by Alyse Zaftig
Even though we hadn't been around each other for a while, back in my thieving days when Phuong and I were living next to the aquarium, it felt natural to sit down with them.
"She's Arienne," I said. "Thao, Huu, and Gia," I introduced the three, pointing at all of them in turn. "And there'll be more once the light show is over."
Gia opened up some ruou so that we could all relax and talk. He launched into an explanation of how the light show revenue worked. It was expensive to do, but it seemed like they'd created a system where it really worked out for them.
After three shots of ruou, I was feeling pretty good. Arienne had only drunk one, but she was beginning to relax with my friends. I had no idea that they were out here.
"I'm sorry," Arienne gasped, a hand on her upper chest and next to her throat. "I think I'm going to hurl."
"No need for subterfuge," Thao said, winking. "We know what you want privacy for." He showed us to a spare bedroom. "Nobody's in here. You can stay the night if you want."
I helped Arienne into the bathroom, where she leaned over the toilet. She looked like she would vomit, so I stroked her back. After a few seconds, she stood up straight. "It's over."
"Good." I sat down on the bed and patted the space next to me. "Do you want to go back out there?"
"I feel like I should, because those are your friends and you..."
"You're the most important person in the world," I interrupted. "And if you want to hide in here, then we'll hide in here. You don't have to jump into a new group of friends. It's hard enough that you've left behind your place in Draka society."
Arienne put herself in my lap. My hands traveled between her shoulders and waist. She playfully nipped my neck before grinding herself down on me.
"Your friends are outside."
"Then we'll have to be very quiet." I smiled up at him as his mouth settled on mine and he made stars dance around me.
25
Detained
Arienne
After a night out, we used our floater to get back to the city. Xuan had prepared a room for me in the palace, and with his brothers-in-law there, we would be fine and safe from whatever my mother had planned for my rebellion.
When we got to the port to return the floater, there were law enforcement officers there. My heart sank as I saw the sheer quantity. As soon as we opened the door, they came to hold us.
"Ma'am, you're going to need to come with me." A man with a firm grip took me away from Xuan.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"You're going to need for a Draka dignitary to escort you into town."
"This is absurd," Xuan sneered. "I want to call my sister."
"You don't have the right to call anybody. You're not being charged with anything. You're being slightly delayed."
"I want to call my mother," I seethed. "It's unacceptable for her to do this."
"No comms in or out," the law enforcement officer said with an inappropriate amount of glee.
In the land of the Draka, I had more rights than Xuan. But even then, I was just a young woman. Xuan had incredibly high standing among the Yore but little to none among the Draka, except as a fighter and his sister's younger brother.
I was furious that we were being held like this. I'd never sat in a jail cell in my life. Sure, we were in a much nicer holding area than most criminals, but it didn't erase the fact that they were treating us like we'd done something wrong.
"This'll blow over," Xuan said.
"I hope so," I replied. "I'm going to have a long talk with my mother about this."
Finally, the Draka dignitary arrived. I could tell it was him from the way he was dressed, as if he was going to a party. He had some sort of document that he showed to the police on his tablet. They authorized him to take custody of us. I didn't know what was going to happen, so I grabbed Xuan's hand as the Draka approached.
"Hello," he said, smiling like a crocodile. "I'm here to escort you to the party."
"What party?" Xuan asked.
"You'll see." And with that enigmatic response, he put a hand on both of us and propelled us towards his hover floater. I didn't know why we were being pushed here.
"Help!" I screamed.
He only laughed. "Do you think anybody is coming to save you, a half Yore whore and her illicit Yore lover? Get in the floater while you still can. You can do it your way or mine, but you won't like my way."
I stepped in. There was a glint in his eyes that made me worried that he would hurt Xuan.
26
Fetch
Xuan
With a sigh, I followed Arienne into the hover floater. If he had control of her, there was no way that I'd abandon her. I could fight my out of being jumped in a side alley with my fists and the skills I'd honed as an orphan, but a well-equipped Draka was another matter.
"Do you enjoy playing fetch?" I asked the Draka who'd just insulted us. Besides a slight stiffening of his shoulders, he gave no indication that he'd heard me and my implication that he was someone else's pet.
We passed the journey in silence, although Arienne put her small hand in mine. I squeezed it reassuringly. I'd figure out a way for us to get out of this situation. At the port, there'd been too many people to fight off. But I'd wait for my chance.
"We're here." the Draka announced. "Now I don't have to watch you."
Biting my tongue, I stepped out and helped Arienne out, too. My shoulders slumped. We were surrounded by Draka servants, without any Yore in sight. While Phuong may not have officially sat on her throne, her imperial status and mine meant something. But Lord Georgius must have known that, because we'd been outplayed.
"Come, come," Lord Georgius said. He clicked his tongue as his eyes flicked over the two of us. "You're simply too dusty to attend my party. I'll provide new outfits for you to wear and an area for you to freshen up."
Arienne and I didn't have much of a choice. I was looking for any kind of exit, but the mansion was too well populated for me to just make a break for it. Several of his servants surrounded the two of us as we were shown upstairs.
"You'll be in here, my lovely," he said to Arienne. She looked like she was about to say something but stopped herself and went in.
"And you'll be over there." Lord Georgius pointed to the end of the corridor. I slipped inside of the room and looked around it. It was small, but it did have a sonic shower in the corner. After being manhandled, I could use a quick shower. I shed my clothing and jumped inside. It took very little time before I got dressed in the strange Draka robes on the bed. They were fancier than anything I'd ever worn and the slight irregularity of the patterns meant that they were hand made. I wondered why Lord Georgius had gone to the trouble of giving me something nice to wear when he'd given me a crummy room.
I heard muffled shouting outside and yanked the door open. Arienne was screaming as she was being hauled downstairs. I ran to the stairs and used the railing to swing around and land on the first floor, in front of the men trying to haul her off.
"Stop!" I shouted.
But they had no intention of stopping. Instead, five men rushed at me. I ducked under their blows and tried to get to Arienne, who was struggling against her captors.
Diving low, I took a blow to the face from someone's shoe, but it put me in a good position to throw him down. I realized that the clothing I'd been given restricted my movement, to give the guards just enough time to react to my moves. I tore my fancy jacket off the instant that I realized that it wasn't helping me in the fight. I used the cloth to mask my movements as I fought off the other men. Arienne was being pulled away, so I jumped over my opponents to land next to her. From the expression in their eyes, I knew that they'd never seen anybody who could jump clear over their heads at a moment's notice. I'd trained for this kind of thing, even if it was just for money. They were dopey and underpaid security, kept around for looks rather than actual utility.
"Arienne!" I shouted. Her arms were being held by the dignitary who'd picked us up in his hover f
loater. I slugged him in the face, bruising my knuckles. I had calluses that I'd built on my first two knuckles, but it still hurt like crazy. Arienne came to stand near me, using my body as a shield. The Draka dignitary lunged at me, so I swiped at his face. But he jerked back in time, so the only thing I caught was his necklace, which was an irregular shard of something else.
A blast of telepathic energy opened my mind and took me away from the fight in which I was engrossed. I could see in a second that it belonged to a man who looked just like Phuong but with a beard: my father, the deposed Yore emperor. I could feel it more surely than I'd felt anything in my life besides my pull towards my mate. I could tell in this split second that it was part of a greater whole, that something had been broken.
"Where did you get this?" I asked the asshole who was clutching his cheek.
"It's not for you," he sneered. I kicked him in the stomach, sending him sprawling backwards.
"Arienne, run," I said. We pelted for the door and evaded capture. We ran to his ship, the hover floater that he'd used to pick us up at the port. I could see an opening near the entrance where there was a shape that matched the shard I held in my hand. I put it inside, which opened the door. There were security guards filtering out of the house now and raising weapons.
"Don't shoot my hover floater!" the Draka dignitary screamed at the top of his lungs. The split second of indecision on the part of the guards meant that we could start the ship and put it on the highest speed setting. I stared out the window at the red faces of the Draka guards.
Arienne sighed and sat down. "Phew. That was close."
"We're not safe yet." I sat down at the control panel. "We're going to go to the Assembly to talk to Gahariet, my brother-in-law. He's in charge of a council who is supposed to look into just what happened to the Yore."
"Why?" Arienne asked.
"Because that man knows something about what happened to my father."
27
Playing with Dragon Babies
Arienne
"Your babies are so sweet," I said. Both of the twins were snoozing in one bed.
"Only when they're like this," Phuong said. She sighed, “They're rambunctious most of the time."
Our voices must have woken them up. I couldn't tell them apart. One woke up, rolled over, and immediately gunned straight for his mother.
"This one is my troublemaker," Phuong told me, picking him up and balancing him on her hip like she did it every day of her life. He accepted one kiss before wiggling and getting her to put him on his feet.
The second twin woke up, his eyes growing wide as he beamed up at us.
"They don't have to worry about the things we do, like the shard necklace."
"Gahariet promised that he'd bring it up as an emergency matter in the Assembly, especially after I found that archived image of Lord Georgius wearing the shard necklace."
"That's good," I said in an absent tone as the second twin held his arms up to his mother. He endured a kiss from her, too, before turning to me and holding out his arms.
"He wants you," Phuong explained.
"Sure," I replied, even though my heart was thudding hard behind my ribcage. I didn't spend much time with babies.
The second twin's weight was hefty but solid. He promptly put a piece of my hair in his mouth and thoughtfully chewed on it. I'd need to wash my hair to get the baby saliva out.
"I'm sorry!" Phuong gasped. She immediately tried to tug him out of my arms, but he wrapped his tiny arms around my neck and resisted her efforts to take him back. He bit down on my hair, which made me wince. "He's hurting you!"
"Just pulling on my hair a little."
"He's still at that stage where he explores everything by putting it in his mouth." Phuong tried to get it out of his mouth, but he wasn't having it. He switched to my other shoulder.
"I give up," Phuong said. "I think it's because he's never seen hair that shade of orange."
"It's not orange," I said automatically because I'd been saying it my whole life. "It's just light blonde hair on top of jet black hair, and it makes it seem reddish-brown."
"Okay," Phuong said. "But he wants to know more about it. That's why he won't let you go."
"I'm fine with it," I answered, shifting him more towards my hip as he continued to gnaw on my hair. "He's not hurting me."
I thought that he was bored with my seemingly orange hair, because he spat it out and started wiggling as his brother had. I put him on the floor, where he began to lurch around with the same amount of grace as his brother. His brother was already investigating a circle on the ground. The second twin went to observe what was happening.
The first one pushed the second one until he fell over. He hit the floor with a thunk and began to wail loudly. Phuong scooped him off of the floor and soothed him. He clung to her shoulder like a tiny monkey.
I felt something tugging at my heart strings when I watched the two of them together. She might have called them rambunctious, but she clearly loved them. As I watched him nestle into her shoulder, I wondered when I'd be lucky enough to have children.
I touched my stomach. Someday. I knew that Xuan was a prince without a throne. One day, we'd have cute part-Draka babies who would be part of the Yore royal family. Even though we hadn't been together for very long, I knew in my heart that he was the one for me. Through thick and thin, we'd stay together.
28
Assembly
Arienne
TWO MONTHS LATER
"What do you mean? He's on vacation?" Xuan's eyebrows drew together.
Gahariet rubbed his eyes. "I mean that the Assembly has put out a mandatory call for his appearance before us. He's indefinitely away."
"Away from where? The city? The planet?" Xuan's voice was rising. I put a hand on his shoulder.
"We can't find him. It's like he knew that he had to disappear. He's drained his bank account. We don't know if we have jurisdiction off of this planet."
"I had so many questions!" Xuan shouted.
"You'll get the answers. It'll take time." Phuong came to link her arm with Gahariet's arm. "Why don't we eat some banh xeo? The cook did a great job on it."
Grumbling to himself, Xuan let me bring him into the small, informal dining room that was still several times the size of the one in the house where I grew up. He wanted to bring Lord Georgius to justice for the crimes committed one generation ago. I knew that he was curious about his father's demise, but I wondered if it was a Pandora's box better left unopened.
"How could he disappear like that?"
"He must have had help," I said, my voice soft. I took a bit of the salty banh xeo. "He doesn't have the resources to disappear like smoke, even if he can shift into it."
Xuan's fist banged on the table. "I need to find him."
"You need to relax." I put a hand on his. "I need to say something to you."
"What is it?"
"I'm pregnant."
Phuong already knew because she'd told me to go to the healer. But the rest of our family was shocked.
"Are you serious?" Xuan asked.
"Yes." I nodded.
He pulled his long arms around me and held me close. "I'm so happy."
I smiled at him. "I know there are still some mysteries to uncover."
He put a finger to my lips. "We'll uncover them together." He knelt at my feet. "Will you marry me?"
"No."
The three other members of our family gasped. I held my flat palm out to them.
"Not yet." I shook my head. "I love you and I know that you're my mate."
"Then why won't you marry me?"
"I want to find my father. With you by my side, surely the Yore will accept me."
"I'll help you do it."
29
Wedding
Arienne
THREE MONTHS LATER
I looked at the tablet's comm message and read it again.
"Why are you torturing yourself?" Xuan asked. "This is a happy time. O
ur family is all around us."
"I thought that he'd show up for today, at least." It'd taken time and money to track down my elusive father. While we knew his name now, we also knew why he'd given me up. He had traded his parental rights away for a lifetime supply of thuoc phien, a drug that felt good and was very addictive. The Draka had brought it with them from another planet and anesthetized the most powerful Yore until they couldn't fight back. My adoptive mother had not, in fact, adopted me. She was my real mother who had concealed her scandalous affair with my Yore father. That's why she was so strict with me and focused on securing a solid Draka marriage. It never occurred to her that I might have my own dreams.
"You have all the family that you need here." He put the little amplifier against my stomach. Everyone at our wedding feast could hear the baby's heartbeat. He kissed me on the mouth while our guests applauded.
Our marriage wasn't exactly one that the Yore were thrilled about. I was half Draka, after all. It was funny that while I'd been growing up, the Yore part of me was the one that was the one to conceal. And now that I was an adult and mated to a Yore prince, the Draka part was the one that tripped people up.
"I can't believe that our babies will be in line for the throne."
"Babies?" Xuan asked, half turned to our guests. "What are you talking about?" He held my hands in his and looked into my eyes.
"Can't you hear it? Two heartbeats, not one."
Xuan blinked for a moment and then kissed me even harder than before. "I don't think twins run in my family."
"Maybe they run in mine." I shrugged. "We'll figure it out. After Phuong's kids, your kids are also in line for the throne."
