Gotta keep some cards tucked up my sleeve, after all! 
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Harrington House
City of Landing
Planet of Manticore
Manticore Binary System System
“Well, I guess that’s everything.”
Honor Alexander-Harrington stood in the quiet library. Rain pounded the skylight overhead. It was barely midafternoon, but the overcast day was dark and murky, and somehow it felt cold, despite Landing’s warmth. She listened to the rain as she looked around her at all the familiar furnishings, the shelved books, the paintings, the subdued lighting. But she didn’t really see any of it, and she looked like a stranger standing in someone else’s house, unable to understand how she’d come there.
“If you’re sure,” her mother said.
Allison stood beside Honor with Katherine in her arms. Raoul was in the nursery. He burst into sobs anytime Honor was in the same room as him, clinging to her with desperate strength. She didn’t know exactly how it worked, but there was no question that he was able to taste her emotions, whether or not he could truly feel anyone else’s. She needed to cling to him as desperately as he needed to cling to her, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t inflict that on him, not now, not when he was only a baby and no one could possibly explain it to him. And so she’d handed him as gently as she could to Lindsey Phillips and walked out of that nursery, heart breaking at his sobbed “Mama! Want Mama!” from behind her. Now he lay exhausted in his crib, and the White Haven treecats huddled around him like guardian gargoyles, somehow blunting the worst of his sorrow and fear. Katherine was subdued, obviously aware something terrible had happened, yet at least she’d been spared the terrible weight of someone else’s grief, and Honor reached out to lay a gentle hand on the little girl’s head.
For a moment, something seemed alive behind the frozen flint of her eyes, but then she took her hand from Katherine’s head and whatever it had been disappeared once again into the ice.
“I have to get back to the ship. We’ve got a lot to do, and I don’t want to lose the time window.”
“If you’re sure,” Allison repeated with a very different emphasis and Honor looked at her.
Honor had raised every barrier she could against the emotions of those about her. Her ability to feel what others felt wasn’t something she could turn off or on. It simply was, an inescapable part of who she’d become over the years. She had learned to . . . adjust the volume, though, and she needed that now. Needed it because the loss and the pain and the fury pouring into her and Nimitz from everyone around them threatened to drag them under. That tide of emotion threatened to break her concentration. Threatened to divert her from the task before her, and nothing could be permitted to do that.
But her mother’s very special anguish could not be escaped. The grief over the death of her beloved twin brother. The knowledge of how Jacques’s death, especially like this, would hammer all of Alfred Harrington’s wounds from the Yawata Strike.
And fear. Fear for her daughter.
“I’m sure, Mother.” There was no emotion in Honor’s voice, but she managed a brief caricature of a smile. It vanished quickly, and her nostrils flared as she reached up to the silent, grieving treecat on her shoulder. “Like I told Elizabeth, this has to end. And I’m going to end it, once and for all.”
Allison shifted Katherine’s weight so she could lay one hand on Honor’s arm.
“I know you are, sweetheart.” Her voice was calm, almost serene, despite the tears glittering on her lashes, and she shook her head. “I know that, believe me. But you come back to me. Raoul and Katherine need you now, more than ever. And your father and I — We’ll always need you, Honor. So you come back to us.”
“Mother, I’ll be aboard the fleet flagship.” She managed another fleeting smile. “The Sollies don’t have a thing that could touch her in a standup fight. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we just didn’t make that clear enough.” A very different expression replaced the smile, and her frozen eyes filled with a chill, flickering fire. “That’s one of the oversights I intend to set right.”
She felt Allison’s concern spike higher, but she refused to allow it in, denied it access to the frozen helium of her purpose. She knew what Allison really meant. Knew what her mother really wanted to say was “Give me back my daughter and take away this stranger. Give me back the person who still knows how to love, how to care. Give me back my child and give back the mother my grandchildren need.”
But Honor didn’t know if she could do that.
She didn’t know if anyone could do that.
She reached out, touched her mother’s cheek very gently, and her thumb brushed away one of Allison’s tears.
“Take care of Daddy and the babies,” she said softly.
“Of course I will.”
“I know.”
She leaned close, kissed Katherine’s cheek, then leaned her forehead against her mother’s for a long, still moment.
And then Honor Alexander-Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, turned and walked out of that foyer, into the driving Landing rain, down the steps to the waiting air car, without a single backward glance.