[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 24 - Milla

Coda led the way into the cabin and then quietly withdrew, leaving Milla alone with the Countess. The dark-haired aristocrat didn't look up from where she worked at her desk, a messy array of holo screens around her. Milla glanced around. The cabin was twice the size of the cabin she and Elise had been given, but not big enough to be the captain's cabin. A show of humility, or the economy of not rearranging a ship that might not be her flagship?

"Milla, please sit." The Countess motioned to a chair in front of the desk, and Milla took it. The Countess' gaze was still on her screens, her mouth a grim line. Milla wasn't usually one to fidget, but she found herself rolling the beads in her braids between her fingers and had to force her hands back into her lap. Coda, the Countess' guard, had said the Countess had wanted to see her alone, not with Elise. Coda had refused to say why the Countess wanted to see her, though. Had Elise's ravings been taken as a plot, had the Countess brought Milla here to distract her while the crew brigged her mother?

The Countess looked up, brows raised, as if she expected a question.

"Why did you wish to see me?" Milla asked.

"You mean, why did I wish to see you and not your mother?" The Countess sighed, and downsized most of her screens to a glowing knot on one side of her desk. "Your mother is in distress, and understandably so. But whether she is or not would not change the fact that I wished to speak with you alone." The Countess' gaze sharpened. "You care for Damon Kynaston."

Milla felt her face go hot. "I'm not romantic with him, if that's what you're asking, and it's not your business anyway."

The Countess smiled, ignoring Milla's tone. "I am a keen judge of people, Milla Radego. You don't see him as his rank, or what he can gain you. You're ambitious--strong-willed enough to be an influence on someone like Elise, which I applaud you for, by the way--but not ambitious in that way."

Milla said nothing. She didn't know what the Countess was getting at.

"I saw how he looked to you on the station; for support, for reassurance. For grounding, I suspect, given his upbringing. He looked to you, not Elise. And you looked to him to make sure he was safe, and that is what matters."

Milla shifted. "Countess, I don't see what--"

The Countess folded her hands. "I am Liena Kynaston."

Shock sent coils through her gut and Milla straightened. "What?"

"I have decided to trust you, Milla Radego, so I have given you my name to show that you can trust me. I do expect you to keep that to yourself."

Milla opened her mouth, and felt the weight of what the Countess had just thrown at her. Liena Kynaston. A name that, just now, would make this woman as sought-after as Landon or Shivi in Zivali's witch-hunt.

Milla sat forward, curiosity overtaking her shock. "How? There's been rumors that Liena still lived, but you--" She stopped, and remembered her caution.

Liena snorted, and pressed her palm to her arm, withdrawing her halo bead but not expanding it. The Caelian Crest etched itself on the back of her hand, but then the lion's-head crest of the Kingdom of Sayron also etched itself and intertwined with the whole. Milla stared. Most crests that weren't from high-born Kynastons carried a second sigil of the house branch, and sometimes another sigil entirely. But Milla had never seen two sigils intertwined.

The name around the outer circle of the Crest read: Liena Naveen Liep Kynaston.

Okay. Then this was Liena Kynaston.