“You are the Empress of Allay,” he said softly against her ear.
It was all she needed. The reminder poured strength into her body, steeled her in the face of her tyrannical uncle. Rush was telling her she couldn’t show her fear, and she knew how right that was. Even more, he was telling her she should not be the one in fear. She was the one with all the power. She had to remember that.
She moved quickly to her place across from the judges and opposite her uncle. She remained standing, however. She was the queen of all Allay, and she would not sit until all others in the room had been seated first. The idea was that her head must always remain above others around her. Of course the height of the dais and the fact that she was not taller than most of the men around her prevented a literal truth, but it was the principle of the thing, she supposed. She stood with her chin raised as Suna took her seat behind her and Rush threw himself into the chair at her side. He flung both feet onto the table, stretching back casually and crossing his feet at his ankles, playing up the mannerless Tarian he wished to portray. Ambrea could see her uncle’s attention shift to her protector and his subsequent whisper to an aide. No doubt that aide’s next duty would be to find out who the Tarian at her side was and what he was doing there.
“This court is called to presence, both parties of the arbitration now being accounted for and in attendance,” the lead judge announced.
Now that everyone was seated, Ambrea could take her seat. However, she felt the extraordinary need to stand, to command the presence of the room and dominance over her uncle. It would prove to be a keen instinct, as her uncle immediately got to his feet.
“Arbitors, may I speak? I believe we can clear up this matter very quickly and without a protracted hearing.”
Ambrea felt Rush tense up tightly, his nearness to her hip making it easy to sense his reactions. That and the fact that it was growing decidedly warmer where they were. Rush was expecting the worst from Balkin. Frankly, so was she. Nothing good had ever come out of that man’s mouth as far as Ambrea was concerned. He was up to something. Luckily she didn’t have to wait long to find out what it was.
“You may speak briefly, but then we will continue,” the lead judge said with a dour look, a warning to Balkin to keep his grandstanding to a minimum. The IM judiciary would not tolerate any of his tricks.
“I would like to announce to this court and to my niece that I willingly abdicate any previous claim I had made on the throne of Allay. Allayan law is very clear. The Princess of Allay is the rightful heir to the throne and I would never try to circumvent that right. I made my claim only because I was assured she was dead. Had this been true, I would have been fully in my rights to make the claim I did. I never have wished to cheat my niece of her blood-born rights. I graciously bow to my empress and the queen of all Allay.”
Balkin turned to face her. With a surprising elegance for a man she had always deemed as being hard and rough, he bowed to her. Not just a quick, resentful acknowledgment but a sincere lowering of his head as he dropped to a single knee. He kept his head lowered and did not move. Allayan court manners demanded he not move until the ruling hand dismissed him.
All of Balkin’s aides suddenly made haste to emulate their master. The entire right side of the room lowered themselves into acknowledging bows.
Ambrea moved around Rush, her spine straight, her shoulders level and proud. She stood over her uncle, looking down on him as her mind raced with a lifetime of images. All the times he had threatened her. All the times he had tried to crush her under the heel of his power. Now she was in the position to do the same. Now she held his life and his comfort in the palm of her hand. Now, if she wanted to, she could banish him to the wet rooms. Perhaps that one room in particular where the familiar rivulet of water ran down the wall.
“Uncle,” she spoke, her voice strong and steady in spite of the emotions roiling through her. “You show great wisdom and a keen respect for the well-being of your homeland. It would pain me greatly if we were to be at war with each other, dragging all of Allay along with us.”
“I have no desire to be at war with you, my niece. I hope you understand that everything I have ever done has been in pursuit of what I or your father felt was best for the well-being of Allay. I hope you can forgive me for any injuries or pains you may have suffered in the name of that pursuit.”
He looked up at her then, his dark eyes filled with an unnerving level of sincerity. She had never seen him like this. Quiet, sincere, and respectful. Of course she had to suspect him of ulterior motives—she wasn’t a fool—but she also had to be fair. What he said was true. She couldn’t judge him solely on the acts he had committed while working under others in power. Her father had been deranged. When he made a demand, no one gainsaid him. Perhaps not even his most trusted brother.
“The survival and perfection of Allay is all I want, Uncle,” she said softly. She looked up at the judges. “I accept his gracious abdication. I cannot see why you will not do the same.”
“It seems our work is done then,” the lead judge said with a grin. “I wish all of these arbitrations were this easy. Allay is henceforth in the hands of its proper heir, the Empress Ambrea Vas Allay.”
“Long live our gracious lady queen,” the aides spoke up in unison.
Ambrea turned to her uncle once more and reached to touch him on the shoulder, the epaulet of golden ribbon and metal charms reminding her of the dress uniform that Rush had been wearing only a little while ago. Only these were of royal design, marking her uncle clearly as a male of the royal bloodlines and a potential future heir. It reminded Ambrea that no matter what she did, Balkin Tsu Allay was direct heir to her throne and there was nothing she could do to change that. If anything should happen to her, he would be emperor.
More than ever, she was grateful that Rush had accepted her plea for protection. She had a feeling that he would be the only thing to stand in the way of any underhanded attempt that Balkin might yet make to gain the throne. Only if she were to bear a child could she thwart him forever …
She could bear a child.
Her entire chest tightened at the thought. A child. A life. A freedom she had never thought to taste. She had been convinced she would die never knowing the touch of a lover. Of a man. Of anyone.
She looked over at Rush, unable to help herself. His was the first and only touch she could remember other than that of her mother. His was the first and only kiss. Just thinking about it made her entire body flush with receptive warmth. She pulled her hand away from her uncle, his proximity feeling strangely obscene as she remembered something so sweet and pure. Something Balkin had made certain she was denied in her exile as he controlled every single detail of her life. But she was free of him now.
She didn’t give her uncle leave to rise. Instead, she left him kneeling and then moved to leave the room.
Rush watched Ambrea’s uncle very carefully as she left him like that, silently exerting her command and power over him, silently demanding his respect. Rush stood up and followed Ambrea, making sure everyone understood that he was going to be by her side every moment. He saw Balkin’s eyes tracking him.
Rush would have bet good money that the man was seething with venom on the inside. He didn’t need to hear Ravenna’s report of her vision to understand that of all the dangers in the Allay court, Balkin Tsu Allay would be the most deadly. He might be acquiescent now, but this was not a man who easily bent his head to others. No more than Rush would. If he was doing so, then he was doing so for a reason.
Rush was going to make sure that that reason did not result in any harm to Ambrea.
Balkin kept his teeth clenched tightly as she left him kneeling there like a kowtowing servant. It made his gut turn sour to think of himself handing his power over to her, but he consoled himself with thoughts of the future. Whether it was by his hand or by his clever Eirie’s, the princess—the empress—was not long for this world.
The only unexpected thing was this brute
at her back. As Balkin was forced to kneel until she fully left the room, he used his vantage point to make a study of the big blond Tarian. Everything about him seemed to scream land-born Tarian. His body was heavily conditioned, clearly a man who used his muscle for a living. It was strange. You didn’t see very many land-born Tarians outside their own world and their own clan. There were a few, of course. But practically none who wanted anything to do with Allay. Mainly because Allay made it clear that it wanted nothing to do with them. So how did a land-born Tarian come to be at the back of the Allayan empress?
As soon as Ambrea and the brute were out of the room, Balkin surged up to his full height, shrugging his shoulders into his usual powerful stance. He shot a cold look at the other men slowly climbing to their own proper heights.
“Find out who that Tarian is. I want his name, his age, the names of who he runs with.”
“You’re thinking he’s some kind of gangster? Or mercenary?” Paxor Ricks asked as he dusted off his knee.
“I’d lean toward mercenary,” Balkin mused. “He reeks of being a hired gun. But who hired him? My little twit of a niece isn’t known for being so forward thinking. It has to be whoever orchestrated her escape from prison.”
“There was a report that a Tarian had been thrown in gaol right before the break. Possibly the same one?” Ricks queried.
Balkin’s eyes narrowed. “I’d say that would be a hell of a coincidence otherwise. So he liberates her from the wet rooms and brings her to the IM to claim her throne. But what’s in it for him?”
“Is he her lover?”
Balkin snorted. “I’m having a hard time imagining my milky niece being attractive to a man like that in any way, except perhaps as a means to an end. We’ll have to watch them. But if they’re lovers, my niece is going to be in for a very big shock when commoners realize there’s a Tarian in the royal bed. Especially a land-born beast like that. At least the space-born ones are somewhat civilized. The common people will be lying awake nights horrified at the idea of her dirty blood mixing with his savagery. In just a few weeks they’ll be crying for me to take the throne.”
But in the meantime, he was going to torture the hell out of his upstart niece. He was going to shove her monarchy down her fucking throat.
“She has no idea what it means to be queen. I’m going to take great pleasure in helping her find out.”
Ambrea walked briskly down the palace corridors, the very same path she had last taken when she thought it was her father who had called her there. She had thought she was anxious then, but there was nothing about that previous walk that measured up to this one. Now she was entering Blossom Palace as the duly recognized Empress of Allay. It was the lead story in all the Allayan media, in all of Ulrike’s news sources. When she had left the IM space station, it had been with Rush by her side and the reassuring presence of a team of four Special Active members. Rush’s commander, Bronse; the dark-haired Tarian, Justice; a smaller, younger female who looked more like a girl than a woman, named Devan; and the young communications officer they called Trick. They were visibly unarmed, of course, just a show of the IM’s strength and support of her position. But their duty and presence would end the moment she officially took the throne for the first time. Yet even with them there, even with Rush so close to her back, and even with the phalanx of reporters and videographers they had acquired since landing on Allayan soil, she still couldn’t escape the feeling of aloneness that had stalked her every step, just as it had the last time she’d navigated these corridors.
As she gripped her prayer book between her hands and forced herself once again to keep her head held high and her posture perfectly straight, the questions reeling through her mind were eerily similar.
What did they want from her?
What did this mean for her future?
Was this the end of life as she knew it? Of course it was. But there was something to be said for that quiet little life of exile, a life that moved relatively peacefully as long as she kept her head down. This had to be the ultimate in sticking her neck out.
Ambrea shrugged off that thought. There was no sense wishing for what could never be again. And she had made her choice the moment she settled her hand into Rush’s and let him lead her out of her prison cell. It was all for the best. The best for her, the best for Allay. And she didn’t mind being petty enough to think it would do her uncle a bit of good, too, to get a huge lesson in humility and what it felt like to have others wielding power over his fate. The thing that kept her from being just like her uncle, however, was that she knew she would never terrorize him just for the pleasure of the game and for seeing someone else tremble in her shadow.
The huge doors to the receiving room came into sight as the growing entourage rounded a bend in the corridor, the pressed and sculpted Delran platinum doors gleaming under the directed lighting. Unlike her last travels down this stretch, this time the corridors were lined with people who were eagerly shifting to get a look at her, to take in the unlikely sight of the first female ruler that Allay had seen in over a century, a female they had thought long dead or too dirty-blooded to ever rule. Some of them probably didn’t even know what they thought of her anymore.
Rush reached out to her, his arm crossing in front of her like a restraining belt and his big hand grasping the curve of her waist to make certain she came to a stop. This set up a speculative murmur down both sides of the hallway. It was considered a very familiar way for a male to touch the Empress of Allay, though Rush probably didn’t realize that. Or perhaps he did. It was hard for her to tell just how deeply clever his intentions could be from one moment to the next. She had certainly learned not to underestimate him. He had proven himself to have far more depth and layers than the great Tarian brute he might like to be mistaken for.
She came to a stop and waited as his keen, brooding eyes traveled quickly over both sides of the hallway. He glanced back at the other IM soldiers, just the merest of glances, and they moved up to flank her, two on either side and Rush moving to step protectively in front of her. But this time it was her hand against his chest that did the staying, to keep him from blocking everyone’s view of her.
“Rush,” she said softly, “be the protective shadow over me, not one that overshadows me.”
He frowned, looked as though he wanted to argue with her, but after a moment gave her a curt nod. He reached to touch a firm finger against her chin.
“Just so you know, anyone who so much as sneezes is likely to get his head ripped off,” he breathed softly into her ear.
“You don’t strike me as being so undiscerning when choosing someone to attack,” she whispered back to him. “If it were all about creating a path of victims for you, you wouldn’t have taken the time to move those gaolers out of the way of the explosions you created in the lower wet rooms.”
“Well, I was under orders to create a near zero body count,” he said with a shrug and an irreverent sort of grin that turned up half his mouth.
“Well, you’re working for me now, but you can consider yourself under those same orders. Do nothing unless you absolutely have no choice.” Ambrea could see that that didn’t sit perfectly well with him. He was no doubt chafing at the directive more because he was worried for her safety than he was eager to do others harm. “But feel free to scare the piss out of anyone you deem deserves it.”
That made him laugh out loud, the jolly sound echoing up and down the corridor. He countermanded any irreverence it might have projected by giving her a deep, respectful bow, or as respectful as he could manage without taking his eyes off hers. Those who were hard core about court etiquette would have a difficult time swallowing the Tarian’s presence, which was exactly what Rush wanted. To stir things up, put them all off their mark, make them question his role. What he didn’t want was for them to be looking at her with any more question than they already were. No Allayan would have any doubt that he was full of reverence for Ambrea, that she had tamed a savage to her side, that t
here was something about her that had earned his respect. And watching what she’d had to face down at the arbitration and what she was facing now, on top of what she had gone through to get to this point, she had certainly earned enough of his respect to make it a truth.
It was difficult for Ambrea to resist her sudden urge to reach out and touch him. She might have even settled for a touch on his arm in lieu of his handsome face, which was what truly beckoned her, but she had to be careful not to do anything that could be misconstrued as a flirtation. It was one thing to put a Tarian protector at her back and quite another to lead the people scrutinizing her to speculate in even the slightest way that she was flirting with him, possibly even bringing him into the court as her lover. She had a strong image, it was reported, as a devout and virginal princess. A woman who had been kept in a protective tower of exile, the victim of her father’s petty jealousies. She hadn’t even realized that the people of Allay had any opinion of her at all. She had thought her absence from the public eye had removed her from their thoughts and speculations. Apparently, Suna reported, she was fairly far off the mark in that thinking.
Out here in the hallway was mostly palace staff. They were not allowed in the receiving room, where the nobles and the influential wealthy were given preferred audience. At least, not unless the staff members behaved in a servile capacity. In truth, had the palace guards been doing their duty, there ought not to have been this crowd around her. But Ambrea had no doubt that the master of the Imperial Guard, also known as her uncle, had seen to it that she would have to run an unprotected gauntlet into her own throne room. He had no doubt wanted her to feel alone, vulnerable, and afraid.
He was going to be sorely disappointed.
Ambrea held out her hands as Rush moved into place at her back, so close she could feel his overwhelming warmth. Her extended reach forced the IM soldiers to take a few steps back as well, exposing her a bit more on either side in front, and allowing her to reach for the hands of the first woman she saw on her right side. The woman looked shocked, to say the least, to feel the touch of royal fingers against her own. Ambrea could feel the startling difference in the texture of their skin. Whereas the empress’s hands were not as soft and spoiled as those of most women of her rank, she was still clearly not as hard worked as this woman was.
Seduce Me in Flames Page 18
