Yes.
“Ah, but Para, you must be respectful,” he chastised. “It’s ‘Yes, Lord Zvarin.’”
Oh, Sakra, of all the goddamned fucking pricks! I’d better be careful not to let him hear me thinking like that. He could quite easily have a skill similar to my telepathy. By the way, why isn’t it working on him? She cleared her mind, since she couldn’t clear her throat.
Yes, Lord Zvarin.
“Excellent, Para.” He raised his hand and made a slight movement of his finger. She suddenly found that she could blink. She closed her eyes blissfully. Now that she could close her eyes, a very fond hope came to her. Perhaps this was all a dream. All of it. Maybe she had fallen asleep when she had lain down with Thornton for a few minutes. No, that wouldn’t be good. Before that. She had gone to bed earlier in the day, before the ball, separately as Pax and Amara—surely she hadn’t woken up yet. None of it had happened. None of it. This was all her dream-anxiety about the worst possible thing that could happen later in the evening. And how creative! The ball hadn’t happened. The night hadn’t been a disaster. Her strength hadn’t been discovered. Asher hadn’t gotten upset about the pickles.
No. It had to be real. Even her roaming, unconscious mind wasn’t twisted enough to come up with that pickle conversation. That couldn’t have been a dream. It had to have been real Asher. And that meant that this bastard in front of her was real Zvarin.
No, no, no. I’m still asleep. Wake up. Wake up, girlfriend.
“Para, aren’t you going to thank me for the privilege to close your eyelids?”
You have got to be kidding me. Please tell me I’m dreaming this. Please.
“What do you say, Para?”
Sakra. And it’s between death and thanking him? This force field is crushing me and he’s barely trying! Please. I want to wake up now. Or maybe I should just choose death for the opportunity to spit in his face or insult him. Her eyes snapped open and she glared at him now that her eyes were capable of movement and expression again. It had never felt so rewarding to glare at someone. She knew it would feel just as satisfying if she could gather the most offensive hunk of saliva in the back of her throat and catapult it into his eye. Or unleash a string of profanities, cursing him to the pits of hell, and telling him exactly where he could shove her gratitude…
“Thank you, Lord Zvarin.” It had never felt so dirty to open her lips and speak. My death is worth more than an insult. My life is worth more than my dignity.
“Excellent, just excellent. And what a lovely voice. You train quickly and quite well. I am not fond of stubborn, uncooperative females, not in any species.”
I train quickly? What am I, his newest fucking puppy? She inclined her head to one side, testing the freedom of her neck. She was displeased to find that the force field ended immediately under her chin. He was precise in having given her only the mobility of her head. What can I do with my head? With my eyes and my mouth? Think, Para! How much damage can I inflict with only my head? She considered the technique which allowed her to fire an explosive blast from her mouth when she grew angry enough. She believed that she would very shortly become angry enough. But she would only have one shot, and it took some time to charge up that attack; he could freeze her head again with a microscopic movement of his fingers. In her youth, she had seen the Asura fire laser-like beams from their eyes, but she had never learned the technique herself. No one she knew could have taught her such a thing. It was often uncomfortable to attack with unconventional parts of the body, but now she felt guilty for her lack of versatility.
“Now, Para, before we proceed any further, it’s time for my physicians to examine you.”
What? Physicians?
“Guards!” Zvarin’s voice boomed through the conservatory, and Para imagined that the plants and waterfalls were shaking in terror.
Six gigantic, well-armored men burst into the room immediately, two from each exit. Para tried to pivot her head a little to view them as she assessed their energy signals. She was surprised to see that all of the men were taller than Zvarin, and more heavily muscled. Their life forces were considerable, but Para estimated that she could take all of them if Zvarin wasn’t around—and if they didn’t possess insurmountable tricks like this pesky force field.
“Summon the physicians. Tell them we need a complete alien physical biopsy.”
I take it back. I take it back. I would rather face the press than super-powered villains. I’d really rather face the press. The guards all simultaneously made a motion which involved striking their armored foreheads before they left to carry out the order. Para could only assume this was the conventional salute for the local culture. At least he said ‘biopsy’ and not ‘autopsy.’ I need to appreciate the little things.
The summoned men entered the room shortly thereafter. Para was given the impression that Zvarin was never disobeyed. The physicians were dressed from head-to-toe in hazardous material suits which would protect them from any contaminates: chemical, biological or otherwise. Para did not want to speak, but seeing the men in hazmat suits approaching her made her inwardly cringe. She had to find out what was about to happen.
“What am I going to be tested for?” Para questioned.
The emperor raised one of his emerald eyebrows.
“Lord Zvarin,” she added, trying to keep the sarcasm from dripping off each syllable.
“Everything. I can’t take the chance that my enemies sent you as a biological weapon in the package of a pretty girl. It wouldn’t be very good for my empire if I caught a deathly disease from you and died, would it be?”
“I don’t know,” Para answered truthfully. “I have no idea what kind of empire this is, or what kind of emperor you are—Lord Zvarin."
“The most benevolent and prudent kind.”
The physicians surrounded Para with their toolkits, looking to Zvarin for the word to begin.
He lifted his hand, giving them the command. “Undress her.”
“Undress me?” she shrieked. “They will not undress me! How dare you!”
“Do you want me to take away your privilege to speak?”
She shut her lips tightly. She tried to hold her tongue as she felt the professional, rough hands of the physicians undoing the clasps of her dress and sliding it down her body. Para bit her lip angrily. “In my culture it is unseemly and crude for a strange man to look upon a woman’s naked body.”
Zvarin waved his hand in dismissal. “Oh, that’s the same everywhere. But in my culture—or rather, in the cultures I’ve overtaken, I’m the emperor and I can do as I please. It's quite convenient really.”
Para would have clenched her fists. She would have attacked him. She would have done something, anything but stand there and let these men undress her. But Zvarin’s force field held her fast.
“Would you rather be conscious or unconscious for the examination?” the emperor asked, while staring shamelessly at her body.
“Conscious,” she answered without hesitation. She had spent plenty of time in operating rooms, seeing how disrespectfully doctors treated etherized patients. The things they said and did would have been completely humiliating and unacceptable to the recipients if they had been awake. Para did not want to be taken advantage of in a vulnerable moment. One of the physicians began opening briefcases and she gasped at the sight of their contents. She tried to contain her panic, but her heartbeat had quickened, and she could hear it thumping in her ear. She drew a deep, shuddering breath.
The briefcases were filled with dozens of needles.
“Sakra. Must they use needles?”
He stared at her, waiting.
“Must they use needles, Lord Zvarin?”
“Yes.”
“How many?” When he didn’t answer, waiting for his ceremonial address, she bared her teeth at him and gave him an almost animalistic growl. It was time to stop giving in to his will. “How many needles?”
“A few hundred.”
A small victory. She
had intimidated him into answering twice now without calling him by his title. But his response—it was all she could do to keep from screaming. She gritted her teeth, and tried to breathe deeply and calmly. If it wasn’t enough that she had been imprisoned in a force field and robbed of her mobility, in addition to being stripped completely naked and robbed of her pride, she was also going to have to tolerate being stabbed hundreds of times by the only thing in existence which she innately feared. That is, up until now—Zvarin was quickly assuming the place of needles at the top of her list of fears, but she was working on fixing that. She would find a way to eliminate either her fear, or its cause. She would.
When two doctors approached her arms with the needles, she could no longer keep quiet.
“No! Stay away from me! Don’t touch me!” Para panicked, trying to assume Ruby Form and break free, but her energy couldn’t fill her muscles because her body would not expand against the force field. “I’ll kill you all! I will rip you creeps apart!” she screamed. “Get your hands off me, you weak little shits! If it weren’t for this fucking force field, I swear I would—”
“Well, if you’re going to be hysterical,” Zvarin spoke calmly, “unconscious it is.”
He snapped his fingers.
Everything went black.
* * *
“What bothers me the most is that she never seemed exerted. Even when she was shielding herself from all of our attacks, her life force was no greater than one of your average couch potato.” This was Raymond’s quiet observation.
“That shield was a crafty technique,” said Asher. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“I have,” Gordin remarked. “I saw Kaden Burnson use a similar skill ages ago.”
“Can you teach me, Daddy?” Nyssa asked with a yawn. “I want to do the shield too.”
Gordin looked down at his daughter, clad in her pink pajamas. “I don’t know that specific technique, Nyssa, but I can teach you something like it.”
“You are all ignoring what’s actually important here,” Rose said sternly. “Yes, she’s strong. I get it. Any idiot could see that she’s strong. I don’t really care to know how strong—I care about why she’s here in the first place and what she wants. What she knows. What she has to tell us.”
“And who she is,” Amelia added.
“Do you have any ideas about this situation, Layla?” Rose asked, turning to the dark-skinned woman suspiciously. “Any ex-detective insights?”
“No, Rose. I’m sorry.” Layla rocked Oren against her gently. She knew that Rose would not reveal in front of everyone that she had commissioned an investigation on Medea. Layla hoped she wouldn’t have to reveal that the report had been fabricated.
“I really do wonder who she could be,” Asher said. “If she’s from the future, does that mean she’s a deva? Can the Asura travel through time?”
Layla knew she needed to guide everyone away from the truth for the sake of her friends. “Not necessarily. She could just be a human who trained with devas and got a firm hold on the magick.”
Vincent snorted in a disgusted way. “No, you don’t understand. She’s strong.”
“Nyssa came back in time to help us, and she is mostly human,” Layla argued. “This sounds like it might be a similar situation. It could be one of our descendants, perhaps.”
“What I don’t understand is why she was spending time with us,” Asher wondered out loud. “Was she just using us to get information?”
“From what Mrs. Burnson and Mrs. Kalgren have been saying, I don’t think she had any ill intentions,” Layla interjected. “Maybe she just wanted to get close to us without raising suspicions. Keep an eye on us quietly from a distance.”
“She wasn’t exactly at a great distance, Lay,” Thornton said with a frown, “at least not from me.”
Layla just shrugged weakly and smiled. Gordin stared at her quizzically. He felt the fleeting suspicion that his wife knew something she was hiding from him. Layla seemed far too calm about the whole situation.
“Look—if Medea returns, and I think she will,” Thornton said slowly, “I need you all to let me speak to her. This means you, Father. Do you think you can keep from attacking her for about five minutes so we can find out why she made the journey to a different time dimension? Because my guess is that it might be important.”
“I may have—” Vincent cleared his throat and spoke gruffly, “I may have approached this in the wrong way. You all forget that I’m a lot older than I look; in my day, we did things differently. When faced with danger and we would always shoot first and ask questions later. I was trying to give that girl the benefit of the doubt by shooting and asking questions simultaneously. Don’t you all see what a big step that was for me? But you all seem displeased with that strategy.”
“You could have killed her, Vincent,” Amelia said disapprovingly. “Then what would we have learned? She was trying to speak with us when you tried to incinerate her.”
“I don’t think any of you understand my actions,” Vincent said. “It’s important to me to know exactly how strong she is. As important as it is to Rose to drill the girl about what technology is like in her time—yes, Rose, don’t act like you haven’t been dying to know since she mentioned that she was from the future. I can see it written all over your face.”
“Guilty,” said Rose with a small smile, “but the reason I haven’t mentioned it is because I realize that it’s not important at the moment. I’ll corner her later when our priorities are a bit more relaxed.”
“Knowing her strength is my highest priority,” Vincent said. “Whether she’s on our team or with the enemy? Not my biggest concern. Diplomacy is for the Burnsons. And the women. I know what my role is in this team.”
* * *
Para’s eyes snapped open again, and she found herself very suddenly wide awake. A chill ran through her when she noticed that Zvarin had snapped his fingers again to wake her. It had worked instantly. Some kind of hypnosis? What chance did she stand against him if he could snap his fingers and control whether she was awake or asleep? It was a very strange sensation to wake up so suddenly and to not feel tired at all. Para realized that Zvarin was staring at her, and she frowned at him.
“Congratulations. You’re disease free.”
“Lucky me,” she mumbled sarcastically. Although the force field held her so securely that she could not look down, she could feel that her clothing had been replaced. From the feel of it, it was the same tattered ball gown, and she was still barefoot.
Zvarin advanced on her. “You have a very insolent tongue. Did I not teach you to address me with respect? I am your superior.”
Para felt rage bottling up inside of her. “Superior? Really?”
“Yes. I am an emperor and you are merely an underling.”
“Underling!” Para shouted so loudly that her throat hurt as it tried to expand against the force field. “I’ll have you know that I am no such thing and never have been. My father is the King of Devas.”
“So you’re a princess?” Zvarin remarked with interest. “Is that so? I wasn’t aware. You should have mentioned it sooner. You are of a royal bloodline?”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“I want to know if I can fetch a high ransom for you.”
Para raised both eyebrows.
“That was a joke. I do not know if your culture has a similar concept of humor as ours does.” The emperor shrugged, gesturing to his palace carelessly. “Anyway, I have enough riches for ten kingdoms, and I doubt that any ransom your people could pay for you would increase my piles of treasure by a fraction of a percentage.”
“You sure do know how to impress a girl,” Para said derisively.
“The reason I wish to know about your heritage is because if you are, in truth, a princess of a royal bloodline, then I needn’t enforce the terms of respectful address upon you so strictly in private. We may converse as equals.”
Para allowed a small, insinc
ere smile to grace her features. “Why, I do believe it is possible for you to be reasonable after all.”
“Being reasonable is one of the strongest attributes of a leader.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll release me from this uncomfortable force field so that we can truly converse as equals.”
“Not being a fool is another worthy attribute,” Zvarin answered. “If I release you for even a microsecond you will go teleporting out of the galaxy. Instead, why don’t we get to know each other better since you’re visiting?”
Para tried to shrug, forgetting that her shoulders were locked in place by invisible skin-tight barriers. Visiting? I'm a prisoner, not a guest.
“I may have been too rude with you earlier. It was before I knew that you were not of a lower class.”
“Is that an apology?” Para mused out loud. “Wonders never cease.”
“Tell me about yourself,” Zvarin said, lowering himself into a seated position. “What is your name?”
“Para.”
“Your full name.”
“Para Medea Kalson”
“How many beings have fused together to create you?” he inquired.
“What?” she asked in confusion. “Two, of course.”
“Two!” he bellowed. Guards came rushing into the room at the sound of his raised voice, but quickly he dismissed them and composed himself. “Only two?” he asked again, more calmly.
“Yes,” she answered curiously. “Is more possible?”
“Is more possible!” he repeated with a laugh. “Tell me, Para—are you an important woman on your home planet which is called…”
“Earth,” Para answered against her better judgment. She was uncertain whether it was favorable to appear more valuable and powerful or to seem less significant. She made a quick decision and decided that it was better to try to guarantee her life than to pretend to be worthless to Zvarin. “Yes. I am important. I will be missed.”
Thirty Minutes to Heartbreak Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 90
