Sean leaped over the tables and landed in the middle of the room, his gray robe flaring around him. The staff in his hand split, releasing a brilliant green spear head. His mouth opened, and he roared in the deep snarling voice of an alpha-strain werewolf. It was the same voice that had thundered over the battlefields of Nexus.

“Freeze!”

The three hundred creatures in the dining hall stopped as one.

18

When we last left the inn, Kosandion’s date with the Uma candidate, Ellenda, did not go to plan, and her delegation made a move against the Dominion’s Holy Ecclesiarch. Will Dina and Sean manage to eliminate the dangers gathering around the Sovereign? In this week’s episode of Sweep of the Heart…

The prisoner hung from the ceiling of the throne room, his body wrapped in the inn’s restraints. The Kyporo delegation stood under him, grim-faced and ready for some sort of action if only they could figure out what that action might be. Calling them Team Frowns in my head no longer seemed appropriate.

The rest of the delegates had been asked to return to their quarters. Only the Sovereign faction and the observers remained. The feed was going live to the entire Dominion. Kosandion was making a point: he had nothing to hide, from his people or from the rest of the galaxy.

He sat on the throne now, his expression harsh and cold, watching the massive screen behind the prisoner. On it, Tony led Ellenda to the portal. Her head was held high. They stopped before the round gateway. She turned, looked back at the camera, and gave us a brilliant smile.

The lights on the rim of the portal flashed, the green glow swirled, the Uma woman stepped into it, and her presence vanished from the inn.

Kosandion looked at Sean. “What happened?”

“That man tried to kill the Holy Ecclesiarch,” Sean said.

“How?”

“Poison. A microcapsule sealed inside his tooth. He bit it and exhaled the poisoned vapor.”

And Sean sensed it despite being forty feet away. Hundreds of innkeepers had watched him crush that assassination attempt. Not even one would disagree with a simple fact: Sean Evans was amazing.

“The antidote is already in the prisoner’s system,” Sean continued. “He will survive.”

“Unfortunate,” Kosandion said. The word landed like a brick.

The leader of the Kyporo delegation, a spare, ascetic-looking man, stared at Kosandion with open hostility.

The Holy Ecclesiarch smiled. Every time I had seen him, his kind face all but shone with benevolence, but in this moment his expression changed, as if a different man rose from the depths to the surface. Shrewd. Smart. Powerful. It was there for a mere fraction of a second and vanished back into a soft caring smile. Something wasn’t right about this.

“Well,” the holy man sighed. “At least I’m still important enough to be murdered.”