I braced for an attack.

“Tell me what troubles you, kalenti. You can tell me anything.”

“Anything?” she asked.

“Anything at all. This is our moment. My time and my attention are yours.”

Ellenda exhaled and shut her eyes.

If she moved a muscle in his direction, I would drop her right through the floor. I had expended a lot of magic, but it wouldn’t take much, and my reaction time was just fine.

The Uma woman opened her eyes. “Do not choose me.”

On the screen behind them, the Ocean Dining Hall went perfectly still. Nobody moved.

“What do you mean?” Kosandion asked.

“Do not choose me. I don’t want to be your wife.”

Oh wow. I did not expect that.

“My branch owes a debt to the Kyporo outsiders,” she said. “I came here to repay it.”

Duty over happiness. Of course.

“My presence was required. I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to stay in the Dominion. Don’t try to take my freedom, because I will defend it with my life. So please don’t choose me.”

A silence fell. Birds chirped in the trees, a fish broke the surface of the water and splashed, but the two people in front of me were perfectly still and silent.

On the screen, the faces of the Frowns delegation looked contorted, some with alarm, others with outrage. Their leader clenched his fists on the table.

A subtle change came over Kosandion. He seemed larger somehow, formidable, majestic, no longer a man but an embodiment of power.

“What is it you truly want, daughter of the Uma?” he asked.

Ellenda opened her mouth and then spoke, as if jumping off a cliff. “I want to go home to my planet and the man I love.”

“It is done,” the Sovereign said.

There was a resounding finality to his voice. Goosebumps ran down my arms.

“Innkeeper, take Ellenda to the portal. Once she passes through it, the Dominion will chart a ship to take her back to her homeworld. No citizen of the Dominion will ever trouble her or her branch again.”

On the screen one of the Frown delegates, a man wearing white and green, stood up and walked down the aisle to the door.

Where the hell was he going?

The man reached the table where the Holy Ecclesiarch sat with his entourage.

A transparent column shot out of the ground, sealing the holy man and his retinue inside. Wind jerked their hair as Sean flushed the inside of it with fresh air. At the same time a second column caught the man from the Frowns delegation, cutting him off from the dining hall. He jerked and collapsed.

I turned the volume back up, and the sound roared in, beings jumping to their feet.