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“Lelouch vi Britannia commands you—all of you! DIE!”
“Happily, Your Highness! FIRE!”
The dead bodies of Clovis’s royal guard fell before him in a parade of gunshots and a water-show of blood.
The massacre of the Shinjuku ghetto continued outside—the hail of bullets, crunching of concrete rubble, screaming civilians…but in the wake of his new power, Lelouch’s mind was too numb to pay attention to it all. His gaze momentarily stopped on the green-haired woman who’d given her life to save him, dead at his feet. How had she given him such a strange power?
…he was cut out of his thoughts by the sound of rolling landspinners and whirring mechanical parts. The familiar purple frame of a Sutherland rolled into the opening of the warehouse, sending out a hail of bullets that hit the wall around Lelouch, barely missing the frozen stiff boy by the skin of his teeth.
“What’s going on here?!” the cockpit speakers of the Knightmare turned on, and a male voice reverberated off the corrugated iron, “What are you doing here, schoolboy?! What happened to the royal guard?!”
Internally, Lelouch smirked. Looked like his new power would be very handy indeed.
“Come out of there!” he commanded, activating the heat in his left eye. There was a second of silence, before the voice came back over the speakers, outraged.
“Who do you think you are, to tell me what to do?!”
Lelouch flinched.
…his power didn’t work?!
Slowly, the realisation dawned on him.
Perhaps…perhaps he needed to make eye contact directly in order to use it? Realising his mistake, he put his hands up in surrender.
“My name is Alan Spacer!” he called out, the lie falling as effortlessly off his tongue as the imperial cadence he was using, “My father is a duke! I got caught up in all this mess by complete accident! I have my student ID in my breast pocket, if you need to confirm my identity!”
There was a small moment of hesitation, before the speakers rang out again.
“Very well. Stay where you are with your hands in the air. I’ll come check it myself.”
There was the hissing and sliding of metal, and the Sutherland cockpit opened. Down on the line to the ground hopped a tall, blue-haired man in an equally blue pilot suit. Lelouch smirked.
Checkmate!
Violet eyes met brilliant orange, and he activated his Geass.
“Now, surrender your Knightmare to me!”
The man’s eyes became ringed with red, and he chucked the Knightmare key to Lelouch while reciting the activation passcode. Lelouch took it, and activated the Sutherland, before moving out onto the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah Gottwald of the Purist Faction would wake up to an empty warehouse—the schoolboy he’d barely glanced at with his factspheres having disappeared along with his Sutherland.
The battle at Shinjuku had been an unforgivable disgrace.
Somehow, the resistance cell had gotten their hands on a supply car full of Sutherlands, they had miraculously pulled together a competent commander who hit Clovis tit-for-tat, and the squadrons encircling the G1 had broken their formation—allowing for an opening through which anyone in the ghetto with a regicidal streak could access Prince Clovis…and…
Well…Jeremiah knew the rest. He sat in his office in the Tokyo government bureau, now the de-facto leader of Area 11 while the Third Prince’s body sat in a morgue.
…great. They wouldn’t be able to keep this a secret for too long. How many days would they have before they had to announce to the public that the prince had been murdered? What would they do with no story, and no suspect?
The most information they had gotten, Jeremiah read from the various files shoved onto his desk, was the testimony of General Bartley and the soldiers from the G1, who would have been in the killer’s path to reach Prince Clovis that fateful afternoon.
He read through several of the files aloud to the other purebloods in the room. Kewell scoffed.
“No memory of the situation? How pathetic could a man get? Does he honestly believe that will fly?! A royal heir was killed on his watch! We need to press harder!”
“But it’s not just Bartley…” Viletta put a hand to her chin, “All of the G1 staff as well…are they simply coordinating their lies, or is there more to this story?”
“They’re trying to save their own hides, that’s all!” Kewell snarled, bringing a fist down on Jeremiah’s desk. “Useless, worthless pigs!”
…they both looked at their leader expectantly, waiting for the same nod of affirmation and a series of unsavoury complaints about the prince’s—now former—general, but instead…Jeremiah’s eyes were wide open with shock, his reading of the files deliberate and slow. He fell into a dead silence…
“Lord Jeremiah…?” Viletta asked hesitantly. “What’s wrong…?”
His eyes reread the paper, his lips blurting out the words before he could stop himself.
“This loss of memory…I think it’s real.”
Both of his subordinates stiffened. “What?!” “Lord Jeremiah, you can’t be serious!”
The Margrave raised a glove hand to nurse his forehead.
“…what I say does not leave this room at all, understand?”
“Understood.” They both said curtly. He smiled to himself, despite the graveness of the situation. At least they were willing and loyal.
He struggled to find his words, humming for a moment before they came to him. He started slowly.
“…believe it or not, I understand their quandary…I, too, experienced a strange bout of memory loss at Shinjuku…”
“You’re kidding!” said Viletta. “What happened?”
He shook his head, scrunching up his eyebrows as he tried to recall the last piece of memory before time had suddenly passed him by.
“I had made it to one of the old warehouses, when I found evidence of a scuffle. At the end of the warehouse, I found the dead bodies of Clovis’s royal guard…and standing over them was a Britannian schoolboy.”
“A schoolboy?” Kewell raised an eyebrow incredulously.
“It’s true.” Jeremiah continued. “I glanced at the boy through my factspheres, but after I barely caught the sight of him…suddenly he was gone. Time had passed, I was out of my Knightmare—it was nowhere to be seen. I had to get back to the encirclement on foot.”
There was silence. Viletta finally spoke up.
“You think…the kid had something to do with your Knightmare going missing?”
Jeremiah narrowed his eyes.
“If my hunch is right…then he is what happened to the royal guard…and to myself, to Bartley—to everyone guarding the G1.”
But his testimony was fraught with ridiculous claims. How could a child cause memory loss? How had a schoolboy been in the Shinjuku ghetto, of all places, instead of in class during a school day?
Maybe he had just imagined the whole thing up in the first place?
…no. He would tell no one else what he saw. Nothing outside of Viletta and Kewell.
Not until he had any definitive proof.
Three days had gone by. Three days.
And the Purist Faction had nothing.
No murder weapon, no fingerprints, nothing.
Nothing except for CCTV footage of a Britannian footsoldier entering the G1. But they couldn't see their face.
Prince Clovis was a figure that lavished being in the public eye. There were broadcasts from him going off once or twice a week for some reason or another. The public would be expecting something, especially after the vague announcement of the “urban renewal” in Shinjuku.
They were running out of time, and they had no story.
Kewell hadn’t taken Jeremiah’s story of memory loss very well. He’d promised to keep it to himself, at least, but thought that it was all some sheer ridiculous coincidence, that Jeremiah had simply hit his head too hard on the Sutherland cockpit when he got into it. That all the officers claiming to have amnesia were simply making it up.
Viletta, on the other hand, had been more receptive…
She made the considerate move of getting Jeremiah in touch with a newsman, Diethard Ried—coordinator of Clovis’s media front, and would-be memorial planner. From what she said, the man had a gift for information. If there was anything Jeremiah could find out about this schoolboy, it would be from him.
While Kewell and the other Purists handled the scapegoat they’d scraped together—imprisoning and interrogating Suzaku Kururugi, Honorary Britannian and the son of Japan’s last prime minister—Jeremiah went over his suspicions with Viletta and Diethard.
Diethard, the well-oiled machine he was, had already picked out a database full of all the uniforms belonging to schools in the Tokyo Settlement, seeing if they could pinpoint down where the schoolboy had come from.
They spent several hours in silence, as Jeremiah flipped through countless photos that rang no bells in his head—
“Wait! There!”
The Margrave pointed to the page, his finger on one specific uniform. “It’s that one!”
It snapped Viletta and Diethard out of their daydreaming. They finally drew attention to the Margrave’s gesture.
“Ashford Academy…” Diethard muttered. “That one’s a private school, run by a family of disgraced nobles."
Jeremiah perked up. He’d already heard of the Ashford’s before…over seven years ago in Pendragon…
…no. That thought brought up unwanted memories. He quickly shoved it aside.
“So they went into schooling, huh?” he raised an eyebrow, “I suppose I always wondered what became of them…”
Now they just needed to get onto a student registry and see if they could find the boy they were looking for.
After more hours of scouring through the Ashford student registry, they couldn’t find any face that matched. They had looked through hundreds of students.
Still, their search wasn’t entirely over, he supposed. There were still several names without photos, about a dozen. They were listed at the end of the ones with the photos. Jeremiah eyed the final dozen on the list…until he stumbled across two names that stood out among the rest.
“Lelouch Lamperouge, Nunnally Lamperouge”
…Lelouch and Nunnally?
His mind rolled back to the past. He froze.
…no. It wasn’t possible…surely it was a coincidence?
…but the chances of finding two siblings named “Lelouch” and “Nunnally” together were extremely low…
He checked their ages. Dates of birth weren’t listed, but their classes were. Lelouch was in second year in high school, and Nunnally a second year in middle school.
…seventeen and fourteen.
The prince and princess would be about those ages if they were—
Stop. Thinking. Jeremiah! He scolded himself. You’re letting your greatest failure haunt you again!
…but…the daring temptation of a lifetime nagged at him.
…it couldn’t hurt to take a look, could it? While they were there, they could check for the other students who didn’t have photos in the registry as well. Unless the schoolboy from Shinjuku was wearing an old or stolen uniform (and why would they be doing that in the middle of a ghetto?), they had to be somewhere at Ashford.
Jeremiah had made up his mind.
To Ashford Academy it was.
Four days after the death of Prince Clovis, Jeremiah Gottwald headed to Ashford Academy in disguise. It certainly wouldn’t have helped to have a prominent political figure in Area 11 wandering into some random private school, after all. He managed to check in as a visitor at the school, looking to enrol a relative, and got a tour of campus before being allowed to roam around and ask the students that were out before classes were on.
He’d asked the nearest kids about “Lelouch and Nunnally Lamperouge”. The resulting fuss from the gaggle of schoolgirls, including a bit of swooning over Lelouch, told him all he needed to know. Apparently, they lived separately from the rest of the student populous, in the Student Council clubhouse. Nunnally was blind and crippled, and it was difficult for them to live in the normal dormitories.
Nunnally was blind and crippled.
That was a detail that hadn’t been in the student registry. Alongside the absence of a photo.
…but the listed disabilities only sealed the deal.
…the two siblings, their names, their ages, her disabilities…
His stomach dropped. A rush of adrenaline began pumping through his veins.
…did this mean what he thought it meant? Was this…real?
Jeremiah knocked on the door to the residential wing of the Student Council clubhouse, bracing himself for whatever he might see on the other side…an Eleven maid answered the door.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for uh, Lelouch Lamperouge? I was told he lived here by the other students?”
“Who are you?” the maid narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“I’m a detective, with the police.” The lie came easily. He fished out the false ID he’d prepared in advance, “We’re looking into a recent incident a couple of days ago, and there was a chance he may have been a witness.”
The suspicion in the maid’s eyes only increased. She shifted backwards carefully, slowly widening the gap in the door.
“…Lelouch-sama is in his room.”
He followed the maid into the living quarters—there was a living room, a dining room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. They both stopped at one of them.
“Lelouch-sama…” the maid hesitantly knocked on the bedroom door, “The police are here to see you…”
There was an expectant pause before the door, slowly, opened.
…he stopped as the boy’s face came into view.
Jeremiah’s blood ran dead cold.
(No…it couldn’t be…!)
There, in the flesh, stood the unmistakable face of the boy from Shinjuku, in full detail he hadn’t seen on the factspheres of his Sutherland—the pale skin, dark hair…
…but the details of his face up close also matched another face in Jeremiah’s memory—that of a much younger boy, from the Aries Villa in Pendragon, with his mother’s dark hair and the striking violet eyes of the Emperor.
“You—you’re—!”
“Who are you?” the boy grunted.
Jeremiah relented and took off his disguise.
The boy stood frozen, a deer in headlights, eyes wide open in sheer terror.
He certainly recognised Jeremiah well enough.
The metallic click of a gun sounded.
The boy had reached into his uniform, and Jeremiah now faced down the barrel of a very familiar pistol. A Britannian military issued pistol…
(…some small part of Jeremiah’s mind, right in the back, taunted him—maybe this was the missing pistol that shot Prince Clovis—).
The boy’s breathing was hard. His eye seemed to shine under the light.
“How did you find me?!”
Jeremiah reached up to put his hands to show he was unarmed.
“I’m afraid I’m the one asking the questions here.” He said in a show of bravado…not that it made any different the horror of who he was talking to. If this boy was really…no. Jeremiah knew he had no position compared to the teenager, but he had come to make demands, and make demands he would.
The boy pulled back, flinched, chest heaving. “What?!” He narrowed his eyes.
“Leave me! And forget you were ever here! Forget you met me!” he barked.
The voice that came out was commanding, dare Jeremiah say…imperious. If there was any doubt about the boy’s identity still in his mind, there certainly wasn’t now.
“Oh my god.” Jeremiah breathed.
The boy’s grip on the gun began to shake. His eyes had widened even further into a panic. He aimed the gun at Jeremiah’s face.
“Wait! Your Highness—!”
A bullet whizzed past the Margrave’s head and into the wall.
“LELOUCH-SAMA!”
Before Jeremiah could take another breath, the maid from the front door was behind him, a cold metal blade pressed against his back.
“You’re…Lelouch vi Britannia…” he hissed out on stolen breath, his hands still up in front of his body. The boy clenched his teeth, hardened his gaze into Jeremiah’s. The gun rattled in his shaking hands.
(and oh my god—what if this was the gun that killed Prince Clovis?
Had he been killed by his own brother—?)
“Please, put the gun down…” he said slowly, “we can talk about this—"
“No, we are not talking about this.” Prince Lelouch hissed, finger teasing the trigger. “The next one won’t miss.”
“You’re her son! Lady Marianne’s!”
That startled the prince out of his aim. He narrowed his eyes.
“My mother? What of it?”
“I served Lady Marianne! Years ago!” said Jeremiah, “Jeremiah Gottwald! I was part of her royal guard!”
The finger on the trigger hesitated.
“Mother’s?!”
Jeremiah’s head bowed.
“I failed your mother the night she died. For years I thought I failed her children! It was my greatest disgrace! Please, allow me to make it up to you!”
Prince Lelouch stepped back, aiming the gun downwards. But the knife pressed against Jeremiah’s back didn’t move an inch. “What the hell did you come here to do?”
“I was looking through the Ashford student registry, after Shinjuku.” He admitted, “Then I saw yours and Nunnally’s names with no photos. I figured it was strange, especially given this place was owned by the Ashford’s. I figured I would come and check if you were who I thought you were while I was looking for the boy from Shinjuku—”
“So you remember me.” The boy cursed, “Dammit.”
“I can’t believe you’re alive…” tears started welling in Jeremiah’s eyes. “All these years, you’d been listed among the dead. I thought my Lady’s bloodline was gone forever…”
The prince saw an open opportunity, and pounced on him with stern demands.
“You were there? What did you see that night?!” he shoved the gun further in Jeremiah’s face, “Who killed my mother?!”
Jeremiah gulped, the question weighing heavily on him, and resurrecting his greatest failure before his very eyes.
“I don’t know!” it came out as a broken sob, “That night…that night the guard had orders to withdraw!”
“Orders?! From who?!” the prince pushed.
“If only I had disobeyed, if I had just been there…Lady Marianne might have lived—”
“ORDERS FROM WHO?!” the boy shouted over the top of him. Jeremiah froze, his voice shaking.
“I-I don’t know. Her Highness Princess Cornelia was the captain of the guard; she delivered the orders…but she seemed as shocked by them as the rest of us. I—I suppose…the only one who could have would be Lady Marianne herself…” The boy backed down, his harsh eyes softening into something vulnerable as he processed the information.
“Mother did…” he swallowed his spit. “That…that makes sense. And it could only mean one thing...dammit, I was right.”
“…right about what?” Jeremiah wasn’t following. The violet eyes that gazed into him turned deadly.
“…whoever killed her was someone she trusted, someone she let in. Someone in the royal family…”
The Margrave’s heart nearly stopped. Its thumping in his chest turned enormous, thundering in his ears…
What the prince was suggesting was treasonous.
“You…you can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
Jeremiah grit his teeth. Now, there was only one question on his mind…
Dare he risk his life and let it fall from his lips?
Yes. His life was worthless next to the prince’s.
“…You killed him, didn’t you? …Prince Clovis?”
There was a gasp from both in front of and behind him. The prince’s eyes went wide in horror, and the maid’s grip on the knife she was holding to his back shook.
He didn’t know if he’d get a reply, if his hunch was even right. If not…
If not, then he might have just leaked the news, to this terrified child, of the death of his own brother. Those wide amethysts paused, slowly calming back down…Lelouch lowered his gaze to the floor, his voice grim…
“…so…you’ve figured it out.”
“Why?” He asked.
“Why?” the boy echoed, “Why?! This is war, and he was the enemy commander. The orchestrator of a massacre!"
“Wait…enemy? So…that was you leading the terrorists?”
The teenager flinched.
“Lelouch-sama…what is he talking about?” the maid, Jeremiah had almost forgotten she was there…
“It’s nothing, Sayoko…I’ll explain later.” Prince Lelouch replied.
“Or you can explain right now.” Jeremiah said. Lelouch nearly snarled at that.
“You have no right to demand anything of me!”
He knew he didn’t. But the need for answers bore too strongly down upon him.
Lelouch hesitated…slowly explaining…
“If you know of my mother…you know that she had enemies in court. Enemies who were Britannian. Clovis was my enemy and he was Britannian. Surely that is something you understand.”
“But he was your brother!”
“His royal guard tried to execute me because I had seen something he didn’t want witnesses to!”
“…did they know who you were?” he asked…the boy didn’t answer.
“No? Then surely they would have spared you if they knew who you were! Clovis would never want his brother dead!”
…Lelouch raised a hand to his forehead, as if to settle a brewing headache. He let out a frustrated sigh.
“You harbour too much love for the Empire. Do you not understand? Family doesn’t matter in Britannia! My mother was killed by one of our own! The Emperor dismissed his own daughter for being blind and crippled! The Empire is a rotten arbiter of death and destruction, destroying countless lives and spoiling the soil it lands its troops on!”
…shock—shock welled in Jeremiah, until he was neck-deep.
The young prince hated his own nation…
…to Jeremiah—steadfastly, doggedly loyal…the thought was nearly unthinkable.
“You despise the empire?”
Lelouch’s gaze firmed.
“I have no love for the empire that killed my mother and crippled my sister, or sent us away to die in a warzone they created. The Emperor’s spiel about might makes right is wrong! If the weak are inferior and useless, does that make my sister’s life worth nothing?!”
The room fell into a thoughtful silence. Uncertainty and conflict tore Jeremiah in two…
He finally responded, his resolve unsteady, but certain.
“No, Your Highness.”
“Good.” The prince said coldly; he pointed the gun back at him again, moving across the room. “At least we can agree on one thing.” His mouth pursed into a firm, grim line.
“I did what I did in Shinjuku to save my life, to end a massacre endangering hundreds of lives…to strike back at the enemy I have had no way to strike back at since I was a boy.”
“But…they were just Elevens, Your Highness. What does it matter?”
“What does it matter?” he grit his teeth. “Are you listening to yourself?! You just agreed my sister’s life still mattered even though she was weak, and yet you give no such mercy to the other people Britannia has ruined the lives of?!”
“But you’re royalty—they’re just Numbers…!”
“Numbers.” The boy snorted, “And there was a time where they were not. Before the invasion, before Britannia bombed cities and decimated their army with Knightmare frames. I knew Japan for months before the war—I saw its beauty, lived in one of its shrines, played with its children. Just because they lost a war never changed that. Britannia simply convinced everyone it was so.”
…he looked down.
“Besides, blood doesn’t mean anything. The Britannian nonsense about blood purity is what killed my mother. She was a commoner, you know. You sound like you idolise her so…do the circumstances of her birth make her any lesser to you, because she wasn’t royalty or nobility? Why do you care about her so much?”
Jeremiah pursed his mouth, thinking for a few seconds…
“She was…incredible.” He finally settled on. “Everything she was, everything she achieved. She was a pioneer. A spitfire. Someone who achieved great success with blood, sweat and tears.”
“And there are plenty of Japanese still like that.” Lelouch mentioned, “And like my mother, the circumstances of their birth don’t change any of that!”
…that…well, he supposed he had to give the prince that one. That did make sense, at least…but…
“I don’t understand. Isn’t loyalty for its sake more important above all else?” he tried to wrap his head around the inner conflict causing it to spin. “Why betray Britannia?”
The prince narrowed his eyes.
“Who are you loyal to, Jeremiah Gottwald?”
“To Britannia.” He answered without thought, “To Lady Marianne.”
…
“Which one matters more, then?” Lelouch asked.
…Jeremiah stopped.
Words clammed up in his throat, refused to budge. His mind stumbled.
“I…I…”
“If Britannia’s own philosophy wronged Lady Marianne, who would you choose then?”
…
Words finally came out with resolve.
“..Lady Marianne. And by extension, her children.”
The words settled, murky, in Jeremiah’s chest, like a lead blanket had been stuffed down into his lungs. They rang in his own mind like a several-ton weight. A black hole with an immeasurable centre of gravity. His breath heaved.
He never thought he’d see the days his loyalty would come into question.
It tore him in two.
“Would the Empire therefore be wrong, in wronging Lady Marianne, and her children?”
“Yes.” He said in a heartbeat. “I suppose that makes it so…”
Mercifully, finally, the gun lowered again. Jeremiah’s skin flashed hot, his palms clammy with nervous sweat.
“…well there is your answer.” Said Lelouch. “Take a good look at yourself, Jeremiah Gottwald. You chose where to put your loyalty, and now know the Empire deserves none of it.”
The hot flush inundated Jeremiah from head to toe, his breathing hard, his mind reeling in horror…
“I won’t say a word…” he breathed, “…about you. About what you did. To out you would go against protecting you…they would surely execute you for your crimes, or at least throw you in prison and destroy the key…”
Lelouch fell silent…
“And Princess Nunnally needs you. You both need each other.”
Lelouch’s gaze darted downwards again, softer.
“Yes, she does…”
…
His gaze returned to the Margrave, full of resolve.
“Jeremiah Gottwald, would you swear yourself to me, and my sister, even if it meant going against your country? If it meant fighting them by my side?”
This time the answer came more easily.
“Yes.”
“Even if it meant losing your status, your standing, your life?”
“Mine is nothing in comparison to yours.” Jeremiah mumbled...Lelouch stopped pointing the gun again, finally setting it aside on his desk. He gave off a curt gesture—some strange hand signal Jeremiah didn’t understand—and the soldier felt the metal blade at his back draw away.
“…then, I suppose I can trust you…” Lelouch hummed. He racked his brain, as if thinking of how best to use this new loyalty… He finally settled on an answer.
“…how far along is the investigation—into Clovis’s death?”
“They have nothing, my Lord.” Jeremiah answered, head bowed, “They don’t have the murder weapon, and they only have CCTV footage of a soldier’s uniform walking into the G1. They’ve decided to use a scapegoat to compensate, so they have something of a solution to say when they announce His Highness has passed.”
Lelouch frowned with intrigue.
“…a scapegoat, you say? …who?”
“An Honorary Britannian.” He answered, “The son of Japan’s last prime minister, Suzaku Kururugi.”
Those violet eyes shot wide open again.
“What?!”
His voice wavered.
“He’s still alive?! When did this happen?!”
“Just today. The plan’s already in motion. They’re going to broadcast it this afternoon.”
Lelouch let out a string of curses much more profane than “dammit”.
“Does name Kururugi mean something to you?” Jeremiah asked carefully.
“Suzaku is my friend from seven years ago.” Lelouch hissed. “He protected Nunnally and I during the war! And you bastards are going to get him executed for a regicide he didn’t commit?!”
(well, unless Prince Lelouch was willing to come out of hiding and confess.
But he knew that wasn’t an option.)
“…you know what? Could you do something for me, Jeremiah?”
“Anything, my prince.”
“Get yourself a position at his trial.”
“I already have.” He answered, “the other purists have put together the scapegoat plan, but I’m still the face of the operation. I’m in charge of his public escort on the night of the trial.”
Lelouch narrowed his eyes. “Good. Keep it. If you do, then there’s something you can do for me…”
…what? What did the prince have in store…?
“I’ll find a way to that procession. I’ll be prepared. That’s a promise.” He answered Jeremiah’s internal question. “If you’re the head of the operation then we’ll likely meet face to face. I’ll put on a show, a little attempt to stop your parade. You just need to let me.”
Jeremiah gulped.
This was…was this treason? If not, it was certainly betrayal of the highest order to the empire…
He truly would be throwing away his rank, his military career…maybe even his life…
But after his disgrace to not protect Lady Marianne and her lineage, he knew where his loyalties lay. Even if it cost him everything.
“But that won’t be simple. I can’t just outwardly cooperate with you out of the blue. There needs to be a method to it. Otherwise everyone will notice.”
“Fine.” The prince sighed. “Mask it as something else, then. A hostage negotiation, a blackmail...to make it look like you don’t have a choice. I’ll figure something out.”
“Perhaps a code word should be in order?” Jeremiah asked. After all, they’d been endlessly handy in military operations.
“Yes, that’s a good idea.” The prince narrowed his eyes deviously, “Let’s see…when I say the word ‘orange’…”