by TylerRose.
“Come back tomorrow for the midmeal. Gar Mankell will be here to dine. I made a promise to my wife that I intend to honor tomorrow after the meal.”
“Speaking of which. Are you going to have her get the next contraceptive dose?” Dorn asked.
“I have not decided.”
“I’m going to tell you something you already know, just in case you forget. You must be her only lover for a long enough period of time to nullify any accusations that a child isn’t yours, especially if it’s male.”
“Or I make sure the world knows her only other lover is a K’Tran,” Shestna shot back, shutting Dorn up. “What did you do to her to make her unable to walk?”
“I put her across my leg and gave her a hard spanking. During the second half, I shot jolts of the crystal energy directly at her hip joints, effectively stopping commands from her brain from reaching her lower half. She could still feel but she could not move until it wore off. She stood for the ceremony out of sheer hard-headedness.”
“That’s diabolical,” Shestna grinned.
“Also most effective in stopping a woman who has a tendency to storm away when she’s angry. I have used it as punishment for many of Father’s wives and concubines over the years.”
“I shall have to remember that. The hip joints, you say?”
“Most nerves come down through the buttocks to the thighs. If you range all over and do it with every strike, you are sure to short out the entire area,” Dorn advised, rubbing the cherry of his cigar on the bottom of his shoe to extinguish it. He bent to place a flat palm on the ground, releasing the energy he’d been holding onto. “I will be going. See you tomorrow. I’ll take the rings to Father then.”
He activated his device, which opened the teleport shield around the house for the two seconds it took to teleport out. The shield closed again, and would deliver any attempted intrusions to a cell in the palace specifically designated for Shestna’s home.
Shestna spent a moment looking to the mountains on the far side of his principality, to the caves. The Rovan dens. He thought seriously about kicking them out and moving Tyler in for her own protection. The coming weeks were going to be a dangerous time. Everyone knew where she was now. He would prefer her location be unknown by the rest of the galaxy.
Chapter Twelve
Julian also came to the midmeal. As did all four of the men who had been guarding Tyler, to keep them apprised of the situation. Initial conversation centered around the plan to file charges against Earnol and immediately thereafter arrest and remove him from office before he could learn about the charges. Shestna was the man in the middle, coordinating between lawyers and Congressional contacts.
“Do you have a security team you can rely on to make the arrest?” Shestna asked Julian.
“I do. I have a group of men from Mankell’s House, and also Rosaas Untrock’s. They joined the security force when K’Tran’s application was approved. They can be trusted. Earnol hasn’t had time to buy or blackmail them yet.”
“They couldn’t be bought,” Mankell said without a doubt. “The penalties at home for that sort of disloyalty are severe.”
“Blackmail doesn’t work on us either,” Saber added. “We’ve been taught from earliest years to immediately report any attempts of blackmail so the Gar can deal with it head on. Even among the children.”
Good to know, Tyler thought.
They continued to talk around her, as if she wasn’t there, not including her in the discussion. She picked up the bottle of wine and walked out the open wall into the yard. Saber rose from his seat to follow.
“No. Sit and enjoy your meal. I want to speak with her privately anyway,” Mankell said, taking his glass with him.
He followed her to the tree in the middle of the yard, found her leaning against it on the back side with the bottle tilted up for a good drink. The bottom of the rim rested on her lower lip, to let the wine roll gently into her mouth.
“May I have some of that, please?”
Bottle tilted downward from her mouth to stop the flow, she turned it to pour for him.
“I hadn’t been told you would be here for the ceremony,” she said, emptying the bottle into his glass. “It was a nice surprise.”
“I was happy to receive the invitation. I would ask how you’ve been, but I’m sure it’s understandably complicated. I heard your co-worker and housemate killed herself. I am sorry.”
“I’m not,” she replied, watching him sip from the slightly over-full glass. “She’s not in pain anymore. There wasn’t anything more they could do for her and she hid her pain too well. Even from me. She planned her timing carefully to ensure her success.”
“You’re very pragmatic,” he said, offering her the glass to drink from.
She took it, sipped, handed it back with a shrug. “I don’t know what else I feel about it right now. I don’t know how I feel about a lot of things at the moment. A week and a half ago, I buried my grandmother. Then I was forcibly taken from my home and illegally arrested. The next minute, I’m married to prevent immediate transfer to a prison where I would have died within days. Then my best friend kills herself.”
“Plus a full wedding party too finish it off,” he added.
“It’s been a busy couple of weeks, Kell. Everything annoys me right now. Everything angers me. It would be nice if the universe would stop for a second.”
He took her hand, looking softly into her eyes with a compassion she’d not seen from anyone in a long time. “Then let us two stand here and be still, and let the universe spin on its own without us.”
The Universe did almost stop for those few seconds. The heaviness on her lightened, if only for a breath.
“You are far too young to have this much pressure put on you. How can I help?” he asked.
“You already have, and I thank you for it.”
“You have an entire planet to roam and yet you feel caged?” he asked.
“Am I that transparent?” she asked in return.
“To someone who knows you well enough. I think I do. Right now, you’d like nothing more than to vanish for three or four days.”
She could not deny it, could only smile and look to the sky. “However far away the boundary is, if there is life on the other side of that boundary, it is still a cage. My current cage maybe very large, but I know what life lies beyond. I hate being confined.”
“I understand. I do bring some news, if you would hear it.”
She nodded her consent.
“Rosaas Untrock’s farm was set afire several days ago. All the barns burned to the ground. Several of his people were injured. One of his sons died.”
“I’m sorry sorry to hear that. Because he was voted in? Who did it?” she asked.
“The vote between him and Gar Letcalf was very close. Sometimes there are reprisals. He is making whiskey now rather than rebuild the chicken barns.”
“Mankell,” they heard from near the house.
He leaned back to see around the tree. Shestna had called to him.
“Bring her.”
Mankell returned to his previous position, seeing her glowering expression. “What? What is wrong?”
“He tells you to bring me, like I’m the family dog. I am within the walls of my husband’s home and reduced to the status of an object. A man from another planet is addressed rather than his wife, the 1st Daughter of the planet.”
“No, Zitara. A man from another planet was treated like a servant in your husband’s home. I was given instruction by the Master of the House.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way. That didn’t seem quite so bad.
He finished the last bit of wine and took her hand to walk toward the open dining room, where Shestna and Dorn waited. The four companion guards were nowhere to be seen. They’d been sent to the movies, as it were.
Shestna led the way down the corridor to the last bedroom on the right, one his older sons used when they visited.
Mankell and Shestna bega
n a discussion of how to start, in which of the two beds, who would have her first, what was off the table. By the time they had it settled and turned to her, she wasn’t there.
“Where did she go?” Shestna asked.
Dorn looked as well, having not seen her leave.
Shestna called out for a Neverseen, who informed him his wife had left the house out the front door some fifteen minutes earlier.
“Did she say where she was going?” Shestna asked.
“No, Your Highness. She said not one word, only shook her head.”
Tyler teleported to her gateand went inside. Door closed behind herself, she changed the access codes for the gate, the front door, and also for the teleport traps. They’d notice she’d left eventually and come looking for her. Fucking annoying. They had how much time and could not be bothered to discuss privately the details of the arrangement? Haggling over her?
“Tell me when one of them shows up,” she said to the Neverseen on duty.
Her garden waited and she went back to the spot where she’d left off the day Encito had come to pull weeds with her.
Mankell had been right. She would have loved to disappear for a few days. Or weeks. Right now, some time on Crecorday sounded fantastic. If only she could teleport back in time by herself.
She had worked her way through the last four feet of the bed before the Neverseen came out to tell her Dorn had come to the gate.
“Tell him they should have all pertinent discussions and then invite me back to join them tomorrow.”
The Neverseen went to the door intercom to repeat the message.
“Open the damn gate!” Dorn snapped.
“I cannot, Your Highness. The Mistress has changed the codes and I do not know them.”
Cursing under his breath, Dorn went looking for the K’Tran men who made up her security team. He would have to get their phone numbers. He found them at the market.
“She’s returned to her home. You need to be there. Give me your phone information. I don’t have it.”
Saber stopped Docku from touching phones. “Just a minute. What happened? She was supposed to be there for hours yet, or even until morning. What happened?”
“I don’t know. One moment she was there and the next, she had left. She won’t let me in to find out,” Dorn admitted.
“You think we’re going to sneak you in?” Saber asked.
“It would not be sneaking,” Dorn denied.
“Yes, it would,” Teagan said.
“You can come back with us but you’ll wait outside the gate until she says otherwise,” Saber decided.
Front door open to watch them come through the gate, she let the four through and closed the gate in Dorn’s face.
“What’s going on?” Saber asked her.
“I dislike being treated like a piece of meat, ignored until they figure out how to cooperate and fuck it,” she said, already heading for the door to the garden.
“Wait. They hadn’t even had that discussion?”
“Apparently not. It certainly didn’t turn me on. Rather, it pissed me off. Again. Seems they’re very good at that. I’m going to stay here for a couple days and enjoy my own company. You guys can come and go so long as at least two of you are here. I know Ch’Wik’s son is just born. Call him and ask when he’d be comfortable coming back.”
“I talked to him a little bit ago. He’ll come back tomorrow. His wife and baby are doing fine and she’s got a sister to stay and help. Let me go tell Dorn to go away and I’ll help you with the weeds,” Saber said, and jogged off.
He couldn’t help the shit-eatin’ grin on his face when he walked out the front door to the gate.
“Well?” Dorn impatiently interrupted the chuckling.
“Next time you want to share a woman, get the penis hierarchy settled privately and beforehand, not while she’s standing there feeling like a blow up doll. Or worse, a whore. I would think you three would know better, being Princes and Gars. Leave her alone for a couple days and try again.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dorn complained. “Tell her to come here right now.”
Saber laughed. “No. She’ll talk to you when she feels like it, not when she’s ordered to. Go away until she summons you.”
He turned around and went inside.
“No one comes inside that gate,” he told the other three. “Be inside or out as you want. No discussing the situation with anyone. We will maintain her privacy. She’ll either let them in herself or give one of us the code when she’s ready to talk to one of them.”
Volf went with Saber to the garden, sitting to read while Saber helped pull weeds. Every few lines, he looked up to be sure everything was the same. Tyler had started on another, less dense, flower bed They were moving quickly up the inside of the wall.
Shestna scowled at his own stupidity when Dorn told him why she’d left and that she had locked herself inside her house compound.
“Do you know the override code to the gate and door?” he asked.
“I do not. Father has not given me that access.”
In two seconds, Shestna was on the video phone to his father, explaining the situation. The Emperor laughed.
“You realize you have misnamed her, don’t you?”
“How so, Father?”
“She is no Femina. She is a Feralina if ever there was one.”
Feral: Wild, untamed and untamable.
“May we please have access to go settle this, Father?” Shestna asked.
“I am not going to interfere for you every time you misstep and make her angry. You will have to deal with your wife all by yourself. You’ve had enough mistakes. I should think you had figured it out.”
“She is not Voranian. Her reactions are never what would be expected.”
“Yes. She is an Earthling, from an upstart country called the United States of America, where a woman is absolutely free to choose everything about her own life. So welcome to Earth, First Prince. She has her own plot of it under my personal protection. You shall have to meet her on her own terms and conduct your own diplomatic negotiations from now on.”
The section of wall went blank. Shestna released a heavy sigh, not sure how to proceed.
“I’m sorry, Mankell—“
Mankell was no longer there. Shestna sent a text asking where he’d gone.
Where do you think? Be patient and wait, came the reply.
Saber pausedto look at his beeping phone. “Mankell is outside the gate. He has a message for you.”
“Yeah? What?”
Saber typed back “what?” and waited the moment for the return message.
“Treating allies like enemies will be your undoing, Zitara.”
She tossed the weed in her hand to the sidewalk, staring at the ground in front of her.
“That’s mean,” Saber said.
“But he’s right. Let him in.”
“I need the code.”
She gave it, continuing to work while he went to the front door to open the gate and let his Gar in.
“Did she cry?” Mankell asked.
“Not this time. She just fumed and pulled weeds. I think she pulls weeds to stop herself from throttling people with her thoughts,” Saber answered, and that was all the answer he was going to give. “She’s through that door, beyond the walk.”
Arriving at the end of the building, a gesture brought Volf off the bench and into the corridor while Mankell went out into the garden.
[Come and sit with me] she heard his voice in her head.
He wasn’t telepathic, but knew she would hear him. She finished with the current weed, stood up to brush the knees of her skirt, smacked her hands back and forth to knock off some of the dirt, taking her time and deciding what she was going to do. She ended up teleporting to the bench he was approaching, arriving already sitting on it.
“When you were in my home visiting, not all that long ago, you enjoyed watching two men vie for your attentions. You enjoyed playing them off each oth
er for your own amusement. Today when that very thing was happening, you walked away and locked everyone out. To say you’ve changed is an understatement,” he said, remaining standing in front of her.
“Seems like a lifetime ago to me. Too many men have been dying for wanting me, or for someone thinking another man wants me. I don’t have the stomach for it anymore,” she admitted. “I can’t stand that kind of discord now. I knew you weren’t going to fight over it but hearing you bicker about it hit me like a panic. I couldn’t stand the energy that was building in the room. I had to remove myself from it until I no longer felt it. This was the only protected place.”
He let her words sit for a few seconds, imagined being in that position. He remembered what Ch’Wik had told him about the night Osan had been waiting in her room for her, how she’d not been able to sleep without the men staged feet apart along the path from the door to the bed closet.
The scared little girl inside that hard exterior. He took her hand, feeling the dirt still there from digging up weeds, brushed a wisp of her hair from her eyes around behind her ear.
“The stress of this last couple weeks really has been getting to you, hasn’t it? Shestna doesn’t know a thing about how you’re really feeling inside, does he?”
“He should, as much as I’ve told him off,” she smirked.
He sat beside her. “That doesn’t mean he’s heard you. He’s had his own side of all of this to deal with. So tell me. Tell me exactly how it feels inside.”
“It feels like the entire galaxy is conspiring to destroy me from the inside out. I have this constant hurricane of voices. This constant nagging that things aren’t right but I can’t fix them. People telling me I’m supposed to be this or that, expecting things of me that I was never prepared to be. Now people are dying around me like being too close to me causes it. I was told I would have to give up everything and everyone. I was not told that would take the form of multiple and repeated deaths of people I love and people I need and people I trusted, one after the other in such rapid succession. It’s beyond cruel. People who helped me have died. People who loved me have died. When I let someone get close, they die.”
