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Michi gazed at her reflection with a great deal of satisfaction. “Juno, pass me my birds,” she said.

“Of course, my lady.” The fair-haired servant looked through a box of hair ornaments before pulling out the exquisite hand-painted enamel comb. He helped her set it in place in the elaborate knot one of the other servants had woven her hair into.

The midnight blue background with the scarlet and gold birds was probably one of Michi’s favorite designs. It matched the midnight blue business suit and scarlet and gold blouse she was wearing. “Do you think this is suitable for meeting my son at the port?”

“You will be the envy of all those waiting for passengers to disembark, my lady,” Juno said.

“Excellent,” Michi said, beaming. “Make sure the rest of the adjustments to Kuen’s rooms are finished before we return, or I will be very displeased.”

“I will see to it personally, my lady.” Juno bowed low and walked out of the room.

Michi slipped her feet into her high heeled shoes and made her way out of the house. She pursed her lips. Her preferred vehicle wouldn’t be big enough to accommodate her son’s tall, lean frame. He was certainly not what she expected given the price she’d paid to have him made properly to her specifications.

How had he gotten so tall? Dr. Asura hadn’t told her that his manipulations of Kuen’s genetics prior to his birth would result in someone so tall, so broad, or with such a deep voice. Was it the military that had done it? If so, then she’d made a mistake sending him to the High Command’s most cherished Academy twenty years earlier.

Settling on one of her least favorite vehicles as the proper one to be able to support Kuen, Lakshmi having a small car already waiting for her at the port, she set out on the road. Traffic was abysmal. Michi felt a growing certainty in the pit of her stomach that she’d be late.

Michi Nakano was never late. It simply couldn’t be allowed. Nausea churned in her stomach and bile burned the back of her throat. She swallowed the mixture of stomach acid and her lunch back down and focused on the road. The autodriver stated that there was an accident ahead, probably some idiot driving manually.

Michi rolled down her window, and making certain no one noticed her, she spat out some of the vile tasting fluid in the back of her throat. It wouldn’t do to have anyone see her be sick. She did have her reputation to maintain after all. The autodriver pulled up an alternate route that would get her to the port twenty minutes late. That was simply unacceptable.

Michi tapped in her requirements and had the autodriver recalculate its route. Red lit warnings flashed on the screens. She’d have to break a few traffic laws to do what she wanted. Michi almost laughed. The law didn’t apply to her any more than it did to any of the other members of her social caste, so why should she care about speed laws and legal traffic patterns?

She put in the override command and leaned back satisfied as the engine revved. The car slid into another lane as the autodriver cut off a cheaper model vehicle. She heard the horn blare but ignored it as her car moved smoothly across two more lanes of traffic before taking a sharp turn the wrong way onto a one-way street. She was only on the street for a few seconds before taking a hard left onto a normal two-way street.

She arrived at the port ten minutes before Lakshmi was scheduled to land. Feeling a little calmer, she got out of her car and paid the valet fee to have it parked safely. She went inside and bought herself a cup of tea before making her way out to the Nakano family private landing pad.

She watched with an eagerness that would be odd to anyone who didn’t know this more private side to her. Michi hadn’t seen her son, other than that brief glimpse of him on the comm, since he was five. He was right – two decades was far too long to go without any kind of contact, yet she’d done it to protect him. How long would he have survived with the sheer number of people out there trying to kill her, let alone her heirs?

Michi wrapped one hand around her stomach and clenched the jacket with a ferocity that only showed a hint of the bottled-up rage. Kuen was her only living child, not because she only desired to have a single heir but because every pregnancy had been terminated by assassins or the infants had been murdered before she’d even gotten the chance to know them.

She let go of her jacket and smoothed the wrinkles out, her fingers straying up to the locket around her neck. Hope was not something she ever dared let herself do. Yet in the end, wasn’t hope the only thing worth fighting for?