He laughed. It was mocking and made her teeth grate.
“Execute you? On whose orders?” He huddled down into his blanket and stared at her, his strange pale blue pupils boring into hers. “Vegans would not initiate another war with Lyra. They have no need to. The galaxy is divided and both are trapped, unable to expand their empires or their technology.”
“Lyrans are expanding their technology perfectly well.”
“Well enough that you could create your own barrier?”
She resisted a pout. “Perhaps.”
It wasn’t her place to talk about politics like this, or even something that she was interested in doing, but the way he was talking made her furious. He sounded as though he sympathised with the Vegans and that he was mocking the Lyrans. It was difficult to stop herself from talking about things like her cousin’s recent marriage to the emperor of Varka. Lyra had already expanded the reach of their technology because of it. She was sure that soon Lyra could build a barrier like the one Vega had erected, but she wasn’t sure there was a need.
“That barrier... I saw a planet out there... or something that used to be a planet. My brother said that it had a high carbon content, as though everyone who had once lived on it had died in a flash.” She hugged her knees again as she thought about being back on the small ship with her brother. Where was he? Was he alive? If the Vegans had realised that she was royalty just by touching her, then perhaps they would sense the same about her brother. It was to their advantage to ensure he survived.
“When the barrier was turned on, anything in its path was decimated.”
Decimated. Her brother had been right. The barrier had destroyed the planet.
“In time, things that are blocking the barrier or caught in it are eliminated. Vega must keep a clean line between the Black Zone and the rest of the galaxy.”
“We were hit by meteorites—”
“Not meteorites,” he said, cutting her off. “This ship has a duty. It was sent here to destroy the planet. It was part of that planet that struck your vessel.”
No wonder the ship hadn’t detected anything before the meteorites were already closing in on them. No wonder there was a ship in the vicinity to hear her distress call.
“I see,” she said and stared at her knees. Her hand hurt. She sucked her fingers, trying not to think about how dire her situation was. Her father would pay for her return, but would it be enough? Would the Vegans give her and her brother up so easily?
Would her father give up so easily? She was sure that he would fight for her. If he did, then there was a chance the war with Vega would begin again. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to subject the people of Lyra to war again, or to catch another system in the crossfire and have them suffer as the Earth system had.
The thought of billions of people dying as the Terrans had made her sick to her stomach. She clutched it and closed her eyes.
“Are you ill?” the man said.
She shook her head.
“Worried perhaps?”
She nodded this time and rested her chin on her knees.
“If you are a princess, then your brother will be safe.”
Those words weren’t as reassuring as she had thought they would be. Her thoughts turned to Rezic and she wondered if she would ever see him again. Would they ransom him and then her? What if they refused to hand them over at all? What if her and her brother were about to become pawns in the downfall of Lyra? She hoped her father wouldn’t come. She hoped her uncles would be able to talk sense into him.
She had to escape this cell and find Rezic but she knew it was as impossible as her pale friend had said it was. The Vegans would catch her in seconds, and that was if she even managed to escape the cell in the first place. She couldn’t see a way past the bars.
“Will you answer one more question?” she said to the man, losing hope more and more by the second.
He nodded.
“What will the Vegans do to me?”
****
Chapter 3
Tres came out of his blanket and looked at her. She was trembling and it wasn’t from cold. Warm blooded as she was, she didn’t have his problem. She was frightened. He had little experience of frightened females. All of the women this side of the barrier seemed hardhearted and as fierce as the males. Even his mother was vicious. The only female he knew with a modicum of emotion was his sister.
The Lyran female’s dark eyes pleaded him for an answer and his heart said she craved reassurance. She was turning to him for help and for hope. He couldn’t deny one as beautiful as her, as delicate and scared. Her fear and beauty spoke to him, making her appear as fragile as a Cyoliane butterfly, and tempting him to reach out and cradle her gently in his hands. He wondered at this strange desire.
“I am sure they will release you. Ransoming you would contravene the Treaty of Espacia.” He noticed her look didn’t change. “They will not harm you.”
Silently, he added a promise to those words. He wouldn’t let anyone harm her or her brother. He moved to the end of the bench near her, wondering what strange twist of fate had brought her into this side of the galaxy. She seemed too frail to survive in such a dark place but at the same time her black eyes held a trace of determination and there was a hint of strength in the set of her subtly curved jaw. A strange mixture. Beauty and grace joined with strength and resolve.
It was a shame she wasn’t strong enough.
His heart said that she could be. He could probably get her to her brother and then to a ship. He knew this class of Vegan fighter well enough to be able to take her through the ducts to the medical deck.
Tres looked up at the ceiling. It shifted from pale grey to a thermal image and then he could see through the panels to the ducts, pipes and wiring beyond. Down the side of the image, thermal readings gave him the temperature of each duct. Below it was an assessment of width, height and other factors.
It was warmer in the duct than it was in this room.
“Is there something interesting up there?” she said.
His gaze shifted to her and, in a matter of seconds, his ocular implants had her vital statistics displayed next to the thermal image of her body. She was hot. Far hotter than he had expected. She was radiating heat at a level that made him consider crossing his cell to the bars, reaching through and taking her hand to warm himself. She was also shorter than he had expected and lighter. If they stood side by side, she would be a good head shorter than he was.
“Only ducts and engineering passageways,” he said without thinking and her thermal image frowned at him. His gaze slid down to her chest and he watched her heart pounding. It was beating faster than he had thought it would. As he watched it, it picked up speed. Her body temperature rose. He smiled inside, amused at this reaction to his staring, and then switched off the implants and looked away from her. It was wrong of him to stare, even if she was the most fascinating creature he had ever met.
“Ducts? You can see the ducts?”
He nodded. “On ships this size, they are wide enough for someone to crawl through.”
“How can you see the ducts?”
She seemed more interested in how he knew things than how they could help. He tapped the side of his head.
“I have ocular implants, amongst other things.”
Her eyes widened and her brows rose in surprise. “Implants? Like cybernetics?”
“Far more advanced than that.” He smiled at her. “Does Lyra not have such things?”
Her jaw tensed and he realised that she didn’t like it when he spoke about Lyra in a way that made it sound less advanced than Vega or any species on this side of the barrier.
She was even more beautiful when she was angry.
His gaze ran over her again, this time seeing her as she was. Dressed like a male in what appeared to be a white shirt and brown trousers. It didn’t suit her. He could imagine her dressed in the raiment of a female, something flowing and soft, in subtle shades. With her hair down, long black lo
cks flowing over her pale creamy skin, she would be stunning, more beautiful than any butterfly.
Tres frowned when her dark gaze fell to her knees, a blush of colour caressing her cheeks. When she raised her eyes again, she gave him a little smile that sent a jolt of heat through him. Not actual temperature he realised but something else. Unfamiliar feelings that made him desire to touch her. Touch. He longed to feel her skin against his, to feel a connection to something at last.
A noise in the corridor startled him out of his perusal of her. His eyes shifted to the door of the cellblock and then roamed back to her, unable to leave her for any amount of time. He wanted to look at her forever. He wanted to touch her. Not with gloves on. He needed to feel her soft skin, needed to feel her warmth. He didn’t care if it was forbidden. It only made him want it more. He wanted her to touch him. He craved the feel of her fingers on him, hungered for her touch.
The violence and strength of that need surprised him. Never before had he wanted to be touched. Never had he considered that he had been deprived all these years by the law that forbade skin-to-skin contact with him. He wondered what it would feel like to have her warm little hands on him.
“The guards are coming. If they find you talking to me, you will be in trouble.” He lay back down on his bench, frowning at the hardness of it, and hoped that she would take the hint and be quiet for a while.
She moved to the bench and sat on it, still nursing her hand. She had been foolish to touch the bars. He knew that some Lyran vessels had similar light technology. Perhaps she didn’t travel on those kinds of military vessels, or perhaps she hadn’t seen any cells in her time. A delicate creature like her would probably want to stay away from such areas.
Or perhaps a protective male had kept her safe from them.
That thought sent a cold spike into his heart.
One as beautiful as her probably had a male.
The door opened, chasing away his thoughts. He sensed her stiffen when the guards passed her cell. They stopped at his.
“It is cold in here,” he said, casual and with a smile.
“We have orders to maintain this temperature and inquire whether you will eat now?”
Tres shook his head. “I will not. Perhaps your other guest will.”
The two male Vegans looked over their shoulders in the direction of the woman. They grinned and then the smile fell off their faces when they looked back at him. He frowned at them.
“We have orders to starve her, at least until Lyra sends a party to negotiate.”
“Negotiate?” he said and then bit his tongue to stop himself from saying anything more. Angering the commander of this ship wasn’t wise. He had proven himself to be quite ruthless and a male who followed the rules to the letter. The moment the commander had caught him, he had thrown him in the cells and done everything required to stop him escaping.
“If you try to ransom me it will be a direction violation of the treaty! You will be starting a war with Lyra,” the female said.
The two guards laughed and moved to the female’s cell. She should have kept her mouth shut. Vegan military officers hated all things Lyran, regardless of how beautiful they appeared to be.
“It’s none of your business. Just wait there for someone to come and get you.”
“Wait,” she said as they started to leave and got to her feet. “My brother.”
“What about him?” The first guard glared at her, his yellow eyes intent on her face.
“Is he alive?”
The guard hesitated and looked over at him. Tres held his gaze. The man looked back at her and nodded.
“He is stable. He will be ransomed with you.”
She went to speak and then stopped, as though she had got the better of herself at last. They had answered one of her questions. It wasn’t wise to ask any more.
The guards left and she moved back to the blue energy bars near his cell.
“Do you believe them?” she said and he nodded. The officers of this ship would ensure her brother’s survival. They stood to gain a large amount of currency from ransoming them, but only if her brother were alive.
“Your family must know that you travel together and that you would never enter the Black Zone without reason. Therefore, they would know that you would have been taken together. If they only have you to ransom, Lyra would enquire after your brother. If they discover he is dead, they will not pay the Vegans anything. They will attack.”
She flinched at that last word and he could see she didn’t want that to happen.
Tres sat up and pulled the blanket around him, muttering to himself about the guards and their orders to keep the cells at such a horrible temperature.
“Are you cold?” she said again and when his eyes met hers, he saw a hint of concern in them.
What kind of warm hearted created was she that she cared about a male she had only just met? None on this side of the barrier would care about someone they hadn’t known for less than two standard Vegan years. He calculated that in his head. By her species, she would’ve had to known him for at least fourteen years to reach this level of concern.
He tugged at the collar of the tight suit beneath his looser black clothes, pulling it up his neck until it almost reached his jaw.
“It is cold,” Tres repeated but not in the same tone he had used before. This time there was a hint of resignation in his voice that surprised him. Perhaps it was because the guards had flatly refused his attempts to raise the temperature.
“What’s that suit you’re wearing?” She moved close to the bars and peered at the collar now visible above his clothes. “It looks like a flight suit. Did they capture your ship too? I didn’t see another ship in the cargo bay.”
Tres reached into the pocket of his loose trousers and pulled out his one remaining glove. He had lost the other to the commander of the ship. Proof of capture he had called it. Sighing, Tres stared at the glove. In his current state, there was no way that he could help the woman find her brother and leave the ship.
His gaze roamed back to her, studying her face as she looked at his hands. His heart beat and then only a few minutes later beat again. He had never felt it race like this, not even when he had been running. Hers was thundering by the time her eyes met his again. His beat again. When compared with hers, it was leisurely at best, but to him it was a giddy fast beat.
“It’s a thermal suit,” he said and flexed his fingers while looking at his forearm. His muscles shifted beneath the skintight material and the residual heat they created was absorbed and used to warm his entire arm. “The commander of this ship wanted to ensure I did not get it into my head to escape so he broke it.”
Her eyebrows rose. “But you need heat.”
“He cares little about such technicalities as that,” Tres said and slowly stood. It took incredible effort to move his stiff limbs and stretching was painful but rewarded him with a short burst of heat.
She stared at him, silent and pensive.
He wondered what she was thinking behind her beautiful eyes and then remembered what he had been thinking about before the guards had entered.
Her. Males.
Tres frowned at the door to the cellblock and clenched his fists. The thought that she might already belong to another male infuriated him and his heart beat again, quickly followed by another. Two in as many minutes. If a male had her, owned her, then he would fight that male for her.
His eyes grew wide when he realised what he was thinking and he looked down at her. She knelt by the bars, her hands in her lap, her eyes round and dark as she looked up at him. He would fight for her. On this side of the barrier, such a fight would be to the death. If her male was large, Tres could lose, but he would fight regardless. She had him fascinated, a slave to her, enthralled by her beauty and her frailty. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and protect her from the darkness of the universe. He would protect her from anything.
Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince Page 3
