Tres’s eyes narrowed slightly, a look filling them that made her heart race a little quicker. His blue pupils mesmerised her, surrounded by inky black irises and then the white of his eyes. The soft look in them warmed her, soothed her. She didn’t understand any of what had happened between him and the commander and she didn’t need to in order to know that Tres had made a sacrifice for her sake. He had protected her and her brother by giving in to the commander.
He had hurt himself defending her.
She tensed when something brushed her left cheek, cold but soft, and then tried to smile when she realised that it was Tres’s other hand. He brushed his fingers along her jaw line and his thumb swept across her cheek below her eye, wiping away her tears. He smiled at her when he moved to the other side, catching her tears with his fingers and taking them away.
“I believe you are hurt worse than I,” he whispered back at her, his eyes never leaving hers. She briefly closed hers when his fingers paused against her right cheek, his touch light and tender. This was insane. Here she was stuck in a cell on a Vegan military ship with a man she barely knew and she was having what had to be the most romantic moment of her life. She leaned into Tres’s touch, wanting to steal every drop of comfort and strength from it as possible.
He took his hand back and she looked at him again.
“My family is coming,” she said, more to herself than to him. She needed to make it sink in. Her family were coming for her. Rezic would be safe. Everything was going to be all right. “Your family too, apparently. You seem important to the Vegans.”
She studied his face, trying to read his reaction.
“My mother is an important political figure,” Tres said and leaned his head back into the wall behind him. He stared up at the ceiling and Renie wondered if he was seeing it or the ducts. What would it be like to have ocular implants? Could he see through anything? “My family were probably looking for me and that is why the ship picked me up.”
Renie’s eyebrows rose. “Will they ransom you too?”
“No.” He shook his head and looked into her eyes. “As it stands, their treatment of me will probably get them punished... but that all depends on my mother’s mood.”
“What do you mean by that?” Renie said with a glance down at her hand where it still covered his. It felt nice. Reassuring. She had never realised that such small contact between two people could have such a profound effect. It wasn’t the first time she had held hands, but it was the first time it had deeply affected her, making her feel strangely safe and sure that everything would turn out fine in the end.
Tres frowned. “It means that it may turn out that I am the one who is punished while the commander of this vessel is commended for his actions in capturing and containing me.”
“Your mother sounds frightening.” Renie managed a smile when he did. He had a nice smile, although they were always closed lipped. She looked at his mouth. The seam of his lips was dark blue. Did he have blue gums? What colour were his teeth? He was so fascinating. She wanted to ask him a million questions but held them all inside, sure that he wouldn’t like her probing into his life and treating him as though he was a science experiment.
“She can be at times,” he said and looked up at the ceiling again. Renie studied his profile. His nose was perfectly straight and, for the first time since meeting him, she noticed that he had a slight blue shadowing around his eyes and that his eyelashes were like his hair but in reverse. They went from black at the root to blue at the tip. He suddenly turned his head to face her, his eyes meeting hers. “What is your mother like? Will she be coming with your father on the ship?”
“My mother?” Renie smiled as she thought about her mother and father. “No, she probably won’t be with my father. It’s not that she wouldn’t want to be with him when he came for me. She’s probably worried sick about me and Rezic.”
She giggled.
“Mother always said that we’d get into trouble one day and father would have to come for us.” Her look turned serious as she thought about how scared her mother probably was, and her sister and brothers too. Even her father was probably worried. Perhaps her and Rezic had overstepped the mark by venturing so close to the Black Zone. They only had themselves to blame and she didn’t know what she would do if a war started between Vega and Lyra again because of her.
“You look upset,” Tres said and she blinked and then looked at him. She shook her head. “Worried?”
“Are they really going to ransom me and Rezic?” she said, needing him to tell her again that everything was going to be fine.
“They would be fools to try. Vega would not condone such actions.”
“You seem terribly sure of that,” she said with a little laugh and a smile, afraid that he was wrong. “The commander seemed rather intent on getting his dues.”
“And he will get them, but it will not be from ransoming you.” Tres’s hand shifted beneath hers and he held it tight. “Come, you were speaking of your family. I wish to know about them. Is your mother Terran?”
Renie frowned. “You know who I am don’t you? You know about my family. Do you know who my father is?”
He nodded. “I know of General Lyra II, but I do not know about you, and... I would like to.”
A blush blazed across her cheeks and she dropped her gaze. Her eyes fixed on their joined hands and her face only burned hotter. He wanted to know about her. It was a strange notion. No one had ever really wanted to know about her, but then she had never remained in one spot long enough for someone to ask. Rezic and her had always been flitting from one port to the next, heading deeper and deeper into space that was sparsely populated.
“My mother is Terran,” she said after a moment’s thought. She wasn’t going to deny Tres the chance to hear all about her family, not when it was comforting to speak about them and to remember how much they loved her and that they were coming for her. “She was a princess but no one knew it. When my parents met, she was a slave. My father was given her by a trader. His translator had broken and he didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. My father set her free.”
Her eyes met Tres’s when his hand tensed against hers. His were wide, staring at her with a curious look that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Was he thinking about their situation? Did he think that he could free her just as her father had freed her mother?
“Your father is a very noble man and has a great reputation that spreads deep into the Black Zone. All of the sons of Lyra are men to be feared. I am learning that their daughters may be just as formidable.”
Renie laughed. “Formidable? That’s not a very complimentary thing to say to a woman.”
Tres’s hand left hers. “I apologise,” he said and frowned, staring at the floor near his bench. “I have little experience of speaking to females.”
“But you have your mother?”
“My mother is often in other quarters. I rarely see her.”
“Oh,” she said and a horrible feeling settled in her chest. Perhaps she shouldn’t have teased him about his choice of words. He was only being nice to her after all. She should have seen the good in what he had said rather than the bad. His mother sounded quite formidable though. “Don’t you have any other family?”
“My sister.”
There was a curt edge to his voice that warned her not to probe any further.
“I wish I could speak to my parents. My mother especially. I’m sure that she would want to come with father but he’s out in the region of Perseia.”
“He is closer to us than he is to Lyra then.”
She looked at Tres with a frown. “Are there star charts of my side of the galaxy in the Black Zone? We have no charts of the Black Zone. They end at the line of the Vegan barrier.”
“Your space is well documented,” he said and his hand came back to hers, his fingers brushing her knuckles. His hands were still cold but she didn’t care, not when it felt so nice and he looked as though he was enj
oying the contact between them. He seemed fascinated with her hand. Perhaps it was warmth he was after. She hoped it was something more.
The door to the cellblock opened again and Tres’s hand left hers as he stood.
Renie took her hand back and wiped away any remaining trace of her earlier tears before looking up at the corridor of the cellblock. The other guard was back. He had a blue dish filled with something. The guard that had remained with them did something to a control panel near Tres’s door and a small opening appeared at the bottom of the bars. The guard with the food pushed the blue bowl through and then the bars closed again.
“Eat,” the guard said and nodded towards the food.
Tres took the bowl and came back to her. He gave her a small smile as he sat down and she peered across into the bowl. It looked disgusting. Inside the blue dish was a thick gooey clear mixture with some kind of pale red strings in it. Tres stuck his fingers into the mixture and stirred it. A blush of purple rose to the surface, rippling through the clear. It smelt foul.
But she couldn’t stop herself from watching Tres eat it. He scooped some up in his hand, tipped his head back, and let it fall into his mouth. She caught a flash of blue gums and white teeth and then he was swallowing. How could he eat such a horrible smelling and gross looking food?
Her stomach growled.
She looked at the bowl again and placed her hand over her stomach, trying to make it be quiet. It grumbled again as Tres ate another mouthful of the food. The more she looked at it, the more her stomach rumbled and the more appetising it looked. She was starving. It had been a while since she had eaten. Two days or possibly more. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious.
When Tres was halfway through, he stood and went back to the door of his cell.
“Give the rest to her,” he said.
The guard looked unimpressed. “Our orders were to make sure you ate.”
“I have eaten. Now I am full. I wish for you to give the rest to the princess. If she is ill when her family come, your chances of receiving the ransom will be zero.”
The bars at the bottom of the cell door lifted. Tres put the bowl down and slid it through the small gap. The guard took it and Renie moved towards the door when a small area of the light bars disappeared. The man pushed the bowl through into her cell.
She picked it up and sniffed it. It really did smell foul but her stomach didn’t seem to care. It rumbled loudly. She cast a nervous glance at the two guards and then Tres, unsure whether she wanted to eat it in front of them. Not only was she going to have to use her hands, but she wasn’t sure if she would be able to keep the food down if it tasted as disgusting as it smelt.
She dipped a finger in and licked it clean.
Her eyes popped wide.
It tasted amazing.
Carrying the bowl back to the corner with her, she sat down and scooped a small amount of the stringy goo up. She ate it. It was incredible. The textures and layers of taste were phenomenal, each making some different sense zing and pop. She had never tasted anything like it. It was food fit for a king. Not even the smell put her off.
It was delicious.
The bowl was empty before her stomach was full. She reluctantly turned it on its side and passed it through the bars to the guard. He took it without so much as a glance at her and left along with the other one. She looked longingly after him, wondering if he would come back with more. She could have licked the bowl. She would have if Tres hadn’t been watching her.
Sitting back down beside Tres, she sighed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
She looked across at him, through the shimmering blue light bars.
“For eating in order to help my brother. I admit that I don’t understand it, but thank you. I was sure that they were going to hurt him,” she said and wondered if Tres would hold her hand again if she placed it down on the floor by her side. “Rezic has no interest in the throne. He wishes we were just archaeologists, like I do. We’ve never used our positions or our family to get anything.”
Tres smiled at her. There was so much warmth in it and his eyes. What was he thinking when he looked at her like that?
He scratched his face, reopening the gash that ran below his eye. A bead of blue blood broke to the surface.
“I think you’re bleeding,” she said and pointed towards the cut.
He frowned and raised his hand up, swiping the blood away with the pad of his thumb. Her gaze ran over his tattered black clothes.
“You must have put up quite a fight when they captured you.” She shuffled closer to the bars.
Staring at the blue blood on his thumb, he said, “You are not the only one who wishes they were common. I will always fight hard to achieve that which I have set my heart on.”
Before she could ask what he meant by that, he had opened his mouth. She stared in fascination as he poked his tongue out. The sight of it stirred a strange desire in her, a hunger to feel it against her. It was blue, as exotic as the rest of him. The glide of his tongue over his thumb was erotic, sensual, igniting fire in her veins as she drank in the sight of it. The fire was fanned into an inferno when he licked his thumb again and she imagined how good it would feel to have that tongue laving her flesh, caressing her. She wanted to feel it, desired his mouth against hers and his hands on her body.
Shaking her head, she snapped herself out of it. She had been up in space too long if the sight of a man’s tongue gave her fantasies. Her eyes roamed back to his mouth. But what a tongue. The way he had licked the blood off his thumb had told her without question that he would know exactly what to do with that implement of divine torture if she gave herself to him.
The door opened again and a guard entered. He closed the door and stood in the corner near it. The lights above her dimmed until only the light from the blue bars of the cells illuminated the room.
“Sleep,” Tres said, gathering his blanket around him and returning to his bench. He lay down on it on his back, his blanket covering him and his arms below his head.
Renie took the blanket down from the bench in her cell and wrapped it around her as she lay down. The bench was hard and uncomfortable. She looked across at Tres to find him watching her, his skin blue from the lights and his eyes dark. Only their pupils shone strangely, bright as though they fed off the blue light.
“Tres?” she whispered, afraid of raising her voice in case the guard berated her.
“Yes?”
“Do you think Rezic will be safe?”
Silence.
A dark look entered his eyes, one that spoke of strength and belief.
“I swear they will not hurt him. I will make sure of that.”
Renie looked at Tres a little longer and then closed her eyes, curling up on her side on the cold bench with her arm as a pillow.
Even though Tres was a prisoner too, she believed him.
He wouldn’t let anything happen to her brother.
****
Chapter 5
Tres paced the small cell, his body stiff and aching as he forced himself to move. It was painful, but it did reward him with a little heat. The temperature had dropped again to the point where it was too cold for him to sleep. He tugged the dark grey blanket tighter around him and hunched up. Perhaps he should have asked the guard for an extra blanket before he had left.
Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince Page 5
