Page 133 of A Light in the Dark
“That young woman is Mary Margaret Quincelle, and she’s the youngest daughter of an interplanetary business mogul. She came here as part of an education trade when we had to import and export people during the Earth crisis. She’s reporting for several interstellar news agencies. The cameraman is one of her brothers, and they have a contract with all major news outlets on world and many of them abroad. The reporters upstairs were mostly local, although their broadcast will be spread across the planet eventually. Mary’s broadcast is going to be the important one. She’s a tough reporter, and that was about as gentle as she gets. Most importantly, having backing from a member of the Quincelle family means if weneedinterstellar assistance, we can access it. That the Quincelle family is in Stonecreek means that the interstellar community has heard about Oustenhaus’s actions and seek coverage—and they’re witnessing that his polar opposite is currently in office. That woman has sway, and she will use it however she sees fit. You just bailed her out for no reason other than you could, and she knows it. She knows you had no clue in hell who she is, and you helped her anyway.”
“Does she know you know who she is?”
“She does; one of her little brothers is in our flutter, although they haven’t seen each other for a while. I will bemaking sure her little brother knows they’re here so they can see each other.”
“I thought we didn’t get imports like this because of our tech restrictions.”
“The Quincelle family is appropriately trained to handle visiting and living on preservation planets. I expect Mary and her older brother will return to space in the next few weeks once the situation here settles down.”
“And her little brother?”
“He loves everything about Stonecreek, so I doubt he’d leave. He lives to fly, and I don’t mean among the stars.”
That I understood, although I hadn’t been allowed to stretch my wings yet. I huffed, lifted my chin, and refused to look at him.
Joel laughed at me and started the engine. “You’ll be flying—and getting skunked on your roses—soon enough, Valerie.”
Good things were to come, and I fully meant to enjoy my future days of peace.
Epilogue: I will destroy them with my boomies.
While I had thoughtthe incident with the reporters had been rather tame, consequences of the conversations blew through the city-state with the force of a flood. I did as any smart woman would in the face of disaster. I stayed home until the wee hours of the night before sneaking into work, doing my job, and otherwise pretending I wasn’t a besieged mayor in dire need of rescue.
My parents loved everything about my house, and at Joel’s invitation, the flutter sent members over every night so they could get their evening dose of glowing luna moths. My mother learned how to cross-stitch from me, my father learned to sew from Joel, and we planned to raid Yolana’s store so they could have their own stash of precious silks.
I made a fuss over Shifter Five solely to enjoy Joel’s jealousy.
We began the tournament on Saturday, and we warned the other participants that we needed to be finished with ourplay at midnight so I could go handle being a mayor without anyone breathing down my neck. The first two days were dedicated to building our towns, and Coraline fed me tips, tricks, and strategies via text while I played Joel, pretending like I had zero idea of what I was doing and acting like I followed his recommendations. Well, in some cases, I followed his recommendations, but only when it enabled me to build bigger booms.
I obsessed over building booms, which played well into my plan to hunker in my bunker and destroy anyone to approach my town with glee. As trades were private until it was time to score the game, I worked with my accomplices to make certain I never ran out of supplies to build my fortifications while they played at being slow on the uptake to confuse their partners. As we all played the same game, I suspected we flew under the radar.
Per Joel’s warning, the female models had insufficient dressing options, but I found a black and white pirate themed outfit I loved, and I made him buy it for me using his resources.
That had earned me a few complaints, as he’d wanted his precious gems for building his town rather than dressing his future pirate queen wife. I got my gems and my outfit, and I enjoyed his complaining.
Two weeks after arriving, my parents went back home to start building their new life in Watercrest, where they’d be induced into the flutter there once they unlocked the secrets of shapeshifting. In the meantime, they’d help Joel’s parents care for the larvae and otherwise leave our hometown—and Zac’s grave—behind.
Sometimes, the only way to move on was to move on,and I felt the constant reminders of my brother’s death had eaten away at them in the same way the flood waters could tear away at even stone.
While it took three weeks, I recovered from the bacterial infection and returned to work, delighting in my usual routine. Doing the work of mayor irritated me as often as not, and I made it my goal to limit how often I had to go to City Hall to no more than three times a month, doing the majority of my work from my home office.
Hunkering in my bunker during the game play had some interesting consequences and taught me a few important lessons.
Only idiots came my way, and there were more than a few idiots among the ‘experienced’ gamers, who thought approaching my little slice of gaming heaven was a wise idea. One of my conspirators had helped, leading their jackass of a parent directly onto a landmine, which exploded nicely and left my victim in dire straits. Armed with a rifle Joel had made for me, promising me it was one of the better ones in the game, I’d scored my first headshot, eliminating the fool with extreme prejudice.
My conspirator wisely ran away to live another day, but to make it appear as though I was trying to score extra points, I took a few pot shots, making certain to miss.
As I’d recovered from my infection nicely, Joel promised to reward me for every kill with positive attention in bed, resulting in all the motivation required to take everyone out with extreme prejudice.
Joel delighted in me having scored the first elimination of the game.
With the help of my conspirators, I bought a rare petfrom the black market, a winged puppy with a horn that ran out into my minefield, placed new explosives without risk to itself, and kept me company in my town, which grew.
The plunder from my first kill had helped keep Joel in the dark about how I transformed my town into a pirate queen’s palace. As the game even allowed me to design specific chambers, I made my queenly bedroom into a chamber of debauchery, which I would show to Joel once I finished conquering.
Three months into my stint as Stonecreek’s mayor, I’d situated most things to my liking and managed to accomplish my goal of needing to only go in once every two weeks or so to deal with work I couldn’t manage from the comfort of home. The game continued, and I marveled over how my fort became a major point of contention among the experienced gamers, who died one by one to my traps along with some help from my conspirators.
I even helped Joel through sending him a hefty chunk of my prizes so he could work on his empire.
