Once Upon a Time (Calluvia's Royalty 3)

At long last, tired of his own distracted state, Jamil dismissed Weyrn, citing a headache, which was genuine enough.

Once he was alone in his office, Jamil finally gave in and accessed the Calluvian database.

Four hours later, Jamil sat back, staring at the holotext in front of him.

As the Crown Prince and second highest-ranking person in the Third Grand Clan, he had the highest clearance for the Calluvian database. He could access the most obscure, classified information with a single command. The research had still been incredibly frustrating.

It had been thousands of years since Calluvians had started practicing childhood telepathic bonds. Any information on any other type of telepathic connection was sparse and frustratingly vague. Several ancient texts alluded to the existence of perfect telepathic compatibility, which allegedly led to two people being inexplicably drawn to each other. That would explain why one look into a total stranger’s eyes might provoke such a strong, strange, sickening reaction.

Except it didn’t make sense.

Every lawful citizen on the planet was bonded. Even widowers like Jamil weren’t completely bondless: they still had a torn marriage bond, which, theoretically, should prevent Jamil from forming any kind of telepathic connection again. Even if the stranger was a widower himself, they shouldn’t have reacted to each other the way they had: two broken bonds didn’t make a whole one.

There was another possibility, however, and that possibility made Jamil’s blood go cold.

Not all Calluvians were bonded, after all. But the only people who didn’t get bonded were the monks of the High Hronthar—and the rebels. Since it was pretty safe to say that the rude man wasn’t a monk, he could be a rebel. Nothing else made any sense given the way they reacted to each other.

Jamil had to suppress the urge to call for security. He reminded himself that he had no proof. He could hardly tell the Captain of his Guard that a stableman he didn’t even know the name of was a rebel. His Captain would think him mad, and he would be right. All palace employees were thoroughly vetted, their backgrounds checked and double-checked. It was highly unlikely that a rebel would infiltrate the palace.

But it wasn’t impossible.

Pursing his lips, Jamil closed the ancient text and brought up the database on the palace employees.

He paused when he was offered to filter the search.

What did he even know about that man? Jamil could remember very little except for those black, bottomless eyes. The man’s skin was brown, he recalled after a moment, thinking of those dark hands stroking the animal’s quivering side. That was a little strange. The Third Grand Clan was famous for its people’s very fair skin. Although it was possible that the stranger belonged to one of the other eleven grand clans, it was rare that the royal palace employed outsiders. The man also had a slight accent.

Feeling more mystified than ever, Jamil brought up the list of employees working in the royal stables—forty-six individuals—and started scrolling, looking for any men with remotely brown skin.

He frowned when the list ended and he still hadn’t found anyone. “Omer, please get me the security footage of the stables—training enclosure three, I think. Date: the eleventh of Raavenys, a little after midnight.”

It took the palace AI just a few moments to load the relevant security footage. “Do you require anything else, Your Highness?”

Jamil leaned forward, watching the footage of that man trying to tame the zywern. The footage started before Jamil’s appearance and it was shot from a different angle than the one Jamil had watched them from.

He zoomed in on the rider’s face and stopped the footage, eyeing the man and taking in the details he’d missed the other night. Chiseled jaw, straight nose, honey-brown skin, closely cropped black hair, and those black eyes… The top of the stranger’s muscular chest was visible through his half-unbuttoned black shirt, and Jamil pursed his lips at such a complete disregard of the employee dress code.

“Omer, run the facial recognition program,” he said.

“One moment, Your Highness. One result is found.”

An employee profile appeared in front of Jamil.

Jamil frowned as he read the sparse information in it.

Name: Rohan di’Lehr.

Age: Thirty-five standard years.

Origin: Colony Tai’Lehr of the Third Grand Clan.

Occupation: Certified zywern trainer.

Bondmate: Camirynn Seg’bez

Apparently, that man wasn’t a permanent palace employee, but a zywern trainer contracted for just three months.

Jamil frowned and racked his brain for everything he knew about Tai’Lehr. It was about one hundred and eighty light-years away from Calluvia, a fringe industrial colony that specialized in mining the invaluable deposits of korviu and breeding a rare breed of zywerns. Although the colony was technically part of Jamil’s grand clan, it was independent in all but name. Transgalactic teleportation to Tai’Lehr was impossible because of the unique magnetic field around the planet caused by its large korviu reserves, and that sector of space was too dangerous to get to on spaceships because of the ongoing war between two neighboring planets.