The Price of Desire (The HouseOf Light And Shadow Book 1)

by P. J. Fox

  A change of clothing had appeared with her tray, neatly folded on the bed. Gathering it to her, she slipped inside the bathroom and shut the door. She now possessed three things that, in her previous life, she’d never imagined could make her so happy: hot running water, toiletries, and a door that locked.

  After a few months in space—coming this far had taken a long time—her standards had fallen dramatically.

  She turned the water on and, after disrobing, pulled back the tempered glass door and stepped into the spray. It felt wonderful. She scrubbed at herself under the scalding water; she still felt filthy, even though she’d obviously been bathed while unconscious. When they’d crash landed, she’d already been caked in the accumulated filth of months. There were no proper showers on the types of ships she’d been forced to use.

  She sighed, luxuriating in the feel of the soap on her skin. Even now, in the midst of disaster, the simple act of cleaning herself lifted her spirits and restored her sense of being a real human being. She turned her face to the spray, reveling in the simple animal pleasure of having her basic needs met. Then, reaching for the shampoo bottle, she poured some into her hands and massaged it thoroughly into her scalp. It smelled exotic: sandalwood, she thought, with a hint of something else. Not a woman’s fragrance, came the unbidden thought. She shivered at the reminder that this was borrowed space. The heady, wood-based scent filled the shower, borne on the almost opaque mist. She leaned back against the tile and tried to figure out what she was going to do. No solutions came to mind.

  Forcing herself to leave the haven of the shower, she buffed herself with a towel and dried her long, straight hair. She gave herself excuses not to leave the bathroom and face the real world, examining the various personal items and turning each one over with interest. She found a razor, soap in a wooden dish that smelled of sandalwood, just like the shampoo, conditioner and bath gel, and what appeared to be a shaving brush. A bottle of cologne. The entire bathroom had been ordered into an exacting, almost painful neatness and gave her an even more frightening picture of the man who used it. People who forced even inanimate objects into such rigid submission were people who craved control.

  Aria forced herself to face the mirror. She’d consciously avoided her reflection so far, for fear of what she might see. Tucking a piece of straw blonde hair behind her ear, she forced herself to take stock of what privation and stress had wrought. She’d never been a heavy person, but their virtual starvation diet aboard first one ship and then another had wasted her down into almost nothing. She ran a hand over her chest, feeling her ribs. Her pale skin had become translucent, her eyes startlingly blue in their smudged sockets. Her hair, at least, looked better now that she’d dried it but it still poured down in a lank curtain over her shoulders.

  Her skin was beginning to chill and she dressed quickly, stepping into her panties and fastening her bra and then, shivering now, stepping into the dress and zipping it up. She looked like an acolyte at some long-forgotten temple, the simple linen shift clinging to her bony frame and pooling gracefully at her feet. She smiled slightly, surprised and pleased at how flattering the garment was—and felt, for the first time since leaving Solaris, like she might be a real girl after all.

  Was it wrong to take pleasure in something so petty and ultimately meaningless, especially at a time like this? Considering the question, she decided that the answer was no. Sometimes, she thought, it was when things were the most wrong that one most needed these simple victories—and could, indeed, benefit the most from them.

  She was alive; she was clean; she had food. Right now, that had to be enough or she’d go insane. What else, after all, did she have to be happy about? She needed to find the girls! They—this man, whoever he was, probably sixty if he was a day and married with three children—could do anything they wanted to her so long as the girls were left unharmed. She’d explain as much, if anyone ever appeared.

  In the meantime, she supposed, she’d stare at space debris and try not to panic. Just like she’d done all morning. Unlocking the bathroom door, she stepped out into the cabin.

  And found a man sitting on the couch.

  SEVEN

  Unable to help the small, strangled noise that escaped her throat, she darted back into the bathroom. She scrabbled for the lock, cursing her clumsiness and finally flipping it shut with a strangled oath. Then she waited. Her heart raced as bitter adrenaline filled her mouth. This was it. He’d bang on the door—or, God knew, break it down—and force her to come back out and then he’d rape her. She’d been convinced that this was what would happen since she’d woken up and found herself on a strange ship.

  Except there was no sound.

  She waited. And waited. She was thirsty, so she drank some water from the sink. She paced. Eventually, a combination of fatalism and simple curiosity forced her hand. She couldn’t live inside a bathroom forever. She pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. Maybe he’d left, she reasoned, or fallen asleep. Or died. That last option sounded especially appealing. Briefly, she entertained fantasies of, after he’d finished with her, waiting until he’d fallen asleep and stabbing him with a fork.

  She cracked the door open and peered out. He was still there, on the couch, and appeared to be neither asleep nor dead. He’d relaxed back into the leather cushions, one arm resting on the back of the couch and one leg crossed negligently over the other. He radiated an aura of casual, almost lazy dominion as he waited for her to emerge.

  This, she realized, must be the commander.

  Their eyes met. Her heart skipped a beat. He smiled slightly, a quirk of the lips that wasn’t friendly and didn’t reach his eyes. Her first thought, incongruously, was that he’s so young. When she’d heard commander, she’d expected someone at least fifty—maybe older. But this man couldn’t have been more than thirty, thirty-five at the most; although his eyes belonged to someone much older.

  “Please,” he said in a drawling, cultured accent. “Sit.” He gestured to the chair opposite.

  Not knowing what else to do, she sat. She folded her hands in her lap, where they clutched at each other nervously. He waited. Finally, through a supreme act of will, she raised her eyes and got her first good look at him. He was in uniform, the dark blue wool much more formal than anything anyone in the Union wore. Then again, she reminded herself, this was a totalitarian state. Everything was meant to intimidate. And it did. But more than his uniform or his authority or his obvious power over her, what frightened her was his eyes. Something in them made her blood run cold. He appeared to be drinking in her fear, savoring it along with the knowledge that she was completely and utterly at his mercy.

  She’d never felt so vulnerable, or so miserable. Bizarrely, some rebellious corner of her mind took that precise moment to point out that he was handsome. Startlingly so. This was…not a realization she wanted, but now that she’d had it she found it impossible to ignore.

  His skin was pale but with a warm, tanned glow that contrasted sharply with his raven black hair. He had beautiful bone structure, a strong jaw and a firm chin. That his nose was straight and just slightly too long only solidified his appeal. Slightly bowed lips were still curved into that faint ghost of a smile. Something about them, though, seemed to suggest an expressiveness of character hidden beneath the cool façade. She didn’t know how she’d guessed at the existence of this other dimension, only that she had—and, equally inexplicably, that he almost never revealed it. But what arrested her most was his eyes: set beneath well-shaped eyebrows, they were an astonishing shade of violet. And, watching her watch him, they were entirely too knowing.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “What?” she stammered.

  “Do you like what you see?”

  Her face flamed as she dropped her gaze, staring intently at her hands and willing him to get it over with. Whatever he intended to do. Her heart raced. She felt nauseous, and naked under his searching gaze. But once again he surprised her. “I apologize,” he said in that
same cultured accent, now with a faint trace of amusement. “That was rather impudent. Coffee?”

  She looked up, confused. He was offering her coffee? Someone—she doubted very much that it was him—had left a service on the table: an ornately sculptured silver coffee pot with a wooden handle and two matching cups arranged on a lacquered tray. He poured her a cup, added cream and sugar and, leaning forward slightly, put it down in front of her.

  She didn’t touch it. He could do what he wanted with her, she couldn’t stop him, but he couldn’t force her to act like this was a normal social occasion. She wouldn’t drink coffee with him like they were friends while he sat there and made plans to rape her or sell her or worse.

  He sipped his own coffee, apparently content to wait.

  And then she finally realized what else bothered her about his eyes: they weren’t human. The differences should have been obvious; but she hadn’t expected to see them, so she hadn’t. It was difficult to notice, too, because the light in the room wasn’t all that bright and his irises were dark: his pupils weren’t round like hers but slitted, like a cat’s—or a reptile’s. That but for this one difference he could have passed for Solarian drew all the more attention to it.

  “You are Aria Hahn,” he remarked, “and I am Kisten Mara Sant.”

  “Where are the girls?” She willed her heart not to beat so fast.

  “They are well.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  He made an offhanded gesture. “That remains to be seen.”

  “Are you going to enslave them, too?” Her tone was caustic.

  Something flashed in his eyes and was gone. She’d expected anger, which would have been easier to take. Instead he just watched her, as though waiting to see what she might do next. She hated feeling like she was on display, like some sort of zoo animal, and felt a surge of anger and resentment that momentarily blotted out her fear.

  He sipped his coffee. “I haven’t enslaved you,” he remarked.

  “You’re holding me prisoner for your own perverted purposes,” she countered.

  He shrugged, unmoved. “You have nowhere else to go.”

  His response stymied her. He was right, of course. He couldn’t have captured her if she hadn’t been marooned on that hateful planet in the first place. She had no one to blame for her predicament except herself, and the knowledge rankled. She paused, as a disturbing thought occurred to her. He’d called her by name. “How—how do you know my name?”

  “By the same method I used to discover your location; I listened. We’ve heard nearly every conversation that’s taken place aboard your now-defunct ship for the past several weeks—private and public. I learned all manner of interesting things about you, Aria.” That unpleasant smile again. “Which, incidentally, I apologize for not rescuing you sooner. Something came up.” Something came up. How like a man. He apparently didn’t intend to elaborate.

  Remembering the conversations she’d had, the intimate details she’d revealed, Aria flushed. She and the girls had discussed anything and everything before the crash; there had been nothing to do except talk. She’d told stories about her parents, her sister, the hated Aiden and his pompous, self-important attitude. She’d discussed her reasons for wanting to leave Solaris, her dissatisfaction with the Union as a whole and her belief that there had to be something else out there. She didn’t want to only know about the world from books; she wanted to see it, really experience it before she died. She wanted to have adventures.

  Except…not these kinds of adventures. “I see,” she said tightly.

  He put down his cup. “I’m an exile, too,” he told her. “Just like you.”

  “You’re nothing like me,” she said, surprising herself with her own vehemence.

  “Are you so sure?” he asked, tone mild.

  “Yes!” She was trembling, now, with rage and fear and indignation. “You’re an evil man.”

  “On what do you base that assertion?”

  “On the fact that you kidnapped me!”

  “I see.” He considered her statement. His eyes were cold, as something moved in their depths. Was it—anger? “So the responsible thing to do, I take it, would have been to leave you in the jungle to die—or are you suggesting that I should have let the slavers kill you outright?”

  She stared down at her hands. How could she explain that this, this—absorption was worse than death?

  “That dress becomes you,” he remarked.

  Her skin heated with shame; she didn’t want him looking at her. She hated him.

  He should have let her go; she was sure that they both knew that. And, whatever he claimed, his motives were not noble. She remembered back to something he’d said a minute ago, about his being an exile. An exile—from what? Was he a wanted criminal? A pirate? Some kind of slaver, himself? He was wearing a uniform, but that could mean anything.

  She glanced up. He was still watching her. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said, almost to himself. “You wouldn’t know, would you.”

  She waited, wondering what he meant.

  “I,” he said, a faint note of derision in his voice, “am the least favored scion of our ruling house, House Mara Sant.” He was from Brontes, then. Which might explain the eyes…she thought again of certain differences, and suppressed a shudder. “I am a Prince of the Blood,” he continued, sounding both embittered and proud, “third in line for the Dragon Throne, and grand nephew to the Emperor. Owing to a…political dispute, I am now also an exile. Presented with a choice between resigning my commission in the navy and leaving to become governor of a mining planet and staying to face my uncle’s assassins….” He shrugged slightly, as if the choice were of no consequence.

  “A…political dispute?”

  “I gambled,” he said bluntly. “I lost.”

  “You seem…sanguine,” she remarked, surprise blunting the instinct to guard her tongue.

  “He shouldn’t have let me live.”

  That anyone could discuss their own murder with such cold calculation horrified her. He horrified her. She chewed her lip, digesting all that he’d told her: not merely a naval officer, but a prince—and a maverick one at that. She wondered what he could have done.

  “So you see,” he finished, “I’m no more free than you.” He laughed, then, but without humor. “We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Tarsonis to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.”

  “No I am not!” she cried, before she could stop herself.

  “Yes,” he replied calmly, “you are.”

  “So I’m a slave, after all,” she said bitterly.

  “You’re not a slave.” His voice was surprisingly gentle.

  “I can’t leave.”

  He conceded the point with a small, offhanded gesture.

  “I hate you,” she told him, meaning it.

  “We have more in common than you think,” he replied inscrutably.

  “What do you want from me?” It was the one question he hadn’t answered, and it was the most vital.

  “Right now,” he replied, “I want you to join me for dinner.”

  EIGHT

  Dinner? “I’d rather not,” she said stiffly.

  “I thought I could show you the rest of the ship, as well,” he added, as though she hadn’t spoken.

  “Thank you, but no.” She sniffed.

  “You’re being a child,” he said, a hint of reproach to his voice. “As you so rightly point out, you’re an unwilling guest—my unwilling guest. Is there any sense in starving yourself and refusing to leave this room, simply to prove a point of which we’re both well aware?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He didn’t respond.

  After a moment he stood up. “Come,” he told her, “or be carried.”

  She followed him out into the hall. Large rectangular storage compartments lined the otherwise fe
atureless walls, filled with hosing, emergency gear, weapons, and less identifiable things. Everything was the same bland institutional gray, broken only by the occasional beige wood-grain door. A narrow strip of windows curved along at eye level, looking out onto the void.

  “Atropos,” he told her, “is the Chancellor’s—my father’s—flagship. Its purpose being diplomatic, it is rather more luxurious than a true ship of the line.”

  She looked around the spartan environment. This was luxurious?

  “My old command, Nemesis, did not have such frivolities as hot water.”

  She turned, staring. “You’re joking.”

  He seemed surprised. “Of course not.”

  “But that’s….” She bit her lip.

  The look he turned on her was inscrutable. “I wasn’t coddled at boarding school, either.”

  From everything she’d seen so far, the Bronte were a cruel, unyielding people and their empire was every bit as hateful as she’d been led to believe. The man beside her thought that hot water was coddling. She hated to imagine what childhood was like on Brontes if it produced adults like this.

  She stole a quick glance at him. He was tall and broad-shouldered and he walked with a dancer’s posture. In another life, she might have thought him handsome. He certainly fit the classical definition of the term—more than fit it. But it was something about his eyes and the set of his mouth that prevented her from being attracted to him. His was the cold, inhuman and utterly unforgiving beauty of a forest in winter, or a snow-capped mountain. It inspired awe, but it stole breath and life with equal ease and equal disinterest.

  What did he want with her? She was small and slight and had never considered herself beautiful. She had no special skills or talents, except those she’d developed out of necessity over the past few months. She wrote stories, sometimes, that no one read but she doubted somehow that he cared much for stories—hers or anyone’s.

  Maybe if she found out, she could convince him to let her go.