Lottery King 8, page 15
“It’s like battling sects for the same side,” Rune said. “They’re not working in cooperation with one another, but they’re all working against us.”
“I guess it’s not always ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” I sighed. “Well, I guess that’s better than if they worked together.”
“I agree, your majesty,” the third shadow nymph said. “Any squabbling between them is an advantage to us. It uses more of their time and resources and makes them weaker before we come in and eliminate them.”
I nodded and gestured for them to continue.
“These other groups are far less organized than The Rising,” Rune said. “They have much lower quality camps and equipment. It looks like they’ve scrounged more things together, and I suspect they have less funding.”
“Like The Rising is the big team to beat?” I summarized.
“Exactly.” Rune nodded. “It’s like The Rising is the big leagues, and all the others are just trying to keep up.”
“They’re still a threat, I take it?” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Yes, your majesty,” Rune said. “Despite their lower levels of strength and organization, we still consider them a viable threat.”
“Tell me more about these other groups,” I said.
“Well, as you know,” Rune continued. “We’ve found them in many of the same locations as The Rising. There were a small handful of these groups in places by themselves, but there was evidence that there’d been conflict with The Rising in those places, too.”
“So they’re not popping up anywhere completely by themselves,” I said.
“Correct.” Rune nodded.
“But why are they fighting over spots?” I wondered. “Why not just find their own places and not waste time, energy, and resources on fighting The Rising?”
“We’re not–” Rune started to say.
But Vallia exclaimed suddenly in a language I didn’t recognize. We all turned to the blonde-haired woman, and she had a look of excitement on her face.
One of the shadow nymphs went over to see what was up, and Rune proceeded to finish his sentence.
“We’re not sure why they’re picking any of these locations, your majesty,” my golden-haired advisor said.
He and I both continued to watch Vallia as she gestured between a star chart and a map of Chile.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a voice loud enough to address the pair. “Have you found something?”
“Possibly, your majesty,” the shadow nymph responded.
“Yes.” Vallia nodded insistently.
The other shadow nymphs, Rune, and I walked over to see what Vallia had discovered.
She was still speaking rapidly in a language I didn’t know, and the tense set of the shadow nymph’s shoulders gave the impression he had no idea what she was talking about any more than I did.
“Vallia,” Rune said in a gentle and insistent voice. “You’re speaking Gaelic or something again. English please?”
“Oh!” Vallia chirped suddenly. “I’m sorry. I found something that I think might be important.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“This camp here, in Chile,” Vallia said, and she pointed at the camp location from the raid two days ago. “I was so sure there was something about this place, but I couldn’t remember exactly what. I’ve been staring at this map and these charts trying to figure it out.”
“And did you?” I asked as my interest continued to rise.
“I think I did.” Vallia smiled. “You see, there was an ancient festival of the stars that happened in this jungle centuries ago.”
“Okay…?” I didn’t see what that had to do with anything.
“Oooooh!” Rune exclaimed like he definitely got it.
“What am I missing?” I asked.
“Vallia’s discovered that some of The Rising camps are located near astrological monuments.” Rune shuffled through some of the large maps on the table.
“What do you mean?” I asked, and I still felt fairly lost.
“Like Stonehenge?” Rune suggested as he pulled a map out. “None as famous as that monument, but there have been stone structures or historical evidence of the native populations celebrating things on certain dates.”
“Okay, but what does any of that have to do with The Rising?” I asked.
“Well, we don’t know yet,” Rune admitted.
“Tell me more about this spot, Vallia.” I pointed at the camp in Chile.
“Well, before the humans of Europe traveled to this side of the ocean,” Vallia said. “The paranormals of Chile would celebrate the movement of this galaxy across the night sky.”
She pointed at a cluster of stars on one of the star charts, but it wasn’t part of any constellation I was familiar with.
“They celebrated the galaxy every year,” Vallia said. “They would worship the stars for a week, but they didn’t know it was a galaxy made of millions of stars.”
My eyebrows raised at that, and Vallia must have interpreted my surprise incorrectly.
“I have learned much of the science of the night sky since your arrival in my life, your majesty,” Vallia said, and she gestured at the two-foot-tall stack of astronomy textbooks. “The ancients believed it was one massive star, and they worshiped it as a companion to the goddess. They thought it was her lover moving closer so they could be together.”
“Okay…” My eyebrows furrowed. “But what does that have to do with the camps?”
Vallia’s golden eyes became unfocused, and her lips moved in silent words for a second before she finally said something audible.
“The Path of the Mate,” Vallia mumbled.
She looked like she wasn’t even in the room with us anymore, and I fought the urge to shake her slightly to come back to us.
“The galaxy has been named Osorin by modern paranormals,” one of the shadow nymph guards said.
I was still focused on Vallia’s hazy eyes, though, and I saw the instant she seemed to come back into the present.
“Vallia?” I asked gently.
“I lived there,” Vallia breathed. “With the ancients. They worshiped that star like it was a god.”
“You said that,” I said in a low voice. “What does it have to do with the camps?”
“It’s moved since then,” Vallia murmured.
I realized she wasn’t quite with us, and I waited as she worked through her astonishingly long life of memories to see if anything else useful might surface. It felt like panning for tiny flecks of gold in a river filled with billions of pebbles. Maybe something of value would come up, but more likely, there were just a lot of pretty little rocks that provided nothing of worth.
“It will return once more,” Vallia said, and something about her tone made me think it wasn’t an original thought. “He will return one day.”
“Vallia?” I probed gently. “What are you saying?”
The woman’s beautiful eyes turned to me, and after a second of blank stares, the bright intelligence returned to the golden irises.
“I’m not sure,” Vallia admitted. “I’m sorry. It’s such a jumble of things from so long ago…”
“It’s okay,” I assured her as empathy swelled in my heart. “Don’t force it.”
Vallia’s bottom lip quivered softly as she nodded, and I turned to have a closer look at the constellation map. I tried to find anything I was familiar with, but none of the little white lines that made the shapes seemed to make a bit of sense to me.
Then I spotted the three stars that made up Orion’s Belt and the distinctive shape of the Big Dipper, but neither were marked on the chart. In fact, several of those stars were linked with others I didn’t know at all to make up shapes that were entirely foreign to me.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered to myself. “Rune?”
“Yes, your majesty,” he said, and he moved to stand beside me.
“What are these constellations?” I asked. “I don’t recognize any of them, and Orion, the Big Dipper, Leo, none of them are marked.”
“Oooooh,” Rune breathed with passionate understanding. “You’re looking for the human world’s constellations. Of course.”
Rune slapped his forehead softly and shook his head.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m so sorry, your majesty,” Rune said. “We’re using the constellations of the Eternal Realm. We have an entirely different set than what you’d know from the human world.”
“Oh, shit,” I sighed. “That makes perfect sense. We should bring in maps of the human constellations just to make sure we’re not missing something by using the wrong set of data.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Rune said. “We’ve cross-checked them, but there’s nothing in the human constellation charts, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, that doesn’t really surprise me,” I said.
“Yes, good to double-check, though,” Rune said.
“Right.” I nodded. “I still don’t get why or how any of this connects to The Rising. How many other celestial events or historical things like that line up with the camp locations?”
“Definitely not a majority of them,” Rune said.
“It might be more than we thought,” Vallia said.
“That’s true,” the shadow nymph said. “It would take far too much time to try and calculate the locations of all possible momentous occasions related to the galaxies or constellations with the camps. The only ones we’ve been able to connect have come from Vallia’s first-hand knowledge.”
“How many have you identified?” I asked the blonde woman.
“Three others,” she replied. “But they seem to have no connection between them. At least, nothing I’m aware of… or can remember.”
Vallia’s tone became more pessimistic as she spoke, and by the time she finished, she looked overwhelmed with frustration once more.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll keep working on this theory as is, and if you remember more, that’s great.”
“Should we focus on trying to make connections between all the camps and the star charts?” the shadow nymph asked.
“Yes, but don’t let it occupy all our time or resources,” I said. “Just include it in the work as equally as everything else you’re doing.”
I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. There were so many factors up in the air right now, and so many things to keep track of. Thank the goddess for my hard-working staff.
Vallia decided to immediately dive into trying to identify more celestial and historical events that matched up with camp locations, and the shadow nymphs followed her lead. I stuck around for a while, too, and we managed to piece together enough evidence to identify one more in South Saharan Africa.
“When did this festival take place?” I asked.
“In the spring, I think,” Vallia said.
That wasn’t what I meant, but I could see the utter exhaustion and frustration on her face. She even started to yawn, and I wondered if she was finally reaching the point of needing a break.
“You need to sleep,” I said softly.
“No.” Vallia shook her head. “I typically only sleep once every new moon.”
“Vallia,” Rune said gently. “Doctor Silas said you haven’t slept once since he met you, and that was four weeks ago.”
“You need to sleep,” I said again in a firmer tone. “Go ahead and consider that an order from your king. You can’t help with any of this if you’re too tired to even think straight.”
“I suppose not,” Vallia sighed. “I didn’t realize it had been that long. I’ve been so focused…”
“I know what that’s like,” I said. “Get some sleep, and you can come back to it tomorrow. In fact, I want everyone here to call it quits for the night.”
“Your majesty,” one shadow nymph started to argue.
“You don’t need to sleep,” I said. “But you need to stop working on this. That’s an order. We can come back tomorrow with fresh minds.”
“Yes, your majesty,” the shadow nymph said.
I said goodnight to everyone and started to make my way back into the mansion.
All I could think about was my mom’s passion for jigsaw puzzles. She would get so focused on one and stay up until midnight trying to get just one more section done. But it was when she was tired and hadn’t taken a break from it that she was least productive. Finally, she would sigh and say she needed to come back with fresh eyes the next day, and like clockwork, she would fit dozens of pieces together in the first twenty minutes of her next puzzle session.
It was like her eyes would go color and shape blind after staring at the pieces for too long, and I suspected we’d started to venture into that territory with our maps tonight. A good long break from it was exactly what we all needed.
I took a detour into the kitchen for a glass of water and a little late night snack, and I realized I’d spent more time with Rune and Vallia than I’d thought. It was close to midnight, and I knew all of my six lovers would be sound asleep when I went upstairs.
The mansion was quiet like everyone had gone to bed already, but I knew there were always shadow nymph guards lurking around everywhere to make sure the house was secure. It had been really odd to me in the beginning after having lived alone for so long, but now I found deep comfort in the fact that I was always protected.
As silently as I could manage, I walked upstairs and into my sitting room. I figured I would just sleep in my underwear to minimize the risk of waking up the women sleeping in my bed, and I shed my clothes in the sitting room.
The sounds of my six beauties sleeping greeted me as I padded into the pitch-black room, and I found my way to the foot of the bed. I felt around for the depressions of their bodies in the mattress, and just as I anticipated, there was a me-sized gap in the middle of the bed.
A smile tugged at my lips as I crawled in between who I suspected were Ivis and Poppy. The delicate membrane of Poppy’s wings confirmed she was on my right, and I could smell the faint earthy scent of Ivis’ shampoo on my left. None of them seemed to wake up as I settled myself under the blankets.
I’d expected to be tired when I climbed into bed, but my mind was wide awake. The weight of everything that was currently going on was heavy in my thoughts, and I was caught in a whirlwind of anticipation of tomorrow’s summit and questions about our investigation.
It was like my brain was digging into itself in a futile attempt to come up with the connecting information that simply wasn’t there. I didn’t know very much about the human world’s constellations, and I knew jack shit about the Eternal Realm’s constellations. There was no way I would be able to just suddenly come up with the missing piece out of my own knowledge.
So I turned my thoughts to the Royal and Representatives Summit instead.
I went over my main talking points and the annual review stuff I was supposed to begin with. The total revenue of the crown was up from good investments. The minor trade deal I’d overseen between the vampires of Spain and the Dryads of Scotland had gone well, and it would be signed in a matter of days.
About fifteen representatives would need to be officially introduced at the summit as well. They were either coming on to replace former representatives who’d retired or died, or they were replacing the ones I’d had removed after all that shit with Rhaiden, Crane, and Vagin. We’d found a few more representatives beyond Lord Crane and Lord Vagin who were misusing their positions, and I’d quickly set about removing them from power.
Thankfully, none of them had caused quite as much damage as those two bastards. The process had been completed as protocol dictated, and they’d been nominated by the local populations and then confirmed by me.
This would be their first summit as well as mine, and I found a bit of reassurance in the fact that I wouldn’t be the only new kid on the block tomorrow.
I found my anxiety starting to climb just a bit in a sort of stage fright kind of way, and I soothed myself with reminders of everything I’d done to prepare for the summit. Plus, Rune, Cove, Firo, and all six of my women would be with me tomorrow. And that didn’t even take into account all the loyal representatives who would be present at the summit.
From Gemma’s brother, Lord Finn, to the friendly werewolf, Lord Alan, to the delightful gnome, Lady Shay, and the kind-spirited cyclops, Lady Windy, there were dozens of representatives whom I would consider not just loyal subjects, but friends. I looked forward to having a chance to see them all tomorrow, and their company was the thing I was second most looking forward to after my wedding to Gemma and Nyxx.
Obviously, I was most looking forward to marrying the two sexy warrior women, but getting to socialize with the royal representatives was something I was greatly looking forward to.
I never would have imagined that so much of my time as king would have been occupied by life-or-death, world-ending chaos and war. This job certainly kept me on my toes and constantly gave huge shifts to my worldviews.
My train of thought finally looped around to a peaceful and pleasant place after that, and I was able to fall asleep eventually. I slept like a fucking rock that night, and when I woke up, I found myself alone in our bed.
Poppy, Helena, Dinah, Ivis, Nyxx, and Gemma must have gotten all the sleep they needed and then decided to allow me the same grace to sleep in. I wondered what time it was, and I was grateful the summit was an afternoon event. I crawled out of bed and checked one of my watches, and I was pleased to find I had a few hours still before it would be time to go.
I pulled on some basketball shorts and a t-shirt to wear for the morning, and I knew my triplet valets would help me select the best suit for the Royal and Representatives Summit later when it was time to get ready. Then I headed downstairs to get some much-needed breakfast. By the time I walked into the kitchen and found all six of my lovers enjoying their morning coffee and tea, my stomach growled angrily at me.
“Good morning, my love,” Helena hummed.
“How did you sleep?” Gemma asked.
“Really deeply,” I said.
