I nod. That’s dedication. “I’d say you know this place like the back of your hand.”
“That’s right.”
“I assume you aren’t receiving a paycheck if you aren’t working. And how do you expect to feed your family if you aren’t getting paid?” I glance pointedly at the ring on his finger.
Dimitri clenches his hand around his clipboard. “My wife has a job.”
“That’s excellent. So her job provides enough for your family?” I raise an eyebrow.
Dimitri’s eyes narrow. “Are you saying I don’t contribute?”
“On the contrary, I am trying to reason with you. Demand better pay from Bersa, but also understand that until this plant is up and running, the money you and your wife rely on to live won’t be coming in. And Bersa? It might not matter to him if you refuse to return to work. Once the outage goes on long enough, he will find other Cosmic Witches more desperate than you, willing to come in, and get this place working for half the price.”
Dimitri scowls, his face reddening. “That won’t happen.”
I tilt my head. “You sound so sure. Yet, I thought only Sea Witches had powers of premonition?”
“Stellan will be mayor long before Bersa can reliably replace me. He will force Bersa to meet our criteria or leave this city, which means this place could be mine.”
I take a deep breath. Dimitri’s belief in Stellan goes deeper than I expected. Does he really think Stellan will wave a magic wand and all the issues the Nebula face will disappear? Things will worsen before that day, and Aurora may not be unscathed. If the Epsilon choose to fight back, Dimitri and his wife may not survive what’s coming. He has delusions of grandeur. I need him to stop relying on Stellan for all the answers and take matters into his own hands. That means working with, rather than against, Michael Bersa. No matter how self-inflated Bersa is. It also means I need to talk to Stellan sooner rather than later. If I can reason with him, I can reason with his supporters. But he is more elusive than smoke.
“Are you close with Stellan Navis, Dimitri?” I ask.
“I don’t know him well, but I admire him. He will make a great leader.”
“Yet you are sure that if Stellan becomes mayor, he will give you this business, no strings attached?”
“Wilder, stop antagonizing him,” Brigid mutters. I bristle. If she is okay with prolonging this blackout, then she isn’t the girl I remember. She fought for the people in this city, yet by not pushing Dimitri to compromise, she’s letting them suffer.
“I’m not,” I shoot back.“We are having a friendly conversation before Michael arrives, trying to figure out how to work together to get this place running again.”
Brigid narrows her eyes, and I glare back at her. She can go. I don’t need two people undermining me when I only want torestore balance between the factions. We are the same, yet she lets Dimitri treat me like an outsider.
Dimitri shakes his head. “We aren’t friends. Nor do we want the same things, so nothing you can say will get me to listen to you.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises. “Why is that?”
He smiles, revealing coffee-stained teeth. “You call yourself a Nebula, yet you turned your back on our kind. The queen’s ancestors persecuted us, but that doesn’t matter so long as she warms your bed.” Dimitri gestures to Brigid, whose eyes widen with indignation. “You could be with a perfectly good Nebula woman, like Brigid here, someone who understands you, yet you’d rather continue to let the Epsilon control you.”
My anger boils over. Now I understand. Dimitri’s hatred for me stems from my relationship with Leigh, which means he blindly believes Stellan’s writings. People suffer from this power outage, just as we suffered because of the War Letters. We have a chance to fix both issues, but not when people like Dimitri think vengeance is the answer.
“My personal life has nothing to do with the power,” I snap. “I know what I am and where I came from. Being with Leigh doesn’t change that.”
Brigid winces.
Dimitri scoffs. “Oh? Could have fooled me, given you are here at the queen’s behest. If she and the Council want power back in Borealis, have your queen endorse Stellan’s campaign. It will make people like her more.”
I step forward, my hands flexing at my sides. “Stellan doesn’t know the first thing about ruling a nation. There will be pandemonium in the streets.”
“That’s to be determined,” Dimitri responds breezily. “Stellan has friends in high places.”
“Who?”
“I am sure he’d tell you if he didn’t think you were a traitor.”
Brigid tenses. So do I. This term has followed me since Dad’s arrest, and I thought we were past it.
Polished shoes slap the scorched concrete. We all turn to Michael Bersa, who grins in his fancy suit with his combed hair. “Ah, Wilder, I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he says, as if we didn’t part on bad terms.
