Shrouded: Heartstone Book One

by Frances Pauli

  She was there somewhere. His Heart mate.

  “Greetings, Highnesses.” Nerala curtseyed before he’d caught up with Mofitan. She nodded to him as he slid to a stop beside his rival. “What a delightful surprise.”

  “Madame Nerala,” Mofitan answered.

  Dolfan nodded his head in her direction, but he watched a blue wig at the far side of the group. The static pulsed every time the woman wearing it moved. They all pressed together, shifting places and sneaking looks at him and Mofitan. He tried to listen to Nerala’s prattle and still catch each face in the crowd.

  “…our new arrivals to their rooms and let them rest,” she was saying. Her words faded against his internal reaction. His brain, his blood, buzzed with it. The source had to be here.

  “Well, then.”

  He could tell from the woman’s voice that she felt slighted. He should have felt bad, should have torn his gaze from the blue wig long enough to make eye contact, to make amends. But the crowd shifted and his senses blurred out the thought.

  She’d been hiding behind the other woman with the blue wig. He knew it as well as he knew her face, though he’d never seen it before. Her gray eyes flashed to his and he knew she’d been hiding, just as he knew she could feel the same static, just as he knew that her brain hummed along with his.

  Her hair shagged around her shoulders, honey golden and only a shade lighter than her skin. She stood two feet shorter than him at the very least, but the set of her jaw and that cool spark in her eyes said enough. They said she knew him too. They said that he was in a whole world of trouble.

  “Did you see them?” Murrel hissed for the third time. “I mean, wow.”

  “You said that already.” Tarren nudged Vashia and chuckled.

  “They’re purple.” Murrel sighed and sank further into her lounge.

  “More lilac, really.”

  Vashia watched them argue. If she’d had to venture an opinion, she’d have called it taupe—smoky tan with just a hint of lilac. She kept her mouth clamped shut and let her brain recover from its encounter with the Shrouded.

  “And I told you they were big.” Murrel rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow.

  “You made them sound like giants,” Tarren said. She sat on her couch, as if she didn’t quite trust the padded cushions, as if the tasseled fringe might snag her in her sleep. “They’re just tall and—broad.”

  And muscular and exotic, Vashia amended to herself. The Shrouded had black hair that set off their unusual skin tone. They had muscles on their muscles, and shoulders as wide as…

  “Are you still with us, Vash?” Tarren stared at her. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “Maybe she’s in love,” Murrel sang.

  She sat up and shook her head. What could she tell them? Her vocal cords hadn’t felt like working since the hangar. She’d followed Madame Nerala like the other girls. She’d marched with them through the causeways, the atrium where the dome promised a full view of the planet once it rose and the fronds of plants she’d never heard of clung and twisted over the walls. She’d followed, but her body protested each step.

  By the time they’d reached their room, the humming had long since faded. The static evaporating as they left the Shrouded Princes behind, but the memory of it still fuzzed her thinking.

  “Well,” Tarren reached out her leg and poked at her with one toe. “Are you in love, then? Is it the fairy tale after all?”

  Was it? She caught the note in Tarren’s voice and cringed. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t feed them false comfort. She shook her head and sighed. “I’m just tired.”

  “The one with the braid,” Murrel whispered. “He looked right at me.”

  “They definitely had a way about them.” Tarren lay back and stared at the ceiling. “That’s for certain.”

  “I told you they were big.”

  “Shut up, Murrel.”

  Vashia felt the urge to chuckle and just let it fly. They’d been given clean clothes, uniform, sage jumpsuits that hugged and warmed enough to make her sleepy. She snuggled into the lounge and closed her eyes. Maybe she was just tired. She’d been under more than her share of stress. Her body might just have had enough. Maybe the static was nothing more than fatigue. Maybe it had nothing to do with taupe skin or muscles.

  She didn’t remember a braid. Must have been the other one. As she drifted off to sleep she pictured hazel eyes and jet black tendrils framing a face that seemed much too familiar.

  Mofitan disappeared after the hangar. Dolfan let him go. He wandered back to the relay office, to the gauges and the Gauss and stared at the readings until his vision blurred. He didn’t want the throne. It hadn’t been a lie. He still didn’t want it.

  He flicked a switch and watched the elevator cars pass cargo between the moon base and his world. He didn’t care to rule Shroud, but he’d take it if that was the path that brought him to the Heart, if he could stand beside the stone and understand for once what that bond meant.

  He wanted it now. He’d seen his future in gray eyes and honey hair. Why the Heart would make him king, he couldn’t guess, but he’d take it. The Heart didn’t lie, and it couldn’t be denied. If he bonded first, Mofitan and Haftan and the rest of them would have no choice but to accept it.

  Dolfan leaned back in his chair and watched the colors swirling in the Shroud. He didn’t know how to rule. He didn’t know why he’d felt the pull, especially here, so far from the Heart’s dome. No matter. He knew it now. He’d known it the second he saw her face. The Kingmaker had arrived. Once she’d passed Nerala’s training and they returned to the palace, then nothing would separate them ever again.

  They ate breakfast in the atrium. The dome overhead framed a blazing view of Shroud, swirling in shades of blush and yellow. Storms, Vashia knew, but from a distance undeniably beautiful. How would they live inside that? For the first time, she imagined what her future might look like. Did they have cloud cities? Giant beetles? She grinned and looked back to her plate. At least they ate well. The station food processors spit out fare that beat their ship’s stores by a mile. She nibbled on tiny bits of fruit shaped into gemstones and little stars and listened to the women around her chatter.

  “The one with the braid was too brawny,” Jine said. “I liked the shaggy one.”

  “Is there such a thing as too brawny?” Tarren winked at Vashia and dove into her own fruit. The Shrouded Princes had dominated the conversational topic all morning.

  Vashia snapped up another red star and reminded herself that she didn’t care who Jine thought was attractive. Besides, both men had been built similarly. Granted, she didn’t remember the braid, or what color that one’s eyes had been, but she got enough of a look to see the similarities in muscle mass and breadth.

  She’d heard enough as well. The constant giggling and whispers were impossible to drown out and drove her toward a considerable headache. Of course, it might have been the static. She’d woken from it twice during the night, and so far this morning she’d had three little mind storms already. None of the others, not one of them, seemed to be suffering the same malady. She’d listened carefully enough to figure that much out, hoping she wasn’t the only one who’d developed a psychic allergy to the Shrouded. No such luck, though. Again, Vashia was the odd one out.

  As if on cue, it started again. Faint and humming in the back of her skull, then swelling into a roar, a buzz that made her vision fizzle at the edges. She figured they were circling her—that or pacing back and forth outside the atrium. She’d marked at least four exits from the base’s central dome. The Shrouded Princes could be down any one of them. Wherever they were, Vashia was able to sense them from a bit of a distance.

  The effect swirled through her nervous system until her heel twitched and tapped to release some of the energy. She took another bite of her breakfast and scanned the pathways. The rest of the brides giggled and gossiped and remained completely oblivious.

  “She’s coming back,” Ta
rren spoke around a mouthful of fruit. “Madame Nerala.”

  Vashia followed her nod to the pathway. She caught sight of their teacher approaching, but the madness inside her head pulled from the other direction. He, or they, or one of them was coming from the other side.

  “Good morning, girls!” Nerala chirped as she burst from the potted plants like some exotic bird. She flit in her multicolored skirts to the nearest table and deposited an armload of data pads. “Enjoying the view?”

  “Is there a surface?” Tarren called out. The questions exploded from the rest of them, as if the cork had been removed from their pent up curiosity.

  “How long until we go down?”

  “Can we breathe that?”

  “When are we leaving?”

  The noise almost managed to drown out the static, but whichever prince approached, Vashia’s head spun in response. She clenched her jaw and forced herself to stare at Nerala.

  “Now, now,” the woman waved the questions away and waited for quiet. “Your questions will be answered in time. I promise. But first, I have something that might help right off the start.” She patted the stack of pads and smiled like a tiger. “These will answer most of your inquiries, and once you’ve studied them, I’ll sort out the rest.” She turned her head from side to side. “Who can help me pass them around?”

  Murrel stood up. While she scurried to help Madame Nerala, Vashia snuck a look over her shoulder in time to see him step into view. She’d known he was there, but the shock of him, the primal trembling under her skin, took her breath away.

  He stalked from the plants and stopped, his eyes locking with hers immediately, as if he’d sensed her position as well. She figured he probably had. He held her gaze without flickering away while he walked around the clearing’s edge. His head turned as he passed, kept her pinned with hazel eyes that peeked between the loose strands of his hair.

  “Good morning,” Nerala hooted, but he didn’t look at her. “Dolfan? Will you be joining us this morning?”

  Dolfan.

  “I’m afraid not.” The Shrouded Prince, Dolfan––Dolfan––shook his head, his silky, black hair dancing above his shoulders. “But I thought I’d see how you were doing.”

  Vashia would have bet her last credit that he spoke directly to her. The static in her head thrummed. Her skin shivered, and her eyes linked to his, not flinching either. She didn’t hear what Nerala said next, though the words drew his attention enough that he turned and Vashia was released from his visual grip.

  She dropped her eyes to her hands and found them clamped around the table’s edge. Something brushed her shoulder and she jumped, rattling her chair’s legs against the tile patio. Murrel waited at her side. She held out a data pad and fixed Vashia with a sly look.

  “You all right?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.” She took the device without meeting the girl’s eyes. Her head buzzed on; she didn’t trust herself to feign normalcy. Not with him so close. Dolfan. She flicked the pad’s switch and watched words manifest on the screen: Shrouded Law and Cultural Guide for Bride Candidates. Bride. Her eyes danced to the prince and back. In less than twenty-four hours, the word had adopted a whole different meaning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MOFITAN SMILED at him when he opened the door. The bastard grinned and leaned back in the chair. His feet rested on the lip of the Gauss readout, and his big hands locked behind his empty head.

  Dolfan smiled back and took a chair beside him. “How’s the Gauss?”

  “Same.” Mof twisted his seat from side to side and grinned. “Normal.”

  Normal. Except that he’d found the Kingmaker, except that the woman of his dreams, the perfect woman, took Madame Nerala’s station tour as they sat there grinning like idiots. Both of them grinning like idiots. Dolfan frowned. Why the hell was Mof so tickled?

  “What gives?”

  “Huh?” Mofitan slid his legs off the console and spun to face him. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? You’re grinning like a cat and civil.”

  Mofitan nodded and leaned back further. He turned back to the screens, but Dolfan could see his reflection smiling out from them. “Maybe I’m just in a good mood?”

  “Maybe.” Dolfan nodded, but a seed of suspicion still nagged.

  “Besides,” Mof continued. “When I’m king, it will go easier if we’re not at one another’s throat.”

  The seed sprouted into a sapling. The statement didn’t hold Mofitan’s usual swagger. He said it casually, matter-of-factly. “It will go easier if we get along,” Dolfan said, “whoever is chosen as king.”

  “Good, because when I’m king,”—he did it again—“I’ll need full support from the Council to be effective.”

  “Full support.” Dolfan let him play a little. In fact, he did wonder what Mofitan as king would look like. He let his curiosity answer. “And what would we be supporting, then?”

  “Defense increases.” Mofitan had thought his leadership through. The man had plans hovering around his edges that Dolfan had never suspected. “At least double the forces at the elevator platform, increase organized training and, eventually, a second platform.”

  “Two platforms? Won’t two elevators weaken our defenses?”

  Mof shook his head. “No elevator. A second platform, equidistant from the first, with a response fleet.”

  “Response to what?” Dolfan made the mistake of laughing, catching some of the old rivalry in Mofitan’s glare. “Seriously, Mof. An attack through the Shroud?”

  “It’s not impossible, but no. I was thinking back-up troops should the elevator or the base fall out of our hands.”

  “You’ve given this some serious thought.”

  “We are prince candidates, Dolfan. Shouldn’t we all give it some serious thought?”

  He had a valid point, and it stung more than a little. “I give serious thought to the Gauss, to running the base, to my work, Mofitan. I don’t have time to play king.”

  “Well, in your case, it would be playing.”

  “You seem awfully damn certain about that.”

  “Will you support me or not?”

  “What makes you think you won’t be supporting me?”

  The room went silent. Dolfan watched Mof’s reflection, and it watched him. They stared off for three breaths before both spoke in unison. “The Kingmaker is here.”

  Mof’s eyebrows lifted. Dolfan imagined his own expression matched the other’s surprise. How did Mofitan know about her? How could he? Dolfan felt the pull. He knew it every time he got within forty feet of the woman.

  “How did you know that?” Mofitan’s upper lip curled. Apparently the idea of peace had lost its appeal. “How do you know about her?”

  “How do you?”

  “I asked you first.”

  Dolfan stared at him. Mofitan couldn’t possibly know about her. Had he guessed, or was he just bluffing? Dolfan had recognized the Kingmaker the moment he laid eyes on her. Mofitan couldn’t possibly understand that. He’d almost convinced himself when Mof spoke.

  “I can feel her,” he said. “She’s here for me.”

  The atrium backed up to a sizable retail area where what traffic Moon Base 14 did see could shop for the Shroud’s few exports. Silk, some of the finest she’d ever seen, draped across long metal racks. Jewelers cut and set samplings of the stones mined from the Shroud core. As the women window shopped, Madame Nerala explained the finer things they could expect from life on their new home.

  Vashia hung back, trailing at the rear of the group and sneaking peeks at her data pad. She read while the others sighed and ran their fingers over the silks. When the group started for the next shop, Tarren tugged on her elbow, and she followed without glancing at the fabrics. She’d seen silk before.

  She’d seen gemstones too. So when the women clustered around an open shop to watch the cutters faceting, she flipped to the next chapter and read about her new legal status as a citizen of Shroud. She’d already
covered the safety section, though it would take a little study to understand the flag system and breathability. Vashia imagined she’d be wearing her breather regardless for some time. She’d skimmed the bit on magnetism, skipped the section on language for non-Genish speakers and flipped straight to the first section that she felt held direct relevance to her predicament.

  “Do they mine them on Shroud?” Murrel’s voice broke her concentration. The girl had pushed her way to the front again, and stood closer to Madame Nerala than Vashia would have felt comfortable with. “Then there must be a surface.”

  “Yes, of course.” Nerala beamed at her, easily won over by Murrel’s enthusiasm. “Underneath the Shroud.”

  “I thought the planet was called Shroud,” Tarren said. “Or is it The Shroud?”“Both.” Nerala placed her hands together and touched her lips with her fingertips. “The Shroud refers to the gaseous atmosphere, Shroud to the entire planet.”

  “But—” Murrel leapt in with another inquiry, but Vashia didn’t hear it.

  Instead, she shut off the pad and straightened. She scanned the mall to either side for the man she knew had just walked into range of her “allergy.” She’d almost gotten used to the sensation. This time, when she spotted him, a whisper of disappointment joined the static. It was the wrong one.

  He wore his hair shorn everywhere except for the single, long braid that somehow she’d missed the first time. But then, she hadn’t really been looking at him. She’d been right about the build though. This prince might have been Dolfan’s twin—only the hair differed much. Both were built like a barge sled, wide and chiseled for hard work.

  He stared at her with the same hazel eyes, but the look sent a different sort of reaction through her. A predatory possessiveness lurked in that gaze. She wanted to bolt from it, her legs moving instinctively. She backed straight into Tarren.