The woman at the end of the table was a fifteen-year veteran, handpicked for meetings at this level because nothing rattled her, and a single offhand pliment from Kaiden Grey had undone her pletely.
The worst of it was that he seemingly hadn’t even noticed.
The government’s latest internal brief flagged his rapidly growing female demographic as a variable that required serious monitoring, and Grace could see exactly why.
"Such matters are not yours to discuss, Mister Grey. But...fine." The Chairman exhaled through his nose. "I’ll double her salary."
It was a very small price to pay, and considering how much of a lunatic Kaiden could be... This was for the best, he reasoned.
The scribe’s head snapped to the Chairman.
"Double?" Kaiden’s expression settled into a disappointment so personal it could have graced a restaurant review. "Chairman, pardon me for asking, but are things tighter than I assumed?"
The Chairman closed his eyes for one second. "Five times."
Her head snapped back to Kaiden, who was looking at the Chairman the way a noble looks at a moner trying to bid at a royal auction. "Seeing the sorry state of affairs, Eclipse is willing to make a donat-"
Her head snapped back to the Chairman.
"Ten times." He cut Kaiden off before the word ’donation’ could finish leaving his mouth.
She was a scribe. Her duty was to write, not to be written about.
She had never been the center of attention in her life, let alone caught between two men whose names appeared in classified briefings, and the fact that the younger of the two was genuinely ready to open his own wallet only made her cheeks burn hotter.
Kaiden paused, took in the woman whose face had traveled past healthy pink into tomato red territory, and winked. The warmth in it had nothing to do with the performance the Chairman had endured all meeting.
"Sounds like a good start. What do you say?"
The scribe stared at him, lost.
Grace giggled. "You may voice your opinion."
They transcribed, they observed, and they produced records that survived decades of archival scrutiny. Speaking was not merely unusual under Association guidelines. It was not permitted.
"I..." Her voice came out small and high, a pitch she had never used in any professional context. "I-I’m already happy with what I-"
"It’s okay," Kaiden told her, leaning forward just slightly, and the Chairman’s knuckles went white, because the guild leader who had just extracted a fortune in concessions from the United States government was now reassuring the Chairman’s own employee that it was okay to accept her raise, as if the money was ing from Kaiden’s personal account.
The scribe turned to Grace, who nodded with a smile that was far too amused for the situation, then to the Chairman, who had closed his eyes, visibly counting.
"O-okay..." The word came out even higher than before, a whisper, her cheeks burning as she hugged her ledger to her chest and nodded at Kaiden, then the Chairman, then Kaiden again, unable to hold either gaze for longer than a blink.
Grace’s eyes twinkled with slyness as she grinned at Kaiden. "Should we expect the arrival of the Fifth Valkyrie anytime soon, Kaiden?"
"MISS GRACE!" The scribe’s voice erupted at a volume no one in the tent would have believed her capable of producing, and the ledger she’d been clutching flew out of her arms. "I would never- that’s not- he’s-"
Kaiden chuckled. "A fifth? Someone’s hoping for a slip of the tongue, perhaps?"
"I wouldn’t dare~" Grace mused with zero shame at being caught.
Kaiden liked this woman’s antics.
"I won’t ment on such a possibility."
He glanced at the scribe, whose posure had long since left the building. "But what I’ll say is that even if it existed... While Miss Scribe is certainly a very beautiful young lady..."
"I-I’m much older than you..." she managed from behind both hands.
"...I would be hanged upside down by the balls."
The scribe stared at her ledger. She had just transcribed that phrase into a classified government record, and whatever warmth had been building in her chest hit those words and died on contact.
Grace laughed. "Aria?"
"What? My beautiful angel would never do such a thing," Kaiden confirmed with a firm nod.
"Stop flirting with him already," the Chairman sighed and extended a hand across the table.
"Sir, I would never." Grace’s grin didn’t waver.
Kaiden shook it without the saintly performance. Just a handshake between two men who had arrived at an agreement.
"We’ll be in touch, Mister Grey."
"Eclipse looks forward to it."
He stood, Vespera falling into step behind him as naturally as breathing, and they walked out of the tent into the afternoon sun where his girls were waiting.
The scribe watched him go.
Her hand came up from the ledger in a small wave at his back that he didn’t see, and the look on her face was an open book for the secretary.
Grace patted her shoulder. "Poor girl. You look like you’ll be up late tonight deciding what to name your imaginary children. Let me guess. Is it a boy and a girl?"
"I am a PROFESSIONAL!" The volume was back, the same impossible eruption from before, and it died just as fast when Grace’s eyes dropped pointedly to the hand still waving at an empty tent flap.
The scribe’s cheeks went nuclear as the hand snapped back to her ledger.
...
The stream was off. The cameras were gone. The staging plain was clearing out, and the world was moving on to the next headline, the next crisis, the next thing to argue about.
But for the first time in his life, Kaiden Grey was not moving on with it.
He had a guild to run.
A dungeon to fortify.
A father to bury.
A classification that needed updating, researchers to manage, sovereign territory to establish, and a hundred smaller fires that the man who’d walked into that tent less than an hour ago would have ignored in favor of the next stream.
’Time to actually be a guild leader.’
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