She gulped, audibly, too, because both the king and Ruckus turned her way. Risking a glance up, she almost flinched when she realized she’d caught Trystan’s attention as well.
He was frowning at her, just the corners of his rose-petal-pink lips turned downward. The furrow between his brows was minuscule. When their eyes met, his hardened, the blue lightening to the color of steel in an instant.
She really wished she knew what Olena had done to piss him off so badly.
“So, Olena”—the Basileus cleared his throat—“did you enjoy your denzeration?”
He picked up the gold utensils at the right of his plate, sneakily showing her that they were exactly the same as knives and forks back home. In her nervousness, she hadn’t noticed.
Anything he’d been going to say to her before was now impossible in Trystan’s presence, so they were all forced to act like everything was normal. This would be her first real test, made even more so because it was in front of the Basileus and Basilissa.
“I did,” she said, following suit. She really didn’t want to eat that pink stuff, but knew she had to eat something or else she’d cause suspicion. Cutting into the greens, she lifted a half-inch piece to her lips.
“A bit too much, it would seem,” Trystan spoke, eyes still locked on her. “She almost didn’t leave.”
“Nonsense.” Magnus waved him off. “She simply wanted to experience one last festival.”
“Surely you remember your denzeration, Zane Trystan,” Tilda joined in. Her smile was tight despite the lightness to her voice. She was beautiful, the kind that caused jaws to drop and people to stare stupidly after her.
Her skin was a deep shade, the look of someone who’d been in the sun for days, her blond hair long and swirling around her shoulders almost to her elbows. The dress she wore was every bit as formfitting as the one Delaney did, though it concealed a hell of a lot more skin. Her sleeves were long, but the front didn’t dip quite so low, and when she’d been standing, Delaney had noted that the Basilissa was in a long green skirt that dropped to the ground.
Her eyes were almond shaped, like her daughter’s, and the color of warm, freshly baked cookies. The ring around them was a shocking violet that was actually more pretty than freaky. She was thin, but tall, willowy. And the way she moved, almost as light as air. She came off so serene, it was hard to imagine she was the mother of someone as selfish as Olena.
That she was half the reason Delaney was being held there against her will.
“Certainly,” the Zane sneered in response. Leaning back in his chair, he kept his gaze on Delaney as if hoping to jab her with his next words. “I’ll never forget the stench of that planet. How anyone could live there among so much filth is beyond me. Let alone enjoy it.”
“I take it Earth wasn’t to your liking, Zane.” Delaney boldly held his gaze, skewering another piece of the green stuff with her fork in the process. Weirdly, it wasn’t bad. Sort of tasted like a mixture between sugarcane and sweet potatoes.
“Not at all, Lissa,” he replied, though her statement had clearly been rhetorical.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be.” She shrugged a delicate shoulder and absently reached for the golden goblet at the left of her plate. Inwardly, she prayed she wasn’t about to drink something that tasted like cat piss. Outwardly, she sipped at it, staring him down over the rim.
His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “And just what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, nothing.” She replaced the goblet with a steady click against the metal table. “Nothing at all.”
He opened his mouth to argue but was cut off by the Basileus.
“Olena, have you been told about the Tandem yet? We’re holding it explicitly in your honor. The Zane was kind enough to suggest it.” He watched her through blue-and-green-rimmed eyes. Right now he knew she wasn’t really his daughter, and yet all his senses were claiming otherwise. What must that be like?
“That was nice of him.” She hoped. For all she knew, a Tandem was a ritual sacrifice. That definitely seemed like the sort of thing Trystan would be all for.
Tilda tried to cover up Delaney’s obvious lack of enthusiasm. “It seems our daughter has spent so much time on Earth, she’s no longer thrilled by the same things here as she once was.”
“It’s just hard getting interested in the same old things once you’ve pet a lion and gone parasailing.” Delaney latched on and went with it. She took another sip of her drink, deciding she liked the almost-fruit-punch flavor. “They also let you bungee-jump,” she went on, not sure how much they really knew about Earth activities and not wanting to push her luck. “It’s a lot of fun.”
“Isn’t that where they dive off cliffs with only a string to hold them?” Ruckus asked, addressing her for the first time that morning.
She glanced his way and couldn’t help the mischievous smile. “Oh yeah.”
“You did that?” This came from Trystan. He was skeptical but also curious. She’d take either of those things over anger from him any day.
She had to admit, when he wasn’t pounding walls and standing close enough for it to be impossible not to note he was a giant, he was attractive. His hair wasn’t shaved on the sides like Ruckus’s and Pettus’s, which she’d gathered was their version of a military look. Though it was still thick on the top and shorter on the sides.
He was wearing the same navy uniform he’d been in yesterday, and seemed really at ease in it. He certainly wasn’t having the same issues as she was with her clothing, anyway.
“Twice.” She beamed at him, and relished his surprise because it meant he hadn’t thought she was capable. Perhaps Olena wasn’t the type to take risks? She mentally snorted. If that’d been the case before, it definitely wasn’t now. Forcing her identity on a human? Probably the biggest risk of them all.
Especially considering there were two possible wars resting on the deception.
The Kints couldn’t figure out what Olena had done, and they couldn’t discover what Delaney was doing now. Who she really was. She wondered what would happen to her if they did. Would the Basileus still uphold his end of the deal? Send her back to Earth in time for the war with the Kints to begin? Or would they even get the chance to make that decision?
Trystan didn’t strike her as the type of guy to forgive and forget. He’d probably kill her.
“We should make our way outside,” Magnus stated then, sliding his chair back to stand. When he did, the rest of them got up as well, Delaney scrambling to follow suit.
Someone really should have filled her in on the etiquette before putting her out there in the open. It was hard to keep up with all the rules when she didn’t even know what they were. She assumed that was what they’d been hoping to get into, but Trystan had to go and ruin it.
Ruckus should have filled her in last night, but they’d both been distracted and tired. And honestly, part of her had seriously hoped she wouldn’t be around long enough for an alien etiquette lesson to be necessary.
But what if she was trapped here for months and had to learn all their customs? The world dimmed around the edges for a moment, and she stopped breathing.
“Olena?” Magnus called her.
“Lissa Olena?” Ruckus touched the side of her arm, and she immediately snapped out of it.
Swallowing, she glanced over at Magnus and tried a shaky smile. “Sorry. Daydreaming for a moment. What did you say?”
“I asked if you minded Ander Ruckus accompanying you outside. Your mother and I have some more preparing to do for the Tandem.”
“Of course, Father. That’s no problem at all.”
She wondered if the Zane found Magnus’s request odd. Technically, seeing as how they were betrothed, shouldn’t he be the one accompanying her to events?
She guessed not, because when she risked looking over, Trystan was already moving toward the door closest to his left, not even giving her a backward glance.
Maybe he’d make this easy on her after all.
CHAPTER 9
“It’s a game,” Ruckus told her as he led her through the metallic castle toward the back.
She’d never been this way before, but she was too caught up in his explanation of what a Tandem was to pay much attention. From what little she did process, this part of the castle looked exactly the same as the part she’d entered through yesterday. There wasn’t a single doorway without a soldier flanking it, each dressed in the forest green and gold, and black pants tucked into boots.
She was tempted to ask where the hell they’d all been last night, but decided it wasn’t worth reminding him of what she’d done.
“More like a sport,” he went on. He kept his eyes on the Zane, who walked in front of them a good thirty or so feet away, too far to overhear. “There are two teams, with six members on each. Every player rides his own ung.”
“What’s an ung?”
“Do you know what an emu is?”
“Like the bird?”
“Yes. Ungs are similar, except that along with their feathers, they also have scales and tusks.”
“Tusks?”
“Big ones. And very sharp, which makes it easy for them to crack the jewbie egg.”
“The what?” She got a little too loud there, and pulled back, dropping her arms to her sides. She thought she saw Trystan slow a bit and cock his head to the side as if trying to listen, but she must have been wrong, because Ruckus carried on.
“The players toss the egg backward to their teammates while riding the ungs. There are several obstacle courses, and they lose points and have to start an obstacle over every time a team member drops an egg. Or if it gets cracked by one of the ung tusks.”
“This is seriously the weirdest game I have ever heard of.” She couldn’t believe these people were more technologically advanced than hers. Seriously? A sport where you rode animals and tried to catch an egg without breaking it? Sounded like something someone would do before the written word, let alone the Internet.
“Olena would agree, though she wouldn’t put it so nicely.” He reached out and rested the tips of his fingers against her arm. “The Zane insisted on this, otherwise we wouldn’t be risking it.”
She filled in the blanks. “Make sure I’m careful. Got it.”
They were coming to the end of the wide hall now, and she tilted her head to hear better when pounding sounds started drifting their way. The closer they got, the louder the sounds, and mingled with them was a cacophony of voices and cheers.
“Ruckus?” she said, a bad feeling starting to settle in the pit of her stomach. “Just how big of an event is this, exactly?”
Up ahead, Trystan made it to the doors. The two guards at the sides opened them for him, exposing bright sunlight and a field of green. That, and a massive tentlike fixture set up to the right and already crowded with people.
It didn’t take them long to get there, and the second she stepped outside, she wanted to turn around and run back in.
Ruckus leaned down and whispered into her ear, “Relax.” His hand went to her lower back. “You might actually enjoy it, Delaney.”
At his touch, her body settled some, most of the tension in her shoulders dissipating. Surprised by her reaction to him, she momentarily allowed herself to be distracted before she felt brave enough to continue.
She took a deep, steadying breath and nodded, determined to get on with it before she lost her newfound nerve. The tented area was actually on the other side of what she assumed was the playing field. While she could make out most of their faces already staring, it was somewhat comforting to know she wouldn’t need to get too close to any of them.
“The main event is held there.” Ruckus pointed ahead where an area had been boarded off with a thin golden wire. It stretched up and over a brilliant green hill and disappeared out of sight. “It starts here, at the first obstacle, and makes its way down. Sort of like … golf. You do know golf, correct?”
She nodded again, a bit distracted now by the sights.
The sky was a frothy light green, but the ground was the same as it was back on Earth, with healthy green grass and trees. There weren’t a lot of them, more like one or two planted sporadically, probably because the space was used as a Tandem course.
They happened by one of the trees, and upon closer inspection she realized there were minor differences. The leaves, for one, were all veined yellow, and ribbons of cerulean blue shot up the trunks and through the bark like lightning bolts.
She couldn’t see an end to the property from where they were, as she was so focused on the crowd. A large tent had been positioned a ways away from the mass of people, and was sectioned off with more gold wire and even a few guards. The yellow tent flaps had been pulled back to expose the inside, and she came to a halt when she caught her first sight of what must have been an ung.
Ruckus had made a good comparison when he’d mentioned emus, though she imagined the ung would be the result of an emu falling into a vat of toxic waste and coming out a mutant. It was at least four times the size of one of the birds back home, more around that of a Clydesdale horse.
One of the riders shot out from beneath the tent, clearly doing a warm-up, and brought the ung closer to them. Its skin was covered in gray scales of various shades, so that it looked like an odd shadow twisting in the light. There were feathers, green ones, poofing out of the sides of its narrow head in place of ears, and large wings were tucked into its sides. From the bottom of its five-inch pointy black beak, two daggerlike tusks jutted upward.
The creature’s legs were as thick as bowling balls, with massive three-toed feet that had Delaney picturing the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. The same gray scales covered each foot, and when they hit the ground, they actually left behind footprints in the otherwise pristine grass.
“The footprints add an extra layer of difficulty,” Ruckus said, noticing what she was paying attention to. Five other riders came out to join the first. “It’s about to start.”
The first obstacle wasn’t much of one. There were a few thin poles that they needed to steer their ungs around, as well as a flat black object that stood three feet off the ground. The course wasn’t cordoned off into two sections, but there was a clear split, with one team on the side nearest her and the other closer to the crowd.
“Do you want to sit?” Ruckus tapped the side of her arm.
“No, I’m fine here.” She watched in fascination as the teams got in order, one rider positioned in front of the other, with two feet of empty space between them.
On this side, there weren’t many people, and she got the impression that only those trusted by the Basileus and those who worked in the castle were allowed. It gave her the perfect view of the course without making her feel squished or crowded by anyone. Because of it, she was able to let her guard down a bit. Let some of her amazement show. Which was good, seeing as how she didn’t think she’d have been able to hide it.
The players all wore uniforms similar to jockeys back on Earth, though their shirts had octagons on them and not triangles or diamonds. On some, the shape was painted yellow; on others, it was green. Their tight riding pants alternated as well, with the lead player in green, the one behind him in yellow, and so on.
On the other side, the other team’s colors were different. They were all dressed in navy blue and light gray.
Two men walked onto the field, stopping five feet in front of the leads of each team. Each man held up a ball—the egg—the color of coffee, high enough for everyone to see.
For a second there was total silence, and then a loud horn blew, the eggs were tossed to the first team members, and the men dove out of the way as the ungs shot forward. The first member twisted his ung around one of the thin gold poles that stretched higher than he did, then he tossed the egg over his shoulder without looking and continued on. The second, who was already moving on his heels, caught the egg, moved around the pole, and repeated the motion by chucking it to the guy behind him.
A few times she thought for sure someone was going to drop it, but their deft fingers managed to clasp it in midair, or stroke the side so that it rolled into their palms as if coaxed there. By the time the last team member had the egg, the first three had already disappeared over the rise of the hill, no doubt moving on to the second course.
The last member rose up so that he was standing in his saddle—which she noted was exactly like the kind for a horse—and tossed the egg over the rise. A moment later excited shouts came from the crowd below, who could see the second course.
“He caught it,” Ruckus said with a chuckle, then pointed to the Kint team who was a half minute behind. Their final rider was now doing the same, tossing the ball over. Another cheer sounded and he grunted. “They did, too.”
“We are the best.” The new voice caused Delaney’s spine to tingle, and she twisted her head to find Trystan approaching. There was a glint in his eyes she couldn’t place, and she wasn’t sure she actually even wanted to.
“We’ll see,” Ruckus replied in a tight voice, then added, “Zane Trystan.”
“I’ll escort Lissa Olena from here, Ander.” He came to a stop at her side, close enough that the tips of her fingers almost touched his thigh.
“With all due respect—”
“You can follow at an appropriate distance.” Trystan waved him off, signaling that he should fall back.
Ruckus held her gaze for a moment before obeying. It was clear by the way his jaw clenched that he didn’t like it. He didn’t have any say in the matter though; he was only a commanding officer, while Trystan was a prince.
Steeling herself for another conversation with him, Delaney forced her gaze away from the safety of Ruckus and faced the Zane.
He was watching her closely and with interest. Offering up the curve of his arm, he smiled wickedly. “Shall we, Lissa?”
Her hand was tiny against his arm, and as they started walking toward the hill that would lead to the second course, her heart began to thump. Needing to keep her cool, she reminded herself that there was nothing he could do to her out here. Not with all these witnesses. Besides, he wasn’t stupid. He hated Olena, sure, but he had to know hurting her would only cause him more trouble, especially when he was currently in Vakar territory and not Kint.
Amid Stars and Darkness Page 9
