Page 1 of Only Hard Problems

CHAPTER ONE

ZANE

Thewordshauntedme.

Five little words, seven simple syllables, twenty-three ordinary letters.

And yet the combination of those words, syllables, and letters had rocked my perspective of, well,everything.

Everything I had always been told. Everything I had always believed. Everything I had always known to be an absolutetruth—especially when it came to my family.

Vesper Quill is your sister.

Ah, those five pesky little words.

Kyrion Caldaren had telepathically whispered that thought to me while I had been escorting him to Lord Callus Holloway, the ruler of the Imperium, during a midnight ball at Crownpoint palace. Even now, two weeks later, I could still see the satisfied smirk on Kyrion’s face as he tossed out the revelation like it was the ultimate trump card in the cutthroat Regal game we’d been playing our entire lives. Even worse, I could still feel his bloodysmugnesswith my telempathy, like he was standing right beside me and grinding his stormsword into my ribs one slow, painful inch at a time—

“Lord Zane?” A low voice intruded on my dark thoughts. “Is the solstice suit not to your liking? You haven’t said anything in five minutes.”

A seventy-something man hovered by my side and studied me in the floor-length mirror propped up in the corner. He was a few inches shorter than me, with iron-gray hair, tan skin, and long, slender, nimble fingers that could wield a needle and thread with expert precision. Fergus had been the House Zimmer tailor longer than I had been alive.

Fergus’s dark brown eyes flicked over me from top to bottom as he searched for faults in his work. “Per your instructions, I made the solstice suit a sleeker, more fashionable version of your Arrow uniform.”

A crisp white shirt peeked out from the V at the top of the fitted tailcoat that stretched across my broad shoulders. The front of the coat only came down to my waist, although the twin tails in the back dropped to my knees. Two rows of blue opal buttons marched down the front of the ice-blue coat, while matching blue pants and knee-high black boots completed my ensemble. I almost always wore my family’s colors, even though everyone already knew exactly who I was, thanks to the gossipcasts that breathlessly covered my exploits.

Fergus was wearing a similar tailcoat, although his was dark gray with ice-blue trim and silver buttons stamped with tinyZs, a sign that he belonged to House Zimmer.

“How is it that you can make the same coat look dashing and distinguished, whereas I always feel like a little boy playing dress-up?” I grumbled.

A wry smile curved the corner of Fergus’s mouth. “Skill, my lord.” He gestured at my tailcoat in the mirror. “Although as you’ve told me many, many times, the ice blue of House Zimmer brings out your eyes much better than it does mine.”

I studied my own reflection in the mirror. He was right. The ice-blue fabric did bring out the similar shade of my eyes. My grandmother and my father both had the same color eyes. So did several of my cousins. In fact, just about everyone with even a drop of Zimmer blood had ice-blue eyes.

Except for my sister.

Vesper had the dark blue eyes of her mother, Nerezza Blackwell, although silver flecks often appeared in Vesper’s gaze whenever she was emotional, using her seer power, or tapping into her truebond connection with Kyrion—like she had during the midnight ball.

The memories erupted in my mind, as sharp, bright, and clear as videos playing on a holoscreen. Vesper and Kyrion in the middle of the throne room floor, yelling and crawling toward each other, even as Imperium soldiers tried to drag them away from each other . . . The two of them lunging toward each other, blue sparks flickering around their fingertips like tiny butterflies . . . The couple finally clasping hands, and those blue butterfly sparks coalescing and erupting into bright, crackling lightning that had danced around them in jagged forks as though they were caught in the center of a violent electrical storm . . .

“Zane?” Fergus asked in a low, hesitant voice. “Is something wrong?”

I blinked and focused on Fergus, who stared back at me, concern furrowing his forehead. The tailor was a true friend, and I had confided many things to him over the years, but I wasn’t about to confess my inner turmoil. Not now. Not until I decided how I felt about having a long-lost sister—and all the tough truths and hard problems that came along with the startling revelation.

“Your design and work are impeccable as always, Fergus,” I replied, forcing some false cheer into my voice.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, but I cut him off and spewed out the first lie that popped into my head. “I was just thinking about the solstice celebration.”

The summer solstice was the first major holiday and event since the disastrous midnight ball, and everyone who was anyone in Regal society was scheduled to attend. Except for Callus Holloway, of course. He rarely left the security of Crownpoint for any reason, preferring to force the Regals to come to the Imperium palace to seek an audience with him. But these days, the greedy siphon had a singular focus: finding Vesper and Kyrion so he could take the psionic power of their truebond connection for his own.

More memories crashed over me. Vesper and Kyrion battling Adria and Dargan Byrne, a pair of siblings who also had a truebond . . . A wounded Kyrion staring at me from the back of the open cargo bay while Vesper steered his blitzer, theDream World, out of the Crownpoint docking bay . . . The spaceship streaking through the sky like a shooting star, carrying the couple to safety, before winking out of sight . . .

I blinked again. This time, I managed to banish the memories to the back of my brain, although annoyance sparked in my chest at the gigantic bloodymessKyrion and Vesper had left behind—a mess thatIwas tasked with cleaning up. The truebonded couple might have escaped Holloway’s clutches, but in doing so, they had caused a multitude of problems for me.

Holloway had offered an enormous bounty for Kyrion and Vesper’s capture, but no one had seen them since they had fled Corios, the planet that was the Imperium’s seat of power.

There was a slight chance the couple was dead. A flight director had reported seeing Adria Byrne slip onto Kyrion’s ship before it had left the Crownpoint docking bay. She could have killed Kyrion and Vesper in retaliation for her brother Dargan’s death, but if so, she would have returned to Corios with their bodies. Adria’s continued absence led me to believe that Kyrion and Vesper had ended her instead.

Holloway also thought they were still alive, which was the only thing we agreed on. He would probably spend the solstice holiday poring over supposed sightings of Kyrion and Vesper and listening to his generals theorize about where the couple might be heading. Arrogant fool. He should be worrying about what the Techwave was plotting next. The terrorist group was much more of a threat to the Imperium than Kyrion and Vesper, but Holloway always put his own dark desires and unending lust for power above everything else, including the people he was supposed to lead and protect.

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