#financing contingency

[lawofficeofryansshipp]

Understanding Real Estate Contract Contingencies in Florida: Protecting Your Investment

  Florida Real Estate & Business Attorneys_2 Hey everyone, Florida Real Estate Attorney Ryan S. Shipp here! If you’re buying or selling real estate in Florida, understanding contingencies in your real estate purchase and sales contract is crucial. What Are Contract Contingencies? Contingencies are conditions that must be met before closing, allowing buyers or sellers to cancel without penalty if…

[wani-yasir1]

Unlocking the Potential of Quantum Finance: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction to Quantum Finance The Potential of Quantum Computers in Finance Enhanced Machine Learning and Optimization Efficient Portfolio Optimization and Risk Management Advanced Quantum Cryptography Fraud Detection and Fraud Prevention Improved Financial Modeling and Pricing Applications of Quantum Finance Risk Management Portfolio Optimization Option Pricing Algorithmic Trading Quantum…

[rotzaprachim]

Maybe it’s worth trying to get through to the internet tradwife and coquette contingent that you have way more time and money to engage in the more stereotypically feminine hobbies and aesthetics if you have control over your own finances and time and personal tastes and don’t get married or have children before your time.

[ayeforscotland]

Hi! Saw your Data flow posts, and just asking to check if I've understood correctly: is the issue here (I'm some of the examples you mentioned about a project not working because they had discounted something, for instance) what's succinctly represented in the xkcd Dependency?

https://xkcd.com/2347/

Just so folk don't have to follow the link - here is the xkcd

So this is a great example of a dependency, something that's vital to a single or multiple other processes or assets.

'Impact Analysis' is something that organisations need to do either to preempt something going wrong in order to build contingencies OR something that organisations need to be able to understand *when* something goes wrong.

But while the comic above is focused on modern digital infrastructure (which in the context I refer to Dataflow is more focused on Routers and Switches), it's worth noting that dependencies across organisations are a lot broader than that.

For example:

Person A needs to provide a report to person B so person B can do their job - That is a dependency

Person A needs to use App 1 to write the report but is dependent on the data from App 2 to actually write the report - That is also a dependency

Person A needs to use 'Laptop FW131' but spilled coffee over it at lunch and now it won't turn on - That is a dependency

Person A has found a back-up laptop 'Laptop FW132' but office WiFi is down because the finance department haven't paid the internet provider - Also a dependency

Seeing those examples, you might say, "But in that case, literally anything could be a dependency? What if Person A gets hit by a bus? What if the Laptop explodes and burns the building down?"

And yeah, that's absolutely the case. But if you do not understand the connections and dependencies between People, Business Processes and Technology Assets then you won't be able to ask the question in the first place. Which in an increasingly complex digital world is becoming much more important!

Hope that helps, any questions on the back of that please don't hesitate to ask because I live for this stuff.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Neal Stephenson’s “Polostan”

NEXT WEEKEND (Novem<p>placeholder </p>ber 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Science fiction isn't collection of tropes, nor is it a literary style, nor is it a marketing category. It can encompass all of these, but what sf really is, is an outlook.

At the core of sf is an approach to technology (and, sometimes, science): sf treats technology as a kind of crux that the rest of the tale revolves around. The Bechdel test invites us to notice that in most fiction, stories revolve around men – that it's rare for two or more non-male characters to interact with one another, and if they do, that interaction is triggered by a man.

The sftnal version of this would go something like this: "a story gets increasingly stfnal to the extent that interactions among characters either directly relate to a technology, or are triggered by the consequences of such a relation, or fears, plans or aspirations for same."

(Note that this implies that science fiction is a spectrum: things can be more or less science fictional, and that gradient reflects the centrality of a technology to the narrative.)

No one's work demonstrates this better than Neal Stephenson. Stephenson's work covers a lot of settings and storytelling modes. His debut, The Big U, was a contemporary novel lampooning academic life. Then came Zodiac, another contemporary novel, but one where science – in this case, extremely toxic polychlorinated biphenyls – take center stage. Then came his cyberpunk classic, Snow Crash, which was unambiguously (and gloriously) science fiction.

A couple of books later, we got Cryptonomicon, a finance novel that treated money as a technology, and, notably, did so across both a near-future setting and the historic setting of WWII. In addition to being a cracking novel, Cryptonomicon is exciting in that it treats the technological endeavors of the past in exactly the same way as it does the imaginary technological endeavors of the future. Here's Stephenson fusing his contemporary sensibilities with his deep interests in history, and approaching historical fiction as an sf writer, doing the sftnal thing to gadgets and ideas that have been around for more than two generations.

Stephenson's next novel was Quicksilver, the first book of the massive "System of the World" trilogy, in which the extremely historical events of Newton and Leibniz's quest to discover "the calculus" are given a sweeping, world-spanning sftnal treatment. As "system of the world" suggests, Stephenson uses this sftnal trick to situate a scientific advancement in the context of a global, contingent, complex system that it both grows out of an defines. This is the pure water of science fiction, applied entirely to real seventeenth century events, and it's definitive proof that sf isn't a trope, a style or a category – but rather, it is a way of framing and understanding the world.

You can think of Stephenson's career up to this point as a series of experiments in applying the stfnal lens to events that are progressively less historical (and, with The Diamond Age, events that are atemporal inasmuch as the book is set in a futuristic revival of the Victorian Age). Experiments that range over contemporary settings, and then contemporary settings blended with historical settings, then a deep historical sf trilogy.

(It's rather exciting that these books came out right as William Gibson was entering his own "predicting the present" decade, where he exclusively published sf about the recent past, a prelude to a series of sf novels set in a future so far from our present that the characters literally have no record of which events led up to their own circumstances):

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/28/the-peripheral-william-gibson-vs-william-gibson/

Having proved how successful an historical sf novel could be, Stephenson then bopped around with a lot of stfnal historical ideas, from the "transmedia" 12th century setting of the Mongoliad to a madcap time-travel book (The Rise and Fall of DODO). Stephenson's work since then have been pretty straightforwardly sftnal, which means that he's a little overdue for a return to historical sf.

That's where Polostan comes in, the just-published inaugural volume of a new interwar series about the birth of atomic science:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/polostan-neal-stephenson

Critics and even the publisher have called this a "spy novel" or a "historical novel" but it is neither of those. What Polostan is, is a science fiction novel, about spies in an historical setting. This isn't to say that Stephenson tramples on, or ignores spy tropes: this is absolutely a first-rate spy novel. Nor does Stephenson skimp on the lush, gorgeously realized and painstakingly researched detail you'd want from an historical novel (Stephenson has long enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with the brilliant researcher Lisa Gold, whom we can thank for much of the historical detail across his body of work).

But the overarching sensibility of this work is a world full of people who revolve around technology. You'd be hard-pressed to list more than a handful of actions taken by the characters that aren't driven by technology, and most of the dialog either concerns technology, or the actions that characters have taken in relation to technology. It's unmistakably and indelibly a science fiction novel.

It's great.

Polostan raises the curtain on the story of Dawn Rae Bjornberg, AKA Aurora Maximovna Artemyeva, whose upbringing is split between the American West in the early 20th century and the Leningrad of revolutionary Russia (her parents are an American anarchist and a Ukrainian Communist who meet when her father travels to America as a Communist agitator). Aurora's parents' marriage does not survive their sojourn to the USSR, and eventually Aurora and her father end up back in the States, after her father is tasked with radicalizing the veterans of the Bonus Army that occupied DC, demanding the military benefits they'd been promised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

After the efforts of Communist organizers in the Bonus Army were mercilessly crushed by George S Patton, Aurora ends up living in a Communist commune in Chicago, where she falls into a job selling comfortable shoes to the footsore women who visit the Century of Progress, as the 1933 World's Fair was known:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_Progress

At the Century of Progress, Aurora sits at the junction where many global currents are mixing: she is there when Mussolini's air armada lands on Lake Michigan to the cheers of thronged fascist sympathizers; and also when Neils Bohr lectures on the newly discovered – and still controversial – neutron. She is also exposed to her first boyfriend, a young physicist from New York, who greatly expands her interest in nuclear physics and also impregnates her.

This latter turn in her life sends Aurora back into the American west, where, after a complex series of misadventures and derring-do, she embarks on a career as a tommy gun-toting bank robber, part of an armed gang of her cowboy shirttail cousins.

All of this culminates in her return sojourn to the Soviet Union, where she first falls under suspicion of being an American spy, and then her recruitment as a Soviet spy.

Also: she plays a lot of polo. Like, on a horse.

This isn't just an unmistakably sftnal novel, it's also an unmistakably Stephensonian novel: embroidered, discursive, and brilliantly expositional:

https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit/my-favorite-bit-cory-doctorow-talks-about-the-bezzle/

It is funny, it is interesting, it is even daffy in places. It's sometimes absolutely horrifying. It skips around in time like a subatomic particle bouncing around in a theoretical physics model. It creates and resolves all manner of little subplots in most satisfying ways, but also ultimately exists just to tee up the main action, which will come in future volumes. It's a curtain raiser, and like any good opening number, it hooks you for what is to come.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/04/bomb-light/#nukular

[krisluxxeeempress]

SUN CONJUNCT VENUS| SYNASTRY SERIES

Astrologically, the Sun and Venus are enemies. I have observed that sadly, most people love the “enemies to lovers” trope in books and in real life. In other words, the love/hate relationship dynamics are sought and played out often. The same concept can be said for haters who are really fans. Those haters really love you, but they can’t compete, their ego is unable to express their admiration and or attraction for you; therefore, “logically” they must resort to hating you. This will always be the problem whenever the Sun, in other words, someone’s ego is in the mix of synastry. The ego is very destructive and competitive, in a negative sense. The ego wants to be the beginning and the end. The ego has demands and expects them to be met with no regard to who it hurts, kills, destroys etc. The ego wants all the attention and all their “needs” to be met, except they’re not needs. In FACT, the ego avoids everything they need in lieu of what they want and unfortunately this is a common theme for those who have Sun conjunct Venus synastry.

The Sun person is attracted to the Venus person because, he/she APPEARS to share the same values in addition to, looking exactly how the Sun person wants. The Sun person is more sexually attracted to the Venus person. Venus looks exactly how the Sun person likes, no matter what. Venus can gain weight, lose a tooth, or have funky genitals however, the Sun person will still desire the Venus person- always. As for the Venus person, he/she is attracted to the Sun person because they ACT like Venus’s type. Example, if the Sun is in Cancer conjunct Venus in Cancer, Venus likes how the Sun person ACTS nurturing, caring, sensitive, thoughtful, stand offish, like a homebody and if they have children, Venus loves how the Sun person cares for their child(dren). Venus “loves” that the Sun person cooks, works hard, and ACTS responsible and is always concerned with stability. The Sun person is attracted to the Venus person because he/she LIKES everything they, the Sun person does. The Sun person feels like their ego is stroked very well by Venus and in turn, The Sun “likes/loves” the Venus person. 

So, you may ask, where is the problem with this synastry aspect. The problem therein lies in the fact that the Sun person does not know, understand, value or express TRUE LOVE. The ego does not know or feel comfortable with unconditional love as it’s much concerned with validation. Venus does not express unconditional love either. Venus is all about appearance, pleasure, sex, finances and overall, a good time. Both the Sun and Venus are incapable of giving, expressing, or having GENUINE LOVE on an emotional level. Both may claim to “love” each other, however, it’s very conditional and contingent on how much validation the Sun person receives and how much the Venus person can benefit from the Sun person.

The Sun person will stay wherever, they get attention. So, the Venus person will more than likely be the one to END the relationship or cause the most DRAMA because Venus wants physical benefits. Venus will always give the attention, validation, sex or whatever in excess to the Sun person, so long he/she gives the Venus person something. Back to the example of Sun in Cancer conjunct Venus in Cancer.

Venus in Cancer person will be attracted to the way the Sun person cares for their child(ren), however, if she/he doesn’t get their own children out the synastry, Venus will revoke sex or attention. If the Sun in Cancer person is always working, the Venus person will want to be spoiled financially or else- HE/SHE will get dramatic and revoke validation privileges. (In general cases- sex, and attention or whatever the person values.)

Another problem, depending on the sign, but especially with the example given of Cancerian energy. It’s loving and caring however, if Venus tries to be nurturing, loving and DEEP- this will turn the Sun person off or make them become distant. If the Sun person tries to exude Cancerian traits, Venus will become turned off. If either planet tries to express their energy in a more authentic and deep manner, it will inadvertently turn the other off and cause DRAMA with unconscious intent to bring it back to the surface. What I’ve just described is when one or the other attempts to exert their MOON placement/ energy into this mixture and that’s a big no. If you recall I mentioned above that The Sun, the Ego will always FORGO what they need for what it is they WANT. The Moon and its energy represent NEED. In simpler terms, those with this synastry “love” each other only if things stay on the surface. Anytime, the Moon, emotions get involved- this is when they began to “hate” and or avoid each other.

They will unconsciously do something they know the other will not like, like not giving money or giving sex and this will cause the drama, a separation and then a reunion. Whenever you make up with someone, everyone is on their best behavior and trying to keep the peace- but if you think about it, that’s the surface. Again, when these two get emotions involved and are “forced” to show the love that they’ve been claiming they had for one another, A FIGHT, A DISAGREEMENT will break out and then they are back to square one, on the surface. These two WANT drama because it creates the illusion of getting closer and having deep feelings for one another but it’s just appearances. When these two make up, Venus will go above and beyond to stroke the Sun persons ego. In turn the Sun person will ACT like the person Venus wants- until feelings get involved again. If these two break up, they will not be emotionally affected by it LIKE THAT, HA. Their egos won’t allow it. Sure, they will miss each other, but what they miss is the attention, power, control, sex, and presence of each other. Not necessarily emotionally because they are they've been trying to maintain emotional distance in the first place.

They won’t be able to admit this fact to themselves but it’s very true. This entire scenario would be a different story if maybe the Moon was conjunct Venus however, it’s not.

This synastry reminds me of celebrities who have good-looking partners FOR THAT PURPOSE ONLY.

They are there to have fun, sex, travel and PLAY THE PART. . . Just make sure Venus is benefiting out the deal and the Sun is getting their attention.

I think of Mayweather and his exotic girlfriends. They make him look good and stroke his ego. Meanwhile he spoils them financially. EVERYONE WINS – HENCE THE COMPEITION, I mentioned earlier. If Mayweather stops spending money on them, I can bet they will revoke his access to them.

Then he would just go find someone else. They're not emotionally invested even if they APPEAR that they are with this synastry aspect.

[aeth-eris]

Solar Return : Finances (2nd House)

Solar Return 2nd House in Aries: You may find yourself eager to invest in entrepreneurial ventures or take on new financial risks that could yield immediate returns, but it's important to ensure these ventures are well-thought-out and align with your long-term financial goals.

Solar Return 2nd House in Taurus: Focus on building a steady savings plan or exploring stable investment opportunities that provide a reliable and predictable income source, allowing you to feel financially secure and prepared for any unexpected expenses that may arise.

Solar Return 2nd House in Gemini: Explore various freelance opportunities or part-time jobs that leverage your diverse skill set and offer flexible earning potential, ensuring that you maintain clear and organized records of your income and expenses to manage your finances effectively.

Solar Return 2nd House in Cancer: Consider investing in real estate or other stable long-term assets that provide both financial security and emotional comfort, ensuring that you create a well-structured budget that allows for both practical saving and occasional indulgences that bring you joy.

Solar Return 2nd House in Leo: Channel your creativity into monetizing your passions, such as starting a side business or pursuing artistic endeavors that have the potential to generate additional income, while also being mindful of creating a sustainable financial plan that supports your creative ambitions.

Solar Return 2nd House in Virgo: Focus on organizing your financial records and exploring investment opportunities that are based on thorough research and careful analysis, ensuring that you prioritize practical and cost-effective solutions that align with your long-term financial stability and personal values.

Solar Return 2nd House in Libra: Collaborate with trusted partners or consider investment opportunities that emphasize fairness and mutual benefits, ensuring that you maintain transparent communication and legal clarity in any financial agreements to maintain a harmonious and balanced financial portfolio.

Solar Return 2nd House in Scorpio: Evaluate high-potential investment options that involve calculated risk-taking and in-depth research, ensuring that you remain aware of the potential for financial fluctuations and have contingency plans in place to manage any unexpected changes in your financial situation.

Solar Return 2nd House in Sagittarius: Embrace opportunities for professional growth and consider investing in educational pursuits or travel experiences that can expand your skill set and open up new income streams, while also maintaining a well-planned financial strategy that supports your adventurous endeavors.

Solar Return 2nd House in Capricorn: Focus on building a strong financial foundation through disciplined saving and conservative investments that prioritize long-term stability over short-term gains, ensuring that you approach financial planning with a pragmatic and realistic mindset to achieve sustainable wealth.

Solar Return 2nd House in Aquarius: Explore innovative investment options or consider contributing to socially responsible projects that align with your values and have the potential for long-term financial growth, while also maintaining a balance between your progressive financial approach and the need for practical financial security.

Solar Return 2nd House in Pisces: Trust your intuition when making financial decisions, and consider investing in charitable causes or artistic pursuits that bring you emotional fulfillment, while also maintaining a realistic and well-organized financial plan that balances your compassionate nature with the need for practical financial stability.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canadian government likely owes Indigenous people almost $76 billion for currently filed land claims and lawsuits, recent official reporting says — a sum that's nearly seven times greater today than when Justin Trudeau became prime minister. In 2015, Ottawa counted $11 billion in "contingent liabilities," which are potential legal obligations recorded only in cases where the probability of future payment is considered "likely," according to the 2023 public accounts of Canada. This year's fall economic statement showed the vast majority of these liabilities — 95 per cent — stem from Indigenous claims against the Crown.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[pommedepersephone]

Managing Post Election: Basic Personal Preparedness

As a family who moves frequently, with a US government job that has us living overseas, I am used to being prepared for all contingencies. Given that many of us will be very vulnerable under the incoming administration, I am sharing my advice for getting prepared.

Make sure all your IDs are up to date.

This includes a copy of your social security card, birth certificate, and any licenses related to marriage. Don't have a driver’s license? Get your Real ID from the DMV. And if you don't have one, go get your passport, now.

For those who do not have US citizenship, the National Immigration Law Center has resources related to obtaining IDs, and much more.

Visit your medical provider.

Get a copy of your medical records, your prescriptions, etc. Make sure your vaccinations are up to date. If you use birth control consider stocking up - or switch to an IUD that does not require refills. If you have an IUD that should be replaced in the next four years, see if you can do so now.

Sadly, access to affordable sexual healthcare is nowhere near universal in the US as it is, and it is about to get worse. I will be looking for good resource lists on this very topic next.

Look at your finances.

If you don't have good record keeping in place, consider spending a bit of time to set that up. FEMA's Emergency Financial First Aid Kit (EFFAK) is a great place to start.

There is every chance that we are going to see increased market volatility, major changes in interest rates and tariffs, etc. If you are in any position to, pay down your debt as you can. If you have unavoidable major purchases pending, consider making them now.

What next?

Please note, this is in no way exhaustive, and I plan to do a few more of these posts for folks who might find them useful. I am not an expert, but I do have experience working in human services and I am a mean researcher. Leveraging our respective skills to support each other is how we survive and thrive.

[leiawritesstories]

PART NINE: SEPTEMBER

Word count: 10.7k

Warnings: *covers eyes* swearing, a shitload of scheming, Maeve being her usual self, police presence, angst, one NSFW scene, and um maybe some angst *runs away*

All my thanks to my lovely betas @mariaofdoranelle & @house-of-galathynius love you guys 🫶🫶

Masterlist

Read on AO3

Enjoy!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aelin had felt ice prickling at her spine for a handful of weeks now, and as she walked into her office on the morning of September 6th, she knew it was time to put the contingency plans into motion. Ever since Arobynn’s demise, she had sensed that her Boss days were numbered, so she’d been working on a range of options for what she could do if—when—she was discovered. 

She almost couldn’t stomach the idea of letting her beloved company go, but it had to happen. 

Elide, Nehemia, Ansel, and Lysandra all came to her office at eleven, as she’d asked, each woman wearing an expression of a different level of confusion. 

“What’s up, boss lady?” Elide broke the film of tension as she sat down, fixing Aelin with a look that was equal parts concerned and hesitant. 

Aelin twisted her ring beneath the surface of her desk. “I asked if you would all meet me because I…because…” She pressed her lips together and took a deep, steadying breath. “Because there are some documents that I need you to sign.” 

“Why does this sound ominous?” Ansel’s eyes narrowed. 

“It’s a contingency,” Aelin admitted. 

“For what?” Her lawyer was nothing if not persistent and exacting. 

Pain wrinkled Aelin’s forehead. “For if—when—the law catches up to everything and everyone that I am.” Her words dropped like stones in the silence of her office. 

Lysandra’s brows crinkled in unspoken sympathy. “Will you tell us about this contingency before we have papers pushed at us?” 

Aelin cracked a half-grin. “It’s pretty simple, honestly. If I should be, shall we say, involved in a shockingly lurid criminal trial, I vacate the CEO position and completely step away from the company. Ells, you become CEO in my place. Lys, you assume the COO role. Ansel, you’ll probably be faced with the impossible task of defending my guilty ass, but you’ll retain your position here, and you’ll have full authority over the company’s finances.” She exhaled, twisting her ring around her middle finger. “Nehemia will remain in charge of the labs.” 

Elide curled her fingers around the edge of Aelin’s desk. “Why me?” 

“Because you’re not only the right woman for the job, you’re the perfect woman.” Aelin met her dear friend and lifelong business partner’s heavy gaze. “Ells, you’ve practically given your life to this company, and I trust you completely to guide us through whatever fallout happens when the law catches up to the Boss.” 

“You said when.” Lys broke in. 

Aelin nodded. 

Lys drummed her fingertips against her thigh. “Why did you say when?”

“Because I’m afraid it’s inevitable,” Aelin murmured. “I…something tells me that shit’s going to come crashing down. Soon.” A haunted look flickered through her eyes. 

Nehemia’s penetrating gaze fixed on Aelin for a long moment before she picked up a pen, pulled the stack of papers towards herself, and began working through the pages, signing where it indicated. The office was silent as the chief engineer worked, and when she finished, she simply laid down the pen, nudged the papers back to the middle of the table, and folded her hands. “I trust you, Ae,” she said. “I want to protect this place and these people too.” 

Unexpectedly, Aelin’s eyes watered. “I don’t deserve you, Nemi.” her voice cracked. 

“Nonsense.” Nehemia returned. “We’d all have left a very long time ago if we weren’t determined to keep Gal Inc alive and well.” 

Elide nodded as she picked up the contracts and the pen. “I second that.” 

The office was silent again as Elide worked through the papers, carefully reading each section before she signed and initialed the dotted lines. When she reached the final line, her hand faltered slightly, but she set her jaw and signed her name, accepting the role that she couldn’t help but feel would fall upon her before the end of the year. 

“Let me know when you want to talk about the transition,” she said quietly. Aelin’s eyes were glassy as she nodded. 

Surprisingly, Ansel was the next one to sign the papers, not really reading any of the text as she worked through the signatures. She had been the one to draw them up, albeit reluctantly and with a hell of a lot of questions about the motivation, when Aelin had come to her a few weeks ago. “I still don’t like the fatalism of all of this,” she remarked as she slid the stack of papers into the center of the table. “It feels…Ae, I’m going to be blunt here. This feels like you’re about to make some big, splashy statement to the press and bring down the cops and the TSF all over the place.” 

Aelin flinched. “No.” 

Ansel raised a brow. “No?” 

“No.” Emphatically, Aelin shook her head. “My goal with…with the Boss has always been to stick to the shadows. It wouldn’t make any sense to pull off some kind of grand reveal, which would just jeopardize the safety of these plans.” She tapped the stack of papers. “I have this sense that my days of hiding are almost over, but I’m not going to try and upstage the cops by revealing myself. When the law comes, I’m not going to hide from it. That’s all.” 

Elide weighed Aelin’s words, mulling over the phrasing. When the law comes. “Ae, do you…” She paused, the question hanging thick in her throat. “Do you think you know who’s going to put all the pieces together?” 

Thick, tense silence blanketed the room for a moment. Slowly, Aelin nodded, a jagged slice of grief flickering through her eyes before she shuttered it. “Yes.” The finality of the single word dropped like a stone into the air-conditioned silence of the conference room. She closed her eyes for a brief, steadying moment. “And knowing that he’s the best at his job and would always have figured it out won’t make it hurt any less.” 

Everyone in the room knew who she meant, knew why that grief had crossed her face. 

“Still feels an awful lot like doomsday,” Lys commented as she pulled the papers to her seat. She hesitated for a moment before she began reading and signing, stuffing down the bile that churned in her stomach as she signed the documents. Out of all of them, she was still the most closely linked to the Boss business, since she monitored the cameras around the Boss’s apartment and warehouses. She’d seen everything that happened when the TSF and PD went through Fenrys’s stakeout apartment. “But if you trust us, boss lady, then I trust you.” 

“Thank you,” Aelin rasped, reaching across the table to squeeze Lys’s hands. “Thank you.” 

By the end of the day, the documents were notarized and filed, ready to reshuffle the executive structure of Galathynius Inc. if anything should happen to its current CEO. 

When that something inevitably happened to its CEO.

~

“You needed me, ma’am?” Connall stepped into Maeve’s office, his eyes adjusting rapidly to the familiar darkness. He’d never understand why the hell she insisted on keeping her office so dark she could barely see five feet in front of her, but it was probably for the whole “Queen of the Night” aesthetic. 

“I did.” Maeve’s voice was as cool and controlled as ever, although as Con drew closer to her desk, he could see how her skin was paler than usual. “Connall, I suspect that I’m being poisoned.” 

He remained absolutely still, keeping his face neutral. “What do you need me to do?” 

A faint, insidious smile curled the corners of her scarlet lips. “Kill the kitchen staff and replace them. Get me the doctor for a diagnosis, and when he’s given it, kill him. Then, find the antidote.” 

Con nodded, a sharp dip of his chin. “Right away, ma’am.” 

Maeve smirked. “Good boy.” 

He was on his phone before he even left her office, calling the doctor who lived in the compound to get his ass to Maeve’s office. He let Maeve hear that brief conversation, because she needed the assurance that her closest, most loyal dog was doing her bidding. 

All of his carefully-laid plans would crumble if she turned on him. 

So Con headed down to the kitchens, patting the gun tucked into his hip holster and the assortment of tiny darts hidden in the pockets of his black jacket. He knew the handful of cooks and servers who were kept on staff to feed the Queen of the Night and her men, and he knew that the kitchen staff was aware that they could be killed at a moment’s notice. 

Not a single one of the twelve kitchen staff were surprised when Con strolled into the kitchen, locked the door, and sat down at the raised butcher-block counter, and placed a row of tiny darts in front of him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. 

Jes, the current head chef, just removed their apron. “We all know you’re not a sadist,” they replied, calmly sitting down opposite him. 

Con’s throat tightened as he pulled a small, narrow copper tube out of his sleeve. “The least I can do is make it quick.” He’d had the darts specially designed to be surgically sharp and as small as possible, and they were one of his favorite ways to knock a target out cold. 

To knock them out, not to kill them. 

The drug contained in the darts put all twelve of the kitchen staff into a kind of comatose state that looked like death to an untrained eye, slowing their breathing and heart rate until it was just high enough to keep them alive but just low enough that a cursory inspection would assume they were dead. He hauled each one out the back door, loading their inert bodies into the back of the nondescript van that Maeve’s men used to dispose of bodies, and drove off the property. A quick glance in the mirrors showed a flicker of dark violet curtains in the upper hallway, the only sign that Maeve had been watching as he dragged the ostensibly dead kitchen staff out of the compound. 

Perfect. 

After dropping the slumbering staff off at the docks, where they were taken aboard a cargo ship that belonged to Kingsflame, Celaena Sardothien’s smuggling company, Con drove back to the compound and returned to Maeve’s office. He pushed open the door, blinked in the familiar shadowy gloom, and sighed as he nearly tripped over the corpse of the doctor. 

“Dry cleaning nearly had a fit the last time they had to wash blood out of your carpet, ma’am.” 

Maeve shrugged. “I wanted him to think he had a chance.” 

Con let out a snort. “I’m always in awe of your creativity.” He stopped in front of her desk. “What did he say?” 

“He suspects that it’s some kind of concentrated medication or steroid that’s damaging my internal organs,” Maeve said, oddly calm for someone who was being poisoned. “The suggested treatment is to consume a dose of activated charcoal, induce vomiting to see if it will purge any substance that hasn’t been absorbed, and immediately start NAC supplementation to counteract the poison.” 

Connall nodded tightly. “What do you need me to do, ma’am?” 

“Get me the things that the doctor mentioned.” Maeve’s cold, calculating expression swept over Connall. “Get the corpse off my floor, send the rug to dry cleaning, and then come find me. You know I like to reward my good boy.” Something almost like fondness passed over her face. 

“And if dry cleaning throws another fit about your rug?” The last time he’d taken Maeve’s run down to her preferred dry cleaners, they had all but thrown the damn thing at his face when he informed them that it was once again bloody and needed expedited cleaning. 

“I’m sure they can be adequately convinced,” Maeve drawled. “However, I have begun to tire of this old thing.” She scraped the toe of her crimson-bottomed stiletto heel across the rug. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too terrible to freshen up the tired old décor in here, if necessary.”

“Of course, ma’am.” With a dip of his head, Con left, dragging the doctor’s body behind him. Out in the hallway, he deposited the corpse in the large, unmarked chute that would send it down to be incinerated, frowned at the blood on his hands, and ducked into the closest bathroom to wash up before he left the compound again, heading to the nearest pharmacy. They had long since grown used to Maeve’s men barging into their storefront, and he had a hunch that she either paid off the pharmacists or planted one of her men in the place to make them more agreeable to her…needs. Or both.

He picked up the few things that Maeve needed, palming a vial of essential oil that he tucked into his sleeve as he strolled through the small pharmacy. Combined with the pennyroyal oil that he was already lacing into Maeve’s food, the rosemary oil would speed up the effects of the poisoning, making Maeve weaker by the day. 

Making it easier for when Celeana Sardothien led the Queen of the Night to her death.

~

Aelin rolled down her window as Rowan turned off the highway, letting the mid-September breeze brush through her hair as she inhaled the crisp scent of the leaves beginning to turn. She and Rowan had finally found a day where both of their calendars were clear, and he had wasted no time in planning this date. Don’t even think about accepting any calls, love, he’d teased as he picked her up from her apartment, a laugh sparkling behind his tired eyes. 

“First time you’ve seen sunshine in a while?” Rowan joked as he drove down the country road, flicking her a glance in the rearview mirror. 

Aelin poked his firm shoulder. “I have plenty of windows, love. I should ask you the same things, since apparently it’s a requirement at the police station not to have any windows, if the crime shows I watch are any indication.” 

He chuckled softly. “We have…uh, some windows.” 

“Liar.” A grin broke across her face. “We have to enjoy this last bit of good weather while we can, since I’ve heard we’re supposed to get a record cold winter this year.” 

“No,” Rowan groaned. He turned onto a secluded side road, heading east, towards the Oakwald Forest. The road was mostly gravel, so Aelin reluctantly closed her window. 

Her expression brightened as she realized where they were going. “You remembered,” she whispered, her throat unexpectedly tight. 

“Of course.” He reached over and laid his hand atop hers. A few weeks ago, Aelin had told him about the spot where her family always took picnics when she was a child. About an hour’s drive outside Orynth, the natural area that bordered the Oakwald had been one of her favorite places to explore. When she was little, she daydreamed about being a forest princess who could speak to the Little Fae Folk of the fairy tales. That daydream had faded as she grew up, but the place had remained one of her favorite spots to go when she was feeling overwhelmed. 

In fact, she’d been there just last week, right after she’d filed the contingency documents, and she’d stared out across Terrasen until the sunset faded into star-speckled darkness. 

Rowan pulled into the small parking lot, hopped out of his SUV, grabbed the picnic basket from the backseat, and hurried around to open Aelin’s door. He looped his arm around her waist as they walked down one of the trails, his warmth seeping into her skin. She stole the bag with the blankets from him and slipped her arm around his waist, flashing him a smirk. 

“I can’t let you carry everything,” she teased. 

He pretended to sigh. “It’s called being a gentleman, love.” 

“And I love you for that, but I’m an independent woman.” 

“You don’t have to be all full-on girlboss with me.” He kissed the top of her head. 

A tiny corner of her heart melted at the sincere softness of his words. “I know, but…it’s so hard to get away from that persona.” 

“I know.” His thumb rubbed against the curve of her hip. “I feel like I can’t ever turn off the investigator half of my brain. It’s always going, always trying to fit different puzzle pieces into different places, even when I’m sleeping.” 

“That sounds rather distracting,” she remarked. “For me, it’s all the contracts, all the deals, everything I’ve ever signed or shaken hands on. It’s the details and little clauses and wondering if I said the right words to the right people.” 

“Sounds noisy.” He stopped as they came to a spacious meadow at the top of a rise. “Looks like we’re here.” 

Aelin’s throat tightened again as she drank in the familiar view. “This is my favorite spot out here,” she murmured. “Thank you, my love.” 

“Anything for you, Fireheart.” Rowan tipped his head down and kissed her, slow and sweet. Then he swiped the blankets from her and shook them out before arranging them on the grass. He pulled out an impressive spread of food from the basket and set it all up nicely, turning to her with a big, dazzlingly proud grin. “Eat up.”

“What if I’m not hungry for food?” She tugged her lower lip between her teeth, tracking the slow bob of Rowan’s throat as he swallowed. 

“You need real food first,” he rasped, hooded gaze trailing lazily down her throat. 

She sighed delicately as she sat down, plucked a pair of cherries out of the bowl, and stared straight into his eyes as she sucked both cherries into her mouth and bit into the perfectly sweet-tart fruit, spitting out the pits. “I’ve had real food now.” 

He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, clearly fighting his urge to lunge across the blanket and claim her. “Aelin,” he half-groaned. “You’re driving me wild, Fireheart.” 

“You know I love to do that.” She smirked. 

Very slowly, he picked up a skewer of grilled chicken and bit into the meat, holding her gaze the whole time. “Eat your lunch, love.” 

Her smirk widened. “Enjoying your meat on a stick?” 

Skewer almost to his mouth, Rowan spluttered out a string of coughs, his cheeks blazing with a bright crimson flush. “Aelin!” 

She laughed, the gleefully bright sound echoing around the valley. “I couldn’t resist.” 

He wiped off the corner of his mouth. “My gods, I’m in love with a wild woman.” He graced her with a brief, wicked grin before he took a handful of cherries and ate them, licking the juice off his fingers at a borderline explicit pace. “Two can play this game, love.” 

“Oh, I do love a game,” she purred, picking up a skewer of chicken and dipping it into a small container of sauce. She lifted it to her lips and licked the sauce off of the meat, flicking her tongue against the first piece of chicken. “Delicious,” she hummed, her voice almost a moan. 

Rowan’s knee banged into the picnic basket as he shifted in his seat, brazenly adjusting his erection in his pants. Aelin swore she heard the faint clink of metal in the basket, but dismissed it as probably some extra silverware or something her overprepared boyfriend had packed. He always brought extra stuff whenever they had a date outside the city, something for which she always teased him. 

By the time they had finished lunch, Aelin knew her panties were ruined, and she was certain that Rowan’s dick was about to rip through his jeans. Still, he clung to his impressive control, carefully packing up the picnic and putting everything back into the basket. Aelin took advantage of the moment when his back was turned to lay down on the blankets with a contented hum. He laid down beside her, effortlessly tugging her into his arms so she laid atop his chest, and idly ran his fingers through her hair. 

“I used to dream about being a princess,” she said, finding herself content to just relax in his arms, the heat in her blood dimming to pleasant warmth. 

He chuckled softly, no doubt imagining little Aelin in her pink princess dress at a family picnic. “Did you?” 

“Yeah.” She smiled, the memory old but still vivid. “Little Aelin wanted so badly to run off into the Oakwald and find the Little Fae Folk. I probably read way too many fairy tales.” 

“And then you grew up and became a practical businesswoman,” Rowan teased. 

She nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “You mean business princess.” 

His laughter cascaded over her like a summer shower. “I think little Aelin did read too many fairy tales, but it made her heart that much brighter.” 

“And it made me believe I’d one day find my true love.” She rolled onto her side so she could meet his eyes. “It took a while, but I did.” 

A suspiciously glassy gleam misted his eyes. “I love you,” he whispered. 

She cupped the side of his face, running her thumb over his jaw. “I love you too.” Her lips brushed his, her kiss gentle at first but quickly growing deeper, all the love she had for him poured out into the stroke of her tongue against his. 

They laid in each other’s arms until the sky began to darken, until Aelin shivered and Rowan helped her up and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders for the walk back to his car. As he loaded the picnic basket into the backseat, she heard that metallic clink again, and once again, she dismissed it as just the sound of the containers shifting against each other. She climbed into her seat, tucked the blanket around herself after she buckled her seatbelt, and kissed Rowan’s knuckles when he reached over to help adjust the blanket. She didn’t miss the soft, tender flicker of a smile that crossed his face. 

Aelin drifted into sleep as Rowan drove back into Orynth, only waking when he pulled into the parking garage of her building, stopped the car, and kissed her awake. She let him walk her back to her apartment and kissed him goodnight at her door, giving him a sleepy wave as he headed back down the hallway, his figure illuminated in the soft yellow lighting. 

She was snug in bed by the time he finally pulled out of the garage, having sat there in his car for a good half hour, head in his hands, agonizing over whether to pull the handcuffs he’d hidden in the picnic basket out and go back up to her apartment to face the inevitable arrest, or to just go home for the night and wait another few days before he had to arrest the love of his life. 

In the end, he drove away. 

He could delay the heartbreak for another few days. 

~

“You needed to see me, ma’am?” Connall assumed his usual stance in front of Maeve’s desk. 

Maeve nodded. “I have an assignment for you.” 

“Where?”

She slid him a single sheet of paper. “Sardothien has a warehouse near the docks where she holds her shipments before distribution. I need you to find out what’s currently there and what’s coming next.” Her orders were silky-smooth and firm, despite the tremble in her hands that she couldn’t quite conceal and the sunken circles beneath her eyes, obvious signs of her body weakening. 

Con glanced over the building’s details. “Looks like it’s got a few layers of security,” he observed in a neutral tone of voice. “How often does she visit it?” 

“Practically never.” Maeve scoffed. “Unlike a proper leader, she lets some underling run it.” 

“So it’ll be easy as fuck to break in,” Con remarked. He allowed a sharp-edged smirk to curl across his lips. “Damn, I was hoping for a challenge.” 

The Queen of the Night chuckled softly, a sinister rasp that would have been far more villainous if it hadn’t broken into a hoarse cough after two seconds. “I believe the interior will be the challenge you want, Connall. Sardothien allegedly posts a rotating guard at the place, and I haven’t yet determined how much of the building is patrolled or how extensively.” 

He grinned, his teeth a stark flash in the gloom of her office. “What should I do if I happen to run into the guard, ma’am?” 

“I suppose you’ll be forced to subdue him,” Maeve said calmly. She gave Con a small, chillingly ruthless smile. “I don’t foresee you having any difficulties with that.” 

“None at all, ma’am.” Con tucked the folded paper into the hidden pocket in his shirt, the same place where he kept the vials of Maeve’s poison. 

“I look forward to your discoveries, Connall. Dismissed.” 

Con bowed, turned sharply on his heel, and strode out of Maeve’s office. He returned to his room, where he laid out a small array of easily concealed weapons on his bed, took his Navy SEAL vest out of the closet, and began methodically loading each blade and dart into the multitude of slim pockets in the high-tech mesh material. He tucked a set of lockpicks into a front pocket, along with a generic employee ID card that Celaena’s tech guy—Nyx or Nox or something like that—had given him. The card would, in theory, work at the Boss’s properties. 

With his weapons and devices ready, Con pulled off his plain gray long-sleeve shirt, threw it into the laundry basket, and changed from his jeans into black tactical pants, which were reinforced with a layer of the same material that made up his vest. He pulled on his boots, laced them up, and then he reached into the back of the drawer where he kept his socks and retrieved a small, slender chrome tube. He uncapped it and removed a roll of sterile blue paper, which he carefully unrolled and laid flat on the bare top of his dresser. Also in the tube was a pair of long, narrow tweezers and a small silicone spatula that looked like a bakery dough scraper. He went and washed his hands in his sink, patted them dry, and then removed the tweezers from their plastic packaging and, slowly and carefully, peeled back the top layer of blue paper. 

Near-invisible atop the sterile paper laid a pristine pair of what looked like very, very, very thin, delicate latex gloves molded to the precise measurements of his hands. 

Put this onto your hands if you’re ever going into my property, Celaena had said. I can’t tell you much, but it will ensure that you leave no fingerprints. 

She’d called it “SecondSkin.”

Carefully, Con lifted the first glove, sliding the flat prongs of the tweezers between the layers that were almost too fine for him to see. He slipped his left hand into the glove, surprised at how the synthetic material didn’t cling to his skin like ordinary latex would. Once the glove was on all the way to his fingertips, he exchanged the tweezers for the scraper tool and pressed the synthetic against his skin in order to get every tiny centimeter flush against his skin. 

By the time he was finished, he couldn’t even tell there was something over his skin. 

He repeated the process with his right hand, carefully scraping every little bit of the synthetic material until it was molded seamlessly to his hands and wrists. Finished, he rolled the paper back up and tucked it and the tools back into the slender chrome tube, which he stashed back in his drawer. For good measure, he also put on a pair of flexible faux leather gloves, the same ones he wore whenever Maeve sent him out. He pulled on a close-fitting black thermal shirt, strapped on his vest, and tucked a black balaclava into his pocket. 

If he did run into anyone at the warehouse, it would be best if nobody saw his face. He wasn’t yet ready for the entire military of Terrasen to know that he wasn’t actually missing or dead in action, as they all believed him to be. 

It took roughly twenty minutes for Con to drive down to the edge of the industrial district, park his nondescript car innocently in a 24-hour grocery store parking lot, and weave through the dark, twisting tangle of alleys and unpaved roads that meandered through the district until he reached the Sardothien warehouse. He took a careful lap around the property, noting that the one guard posted by the west loading dock was apparently asleep on the job, and slipped around to the southeast doors. 

The employee ID card worked, and the little sensor by the door flashed green as the steel door unlocked with a clank. Con winced at the sound but darted inside and slowly eased the door shut behind himself. He waited a full two minutes before he moved, both to let his vision adjust to the shadowed gloom of the warehouse interior and to listen for sounds of any other presence. Finding the place mostly silent except for the gentle mechanical hum of the overhead fan system, he slunk around the perimeter of the space, heading for a set of steel stairs that went up to a mezzanine level positioned about halfway up the wall. 

A perfect height to observe the entire warehouse. 

The steel walkway spanned the whole south wall and curved around the east wall as well, but Con had his sights set on the single office built into the mezzanine. He was surprised to find the door unlocked, but as he entered, the apparent lack of security made perfect sense. Because there was a rather sophisticated security camera system arranged on one wall of the office, allowing him to look around the floor without having to walk all over the place and potentially disrupt the tidy stacks of crates and pallets that stood in orderly, numbered rows. 

It also required him to spend ten minutes editing the camera footage to wipe away his presence from four of the camera angles, but that was just the job. 

Having learned from the camera feed and the printout taped to another wall that the warehouse was currently mostly full of ammunition, Con left the office and stealthily paced the length of the mezzanine floor before he crept down the other set of stairs. He’d set the cameras up to run on a loop for the next hour, giving himself that time to have a good look around the place and get himself out. The stacks of pallets and crates cast overlapping shadows on the concrete floor, hiding Con from the handful of dimmed lights that gave some illumination to the empty space. He hadn’t yet seen or heard anyone else inside the building, so he assumed that the outside guard probably had a view of the security cameras. 

Not that it mattered, since the man was still sleeping soundly. 

Con wove through the neatly organized stacks, mentally noting how each was marked with a date of arrival and a date of distribution and the distribution dates were spaced out across the span of a week. It would apparently be a few days before they were sent out, since the first date was the 27th and it was currently only the 23rd. Aside from the efficient cataloging system, he didn’t really notice anything unusual or worth reporting, so he headed for the south door and let himself out. 

He was almost back in the safe cover of the warehouse’s shadows when he heard the faint but bone-chillingly recognizable scrape of footsteps. 

Shit. 

Con’s Navy SEAL instincts kicked in within split seconds, and he ducked around the closest corner of the warehouse, where a set of steel rungs bolted into the exterior wall led him up to the roof. He scaled the ladder in seconds and was crouched on the rooftop, mostly hidden in the deep shadows of the venting pipes, before he dared to look down at the ground. He tugged the balaclava over his head and tapped the special lenses that laid over his eyes, activating a highly secret and definitely experimental bit of vision-enhancing tech that allowed him to zoom in on the muscular male figure that was messing with the keypad of the south door. 

The man was slightly taller than Con and was also dressed in tactical black, but the Kevlar vest and flexible-soled boots he wore, paired with the obvious expertise of the way he disarmed the door’s safety features, identified him as TSF. 

Double shit. Just what Con needed—the goddamn Terrasen Special Forces on his ass. 

They aren’t on your ass yet, idiot, he snapped at himself. He kept his vision trained on the TSF man, watching as he opened the door, stepped back, and ran a slow, analytical, sweeping gaze over the loading docks and the property. Con instinctively sank deeper into the shadows, holding his breath as the man’s dark green gaze flicked briefly over the warehouse itself. But the man was apparently satisfied that he was alone, because he ducked into the warehouse and closed the door. 

Con tapped his lenses again, returning his vision to normal, and uncurled himself from his crouch. Slowly, keeping his boots silent against the roof, he swung himself around the pipes and slipped back down the ladder, barely breathing until he was back on the ground. He swept a look over the area, found it clear, and kept his tread as light as possible as he dashed towards the neighboring warehouse, which backed up into the headache-inducing tangle of the industrial district. 

He was four feet from safe cover when the Boss’s warehouse door banged open and the TSF man sent a knife whizzing past Con’s head. 

“STOP!” The barked command almost made Con’s own military training jerk him to an abrupt halt, but he ignored those instincts and instead took the last stride and a half into the shadows surrounding the closest warehouse building. The TSF soldier gave chase, and Con stifled a rather creative curse as he ducked around the corner of the building, found a ladder, and got himself onto the roof in under twenty seconds. Just in time for TSF Jackass to come into view and ah fuck. 

That was Lieutenant Rowan Whitethorn, who was currently part of a joint TSF and Orynth Police investigation into Celaena Sardothien. 

And also one of Fenrys's closest friends.

Don’t think, just move, idiot! Beyond thankful for the film of smoky fog that smeared the midnight sky over the industrial district, Con ran along the rooftop, his boots light as feathers atop the ridged metal plates, and launched himself across to the roof of a mossy brick building. He tucked and rolled, absorbing the impact of the landing, and kept going, darting from that rooftop across a series of other connected roofs. When he reached a brownstone building with a weathered tile roof, he crossed to the corner and swung himself down via the drainpipes. 

Tucked into a dark, cramped alley that reeked of soot and garbage, Con waited with held breath for the sound of pursuit. After three minutes, he deemed it safe enough and ducked out of the alley, hiding himself in the shadows of the industrial district’s disorganized sprawl as he wove the most confusing path possible back towards where he’d left his car. He paused every few blocks to make sure there was nobody behind him, unaware that he’d left his would-be pursuer in the dust back at the warehouse. 

And Rowan Whitethorn, who’d only just managed to pry his knife free from the steel wall that it had embedded into when it missed Con by an inch, grumbled under his breath about damned fucking criminals and returned to Sardothien’s warehouse to discover that it was full of neatly stacked crates of military-grade ammunition, all of them marked for distribution to decidedly non-military personnel. 

~

Rowan’s house was quiet, peacefully removed from the noise and lights and general clamor that made up downtown Orynth. As much as Aelin loved her downtown apartment, she was drawn to the illusion of isolation that her love’s house offered, an oasis of calm amid the noisy sea of city life. She’d only been there a few other times, scattered throughout the whirlwind blur of their months together, and most of those visits had been spent either in his bedroom or on the spacious covered patio, lost in a haze of love and desire and him. His home was large but cozy, its dark wood paneling, plaster walls, and mismatched furniture giving it a comfortable, lived-in ambience. The fireplace in the living room burned brightly, recently re-ignited as the cool nip of early fall began to descend over Orynth. 

Bourbon in hand, Rowan dropped into his comfortable armchair, legs automatically spreading into what she teased him was a typical man-pose. Aelin curled lazily on the couch opposite his armchair, tugging her sweater down so it artfully draped over her lean, muscled legs, hiding another lingerie set that would no doubt bring him to his knees, and set her mostly-full glass of wine down on the side table. 

“I’ve missed this.” Her soft, open look radiated with warmth and trust, and he was torn between the desire to bottle up that look and keep it forever and the fear that it was all a façade. “Just us, some drinks, and a snatch of time to breathe.” 

Despite the iron weighing down his blood, he smiled. “I’ve missed this too.” 

“When was the last time we got a whole night to ourselves, maybe May?” Her soft laughter warmed his numbing heart. “I’m a little surprised you haven’t backed me into the wall yet, Ro.” 

Fire sizzled down his spine, but Rowan calmly lifted his drink to his lips. “And what if I want you to be patient for me?” 

Aelin tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, hooded gaze tracking the thick bob of his throat as he swallowed another mouthful of bourbon. “Seems an awful lot like you’re sitting there and doing nothing, buzzard.” 

“Is that so?” With deliberate slowness, he set his drink down and uncrossed his legs. “Don’t give me ideas you don’t want me to have, darling.” How can I not want you? His internal echo was desperate, aching, filled with the emotion he stifled. One last time.

“Who said anything about not wanting you?” 

“Not me.” The humidity of the room seemed to be increasing with every whispered word and hitch of breath. 

“Good.” Languidly, she stood and stretched her arms over her head, sliding off her oversized sweater in the process. “Because I don’t wear gold for just anybody, Lieutenant Whitethorn.” 

“What did I say about using my name, Aelin?” Warning crept into his words. 

“I might need a reminder…Rowan.” She strolled across the plush carpet of his living room until she was inches away from where he sat. “And you need to stop brooding about your work.” 

He sighed. “I’m not brooding.” He knew full well that he was—he couldn’t help it. Work currently meant the sudden, jarring end of their relationship, and he still questioned if he had the strength to do that. To either of them. 

She snorted. “Look in a mirror and tell yourself that, if you can.” 

“What have we discussed about the sass, love?” Abruptly, he rose to his feet and wrapped one strong arm around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. 

Her lips dropped into a soft O of surprise. “That it’s–hmmm.” Before she could properly answer, he kissed her, slowly at first and then deeper, more urging. 

“Fine,” he murmured, pulling just an inch away. “Maybe I’m brooding. I’m sure you can help me forget why, though.” I wish I could forget why, he added, silently. Deep down, he wished she could erase that part of his mind—the part that knew this was the last time. 

“I’m sure I can.” She looped her arms around his neck, the lace of her delicate lingerie brushing his bare chest, and pressed her lips to his, her kiss soft, sensual, tender. “I love you, Ro,” she breathed against his lips. 

If only you did, his heart screamed. But he threaded his fingers into her hair and slid his tongue between her lips, losing himself in her kiss. “I love you too, Fireheart,” he whispered, his words thick. He slid his free hand down and lifted her into his arms, and her legs wrapped easily, fluidly, naturally around his waist, her panties notched against the fabric of his trousers. In a rushed, heated blur, they were in his bedroom, Aelin’s back flush against his sheets as he kissed her harder, toying with the string of her panties. Lingerie that was his favorite shade of gold. 

She gasped, a soft whine breaking from her lips as he brushed his thumb a fraction away from her clit. “Rowan, please.” 

“So good for me,” he smirked, though the words nearly killed him to utter. So good. Ironic, when the woman sprawled beneath his touch was anything but good. He shook his head, shoving those thoughts aside for the moment. 

One more night. They could have one more night. 

Always so clever, Aelin’s fingers flicked open the clasp of his trousers, and the tailored material pooled around his ankles. “Good girl,” he purred into her ear as he kicked off his pants, relishing the quiet moan his Fireheart let out at the praise. 

“My gods,” Aelin rasped as Rowan stripped off his boxers. “I could never get used to the sight of you, love.” Her eyes were bright as she watched him, her figure a vision in scraps of gold sprawled upon his bed. 

“Likewise.” He pounced, ripping those tiny golden panties right down the seam, and she’d barely gasped in shock before his tongue was on her cunt. “Fuuuuck,” he groaned, swiping his tongue in a long, lazy stroke, “so ready for me.” Her fingers knotted into his hair as he licked her, swirling his tongue indolently around her clit, and she released a garbled string of moans that could have been his name. He just smirked, his gaze lifting to sear into hers, as he devoured her, loving how quickly his love turned wordless and needy for him. Only for him. 

“Rowan!” Aelin screamed as she came, her hips thrashing against his face, and she rode out the waves of her orgasm along his tongue and fingers, calming just in time for him to lift his glistening jaw, swipe a long, slow touch through her pussy, and kiss a deliciously indecent path from her cunt up to her throat, removing the lacy bra as he went. 

When his lips claimed hers again, the taste of her thick and heady on his lips, she locked her leg around his and smoothly flipped them, landing him on his back with her astride him. One-armed, he pushed himself into a seated position, wrapped her hair around his fist, and tipped her head backwards, kissing her hard and sinful, a promise wrapped into the curling strokes of his tongue. 

“Yes,” she breathed against his lips, her hand sliding down to wrap around his cock. Her grip was dangerously close to perfection, and she stroked the length of his dick with just enough pressure to ignite his blood. Her nails scraped lightly along the underside of his cock, and he groaned, pinching her tight little nipples in return. She smirked and tightened her grip, squeezing and twisting her wrist. 

“Fireheart,” he growled, far too close to begging as she shot him a devious, cunning smirk and shifted just far back enough to lower her head, pressing kisses down his throat, his chest, his tattoo before he lifted her head back up. “N-not this time.” His words were shaky, uneven, laden with the urgency of his need to be fully inside of her and the weight of his knowledge that this was the last time. “I need you.”

She pushed herself back up, tracing the script of his tattoo. “I need you too,” she admitted, a gleam of vulnerability flickering briefly through her heated gaze. 

Not trusting himself to reply, Rowan just kissed her neck, flicking his tongue along the tender spot he knew could make her tremble. “Ready, love?” 

“Always.” Fuck, the word drove a knife straight through his fragile heart. 

He lifted her hips up, and she positioned herself just right before she sat down, sliding onto his steel-hard dick, and both groaned at the utterly perfect sensation. Aelin’s head arched back with pleasure, but Rowan tipped her chin forwards, kissing her deep and slow as he rocked against her. She broke the kiss to drop her head to his shoulder, laying kisses and tiny bites on his tattoos, and he brushed her hair over her shoulder so he could drag his hands down her dragon tattoo, feeling the seemingly delicate ridges of her spine and the solid firmness of the muscle lining her back. The dragon on her spine coiled and shifted with the pattern of his thrusts, its flames almost alive, if only for an illusory moment. 

The kiss he laid atop those flames was both a claiming of her whole self as his and a final confirmation that the flames licking out of the dragon’s screaming maw matched the one image he’d caught of Celaena Sardothien. Gently, in stark contrast to the roughness of his thrusts, he kissed those inked flames. 

A gesture of farewell. 

Aelin choked out his name as she flew closer and closer to orgasm, and Rowan breathed hers as he drove his pace faster, pushing them both into silent, unending bliss. He held her close as she came down, as the shaking of her body calmed, as his movements beside hers slowed. Carefully, he lifted them off the bed, not pulling out until they were in the shower, Aelin languid and relaxed as he lathered her lavender body wash over her skin. 

He carried her sleepy form back to bed and tucked her between the sheets, then slipped into bed behind her, curling into her warmth as he’d grown so used to doing. His breathing deepened with hers as she fell into dreams, and he kissed her forehead, tucking her soft hair away from her face. 

Aelin slumbered peacefully beside Rowan, her golden hair strewn messily over his pillows. Her face tucked downwards, the hint of tension that always lined it softened with sleep, and the moonlight that slanted through his bedroom window cast the splattering of freckles on her cheeks in pale silver. She looked so vulnerable there, asleep in his bed, so soft and sweet. But he knew full well what lurked under that innocent face—a ruthless, cold-blooded killer. 

The jarring juxtaposition of images haunted his restless sleep. 

~

Aelin blinked awake to moody gray light filtering in through Rowan’s curtains, the sky dimmed by a thick blanket of clouds that promised rain. She stretched, feeling the delicious ache in her body, and rolled out of bed, throwing on one of Rowan’s worn old t-shirts before she went into the master bathroom to brush her teeth and do her morning skincare. She came back out to get dressed, changing into the clean trousers and silk blouse that she’d brought, and went back to put on makeup and brush out her hair. She tied the golden waves into a thick braid, put in a pair of pearl drop earrings, and paused to check for stray hairs or mascara smudges before she left the bathroom. 

The scent of fresh coffee floated down the hallway, and she smiled. Rowan had probably been up for at least a couple of hours, enough time to get in his morning run and brew fresh coffee before she even dragged herself out of bed. She followed that enticing scent out into the kitchen, rose onto her tiptoes to get a mug from the cabinet, and turned around with a smile that instantly froze. 

Because Rowan’s gun was trained on her. 

Handcuffs dangled from his tattooed hand, glinting in the kitchen lighting. His voice shook and his eyes were shattered pools of tormented grief, but his aim was rock-solid and locked between her eyes as he said, “Celaena Sardothien, you are under arrest for more crimes than I can possibly enumerate.”

She simply, slowly, raised her arms and placed her hands in the air in front of her. “There’s no need for the gun, Lieutenant Whitethorn. I am not going to resist.” 

“Put down the mug and bring your hands back up,” Rowan commanded. The coldness in his voice was one hundred percent TSF. 

Aelin obeyed. 

Rowan holstered his gun—the safety had been on the whole time—stepped forwards, and locked the cuffs around Aelin’s wrists. He didn’t speak, but the pain carved into his features spoke louder, screamed louder, than any words ever could. Betrayal, regret, and a thousand other emotions flickered across his face, but he locked his jaw, guided her hands down, and turned her so her back was against the kitchen counter. 

“I loved you,” he breathed, hoarsely. “I loved you so goddamn much, Aelin Galathynius.” He refused to let the tears glossing his eyes fall. “Why?” 

The past tense—loved—drove an iron spike through her heart. Tears of her own sprang to her eyes, and she didn’t have the strength to keep them from falling. She looked into Rowan’s gaze, meeting the eyes that seared her soul, and stayed silent. 

No words could ever describe what she felt for him. 

He breathed deeply, steeling himself, and she watched as the investigator’s mask descended back upon his face. “I’m going to go collect your things. Don’t move.” Abruptly, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the kitchen, his boots thudding hollowly on the hardwood floors. He returned a few moments later with her purse and work tote slung over his arm. “Everything’s here. Let’s go.” 

She followed him out to his TSF-logoed vehicle, grateful that his home was secluded enough from the city that there weren’t any neighbors around to snatch photos of the CEO of Galathynius, Inc. being escorted to a TSF car in handcuffs at seven in the morning. She could deal with her arrest—hell, she’d been planning to be arrested for months. She couldn’t deal with the media storm until it became unavoidable. 

Ever a gentleman, Rowan opened the passenger door, helped her up into the seat, got her buckled, and set her bags at her feet. He closed her door and walked around to the driver’s side, and he only spared her a glance after he was on the road, driving towards the city. “I’m not going to hold any of your things for inspection.” 

Aelin nodded. “Thank you.” The first words she’d spoken since acquiescing to her arrest. 

His jaw ticked, a clear sign that he had questions begging to be released. “Why…” He took a sharp breath. “How are you so calm right now?” 

“This was inevitable,” she replied, masking the quiver of her shattering heart with her cool, professional, CEO voice. “Lieutenant, you’re the best in the TSF for a reason. I knew as soon as you were assigned to the investigation that you would discover me. I suppose I’m both surprised and grateful that it took you this long.” 

“Grateful?” 

She turned her head, staring out the window to avoid his penetrating gaze. “For…for you.” 

They were silent for the rest of the drive. 

When they arrived at Orynth PD, Rowan pulled around to the private parking lot, parked, and helped Aelin out of the car. To her surprise, he unlocked the handcuffs and removed them from her wrists, but he replaced them with a single black cuff around her left wrist. She glanced at the smooth silicone and instantly recognized it as an alternative, more technologically advanced, version of an ankle monitor. Her team had spent over a year developing it before they sold it to Orynth PD, and the irony of her own damn tech being used on her was almost enough to make her laugh. 

It was called a Wyrd cuff.

“Come with me.” Rowan led Aelin into the building through a side door, escorting her past a row of offices and down some hallways until they reached his office. He opened the door for her, drew the blinds over the window, and stepped back out of the office. He locked the door from the outside. 

“Fucking hell,” she heard him whisper, a faint, broken rasp, before he collected himself and strode off down the hall. He was back in a couple of minutes with at least three others, judging from their silhouettes in the hallway, and she listened as best as she could to the rumble of their conversation. 

“B-but we can’t just toss her in jail!” That sounded like a younger voice, probably a junior cop. 

“What choice do we have?” Rowan. “She’s been arrested.” 

“She’s probably able to post bail and just leave,” the younger man argued. “I bet she’s filthy rich from all the exports she does.” So Rowan hadn’t revealed who Celaena Sardothien really was. Interesting. 

The voices continued in a hushed flurry, and Aelin was only able to pick up scraps from their conversation. There were four of them—Rowan, the younger one, a middle-aged one, and one about Rowan’s age, and each of them seemed to have a different opinion on what to do with the highly dangerous criminal currently locked in Lieutenant Whitethorn’s office. 

Rowan grunted with frustration, and Aelin’s ears honed in on his voice. “There’s also the fact that the goddamn media will be up our ass as soon as they find out who she is.” 

“A murderer?” That was the older one. 

“Not just a murderer,” the younger one piped up. “A crime boss.” 

“A criminal.” 

“A killer.”

“Someone who knew exactly what she was doing.”

“A mastermind.” That one made her smile. 

“And one of the most famous women in Orynth.” That was Rowan, and her blood chilled at the resignation in his words. He raised his voice. “Sardothien, open the blinds.” 

With a deep, steadying exhale, Aelin pulled up the blinds on the office door. 

Three absolutely stunned faces stared back at her. 

The younger cop pointed a shaky finger at her through the glass. “Th-th-that…that’s Aelin Galathynius, sir.” 

“Alias Celaena Sardothien,” Rowan said. 

Unable to resist the opportunity, Aelin gave the cops a little finger wave and a wicked little grin.

The young one, whose wild, curly hair matched his goggle-eyed shock, gaped openly at her with wide, deep brown eyes. “I…we thought they were two people.” He ran his fingers through his frizzy curls, astonished. “Holy shit, sir! She’s had us fooled for gods know how long.” 

Rowan’s jaw was set in a tense line. “Thank you for your astute observation, Luca,” he ground out, flicking Aelin a bare hint of a glance before he turned his irritation onto the young cop. 

Luca shrugged, totally unfazed by Rowan’s famously icy attitude. “Is it too much to ask for an autograph?” he quipped, muffling what was probably a shit-eating grin. 

The older cop pressed his hands to his eyes in fatherly exasperation. “What have we discussed about not pushing Lieutenant Whitethorn’s buttons, Luca?” 

“Sorry, Brullo.” Luca didn’t appear particularly sorry—he looked like he had both the means and the camaraderie to needle Rowan incessantly. A small part of Aelin’s heart was deeply glad that Rowan had found that kind of friendship with a few of the cops. 

“Everyone out.” Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t know why I even bothered to ask for anyone’s opinion if the only thing you were going to do was stare googly-eyed at the most infamous crime boss in Orynth.” His tone was authoritative, but edged with a faint undertone of humor. 

“I wouldn’t call her the most infamous,” Brullo commented. “What about the Queen of the Night?” Luca snickered. 

“That bitch,” Aelin muttered, turning away from the cops, wrath flickering briefly across her face before she smoothed her expression back into careful neutrality. It wasn’t the right time for the police to find out that she knew something about Maeve the Fucking Bitch Queen. 

“Good god,” Rowan mumbled. “Alright, here’s what’s happening, since apparently I have to do everything around here.” He waited for the others to quiet down before he continued. “I’m calling the TSF. Yes, I know this is a joint case, and it was me who brought Sardothien in, so I get to decide who’s gonna keep an eye on her while she awaits trial.” 

“Actually, I was just about to ask if TSF was going to get involved again,” Luca said. 

“Good.” Rowan tipped his chin at the other cops. “You can go, then. I’ll make the call.” As the other cops headed away, he pivoted slowly towards his office, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders before he unlocked the door and came in. 

“Luca seems like a bright kid,” Aelin remarked, casually. 

Rowan paused next to his desk, posture stiff. “If that’s a threat…” The coldness of his voice cut Aelin through to the bone, but she heard the protectiveness hidden beneath the ice. 

“It’s completely genuine,” she said softly. “I only threaten the kind of scum that deserves it,” she added, letting some of the Boss’s notorious darkness edge her words. 

“And the list of your kills will prove it.” He picked up his phone, clearly unwilling to speak with her any longer before he contacted the TSF. Aelin relaxed herself in her chair as he spoke on the phone, his words terse and clipped. 

“Whitethorn.” A short pause. “Yes, I have her in custody. She’s fitted with a Wyrd cuff.” Another brief silence. “I understand that, sir, but with all due respect, I don’t really think prison is the right move. We’ve seen how effortlessly she was able to pull Allsbrook, and my instincts tell me that it’d be better to have her in TSF custody.” A longer pause, during which he pinched the bridge of his nose, indicating his muffled frustration. “Yes, but still. We can’t take that risk now that we finally—fine. Yes, sir.” He hung up with a click and braced his hands on his desk.

“Allow me to reiterate that I am not going to resist, Lieutenant.” Aelin broke the thick silence. “I gave you my word.”

Rowan was quiet for a handful of seconds before he turned to face her. “I believe you. Gods only know why, but I’ll take your word. So. TSF is sending a squad to escort you to your home, where you will be placed on house arrest. There will be a special forces guard assigned to your door as well as a pair of soldiers stationed in the lobby of your building lest you try to stage an escape.” 

“Should I expect a guard in my home?” 

He shook his head. “No. At this time, we don’t believe that an in-home monitor is necessary, particularly because you’re wearing a Wyrd cuff. The device is similar to an ankle monitor, but—” 

“But lighter-weight, much better protected against involuntary removal, and specially outfitted with tracking and monitoring technology that connects via satellite receiver to the person or people who placed and activated the device. Additionally, once placed, the Wyrd cuff can only be removed by the person who closed and locked it, as it has both fingerprint and DNA sensor locks to ensure that the criminal is unable to remove it. Despite these features, the Wyrd cuff is currently the most humane piece of monitoring technology.” Aelin lifted her chin, professional smile tugging at her lips. “The Wyrd cuff was developed and sold exclusively to Orynth PD by Galathynius, Inc.” 

“I…ah, I was unaware.” An uncharacteristic flush dusted Rowan’s cheeks. “It’s an impressive piece of engineering.” 

“And I’m glad to see that it’s being used precisely as we hoped it would be.” 

Rowan looked like he was on the verge of saying something else, but he was interrupted by a rapid knock on his door. Luca stuck his head into the office. “TSF is here, sir.” 

“Thanks, Luca.” Rowan stood up. “Ae—Sardothien, you ready?” 

Aelin swallowed the tears that sprang up at Rowan’s use of her alias. “I am.” She allowed him to lead her out of his office and down the rows of hallways into the bullpen, his hand just barely touching her back as if he was hiding his lingering desire to touch her one last time behind the pretense of keeping a safeguard on the dangerous criminal. 

“Luca, where the hell are the TSF?” 

“Right—” 

Commander Gavriel Ashryver strode into the room…and jerked to an abrupt halt as he took in the sight of his niece in a Wyrd cuff. 

“Um, here, sir,” Luca finished, sheepish. “I tried to time their arrival into the bullpen with yours.” 

Gav hadn’t moved a muscle. His keen, assessing gaze swept over Aelin, who was the portrait of neutral professionalism with her tote slung over her shoulder, and Rowan, who stood stiff-backed and tense at her side with a stony mask over his features. Six TSF soldiers were arranged in neat pairs behind Gav, having stumbled but rearranged to a military stop when their commander unexpectedly halted. 

“Aelin?” Gav whispered, half incredulous. The shock in his voice stabbed Aelin right in the heart. 

She nodded. “As well as Celaena Sardothien.” She felt more than saw the collective gasp of astonishment that rippled through the bullpen as she confirmed her double identity. 

Ever the master of soldierly stoicism, Gav came forwards and settled one protective hand around her elbow. “I’ll take it from here, Whitethorn. Good work.” He escorted Aelin forwards, and the other soldiers promptly stepped out of the way and re-formed themselves into a short column behind Gav and Aelin as they went out to the waiting TSF vehicles. “She’s with me,” was all that Gav said as he helped her into his black SUV, its tinted windows able to obscure her from sight. The other soldiers climbed into the TSF-logoed van beside Gav’s car, and they drove away together. 

As they navigated the crush of downtown Orynth during the morning commuter hours, Gav flicked Aelin a look in the rearview mirror, his glance laden with heavy sorrow. “I didn’t want to believe it was you, Aelin.” 

She met his sorrow with resignation. “We both knew my crimes would catch up with me someday, Gav. Thank you for protecting me while you could.” 

He nodded, a tight dip of his head. “How bad is the media going to get?” 

“Awful, once the news drops. I’m hoping it won’t break until I go to court, but I’m afraid PD will want to inform the whole world that they caught the Shadow Assassin.” 

“Leave that to me.” 

Aelin’s throat tightened for the thousandth time that morning. “I can’t ask you to keep shielding me, Gav.” 

Her uncle reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m not keeping you unknown, Aelin. I’m simply making sure that my men aren’t stormed by rabid paparazzi.” 

She huffed a soft wisp of a laugh. “Thank you.” 

The rest of the drive passed in silence, and Gav was able to get Aelin as well as the three TSF men assigned to guard her into the building and up to her apartment without attracting much notice. Her apartment building catered primarily to wealthy executives, so private security guards were a common sight, and nobody paid much attention to her new patrol. 

Alone in her apartment, Aelin set down her tote, stepped out of her heels, and walked quietly to her bedroom, heading through the cozy space into the master bathroom. She closed and locked the door behind herself and, suddenly, she slumped to the floor, her body curling into a protective ball. Head in her hands, Aelin Galathynius loosed the tears that she’d been holding at bay all morning, wracked with grief not at her arrest, but at the heartbreak that accompanied it. She cried for herself, for the woman that Rowan’s love had allowed her to become.

And she cried for the lost dream of the future she would never have with him.

~~~

TAGS:

@superspiritfestival

@thegreyj

@wordsafterhours

@elentiyawhitethorn

@morganofthewildfire

@mariaofdoranelle

@rowanaelinn

@house-of-galathynius

@tomtenadia

@julemmaes

@swankii-art-teacher

@charlizeed

@booknerdproblems

@earthtolinds

@goddess-aelin

@sweet-but-stormy

@clea-nightingale

@autumnbabylon

@darling-im-the-queen-of-hell

@llyncooljones

@silentquartz

@sunshinebingo

@hiimheresworld

@athena127

[mariacallous]

In a new interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, President Volodymyr Zelensky argued that nuclear weapons could be a sufficient security guarantee for Ukraine if the nation isn’t granted immediate NATO membership. Zelensky also reasoned that Russian troops should withdraw from every inch of Ukrainian territory if the alliance abandons its expansion plans (after which Kyiv would raise the issue of financial compensation for all its losses). Speaking through an interpreter, Zelensky told Morgan:

Will we be given nuclear weapons? Then, let them give us nuclear weapons. Will they give us the missiles in the quantities [needed to] stop Russia? I’m not sure of that, but I think it would help. Otherwise, what missiles can stop Russia’s nuclear missiles? That’s a rhetorical question. So, let’s do it the following way: Give us back nuclear arms. Give us missile systems. Partners, help us finance the one-million[-man] army, move your contingent on the parts of our state where we want the stability of the situation, so that the people have tranquility.

Later in the interview, Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine lacks the means to liberate all occupied territories, saying that the West’s assistance has been “insufficient” to drive out Russian troops.

Responding to the Ukrainian president’s remarks about nuclear weapons, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called Zelensky “a madman who sees the planet as a stage for his deranged fantasies.”

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly argued that NATO membership is Kyiv’s “only real security guarantee” against continued Russian aggression. Before returning to the White House last month, Donald Trump said he sympathized with Moscow’s opposition to NATO expansion into Ukraine. “Then Russia has somebody [NATO] right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that,” Trump said, ignoring the fact that the NATO member states already border Russia in Norway, the Baltics, Poland, and most recently Finland. 

Ukraine turned over its Soviet nuclear weapons stockpiles under the Budapest Memorandum, signed in December 1994. The document — signed by Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States — guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. 

[not-goldy]

Goldy, this is the most stupid and speculative question you’ll ever receive so feel free to ignore of course. About committed and long term relationships (so Jikook’s one as well), do you believe or see a ‘forever’? Is that something rare or just an optimistic illusion? Based on your experience in life, what’s your idea on growing and getting old together with someone you loved your whole life?

Okay let's get one thing straight, what makes a relationship last is commitment more so than love or anything.

Two people can agree to make a bad relationship last forever while two well suited people can agree to end a good relationship even before it's began.

Commitment plays a central role in long term relationships. From a psychological or even socio-cultural perspective, men approach relationships differently than women.

Women (most straight women) put their emotional well-being at the forefront of their relationships while men (especially straight men) put their ego at the forefront of their relationships.

And yet when two people meet these are not the things they consider at all. They focus on chemistry, butterflies, their dysfunction and childhood wounds- it took me a while to notice this in myself but I only say yes to the person who treats me "right" or the one who treats me the way I wish I had been treated in previous relationships. The one who calls consistently, the one who pursues me, gives me clarity, cheeks in with me always etc the one who caters to the emotional needs that were neglected.

Men also look for the woman who's hot, who wants to fuck them, gives him access to her body, who won't make a big deal when he forgets to call- they rarely consider their ego needs such as whether their friends will respect him for choosing her, whether she will respect him, let him lead and not parent him, be a house wife, always look good and in shape etc. Men only consider these when they start considering long terms.

A woman's long term assessment usually is whether or not they have strong feelings 😵 but some (few) also consider important factors like whether the man is a provider, can provide for children, is emotionally intelligent, someone they can respect especially someone whose decisions they can respect and follow , someone who makes them feel safe and protected- which I advise are things every straight gyal should consider when choosing a man.

Thus, while women want care and love and nurturing the most in relationships, men want their ego needs met- respect, loyalty and commitment to meet their sexual needs. Every other thing is secondary.

Most women married to men aren't really happy in their relationships because men don't cater to women's emotions.

I mean how can they when they think emotion is a sign of weakness? If they believe femininity is also a weakness then any "feminine" activity like nurturing and caring would equally bruise their ego if they should they indulge in that. And stooping so low as to nurture a weak thing like a woman is even worse for their ego🥴

Most women in long term relationships with men aren't happy they are resigned. They stay only for the kids, health reasons, finances, and a myriad other reasons- and that's commitment not love. They are not staying because the relationship is fulfilling they staying because they are committed to the relationship.

Just because people stay together for a very very long time or till one party does don't mean they love eachother and isn't a sign of love but evidence of commitment. You don't need love to stay with someone forever, you only need commitment to stay with them.

So to answer your question, yes there is such a thing as forever and it is contingent on the parties level of commitment.

Commitment however is a social programming and can be predicted with near certainty depending on the sex and gender of the parties and how they have been socialized.

For instance, most men have a fair understanding of this principle commitment more so than most women in a patriarchal setting.

Most men in conservative environments are raised to develop strong a sense of commitment- through toxic masculinty of course. oh that hurts? Well keep going buddy, men don't cry, No pain no gain. Suck it up. Those sort of ideals instill in men a sense of commitment but not necessarily a sense of commitment to women because men are not programed to be loyal to women.

Thus, a straight man in bad relationship with a woman will stay as long as he sees a gain in staying. The gain could be a temporary gain or a future gain. Temporary gain is if they are broke, not in good health, feel they can't find another partner or are working towards achieving a goal and needs to use you till he gets there. So they will tolerate you in the interim because in their minds it's temporary pain for a future gain- the gain being leaving your ass one day and satisfying their ego🤣

Women are not taught commitment in a patriarchal environment in the same sense- we are told are expected to be the weak Damsels in distress, expected to let someone else do the heavy work cos we can't break a nail🙄

we expect to be saved and are expected not to tolerate discomfort or uncomfortable feelings - except if those feelings are caused by a boy because society wants to ingrain loyalty to men in women🤡

Yall thank God for feminism😌

The effect is that, a man can stay with you, not love you and treat you like shit yet still not leave you because he is committed to the relationship but if you bruise their ego or treat them like shit they will dump you in a heartbeat because men are also not programed to be loyal to women in particular.

And a woman won't tolerate bad treatment in every other social setting but will stay with a dusty crusty man that treats her like shit.

Yall people of the patriarchy don't make sense😩

So depending on the sex we are talking about- gay men (especially bottoms) are less likely to stay longer in a bad relationship than gay women and gay women are less likely to stay in a bad relationship than straight women.

Straight men and straight women stay in bad relationships the longest especially when it's with eachother.

Forever is a complex phenomenon, has nothing to do with feelings and social factors can impact the concept.

If you want to be forever with someone find someone who shares the same values especially values commitment with you and fall in love with them. don't love someone and then hope they value the things you value like commitment.

That's gambling.

But forever is possible if you put your mind to it

[centrally-unplanned]

Wack question but do you think an increase in artworks from AI that aren't necessarily that creative or original results in the overall diminishment of creativity or originality we as a species have?? To me it seems the bar would remain the same?? Talented people will keep creating good/original works regardless of whatever tools (AI or not) they're using innit.

I would first say upfront "way too contingent to tell!" - the technology is too new, and the pipelines for "art" too insanely diverse, for anyone to make an actual, solid prediction. Not to mention the word "creativity" doesn't have a single meaning. Just getting that out of the way.

To provide some ~thoughts I think things will probably be fine because of a sort of "conservation of effort" that goes into things; when you find you can radically reduce the time it takes to do one part of a job, you do often reduce the amount of net time on the job; but just as often you increase effort in other areas because now you can. So if we make some arbitrary assumptions about AI art getting better and more controllable in its output, you would almost certainly see a higher % of "images of art" on your feed or w/e being AI art. Based on your definition, that might be less creative than the past. But you will almost certainly also see a net increase in the number of webcomics! Combinations of many pieces of art & text, with the art in particularly being very time consuming to make, now much easier to do so your previously "eh if I get time" webcomic idea can now surface. Again based on your definition that is a definite increase. Dynamics like this will abound in creative industries - from that lens art will shift but not reduce.

However, I do think there is an argument for a creativity reduction. Commercial art is generally made by large teams of creatives & non-creatives, and this comes with a lot of compromises by everyone involved as they push and pull. And a lot of times the financial side of things would ideally want to make "the most marketable thing", but can't really implement that vision because they need the creatives who execute on board and they have their own zany predilections as artists. You can very frequently see in "new" artistic fields that early on, some really crazy shit gets funded because only like 50 guys can make video games or anime or w/e, and you just sort of have to do what they say. Over time that fades as production grows and lots of new trained staff emerge and the people involved become relatively "replaceable", and so balance shifts to the financers. All relative ofc, other dynamics are going on here as well.

Here you can see AI art as a sort of accelerant of "optimized" art - by making the art much easier to make, commercial ventures can more effectively "force" a production to be exactly what they want it to be. It lowers the bargaining power of artists, who typically do want to do more adventurous things. Again relative ofc, plenty of indie arthouse business types and staid, workhorse artists exist. But still, I could see a world where commercial art becomes more predictable as production pipelines get better at "tamping down" on the human variation in the product.

Again do I think that will happen? No clue, tech is way too young, and a bunch of other stuff will happen too. Just some ideas to watch for.

[whovianofmidgard]

A treat fic I made for both @jouissants @i-am-a-lonely-visitor for the @silmsmutexchange , since I couldn't resist the prompt

Summary: Fingon has disappeared from the Mithrim camp and his absence only further fuels the unrest between the Nolofinwëan and Fëanorian factions. Could an arranged marriage heal the rift between their feuding Houses?

Fingolfin/Maglor

Snippet:

The new lights in the sky came and went and came and went, counting their journey as days and nights. Several of these days had passed since Findekáno had disappeared from the Mithrim camp, with a single note left behind that said he was going to find Maitimo and rescue him if he could. The first-born son of Nolofinwë, venturing alone into the lands of the Enemy with nothing but a bow and a harp. It was certain death.

Findekáno's absence only fuelled the unrest between the Nolofinwëan and Fëanárian factions, and the longer he stayed gone the more likely the possibility of a civil war became.

Neither Makalaurë, Regent King of the Noldor in absence of his elder brother, nor Nolofinwë, Prince and leader of his people and not so secretly referred to as their own King, wanted that to happen.

Uncle and nephew sat face to face across the council table, inscrutable masks of blank expressions reflected back onto each other. Carnistir sat beside his brother, appointed as chief advisor of laws and finances, while Nolofinwë was flanked by his second-born, Turukáno, on one side, and Findaráto on the other, representing the Arafinwëan faction.

"The scouts reported nothing of Findekáno's whereabouts," Carnistir said to the council at large, hands busy shuffling the appropriate papers. "Yet neither had they seen a change in the orcs' behaviour. They cannot stand the Sun and withdraw from its light, but the dark fumes that spread across their land allows them to roam around throughout the day for a while. The scouts had not crossed over the border as of yet."

Nolofinwë sighed, hiding his face in his palm in silent worry. He had already lost one son, his youngest, when they had set foot on Beleriand, and as the number of days grew without any sign of Findekáno the more likely it seemed he was to lose yet another.

"The mood in our camps only worsen, and my people do not see any tangible results or even progress. They are demanding that you either make action or give us recompense," he relayed, none too happy about the situation.

"Otherwise, the people's temper may boil over and they may revolt against the Fëanárian Host, with or without Atar's approval," Turukáno added, and Nolofinwë squeezed his eyes shut at his son all but threatening his half-cousins with war.

Carnistir scoffed, face darkening with the beginnings of anger. "We have already given our recompense, or are the thousand horses gifted, food from our hunts and harvest shared and a treaty for ongoing trade mean nothing to them? Perhaps we should rescind our gifts and see how they'll fare without our generosity."

"Moryo, enough!" Makalaurë raised a hand and shot his younger brother a sharp look. Carnistir sniffed, his annoyance clear for all to see, but fell silent as bidden, an angry red flush staining his cheeks.

Makalaurë composed himself and took a deep breath before turning back to face his uncle and cousins.

"I'll send Tyelko out with a contingent at first light to sweep through Anfauglith and the foothills of Thangorodrim while under the protection of the Sun. Volunteers from your Host may join in on the search. Either they will return successfully with Finno, or they will be appeased by the firsthand accounts of their own people reporting back what they had witnessed of both the Enemy's lands and forces and our own efforts of goodwill."

"It will give something for Tyelko to do at the least," Caranthir snidely remarked under his breath. With tensions so high everyone was plenty agitated and on edge, none more so than Tyelkormo who stalked the halls of their keep and the Fëanárian campsite like a caged animal, quick to jump into any altercation and snarling and snapping at everyone. He hated the standstill of a precarious political situation he could not course correct for his own gain, rather escaping the stifling atmosphere by joining patrols and hunts. Perhaps only Curufinwë surpassed him in the foulness of his mood, although he managed to keep face in sight of their people, his ire and vocal displeasure only reserved for the close circle of his family.

"Thank you, cousin," Findaráto was quick to accept the offer, ever the peace keeper. "I am sure the opportunity will smooth out some ruffled feathers."

"For a time..." Turukáno said ominously.

"Yes, thank you, Kanafinwë," Nolofinwë repeated the sentiment, the final pieces of his politician's mask breaking after a long day of fraught emotions, left only with the image of a worn and troubled father.

"I believe that should be all for today."

Makalaurë nodded, the rigid tension in his shoulders easing up a fraction. "Agreed. Council dismissed."

As Carnistir gathered his papers and filed out of the room behind Turukáno and Findaráto, Makalaurë remained seated and much to his surprise so did Nolofinwë. His uncle looked as heart sick as he felt himself to be since Maitimo's capture, and in a miserable sort of sympathy Makalaurë cast his mind to something, anything that may alleviate this slow grinding pain of their fëar.

"Have you tasted the Sindar's wine yet, Uncle?" he asked, and internally cringed at himself. The weight of the Noldor's fate rested on their shoulders and Makalaurë was here suggesting drinking their sorrows away. How droll. How original. How very dismal.

"It's a bit dry but stronger than anything we've had in Aman."

Nolofinwë blinked up at him, and it seemed to take some time for him to comprehend his nephew's inquiry. Good, Makalaurë thought. At least his clumsy offer seemed to pull his uncle out of his grief wallowing.

"No, I haven't had the pleasure," Nolofinwë cautiously answered.

Makalaurë rose from his seat and rounded the table to be directly beside his uncle and offered his hand.

"Come. I keep a bottle in my living quarters."

Read the rest of Ao3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cloudburst

Enshittification isn’t inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

First we allowed companies to buy up their competitors. Google is the shining example here: having made one good product (search), they then fielded an essentially unbroken string of in-house flops, but it didn’t matter, because they were able to buy their way to glory: video, mobile, ad-tech, server management, docs, navigation…They’re not Willy Wonka’s idea factory, they’re Rich Uncle Pennybags, making up for their lack of invention by buying out everyone else:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

But this acquisition-fueled growth isn’t unique to tech. Every administration since Reagan (but not Biden! more on this later) has chipped away at antitrust enforcement, so that every sector has undergone an orgy of mergers, from athletic shoes to sea freight, eyeglasses to pro wrestling:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/09/the-importance-of-competition-for-the-american-economy/

But tech is different, because digital is flexible in a way that analog can never be. Tech companies can “twiddle” the back-ends of their clouds to change the rules of the business from moment to moment, in a high-speed shell-game that can make it impossible to know what kind of deal you’re getting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

To make things worse, users are banned from twiddling. The thicket of rules we call IP ensure that twiddling is only done against users, never for them. Reverse-engineering, scraping, bots — these can all be blocked with legal threats and suits and even criminal sanctions, even if they’re being done for legitimate purposes:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enhittification isn’t inevitable but if we let companies buy all their competitors, if we let them twiddle us with every hour that God sends, if we make it illegal to twiddle back in self-defense, we will get twiddled to death. When a company can operate without the discipline of competition, nor of privacy law, nor of labor law, nor of fair trading law, with the US government standing by to punish any rival who alters the logic of their service, then enshittification is the utterly foreseeable outcome.

To understand how our technology gets distorted by these policy choices, consider “The Cloud.” Once, “the cloud” was just a white-board glyph, a way to show that some part of a software’s logic would touch some commodified, fungible, interchangeable appendage of the internet. Today, “The Cloud” is a flashing warning sign, the harbinger of enshittification.

When your image-editing tools live on your computer, your files are yours. But once Adobe moves your software to The Cloud, your critical, labor-intensive, unrecreatable images are purely contingent. At at time, without notice, Adobe can twiddle the back end and literally steal the colors out of your own files:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The finance sector loves The Cloud. Add “The Cloud” to a product and profits (money you get for selling something) can turn into rents (money you get for owning something). Profits can be eroded by competition, but rents are evergreen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

No wonder The Cloud has seeped into every corner of our lives. Remember your first iPod? Adding music to it was trivial: double click any music file to import it into iTunes, then plug in your iPod and presto, synched! Today, even sophisticated technology users struggle to “side load” files onto their mobile devices. Instead, the mobile duopoly — Apple and Google, who bought their way to mobile glory and have converged on the same rent-seeking business practices, down to the percentages they charge — want you to get your files from The Cloud, via their apps. This isn’t for technological reasons, it’s a business imperative: 30% of every transaction that involves an app gets creamed off by either Apple or Google in pure rents:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

And yet, The Cloud is undeniably useful. Having your files synch across multiple devices, including your collaborators’ devices, with built-in tools for resolving conflicting changes, is amazing. Indeed, this feat is the holy grail of networked tools, because it’s how programmers write all the software we use, including software in The Cloud.

If you want to know how good a tool can be, just look at the tools that toolsmiths use. With “source control” — the software programmers use to collaboratively write software — we get a very different vision of how The Cloud could operate. Indeed, modern source control doesn’t use The Cloud at all. Programmers’ workflow doesn’t break if they can’t access the internet, and if the company that provides their source control servers goes away, it’s simplicity itself to move onto another server provider.

This isn’t The Cloud, it’s just “the cloud” — that whiteboard glyph from the days of the old, good internet — freely interchangeable, eminently fungible, disposable and replaceable. For a tool like git, Github is just one possible synchronization point among many, all of which have a workflow whereby programmers’ computers automatically make local copies of all relevant data and periodically lob it back up to one or more servers, resolving conflicting edits through a process that is also largely automated.

There’s a name for this model: it’s called “Local First” computing, which is computing that starts from the presumption that the user and their device is the most important element of the system. Networked servers are dumb pipes and dumb storage, a nice-to-have that fails gracefully when it’s not available.

The data structures of source-code are among the most complicated formats we have; if we can do this for code, we can do it for spreadsheets, word-processing files, slide-decks, even edit-decision-lists for video and audio projects. If local-first computing can work for programmers writing code, it can work for the programs those programmers write.

Local-first computing is experiencing a renaissance. Writing for Wired, Gregory Barber traces the history of the movement, starting with the French computer scientist Marc Shapiro, who helped develop the theory of “Conflict-Free Replicated Data” — a way to synchronize data after multiple people edit it — two decades ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cloud-is-a-prison-can-the-local-first-software-movement-set-us-free/

Shapiro and his co-author Nuno Preguiça envisioned CFRD as the building block of a new generation of P2P collaboration tools that weren’t exactly serverless, but which also didn’t rely on servers as the lynchpin of their operation. They published a technical paper that, while exiting, was largely drowned out by the release of GoogleDocs (based on technology built by a company that Google bought, not something Google made in-house).

Shapiro and Preguiça’s work got fresh interest with the 2019 publication of “Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud,” a viral whitepaper-cum-manifesto from a quartet of computer scientists associated with Cambridge University and Ink and Switch, a self-described “industrial research lab”:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/static/local-first.pdf

The paper describes how its authors — Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg and Mark McGranaghan — prototyped and tested a bunch of simple local-first collaboration tools built on CFRD algorithms, with the goal of “network optional…seamless collaboration.” The results are impressive, if nascent. Conflicting edits were simpler to resolve than the authors anticipated, and users found URLs to be a good, intuitive way of sharing documents. The biggest hurdles are relatively minor, like managing large amounts of change-data associated with shared files.

Just as importantly, the paper makes the case for why you’d want to switch to local-first computing. The Cloud is not reliable. Companies like Evernote don’t last forever — they can disappear in an eyeblink, and take your data with them:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23789012/evernote-layoff-us-staff-bending-spoons-note-taking-app

Google isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, but Google is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA program (“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”) and notorious for shuttering its products, even beloved ones like Google Reader:

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

And while the authors don’t mention it, Google is also prone to simply kicking people off all its services, costing them their phone numbers, email addresses, photos, document archives and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

There is enormous enthusiasm among developers for local-first application design, which is only natural. After all, companies that use The Cloud go to great lengths to make it just “the cloud,” using containerization to simplify hopping from one cloud provider to another in a bid to stave off lock-in from their cloud providers and the enshittification that inevitably follows.

The nimbleness of containerization acts as a disciplining force on cloud providers when they deal with their business customers: disciplined by the threat of losing money, cloud companies are incentivized to treat those customers better. The companies we deal with as end-users know exactly how bad it gets when a tech company can impose high switching costs on you and then turn the screws until things are almost-but-not-quite so bad that you bolt for the doors. They devote fantastic effort to making sure that never happens to them — and that they can always do that to you.

Interoperability — the ability to leave one service for another — is technology’s secret weapon, the thing that ensures that users can turn The Cloud into “the cloud,” a humble whiteboard glyph that you can erase and redraw whenever it suits you. It’s the greatest hedge we have against enshittification, so small wonder that Big Tech has spent decades using interop to clobber their competitors, and lobbying to make it illegal to use interop against them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Getting interop back is a hard slog, but it’s also our best shot at creating a new, good internet that lives up the promise of the old, good internet. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I set out a program fro disenshittifying the internet:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The book is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now, along with an independent, DRM-free audiobooks (DRM-free media is the content-layer equivalent of containerized services — you can move them into or out of any app you want):

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the FTC and the DoJ Antitrust Division are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new merger guidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/biden-administration-corporate-merger-antitrust-guidelines/674779/

The internet doesn’t have to be enshittified, and it’s not too late to disenshittify it. Indeed — the same forces that enshittified the internet — monopoly mergers, a privacy and labor free-for-all, prohibitions on user-side twiddling — have enshittified everything from cars to powered wheelchairs. Not only should we fight enshittification — we must.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad- free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

—

cdsessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[krisluxxeeempress]

MERCURY OPPOSITE MOON SYNASTRY | ASTRO SYNASTRY SERIES

In Vedic astrology, the moon is also considered the mind. Therefore, we believe the emotional state of ourselves, and others is a direct reflection of our mind and vice versa. With such said, most people do not believe the same and go as far as to thinking “they do not make emotional decisions” and so forth, but in actuality, anything anyone ever does, is with their emotions considered. This misconception and misunderstanding serves as a basis for mercury opposite moon synastry.

The mercury person in this dynamic, thinks they are more logical, practical and should be the leader or shown more respect. The mercury person does not trust or value the moon person especially when it comes to making decisions or thinking rationally. This opposition is most felt in the beginning and the cause for the end of this relationship.

Personally, I have my sun and mercury conjunct in Gemini 8th house. I also have a Pisces moon and Venus in cancer with Pluto in Scorpio however, I cannot stand hearing or dealing with emotional people especially in sectors of business. I find that people are blinded by their emotions, unable to think logically and ultimately, people make things more difficult than they need to be because they are thinking emotionally. Most people are unable to accept or hear clear, concise, and blunt facts. They somehow think you are being rude when you are just being professional or straight forward. Most are too sensitive to hear the truth or direct communication. It’s like people cannot not hear you all of a sudden, similar to speaking under water. They hear you talking but cannot discern what you are saying on both sides. The moon person cannot understand the mercury person and the mercury person can understand the moon person but does not “relate” or value the moon persons logic.  

Oppositions are similar in different ways, they come full circle, however, when mercury is involved there’s little patience, if at all for the moon person. I can see this dynamic in married couples where example, THE MOON PERSON BEING THE WOMAN, DOES “GIRL MATH” WHEN GOING SHOPPING AND THIS INFURIATES THE MERCURY PERSON, BEING THE MAN FOR THE SAKE OF THE EXAMPLE. IN THE VICE VERSA, IF THE MAN IS THE MOON PERSON- HE WILL IMPULSIVELY GO OUT AND BUY A MOTORCYCLE AND WHEN THE wife finds outs, who is the mercury person, this infuriates her because “we cannot afford or need this bike”. The planet mercury and the moon are not directly linked to finances unless mercury is in an earth sign and the moon in a water sign- where my example will be most accurate but hopefully you get the point.

Having this synastry with someone will always cause frustration and arguments because they are sensitive planets. When the mind and emotions come together , usually people are unable to balance this, especially in relationships. The moon person may want to cuddle and talk about feelings, but the mercury person does not want to nor finds a purpose in it. The moon represents feelings amongst other things and astrologically, mercury is in its detriment in water signs including dealing with indidivuals with water placements. Think of technology and water mixing - there is bound to be damage that not even a bowl of rice can revive. To reiterate, the moon person simply does not understand the mercury person and the mercury person understands the moon person but lacks respect for them which in turn may appear like they do not understand the moon person. The mercury person is like “I understand your stupidity, but I cant tolerate nor will I trust it”. The moon person is like” I do not understand why you do not trust me or value my feelings/thoughts and actions contingent on said emotions .

Honestly, this is a typical sexist dynamic in a traditional sense where women’s thoughts, opinions or intelligence is not acknowledged or taken seriously whereas, for men, it is though we know men tend to do the silliest things.

This is not literally a sexist dynamic; I am just using that as an example so we can all understand the vibe of this synastry placement.

It’s one thing to be opposites because as we know they attract but when the moon and mercury are involved, I cannot say these planets and people can work. Again, the mind and emotions have different needs that both lack patience to understand or compromise. Despite the opposition, I do not think this synastry is compatible in anyway. These two will cause more frustration, drama and eventually resentment.

Grant it, there are always other aspects in a synastry chart than may overpower this placement and this couple may be able to make it work but interpretating this synastry aspect alone- I am not hopeful. The moon person values their emotional needs just as much as the mercury person values their thoughts, ideas, and logic. They both refuse to budge on that and in the event, they try, sadly, they will fail.

Imagine, as a couple needing to save money, but you have a partner who keeps spending money running your plans for the future. The one spending money clearly doesn’t understand the importance of saving nor are they able to control their emotional impulses to save. Therefore, whatever progress you try to make, your partner is showing you that they are not on board, don’t understand or their emotional spending needs come first. Will this now frustrate you and lead to resentment? 

Imagine, needing your partner to be a crying shoulder. Someone who you just want to vent to without solutions, judgements and or words that go against your emotions. Imagine crying about something that may be your fault and hearing your partner confirm bluntly, “it’s your fault” with no remorse to your feelings. Or whatever your emotional about, your partner invalids it or refuses to hear or even see your side of things because seeing you emotional is bothersome to them in the sense it annoys them. Will this not hurt you and cause resentment? 

There’s so many examples I can give but the gist is, this couple, this synastry is not compatible and I would save yourself the pain, drama and insecurity that this synastry will produce. You guys are just not on the same page and if you try to work through it, at some point that frustration and resentment is going to blow up like throwing an electronic into water. 

Logic and emotions do not mix.