelinian Congress met in a circular chamber in the east wing of the castle, tiered seating rising around a central floor where speakers stood. Every seat was full. Members who hadn't been in the chamber together in years had come. The energy in the room was not panic, Aelinians were not a panicking people, but it was charged with the alertness of people who understood the stakes precisely.
Jace stood at the center of the floor. No podium. No notes. He'd never used notes for this.
He looked around the chamber. Let the silence sit. Made eye contact with as many faces as he could, not performing it, just doing it, because these were his people and they deserved to be seen by the person who was about to ask something of them.
"Three days ago," he began, "a man named Daryl Voss said the word Aelin on a television broadcast that reached every country in the world. He said it alongside the words Prime Minister, Veil, and amulets. He said it as part of a criminal interview in which he was trying to avoid consequences for things he participated in doing to members of this Brotherhood."
The chamber was very quiet.
"He did not know where we are. He does not know how to find us. The Veil holds. Our location is protected. That is not the question in front of us today."
He let that settle.
"The question is this: Aelin is now a word in the world. A word that millions of people are asking about. A word attached to us, to the Brotherhood, to what happened to us in 1986. The world knows something exists. They do not know what, or where, or how. We can continue to say nothing, and the speculation will fill that silence with things we cannot control. Or we can say, in our own voice and on our own terms: yes. We exist. We are a nation. We will not tell you where we are, and we will not drop the Veil. But we are real, and we are sovereign, and we are here."
He looked around the chamber again.
"I will not make this decision for you. It affects every person on this island. It is yours to make. Prime Minister Dallenger and I have agreed: this goes to a vote of the people. Every adult citizen of Aelin will have a voice." He paused. "But before that vote happens, I want to hear from this chamber. I want your questions and your concerns and your anger if you have it. All of it. I'm not leaving this room until we've said everything that needs saying."
The first hand went up almost immediately.
It was going to be a long session.
Jace settled in.
* * *
Aelin — The Chamber. Hours Later.
They went for four hours.
The concerns were real and varied and Jace heard every one of them. The fear that acknowledgment invited attack. The counter-argument that silence invited worse speculation. The worry about Aelinian citizens who lived and worked beyond the island, would they be safe once their connection to a now-public hidden nation was known? The anger at Aldus, who had exploited this exposure through the Marks. The question of whether acknowledging existence would satisfy the world's curiosity or simply whet it.
Nathan spoke at length about the Veil's integrity: technically sound, location completely uncompromised, the broadcast signal still fully contained. He was precise and calm and the chamber trusted him.
Connor spoke about the songs. About what it had meant to put the truth into music and release it into the world, and how in some ways the world already knew more about who Battle Cry was than it knew about what Aelin was. We have been telling them who we are, he said. Perhaps it is time to tell them that we are.
Erik said almost nothing for three hours and then said one thing, slowly and with the weight of a man who had chosen his words with great care: "Whatever this chamber decides, the security of this island is not negotiable. Not a word that gets spoken to the outside world without full certainty that it does not lead anyone here." The chamber took that in. Nobody disagreed.
Ricky, when he finally spoke, was quieter than his usual self and more precise. "Aldus already knows we're here. He's always known. The Veil isn't hidden from him. He just hasn't been able to find it yet. Whatever we decide about the outside world, we can't pretend that's the real security question. The real security question is him." That landed hard. Several Congress members shifted in their seats.
Near the end, an older member named Calloway who had served in the Congress for thirty years asked Jace directly: "And what is your own heart on this, Guardian? Not your duty. Your heart."
Jace was quiet for a long time.
"My heart," he said finally, "wants to protect every person in this chamber and every person outside it who calls this island home. My heart also knows that the word is already out there, and that silence from us doesn't protect us from the questions. It just means someone else answers them. And I would rather Aelin speak for itself."
Calloway nodded slowly. "That's what I needed to hear."
* * *
Aelin — The Broadcast
The Aelinian internal broadcast system ran three channels and reached every home and business on the island simultaneously. Channel One was the news and public affairs channel, state-run and thorough. Channel Two carried sports, football primarily, Aelin's equivalent of the English Premier League, followed with the passionate investment of a small nation that took its clubs very seriously, plus equestrian events, golf, and the Aelinian athletes who had competed on the international stage for generations under Irish colors, quietly dominant, uncredited beyond the Veil. Channel Three was entertainment: dramas, comedies, mystery serials, farming programs, and the occasional film from the small but earnest studio in Léirstinach, whose productions had launched a handful of genuine Aelinian movie stars, famous on the island, largely unknown everywhere else, which suited them fine. The signal, as always, stayed entirely within the Veil, contained, secure, undetectable from outside.
The only person beyond the island who could receive any of it was Tobin, Jace's brother, and only because Tobin had a permanent portal in his basement behind the water heater. Tap the top of it once and it activated just enough to let the Aelinian signal bleed through into the house. The hard part was what came next, getting that signal locked onto an analog television set required the rabbit ears to be positioned with a precision that the laws of physics did not much support, a tolerance for static that most people did not have, and a vocabulary of profanity that Tobin had been building his entire adult life. He'd gotten very good at it. He had favorites on all three channels. He had opinions about the Aelinian football table. He had watched every episode of a mystery serial called The Léirstinach Files that had been running for four years and he had never once been able to discuss it with anyone who had also seen it, which was a kind of loneliness he'd made his peace with.
The broadcast was simple. Galena appeared on screen first, in her capacity as Prime Minister, and explained the situation to the people of Aelin with the clarity and directness that had made her one of the most trusted leaders the island had known. She laid out exactly what Voss had said. What it meant. What it did not mean. What the Veil's current status was. What the Brotherhood was doing.
Then she explained the question.
Then Jace appeared beside her, and he looked directly into the camera with his amber-gold eyes and he said the same things he'd said to the Congress but simpler and more personal, and at the end he said:
"This island has always been ours. The Veil protects us. Our location is safe. The question in front of us is whether we want to let the world know that we exist, in our own words, on our own terms, revealing nothing of where we are. And I want you to tell me what you want. All of you. This is your home too. Your voice counts here. It always has."
The vote would run for forty-eight hours.
Every adult citizen of Aelin received a ballot.
* * *
Aelin — The Archives. Meanwhile.
Gideon had been given a guide through the Guardian Archives by a young Aelinian archivist named Petra who had the energy of someone who had been waiting for a person with his set of questions for quite some time.
The Archives were housed in a building adjacent to the castle library, three levels deep into the bedrock of the island, and they contained records of every Guardian going back to the first, not just the official histories but the tactical ones. Battle records. Threat assessments. Patterns of attack from Aldus and his disciples across generations. The kind of information that Sidney understood from a trainer's perspective and that Gideon understood from a strategist's.
He worked methodically. Petra pulled records and Gideon read and took notes in the compact, precise handwriting of a man who had written field reports in difficult conditions and knew how to capture what mattered.
The patterns were clear once you knew what to look for. Aldus attacked at points of transition: when Guardians changed, when the Brotherhood was newly formed, when Aelin was in a period of political instability. He tested defenses before committing to a full assault. He used human intermediaries when direct supernatural attack would expose him too early.
The Marks fit the pattern exactly. Human intermediaries. A targeted attack designed to destabilize rather than destroy. A probe.
Gideon wrote: Probe successful from Aldus's perspective. Veil status known. Brotherhood identified. Location still protected. Next move likely to be more direct.
He underlined more direct twice.
Then he went to find Sidney.
* * *
Aelin — The Result
The vote came back in thirty-one hours. Not forty-eight. Thirty-one. The people of Aelin, it turned out, did not need more time.
Seventy-three percent voted yes.
Acknowledge existence. Speak in their own voice. Never reveal location. Never drop the Veil.
Galena presented the result to Jace in her office, and he read the number and was quiet.
"Seventy-three," he said.
"The remaining twenty-seven percent were not opposed," Galena said. "They abstained or requested more time. There were no significant votes against."
Jace nodded slowly. "Then we have our answer."
He put his forehead to hers.
"I see you," he said. "Thank you. For all of it. For how you've handled this."
She kept her forehead against his. "Thank Nathan. He held it together from Dallas while you were…"
"I know." He pulled back. "I know he did."
He went to find Nathan first. Then he found each of the others in turn, wherever they were on the island: Connor in the library, Ricky at the training grounds with Sidney, Erik at the harbor watching the water. He told them the number. And each of them, in their own way, received it the same: with something that was not quite relief and not quite gravity but lived in the space between the two.
Seventy-three percent of Aelin had looked at the world knowing their name and said: then let them know we're here.
* * *
The Statement to the World
They drafted it together, all five of them, with Galena and Kavanaugh and Sidney at the table. It took two days and twelve drafts. Connor and Nathan went forty-five minutes on a single sentence before Ricky offered a third option that settled it, and then it was done.
Kavanaugh sent it out by telex and fax to the AP and Reuters wire rooms on a Tuesday morning, and from there it moved the way news moved in 1987, fast, analog, and unstoppable.
Battle Cry can confirm that Aelin is a real and sovereign nation. Its location and the nature of the Veil that protects it will not be disclosed. Aelin's existence is not a matter for negotiation or coercion. The Prime Minister of Aelin, Galena Dallenger, is the appropriate point of contact for any government wishing to open diplomatic communication. Battle Cry asks that the privacy and safety of Aelin's citizens be respected. We have nothing further to add at this time.
The response from the world was immediate, enormous, and exactly as complicated as they'd known it would be.
The hotel switchboard did not stop ringing for four days. Kavanaugh went through three legal pads.
It took eleven hours for the first journalist to ask the question out loud.
It happened at the White House press briefing, which had been called to address the Battle Cry statement and which the Press Secretary had clearly prepared for with the confidence of a man who believed he had anticipated every possible question. He had not.
The question came from a reporter in the third row who covered the intelligence beat. She raised her hand, was called on, and asked very simply: "How long has the United States government known about Aelin and the Brotherhood?"
The Press Secretary's expression did not change. This was a trained response and it held for approximately two seconds before something behind his eyes shifted in a way that every camera caught.
"The administration is aware of the statement released by Battle Cry's management this morning and is..."
"That's not what I asked," she said. "I asked how long the United States government has known. Not this administration. The government."
The briefing room went very quiet.
What followed was four minutes and twenty seconds of the most careful non-answer in the history of White House press briefings, which was itself an answer. Every journalist in the room understood this simultaneously. The clip would be on every evening news broadcast in the country by six p.m.
By the following morning, the question had metastasized into something the White House communications team had no framework for containing. It wasn't just did this administration know. It was did all of them know. It was how far back does this go. It was what oath did the president take and when and to whom.
The answer, had anyone been in a position to give it, was that the chain of knowledge ran from the Oval Office currently occupied by Ronald Reagan back through every president of the modern era, back through the wars and the scandals and the assassinations and the whole complicated machinery of American history, back past the turn of the century and through the Gilded Age and the Reconstruction, all the way back to a room in Washington in the 1860s where a man who was trying to hold a country together had received a visit from people who had been watching America since before it was America, and had decided, finally, that it was time to be of service.
Abraham Lincoln had been the first American president to meet the Brotherhood of Aelin. He had not been the last. Every man who had held the office since had taken a private oath upon being briefed, not in any ceremony the public had ever seen, not in any record that appeared in the official history, just a quiet promise made in private to a hidden island nation that had spent over a century watching this country become what it was.
The journalists pulling that thread in 1987 did not yet know any of this. But they could feel the shape of it. And they were not going to stop pulling.
In his living room in Nevada, Tobin watched the news coverage with a bourbon in his hand and picked up the phone and called his brother.
"Well," Tobin said when Jace picked up. "You've done it now."
"Yep," Jace agreed.
"You okay?" Tobin asked.
"Yeah," Jace said. "Ask me again in a month."
Tobin laughed. "Fair enough. Call me when you're back on the road."
"I will."
He hung up and looked out the window of the castle guest room at the harbor of Aelin, silver in the early morning light. His island. His people. Known now, in name if not in place, to a world that had never heard of them a week ago.
Somewhere out there, Aldus was watching the coverage with great satisfaction.
Jace knew it. He'd known it since Dallas.
He let the thought sit, then set it aside. Not ignored, set aside.
He'd learned that from Seamus's records in the Archives. And from a Marine who drove their bus.
He turned away from the window and went to find Samantha.