Page 83 of Aria's Desire

So, she let him go, even though it didn’t feel right, but that sense of wrongness followed her down, chasing her through her dreams.

Chapter 40

The next day was spent in alliance talks with Ishtal and her advisors as they hashed out the terms of the treaty. There was so much to cover, more than Aria had anticipated. The meeting ended up lasting through the morning and afternoon then well into evening.

It was tedious and often frustrating, with Ishtal’s advisors wanting to revise this or add that. Aria, having never had the patience for bureaucracy, even when she was a Special Agent with the FBI, came close to losing her temper once or twice—might have if her mates hadn’t been there to subtly calm her or take over the debate.

But this was necessary, so she gritted her teeth and persisted.

The devil was in the details, as they say, and Aria wasn’t going to half ass this treaty just because she was getting irritated that a couple of Ishtal’s advisors kept trying to take a mile when she gave an inch.

This wasn’t just two nations joining forces in a war. It was a true alliance, which meant they had to discuss everything from a trade agreement to the possibility of people wanting to relocate from one place to the other.

Thankfully, Ishtal and her advisors all immediately agreed that her army needed training. Aria had no interest in holding their hands forever. They needed to be able to act autonomously and run their own missions, successfully, which meant intensive instruction.

Their open field tactics just weren’t going to work in this war, and aside from needing to know how to use advanced weaponry, they had to be familiar with the technology, social structure, and dangers present in the cities.

That led them to the conversation as to whether or not Ishtal wanted some, or all, of her army to be cloned. Aria was willing, regardless of the massive expenditure it would have on her supply of element cubes. They’d taken control of the two recycling warehouses in the city where the cubes were made, so their supply wouldn’t be wiped out, but it was a dangerous, high-risk mission to transport the waste from the complex there to be remade as cubes.

Still, she didn’t ask her people to risk their lives without the safety net of being in a clone body, and she wouldn’t ask Ishtal’s people to, either.

Ishtal surprised her by deciding to leave that decision up to the individual soldiers. Aria never had any intention of forcing it on anyone, regardless of what the Queen decided, and that Ishtal was leaving the decision to them deepened her respect for the woman.

They agreed to start the training and education the next day. They’d poll the soldiers at the same time about being cloned.

To speed the process and take some of the stress off of herself and her men, Aria would call in the squad still standing by in the mountains.

Ishtal didn’t so much as flinch at discovering Aria had a team lying in wait as backup, just smirked as though unsurprised, and waved off her advisor’s complaints.

Next up for discussion was having a rotating contingent of each other’s soldiers at both the complex and the castle. For that, they had to come to an agreement on a screening process to decide who would go, how many, housing and food once they got there, and a command structure since neither squad would be under their host’s control.

There would obviously be collaboration between the visiting squads and the native army, but they’d still answer to their own leaders. Aria’s soldiers wouldn’t be at Ishtal’s beck and call, and vice versa.

It was finally decided they’d each accommodate no less than ten and no more than seventy soldiers at one time and that they’d reside in their own barracks.

The trade agreement took significantly longer to work out. They had to designate supply lines on the massive, detailed map depicting a surprisingly large area of the globe surrounding Aehri, that Ishtal had one of her attendants produce, then decide on locations for guard posts along the route to protect the supply lines, as well as who would man those posts before they even began discussing what, exactly, they’d be trading.

The list of things they needed at Aehri was exhaustive. They had a modest collection of technology stolen from caravans or travelers that passed too close to the Queendom, which was how Rellik was able to invent the anti-Veil chip, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

They needed comms, runners, weapons, and fabricators to start with. Aria was, again, willing to provide what they needed, but Ishtal quickly dismissed that. She had no interest in being a charity case. Neither did she want their alliance to be one-sided.

As everyone began discussing what they had for trade goods, Aria eyed her cup of kashka tea thoughtfully and bit back a covetous smile. Her men were endlessly amused with her obsession, thought it was both cute and strange, but she knew for a fact the other humans at the complex would go crazy for it. Considering there were upwards of fifty humans there now, with more coming in from rescues and raids every week, there was definitely a market for it.

It was decided they’d start trading tea, a few other food crops, ore, and waste from the palace and villages that Aria would use to make more element cubes.

Next, Aria brought up the possibility of their people wanting to move from one place to the other, as well as allowing those who wished to set up homesteads along the trade route between their nations.

Aria had her eye on the long game. Taking over the planet was only the first step. In order to keep it, they needed to inhabit it.

People needed the freedom to live where they wanted, of course, but it served the dual purpose of giving them eyes all over the world. Aria had a plan to secure the planet, but nothing was perfect. It would be infinitely harder for enemies to exploit any gaps in that security and sneak in the proverbial back door if they had lookouts everywhere. Kix inventing their secure comms meant that, no matter how remote, those people could alert them to trouble.

The safest way to begin populating the planet, for now, was to invite their communities to intermingle. There were sure to be some integration pains and cultural differences to overcome, but Aria had already seen how well her own people learned to coexist, despite often having more differences than similarities.

Speaking of populating, Aria’s gaze strayed back to the map pushed to one side of the very large table. It wasn’t just of the surrounding area, but showed a significant portion of the world. What caught her attention were the massive swaths of forests and jungles… and the population centers they hadn’t yet discovered on their travels and reconnaissance. One island in particular held her interest.

Meeting her mates’ gaze, she gestured for them to look, then shared a speaking glance with them when they saw what she had.

They’d be addressing that problem soon, very soon.

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