Apparently, her cooking raisins were “juicier.”

Bowen had put down the organizer by the time she rose back up to her feet. As she watched, he threw a walnut into his mouth.

“How about eating more actual food rather than my walnuts?” She looked pointedly at his half-full plate.

“I’m taking a break.” He continued to chop the walnuts.

As Kaia began to measure out the ingredients for the first set of cookies, he said, “You lost someone, didn’t you? In the vanishings?”

Kaia’s spine went ramrod straight at the quiet question. God, the man was dangerous—he might have just come out of a coma, but the security chief part of his brain was fully functional. And she’d let down her guard in the silliness of a conversation about bears and walnuts.

Chapter 15

The Consortium wants Trinity to fail. Peace and cooperation between humans, Psy, and changelings hurts their bottom line and their posited ambition of being shadow powers who treat us all as their puppets. As we come from all three races, so do the members of the Consortium. None of us can wash our hands of this scourge. They are the enemy of peace, of unity, of Trinity.

—Message sent to all signatories to the Trinity Accord

“MY BEST FRIEND, Hugo.” Kaia measured out the sugar with jerky hands. “He went out for a long-range swim and never came back.”

“Consortium.” White lines around Bowen’s mouth, his jaw hard. “Those bastards want to use water changelings to get into places they can’t.”

Kaia had heard all the theories. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t in security. Three of Atalina’s brothers were—and then there was Mal, Miane’s right hand and one of the deadliest men in the clan. But when the cousins all gathered together, Mal and the others spoke openly on many things. They knew nothing they said would ever leave the room.

And it wasn’t as if Mal was going behind Miane’s back in sharing the information; she was often right there with them.

In the beginning, it had been strange to have her in the group—Miane was their First, their alpha, the most powerful person in BlackSea and capable of bloody retribution against those who harmed her own. The distance, however, hadn’t lasted long under the force of Miane’s charisma and incredible warmth.

Kaia now knew that Miane had a weakness for salted caramel bites, basil-infused pasta, and strong Turkish coffee. During those dinners full of conversation and laughter, she became just another clanmate, albeit one who hummed with so much power that Malachai alone could handle the full force of it.

So Kaia knew full well that everyone was blaming the Consortium for the vanishings—but they weren’t the only nasties in the water. “Or maybe,” she said, too angry to watch her words, “illegal human fishers are murdering our people and blaming the bogeyman of the Consortium.” What she didn’t say was that those fishermen also gave Bowen Knight and his people plausible deniability.

Bowen’s hand tightened on the wooden hilt of the knife she’d given him. “No.” A flat statement. “Any human who has chosen to become part of the Alliance knows never to breach BlackSea’s territorial waters.” Ice in his tone. “If you have evidence to the contrary, give it to me and I’ll make sure the perpetrators are severely and immediately punished.”

A shiver ran across Kaia’s skin at the chill in his tone, at the implacability of it. But she wasn’t about to be intimidated. “It’s not my job to clean house for you.” She dumped chopped butter into the mix. “You’re cutting the walnuts too big.”

“Kaia.”

Thrusting the bowl under the mixer, she set the attachment spinning. “Yes, the Consortium has unquestionably taken some of our people,” she said, “but as you said—humans cover the world. Your people are perfectly placed to hunt water changelings who get in the way of their illegal harvesting of the ocean’s riches.” She met his eyes, was stunned by the raw dominance in them. She’d never realized humans could interact with changelings on that primal a level. But hell if she’d look away.

“Is it possible?” he said, his cheekbones pushing against his skin and his shoulders taut. “Yes. But the missing have almost uniformly been healthy and young. BlackSea should’ve lost older people, too, if the vanishings were due to malicious kills by illegal fishers.”

Malachai had said the same, but his features had been grim. He hadn’t just brushed her off. Neither had he brushed off the information Hugo had compiled and given her for safekeeping. Her best friend had told her he wanted to undertake further investigation and confirm his data before he passed the dossier to Mal, but when Hugo disappeared, Kaia had known what she had to do.

On the data crystal she’d given Mal had been the names of a significant number of human fishing ships and how very close they’d been to the last seen locations of BlackSea’s lost, the ships going to the very edge of BlackSea’s boundaries and occasionally nudging over.

Also on the data crystal had been the damaging news that the Alliance was planning to set up its own shipping armada in competition with the mainly Psy conglomerates that currently controlled oceanic shipping. That, however, could be explained away as commercial aggressiveness. BlackSea had a fleet, too, but the clan wasn’t interested in going after Psy-held contracts. The Alliance, in contrast, wanted to set itself up as a direct rival.

For that, they’d need BlackSea’s cooperation.

And, as Hugo had pointed out, the only reason BlackSea had even considered the idea of friendship with humans was the vanishings. Yes, humans hadn’t been the clan’s first choice of ally when they realized they were being hunted, but a man who played a long game would be patient, would wait until BlackSea was desperate enough to stretch out a hand to humanity.

Bowen Knight struck her as that kind of a hunter.

That theory also perfectly explained the presence of ships from the tiny Alliance Fleet in BlackSea’s territorial waters; the Fleet ships had been cunningly hidden among the fishing traffic, but Hugo was a comms expert. He’d tracked down beacons, gotten satellite locks, had absolute confirmation that Bowen Knight’s ships had been in their waters when some of their people were taken.

The Alliance had played BlackSea for a fool.

The last and most painful item on the data crystal had been an image that showed the brutalized bodies of two of their vanished—on the deck of a vessel that bore the Alliance logo and was officially part of the Alliance Fleet.

She kept that damaging fact to herself because Mal had asked her to do so; he hadn’t even informed the families of the victims about the Alliance involvement yet. Conscious that Kaia’s anger was too hot a thing to be contained, he hadn’t told her to keep Bowen in the dark about the allegations against the Fleet, just to not tell him the brutal extent of what they had.

“I want to be sure beyond any shadow of a doubt,” he’d said, the pale, pale gold of his eyes like frozen sunlight. “We’re talking about an act of war, Kaia. We cannot be wrong.”

Kaia blinked back the burning at the backs of her eyes. “A large vessel wearing the Alliance Fleet logo was passing just beyond our territorial waters around the time Hugo was taken.” Removing the creamed butter and sugar, she began to sift in the flour. “There are no records of any other vessels nearby. And it’s not the first time Alliance vessels have been spotted near people who later disappeared, and a number of those vessels crept over BlackSea’s border.”

The fact that those incursions had been timed to avoid the clan’s security sweeps added more fuel to the fire. That BlackSea had a traitor was an awful truth no one could ignore; Hugo’s dossier made the link between that traitor and the Alliance as clear as glass. Luck couldn’t explain the Fleet’s faultless timing. “Hugo was the one who connected the dots between the vanishings and the Alliance Fleet—and now Hugo is gone.”

A muscle pulsed along Bowen’s jawline. “Do you have the data? I need to look at it myself, find out what the fuck is going on.”

“You can ask Mal for it.” Blood bubbling, she lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Right now, you’re just arguing with a cook.”

“I don’t think you’re ‘just’ anything.” Bowen was struggling to make sense of what Kaia had told him. If ships belonging to the small Alliance Fleet had truly skirted over BlackSea’s territorial boundaries, then he had a serious problem—because all Fleet ships knew to give BlackSea space. The Fleet was also under the direct command of Heenali Roy, the Alliance’s effective third in command and one of Bo’s trusted knights.

His hand fisted on the counter. “Is there a comm I can use to contact Malachai?”

“The data panel in your room has a comm function.” Picking up her organizer, she did something on the screen. “I’ve used my login to authorize you for full access.” She put the organizer back down. “No point calling Mal right now, though.”

“He still out searching for the vanished?”

“No.” Her cousin and Miane had both come back furiously empty-handed. “He’s gone for a swim.”

Bowen had the feeling she wasn’t talking about a few freestyle laps. “How do you know?” He glanced in the direction of the seaward wall, remembering how Malachai’s eyes had gone from brown to an inhuman light gold, remembering, too, the sense of size around the other man. “Did you see him?”

“No, but one of the others did.” Kaia had quickly rolled out the shortbread dough, now began to cut it into shapes with metal cookie cutters. “He’ll probably be back in another two hours.”

Containing his impatient frustration in a vicious grip, Bowen watched her competent yet graceful movements. “Is that what you think of me?” The realization hit him hard in the solar plexus, driving all the air from his lungs. “That I’m a monster who’s behind the torture and deaths of your people?”