by Anne Wheeler
“You brought me here until I decided to talk?”
“Not exactly. You truly were eradicated. My superiors suggested I ask the Eradication Council for you, and I . . . I saw no downside to doing so.”
Ryllis took a few steady slowing breaths. “You stood there and watched as they made me a slave. You did nothing to prevent it. All so you could practice on me? You—you—”
No epithet, even the vilest Cerethian one, was suitable for what he’d done. The kitchen faded into a cloud of fog while she struggled to herself, fought to keep from lashing out at him. Maybe Kresten could feel her emotions, perhaps he couldn’t, but she didn’t care. How could—how could someone who’d professed to love her allow this?
“It was going to happen one way or another. Would you have preferred to bide your time in a cell while they decided who to give you to?” he asked sharply. “As I said when you first arrived here, that can still be arranged. I did you a favor, the best I could under the circumstances.”
“A cell wouldn’t be much different from being here, Your Highness.”
It felt raw, and unfair somehow, but his threat had terrified her. She reached for the tea to wash away the sour feeling in her mouth, then drew her hand back. It was sitting too close to him.
“Ah, Ryllis,” he replied. “Everything I’ve told you, everything I’ve done for you . . . Has it been that bad?”
He sounded almost broken, and his use of her name disarmed her. The feel of his body against hers had changed everything. Her thighs began to shake as the adrenaline retreated, and she pressed her damp palms to them, leaving marks on the silk.
“I’m sorry. You’ve been kind,” she said to the table, shaking her head. “More than kind. I didn’t expect to feel—”
“Then never compare my home to a prison again.”
The words and the way he’d interrupted her apology were harsh; the underlying pain was not. She stared at him for several seconds, but he didn’t speak again.
“If you can’t just walk up to someone and touch them,” she said, pulling her hands closer to her chest, “how do you do it?”
Kresten looked out the window and her gaze followed. A small brown bird was sitting out on the garden wall, singing its heart out. She wished she were that bird, wished she could fly away and worry about nothing but building a nest somewhere safe.
“A tattoo,” he said, eyes on the bird. “We add a special type of nanobiotes to the ink, and once it enters the bloodstream, it opens a channel to the mind. For most prisoners we access, it’s a black circle, sized for the dose of nanobiotes needed. Some need repeat treatments—their arms have a line of circles up the inside. But I couldn’t imagine the sight of you like that. You didn’t deserve it, and it would have destroyed me. The imperial crest I offered is detailed enough on its own for what I needed to do.”
He paused. “I wasn’t lying about it being painful. I went through it once. We all do, to make sure we understand what kind of power we’ve been honored with and what it takes from subjects when we use it. The original idea was that it would prevent overreach by Shadow Force telepaths, and they were right that it has. I still have nightmares about it every so often. The pain, the violation, it’s something you can’t imagine until it happens to you.”
She felt faint, grateful for the steadiness of the chair beneath her and the table that mostly kept her from fleeing. “And people let you do this to them?”
Kresten laughed, even though she didn’t think it was funny, and suspected he didn’t either. “Of course they don’t let us. No sane person would, but those subjected to the procedure don’t have a choice. Usually strapping them down is enough to ensure compliance, though sometimes they need to be sedated as well. You—I had drugged your coffee that first morning. You wouldn’t have known what was going on until it was too late, and you were in too much agony to fight me.”
The kitchen was silent, except for the squawking of birds in the distance.
“You were going to do this to me.”
He nodded. “Yes, but—”
“Then why didn’t you do it that first morning? Why did you give me the chance to say no?”
“I don’t—” He frowned at his hands. “I don’t know. Maybe because even then, you did something to me. Made me feel things. And the longer you were here, the more I was able to forget what I was supposed to be doing. And then I saw the fear in your eyes that afternoon after the waterfall and questioning you that way became even harder. Almost every night, I dreamed of you screaming in pain while I forced my way into your mind, so I told myself it was unnecessary. They didn’t care what I did with you, after all.”
I can control plants. They grow better and stay alive longer when I’m around. It’s why the flower you gave me on Cereth never died and why your garden looks like it does.
Ryllis tested the confession in her mind—tested him—but Kresten didn’t so much as blink. Relief flowed over her entire body. He couldn’t read her mind as they sat here. Or, at least, he had decided not to.
“Why are you telling me all this now?” she asked.
“Because it’s nothing compared to what I told you in the cave. And because my brother put the question in your mind, and because I didn’t want you thinking I was a womanizer, and because I feel you should know the person you’ve fallen in love with, blemishes and all.”
Her stomach fluttered. “Then what do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Kresten’s shoulders sank, like holding in the secret had cost him most of his energy, and he was going to collapse on top of the table. “You can let them do it. Prove you’re not a traitor.”
“Them?” She frowned. “Not you?”
“They won’t trust me. Not if I bring this concern to them now. And I hardly think I can trust myself. It would have to be someone independent and unbiased. My boss, most likely. He’s good at what he does, and if you’re innocent, he would never say otherwise just for his reputation or record.”
“He’s a stranger. A Vilarian.” Ryllis sprung to her feet and began to pace the kitchen. “I can’t do this. What you’re asking—to let him in my mind—it’s—”
“Why not? I know you’re not a traitor. Even though I haven’t been in your mind, I know you, Ryllis, and I know you would have never done such a thing. I know you aren’t my father’s biggest fan, but murdering people, planning attacks . . . I just can’t see it.”
But the flowers . . . She clutched her hands together, desperate for an excuse. “You just told me how horrible it is. And now you’re telling me it won’t even be you doing it.”
“I had to be honest. I won’t let you agree to it without knowing what you’re agreeing to. And you don’t have to give me your answer now, but will you think about it? I want you cleared. I love you, and I want everyone to know it. My darling star, I want so much for both of us.”
He was asking too much. Had he done it in the cave, while her lips were still tingling and her knees were barely holding her up—yes. She might have been silly enough to agree to anything he asked. But here, back in the mansion, with her senses intact and Kresten sitting across from her like a stranger, it was terrifying. She traced circles in the fabric of the silly gray dress, not knowing what else to do.
How was she supposed to tell him the truth which would ruin his dreams?
Chapter Thirteen
Kresten didn’t know why he’d told Ryllis his secret the day before.
He did know that he’d made sure the static fields on the windows were fully functional when she’d escaped into her room immediately after their conversation. If it came down to it, telling her he could read her mind could be considered a tactic; allowing her to escape would be considered . . . well, he didn’t want to know how the Eradication Council would consider it. Malfeasance at best, treason at worst. Ever since he’d sworn into the Fleet, his royal status could only protect him so far.
Kresten knocked on her door, twice. She didn’t answer, and he stood there for a minute shifting back and fort
h from foot to foot, debating his next move. He wasn’t going to barge in, not when she could be in the bath or doing a myriad of things he didn’t—and did, at the same time—want to see. There’d been no tea waiting for him that morning, so he settled for asking Lina for a cup and parked himself in his office, feet on his desk and a book in his lap.
He was ignoring the words, though. A print of him and Elise sat on top, taken at the palace two solar cycles after their wedding. His hands were around her waist, and she was laughing up at him, her eyes squeezed shut. By the stars, but they’d been young. He wanted to laugh at the young couple who was so sure they’d last forever, more because of their naïve certainty than of how it’d ended.
But surprisingly, underneath his amusement, there was no pain. Sorrow, yes, and loss, but it didn’t take over like it had at first.
“It’s time,” he said out loud. “I’ve pretended it wasn’t, but now I think I was more afraid of going forward than losing the past. We cling to a lot, don’t we, even when it doesn’t exist anymore.” With a quick glance at the closed door, he brought the photo to his mouth and kissed it. “I won’t forget you.”
There was a shuffle in the hallway, and he dropped the photo to the side of his chair and picked up his book once more. Lina kicked open the door with her feet as he pretended to read about the history of attrition warfare in the Theipra System, a tray in her hands. There was the long overdue tea, yes, two cups of it, but also an assortment of pastries he’d seen her making earlier. His mouth watered at the smell of sugar and cinnamon—Lina’s baking was something he craved when he was off-world—but the two cups were concerning. Kresten sighed as she placed one on the side table next to him and perched on the upholstered bench under the window with the other.
“Why do I feel like I’m not going to like what you’re here for?” he asked.
“You know, it’s strange, Your Highness.” Lina made him up a plate of pastries with her free hand and passed it over. “You don’t want to see me, and Ryllis doesn’t want to see me, and the two of you don’t seem to want to see each other.”
His stomach growled, and he grumbled out loud to cover the sound. “And I’m the loser, I see.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Just the one with the most information.”
“Information?” He snorted and crossed his ankle over his knee. “Not exactly. I don’t have any information, if we’re being truthful. I don’t even know where she is.”
Lina took a sip of tea. “She’s outside, in the side garden. You should see it. Crocuses, snowdrops, and she’s even gotten some early roses to grow in that rocky soil. She knows what she’s doing, sir.”
Ah.
“I’d wondered where she’d been,” he said.
“You haven’t been wondering—you’d have looked harder for her if you were. Since I haven’t even seen you in the kitchen since you came in asking for tea, I doubt you’ve searched at all, beyond knocking on her door. Almost as if you knew she didn’t want to see you.”
His jaw tightened. “You can stop this hedging. I know what she told you.”
Lina leaned against the window with her tea and shrugged in a strange, cat-like manner. A sunbeam lit her face, exaggerating the wrinkles in her skin but making her look youthful at the same time.
“Shadow Force,” she said. “I should have known. So many things make so much more sense now.”
She sounded so matter of fact and indifferent to his true identity that he almost laughed. “You’re not afraid of me?”
“Why in the Realm would I be afraid of you?”
Kresten shoved an entire tartlet in his mouth. “I don’t know. Most people would be,” he said, chewing. His mother would die if she saw him eating like this, which was why he was doing it. “She is. What if I’m truly a monster, and everyone knows it but me?”
“If Ryllis is afraid of you, it’s because she has a reason to be.” Lina set her cup on the coffee-colored silk of the window seat. “You brought her here as a slave, and then, if I’m understanding the situation correctly, intended to continue her interrogation on top of that. That would have been bad enough on anyone, but then you dumped some other, perhaps more frightening, information on her, I think. Information that’s much easier for you to accept than her.”
He almost coughed out the pastry. “She told you what happened in the cave?” he asked, brushing the crumbs from his pants.
Lina smiled in the motherly way he’d grown to dread over the past few lunar cycles. “No. But I’ve seen the way you look at her, and Aared saw the way she looked at you when you left after your visit. We remember what that was like, and I took a guess. You just confirmed it.”
Kresten wanted to swear. She’d walked him right into a confession. He should have known better—he did know better.
“And if I had to speculate,” Lina went on, “I think she’s more afraid of one than the other.”
Her confrontation had already muddled his brain. “Which one?”
A laugh. Lina couldn’t reach him from the window seat, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had patted his knee in response if she could have.
“You’ve asked a lot of her,” she said. “You’ve ordered her to abandon her home and her family, forget how you met, and now you ask her to trust you enough to give her a future. None of these are minor things. Then you tell her you’re a telepath. For a Cerethian, you might as well have told her you can fly.”
“I can,” he grumbled.
“Automated shuttles don’t count. Unless you’ve suddenly sprouted wings, she doesn’t care about that. She cares that she’s been brought here as a prisoner, and that she was raised to fear you and your kind. You’re not a monster, Your Highness, and I know it, but you might grant her a bit of grace if she thought of you as one in fright. You know the stories they tell on Cereth and the others.”
He did. On most colonized planets, Cereth included, it was said that telepaths could read your thoughts from across the room—and plant new ones at the same time. That they could scan a warship commander’s strategy from light years away, giving them a substantial advantage in battle. That Shadow Force was known for sewing prisoners’ lips together to prevent them from confusing the telepath with deliberately vocal falsehoods.
That last one, he supposed, wasn’t too far from the mark.
“They’re just stories.” He stuck another little tart in his mouth, berry this time, and washed it down with some tea. Lina raised her eyebrows at his etiquette, and he waved her off. There was a reason he was here on the mountain instead of the palace. “You know how it works.”
“I do. I also know you asked her to subject herself to it.”
“I don’t have a choice. Lina, I—fine, you’re right. I don’t know why I bother trying to lie to you anymore.” Against his will, his lip quirked up. “I love her.” The words were startlingly easy to say to someone else. “And now they’ll never trust me to prove her innocent. They sent her here, they believe she’s guilty of everything she’s been accused of.”
“But what if she is?”
“Is what?”
Lina shook her head. Royal idiot¸ he almost heard in her mind.
“Guilty,” she said.
The pastry threatened to come up again. He hadn’t considered that explanation because Ryllis couldn’t be guilty. It would ruin her life—and by extension, his. He could marry a slave. It didn’t happen frequently, especially among the imperial family, but it wasn’t unheard of. Father would protest, but he’d eventually accept it. It wasn’t as though Kresten had a chance of inheriting the throne, so such things were overlooked and tacitly celebrated. But a traitor? It was so hard to think of Ryllis as one to begin with, but he couldn’t marry a traitor, someone who’d actively worked to overthrow his own family. Wasn’t allowed to.
“Then I don’t want them to know,” he said. “I’d rather keep her safe here and never be able to consummate my love. She deserves that, no matter what she’s done.”
Kresten ran his hands over his face and sighed. Would it make a difference to him if Ryllis was guilty? Before Lina had mentioned it, he hadn’t realized he’d been presuming her innocence for a long while. Why? Was it a truth he felt deep down or simply misplaced hope and naïveté? It was the conundrum to end all conundrums.
The hub of the lodge’s security system pinged as he was considering the effects of another pastry on his stomach. He waved at the screen and frowned at the dot there. A suborbital shuttle? No one was expected up in the mountains. Vidar had caused enough trouble, so he couldn’t possibly be—
Kresten squinted at the ship’s identification.
Shadow Force.
“Find Ryllis,” he ordered. She’d panic if they appeared without warning. Would accuse him of calling them in. He needed to speak with her first, needed to calm her, needed to prepare her with how to act and what to say. Lina darted out the door, and he turned a few aimless circles in his office, trying to get his thoughts under control.
I should have sent that report to Colonel Löfgren.
But they wouldn’t come all this way to reprimand him for that. It had to be something else. Were they taking Ryllis away? The thought was unbearable—and didn’t make sense. The Fleet was done with her, and even if they weren’t, they should have allowed him to bring her in to the Shadow Force headquarters at Arvika.
The security system beeped again the signal the shuttle’s landing, and with a sigh, Kresten squared his shoulders and headed out front to meet them. He could see six men through the windows: Major Ivar Dahl—his immediate commander—Captain Erik Ahlund, and four regular security guards. Those last didn’t bode well for Ryllis, but he wouldn’t panic yet. Dahl was known for arriving with an entourage, especially when he was unexpected.
Dahl waved at him as he hopped out of the shuttle, and Kresten, after the briefest glance down at his white cotton undershirt, returned a casual salute. Dahl was lucky to be getting that much with this kind of surprise.
