by Calista Skye
Starset 2 (c) LX (Calista Skye) 2015
Developmental Editing: Lux Development/Inktrip
Intent on keeping the secret of the blood secure at all costs, Prince Kesh braves a ritual that is utterly forbidden in the eyes of the Allied Forces. It is one that will bring the memotic's form into manifested being with the very power no one outside of Teleran culture can know exists. It will mean escaping the royal pod with the hair he plucked from the head of her corpse. It will mean calling her memotic spirit into his keep. And when he has raised her, it will mean hunting down the fiends who would drain him of every drop of blood in his body, down to the bone marrow to recover the DNA they've stolen, but only if he can undo the programming binding the coil of her consciousness and convince her to lead him to them.
Falling in love with her is not a part of the plan.
A BBW, Scifi Warrior Prince Romance (set in the world of Starset and The Darkanian's Claim).
STARSET 2
1
Kesh
Kesh clutched the scarlet box tight in his bejeweled fingers, a grimace flecking his wan mouth as the royal pod disengaged the dock release. He squeezed his eyes shut when the images of his people flooded his vision again. Dripping in black plasma. Cheeks hollowed. Circles formed beneath their eyes. Consciousness utterly drained out of them. He was powerless. Even Tarik and their father were powerless, or at least, feigned to be. No one had even begun to discuss a plan between them. And his youngest brother's wild ideas had largely gone ignored. No one listened to Doon. He was one year into his adulthood and third in line to the throne. A distraction. A pathless boy with an improbable destiny as a failsafe – should he ever need to be called upon in the event of Kesh or Tarik's death.
Kesh sighed softly over the whir of the pod engines.
Doon's ideas were born of lunacy, anyways. He'd do well to listen to the royal tutors, and learn the strategies of war. The traditions. Without that base, he'd be the end of his people if he ever had to assume the throne.
His head was too hot for such a gargantuan task.
Far too hot.
Fingers tapping the red box, Kesh quickly stilled them. His eyes darted to his father and brother and Tarik's new love, Shala. Then his eyes found his mother's, and she held his gaze with a knowing too keen for his comfort. He quickly averted his eyes and held his restless digits still over the box, refusing to draw the slightest attention to it.
When he was sure his mother's attention was trained on something else, he slipped it into in his pocket and folded his hands in his lap. Eyes slipping closed when the turbulence of the pod's journey through the Cyricel belt shook a little too heartily for comfort, he fought back against what he'd known he might have to do from the moment the Tavalar girl fell under his brother's hands.
The thing he'd spoken of to no one other than Han. The thing that could both ruin or save his people, dependent upon the weighed consideration of the stars.
It was an impossible position to be in. One no one would envy. And yet, it was a burden that had only been bestowed to him, and he knew why. Tarik was too full of himself for the task, too charismatic and bursting with the presence any starred heir apparent ever was. His path, by all indications, was assured. Tarik was golden and beloved. He believed himself without error.
And that wouldn't help any of them.
It would lull worries to sleep for a time. It would inflate false courage into the hearts of the people before it broke those same hearts clean in two when his lacking might became universally clear.
Kesh didn't covet Tarik's position. His were the thoughts of a son whose voice didn't glitter brightly enough to be heard. And for that reason, Kesh would hold his words, doing what would surely become unavoidable under the cover of dark.
~
Kesh watched Tarik tear into the Shomsha, glistening in savory Lolo sauce under the artificial lighting of the royal pod. By all appearances, no expense had been spared to wrap the royal family in the usual comforts to which they were accustomed, but it all rang too hollowly in Kesh's heart. While they dined on delicacies meant to assuage the woes assaulting their minds, their people struggled and withered under the effects of their lost blood.
Blood that could not be transfused or otherwise replaced, only taken. They were not royals, and as such, they lacked the hope of full regeneration. The hope of Iala. Really, they lacked any hope at all. Frowning at the counter-thought entering his mind raising objection, he drew a sharp breath and hid behind his wine, sipping it like a bitter, medicinal brew.
His thoughts were impossible now.
He had to stop thinking them.
"You've barely touched your Shomsha."
Eyes flicking up to find his mother's warm gaze, he quickly looked away. Kesh felt only shame lately, as if he knew he would betray them all eventually. Again, not for selfish reasons, but for service. A service everyone at the table should be consumed with in that moment, even as it seemed all was lost.
"I've no true appetite."
He managed a smile that his heart did not support and felt the eyes of his brothers' upon him. Tarik's especially. Foolish of him to be so obvious about his discontent, but he'd never been good at artifice. Tarik would naturally be suspicious. Doon, intrigued. His father, of course, wouldn't notice at all.
"We are all quite weary. It's understandable."
"Unavoidable," Tarik interjected. "How are we to enjoy our spoils while our people suffer as they do?"
Uncanny how Tarik managed to never miss an opportunity to take the stage. Just a moment ago, he was all but inhaling the Shomsha shroom, Sissel shoots, and Shu bulbs, like someone without a care in the world.
"We should crush them. Find them and make them beg at our feet for mercy!"
Foolish, foolish Doon. It was all Kesh could do to keep his head from falling to his hands. He was sure he'd have a headache before this dinner was out. They'd go around and around in circles of meaningless outrage, but not one sound strategy would be proposed.
"May I be excused?"
Better to remove himself from the evening's circus. It was the only way to keep down the little bit of food he'd eaten.
"Of cour-"
"You will sit with your family and eat the food you have been blessed with, royal son."
Kesh grit his teeth, but quickly unclenched his jaw from the place in the shadows in which he lived, which were only just a hair brighter than Doon's.
The king had spoken. Kesh would sit and eat. But he wouldn't smile or enjoy it.
Constrained by the silence descending on the table, Kesh lifted a cut of the shroom to his tongue, making a slow show of chewing it tight between his teeth. What a prison this family was and had always been. He'd come to learn early that there was little to be done about it. As if fate had placed iron chains on his wrists and ankles at birth, adjusted with each passing year to only just accommodate his size, he'd walked with just enough freedom to play the role of the privileged and "wise", but he'd never known what it was truly like to feel stars on his face for him alone.
His every breath was in duty to the family's face.
Kesh wanted more.
He wanted his reason for being to actually serve the people.
Feeling his mother's eyes upon him again, he spared her a glance and a half-smile meant to reassure her. There was an apology in her gaze, one that came from a fellow prisoner peeking out at him from gilded bars.
Her heart was in the right place, always had been, but her voice was as weightless as any puppet queen's he'd ever read of or met. She was the very definition of a figurehead, and for that reason, Kesh could not cling to the warmth of her em
brace or weep softly pressed to her chest.
Not in years. He'd stopped that sort of thing as a small child.
Now a man, he endured the ice of his father's heart dutifully, biding his time as he always did.
The clink of utensils against Looma shells made a haunting, lonely music in the small, round room draped in maroon curtained walls strung with Sholak beads. Kesh couldn't help but marvel at how quickly they'd all relocated the usual sense of haunt to a newer, adequately luxurious tomb. It would be a very long trip if he went against his instincts – even as they gnawed at him.
The new habitation they'd soon be forced to call home beckoned to him with the same malice as any place his father was destined to rule surely would.
2
Kesh
Kesh thumbed the little scarlet box, staring at it as if his entire destiny were contained in the confinement of its depths. Curious how symbolic it was. His life was like this box. A miniature prison. Ironic that it was, perhaps, the only potential key to freedom he possessed. That they all possessed, though little did most of them know.
Sniffing at the memory of his father's brusque insults, hurled with the usual, entitled air all throughout their mealtime, he suppressed the urge to grin at the power he held so uneasily now. So much more power than his father commanded, if only he knew. Kesh felt like the cat who hadn't quite decided to eat the canary, but he refused to revel in it.
He couldn't remember emulating his father a day in his life, and he merely pitied his brothers. His heart contained no animosity for any of them. Only lament for a kingdom under such brutal, foolish rule. A rule everyone celebrated at their own peril.
At the sound of swishing doors, he quickly tucked the red box into the pocket of his robe, lifting his head to the sight of Doon, the stand-by prince, rushing through the doors.
"Someone must do something!"
Ah, the rage. In full bloom. He was wondering when it would finally emerge.
"Are we to sit and wait for these fiends like Bloobas awaiting slaughter?! They will come for us, Kesh. They'll come, and dismantle us, and use our blood to rule the entire galaxy. Something has to be done."
Doon paced from gold carpeted wall to gold carpeted wall, his arms folded over his chest, a shock of ink-black hair falling to the side of eyes narrowed and burning with vengeance. Doon had the killing blood of any warrior, but only half the mind when his rage blinded him as it did now. It was a dangerous combination to be sure.
There was a valid reason for rage, but an even stronger one for caution and well-considered action.
Tarik would only laugh at such thoughts. He'd mock them. And Kesh would say nothing of consequence in answer to his brother's rant. It was wiser to let him blow off steam until tears welled up in his eyes, he broke a few things, then ran to find mother's arms. He was still young enough to take solace in them because his heart was still innocent.
He saw everything in black and white. Believed everything a simple matter to be answered with force.
"I just..."
Doon clenched his fists.
He was going to punch a hole through the parlor walls, clear into the next room. Kesh was near sure of it. But the pod's reinforcements were only made to its shell. The decoration within was simply that and never meant to withhold any force of violence upon the pod's building materials.
"Would you have our every conversation set within clear earshot of anyone who enters the kitchen for the rest of our trip, Doon? Stay your hand. Make no holes in these walls. They cannot withstand your fists."
This seemed to sate his brother's ego, and Doon's eyes rolled closed as he clenched his jaw against his fury.
"It's so infuriating."
"The fury will pass."
"But should it?"
Eyes lifting to meet his brother's, Kesh sighed softly. No, they shouldn't, but what could he say? Father would be beside himself with anger if he opened that box, did what his mind haunted him to do. But better that than let his brother in on the notion and blow the one chance their people might have at evading the genetic capture of the worst fiends in the galaxy.
"Neither of us are King of Telera, Doon. Such notions are beyond us."
"Then what is that flame I see in your eyes so carefully tucked in the ink of them?"
"You need your rest."
"No. I am certain something rests there that I have never seen in your gaze before. Why do you pretend to follow our father's directive, Kesh? You clearly don't."
Sighing, Kesh rose up from the cushions of the lay bench, carefully avoiding his brother's eyes.
"Rest, Doon. Your imagination will get the best of you if you let it."
Forcing as stoic an expression to his face as he could, his eyes rolled toward the direction of the exit, and he took his leave from the gathering parlor, deciding to get some rest himself. The last thing he needed was to further inspire his younger brother's suspicions, and if he allowed his mind to stew on the haunts that would not let him be, he'd lose even more control over his trained expression. He'd let too much slip already.
"I see you, Kesh. I have eyes."
His brother's words followed him out of the room, but Kesh shook them off. Sleep was what he needed, and maybe a visit with Jana. She was always so good at distracting him, though he knew full well she didn't return the years long crush he had on her. Her heart belonged to Tarik, and likely always would – even if he took the Allied Officer as a bride.
Jana was never meant to become the princess Tarik would sit beside during festives and fawn over at every chance. There was no challenge in her for his brother. She'd been wide open from the moment she'd laid eyes on him, and everyone in the royal court knew it. She was, perhaps, the only who didn't know how transparent her affections were.
And Kesh didn't have the heart to embarrass her with the truth.
Perhaps his own crush on her was as clear as crystal to everyone around him. He'd yet to hear whispers of it, but it was possible the matters of his heart were discussed when he was well out of earshot.
Sweeping into his chambers at the swish of his doors, he bathed in the deep emerald of the curtains draping its walls and bed. His royal colors filled him with a sadness he couldn't swat away or pretend didn't exist. His royal hues were the bars of his cell, the ones that declared him the balancer of the family. The one with the healing hands and stilling presence.
It was true enough because Teleran seers were never wrong about the energies surrounding any birth, royal or common, but it failed to reveal the lion beating in his chest. The one he reined in with the last ailing bit of strength left to him.
Discarding his robe, he lowered to his bed and lay back, tucking his hands behind his head as he stared up at the visipanel centering the ceiling.
It was well past starset now.
He'd be better off visiting with Jana during daylight hours. The last thing he wanted was to create a reputation for her, and the court was in such close quarters now, he feared such a visit would do exactly that.
Letting his eyes slip closed, he thought again of the memotic, the beautiful dead girl he'd stared down upon when his brother felled her to save his life. The tragedy of it raged through him. He didn't have the heart of a killer, but she'd been poised to attack him, and Tarik had only caught her just in time.
His brother had killed and lied for him. Claimed he was the only one present, thinking it protected him. But it was wrong for him to do so, no matter that he did it in earnest. Tarik hadn't meant to do what he did. He wasn't a murderer. He was technically, but... Well, he hadn't meant to be. And there was a way to reverse everything. An almost perfect way that could only benefit everyone if played right.
That was the trick of it, though.
How did one play such a forbidden thing right?
He didn't know.
For all of his late-eve studies in the ancient libraries, and all of his tutelage, he was sure he could manage all that he needed to. But he could not help but feel woefully
inept in the face of it. Anyone would, royal or no.
Letting his eyes slip closed, he inhaled the sea wood scent of his quarters, reveling in the subtle smoke that wafted off of the sacred pools of the seers that almost helped them to pretend that they were home.
Home.
It was hard not to think they'd been discarded, somehow. That they'd lost their very root because of their foolish separations by faction and belief. Their planet was sentient. It was a well-known fact. All of them were on some level. And theirs had allowed herself to be flooded, so thoroughly only the aquatic of her keep could survive it.
Had she meant to evolve them somehow by putting out their fire? Or had she meant death? Or... had some of the seers, usually hushed by their contemporaries and made to pace the shadows in their brilliance or madness, whichever it was, been right?
Was it orchestrated by the Allied Forces? Had bombs been detonated deep within Telera's crust, so they could be uprooted with a cause that would win enough of the signatures of the board members that the Teleran's own consent wouldn't be requested or required?
Slipping into the first waves of slumber, Kesh had to fight himself to keep from blinking his eyes awake. Enough thinking. If he had to force himself still long enough that he'd actually slip into his unconsciousness for a few hours, he would do it. He'd been thinking himself in circles for far too long, and that just wouldn't do.
Ideas, impossible ideas. If he was not careful, they would consume him. The premier danger of them most of all.
~
Kesh slow blinked glancing at Tarik and his bride-to-be as they passed him in the corridor with a stirring in his gut that he couldn't assign a name to.
Whatever it was, it was charged with an emotion far more complex than anything he had the energy to figure out as he swept into the bathing chamber. He'd slept fitfully, and his first order of business was breakfast. And then... perhaps he'd visit Jana.
