by Ivy Sparks
Vorian
What was I thinking?
What in the great eleven hells of Lucious was I thinking?
I paced the expanse of the airlock, pulling at my hair and trying to run through the course of events that led me into this mess. When I had left and agreed to the price Ellie demanded, I was completely out of my mind. I felt like I was floating in the clouds, surrounded by the smell of rainwater spilling over valleys of forests on a star-filled night.
The first thing that had brought me back to reality was Valk laughing at me. He’d find out sooner or later, so I told him exactly what happened.
Well, maybe not exactly. I told him I offered the poor girl a job working in my castle. He smiled and nodded as if he believed me, but we both knew what really happened.
I had bought myself an Orion bride. I was no better than all the other filthy elites.
But I wouldn’t touch her. She would have to ask me to.
But how could she truly want a scarred beast like me? She was clearly as insane as I was.
I groaned and ran my hands through my hair. My eyes burned from lack of sleep, which I surmised was part of the problem.
How was I ever going to explain this?
The door slid open and I whirled around, my gaze captured by those green eyes. The smell of rainwater misting the great Solaris gardens perfumed the room. How was her scent such a perfect recreation of that smell? All I wanted to do was grab her, bury my face in her hair, and breathe her in.
What was wrong with me?
Ellie had hastily put some clothes on over her black lingerie, but she was still cold, shivering, with goosebumps on her arms. Or maybe she was scared. Her eyes looked sunken with dark circles underneath, and were wide like a scared animal. I whipped off my coat, careful with my wings, and wrapped it around her small frame.
“I won’t be able to handle your air,” she said while wiping away tears. “I’ll have an hour out there at most.” She inhaled shakily, tears falling more rapidly.
“I’ll fly fast.”
She threw her hands up in the air. “Great,” she laughed. “He’ll fly fast.” Her sudden change in demeanor made me start questioning what we were doing. But she did say she had to escape the Orion, so why the attitude? Then I considered the fact that she had to say goodbye to her sister. Of course she wouldn’t be in a good mood after that.
I needed to give her time. “Yes, Ellie. I’ll fly very fast.”
She continued, “What about when we arrive? Do you have human-friendly air in that castle of yours?”
“I have medicine in my lab and a cryo decompression tube. We can use it to adjust your body to the new atmosphere.”
“That really works?”
I nodded.
“And you’ll fly fast?”
I touched my chest. “I swear on the heavenly gardens of Solaris, I will fly fast.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded. “Fine.” She placed her hand in mine and I picked her up. “But if I die, I swear to God I will haunt you for the rest of eternity.”
“Fair enough.”
I pressed the airlock screen. “Airlock opening,” the computer sounded. Ellie pressed her head into my chest like a child, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. “Airlock opening.” The alarm sounded, an annoying shrill repeated over and over again. “Airlock opening.”
The door slid open, air rushing inside with a strong gust of wind. I held her gently in my arms and walked out into the open. The sunlight blazed and for a moment all I saw were spots. I blinked back the blurring images until the blue rivers of Adonia greeted my eyes. The distant purple peaks of the Adonia mountains blossomed with dark navy Organa flowers. The sky was red with the rising of the sun, the stars disappearing in its glow.
I turned my gaze down at the beautiful human in my arms, smiling with excitement, hoping she was enjoying the view of the great Adonia. My heart was struck by her clamped eyes, her head pushing into my chest. She didn’t care for the sights, her focus solely on surviving this ride. I’d have to make this fast.
My wings expanded to their full length, and I launched myself into the sky, flying higher and faster through the valleys. I flew past the flowering peaks, over the great blue rivers flowing into lakes lit by the yellow glow of sprites, and past the forests of Lanua with its purple and blue trees covering the land. In the distance I saw the Crescent Peaks, dark mountains flowered in purple Lithua flowers. Their pollen glowed under the morning sun.
Home.
I pushed forward for a while, flapping my wings and riding the currents of the wind. We were almost there. I looked down at the girl in my arms. She was limp. I shook her, trying to be gentle. Her head nodded back and forth. Her arm flopped to one side. “Ellie!” I shouted over the gust of wind and the flapping of my wings. Had she fainted from fright? Was our thick air already getting to her? Most humans could last out here for an hour, but maybe she was weak from the night before.
“Ellie,” I said again. She wasn’t responding. Her head lolled to one side. I pumped my wings faster. The peaks grew closer. But it wasn’t fast enough. I needed to be there now.
I promised her.
“Hold on,” I called, diving into the clouds. We were almost there. I saw the veranda of my residence peeking over a waterfall shrouded in dark flowers. The chateau was built into the Crescent Peaks, the flowers blooming from vines wrapping around the pillars. I landed on the balcony, kneeling, my wings folding behind my back.
“My lord.” Zoe walked up the stairs leading from the veranda into the chateau. She was dressed in long, glossy red fabric. Her head bowed with loose black hair spilling over her shoulder. “I expected your return much sooner. What—” She stopped, noticing the girl in my arms. She tilted her head, her eyebrows furrowed, eyes squinting as she approached me. I gathered Ellie into my arms and ran down the steps. Zoe trailed after me. “Is that a human girl?”
I didn’t answer her, my feet taking me into the tubed elevator. Zoe, unfortunately, followed inside. I typed in the code and the tube closed, descending deeper into the peaks.
“What in the eleven hells of Lucious are you doing with a human girl, Vorian?”
I didn’t answer her question. Instead I said, more to myself, “I thought she’d be safe.”
The tube opened into the lab. Dravak looked up from some tech goggles he was tweaking with a pick. He clicked on the metal visor attached to his ear, with the blue screen disappearing from his eyes. “Who is that?” the older Adonian stood from the table and tilted his head. “Better question: What is that?”
“It’s a human girl,” Zoe said. She squinted her eyes down at Ellie. “I think.”
“Why are you in possession of a human girl?” Dravak asked further.
I ignored the both of them and set Ellie down on the only empty table in the lab. “Do you still have the atmosphere meds we’ve been tinkering with?” I wiped Ellie’s hair delicately from her face. She was sweating. Even for a human, she looked unusually pale. I touched her cheeks gently, then her neck. Her whole body was heated and sweating. It hadn’t been close to an hour. Humans from the Orion must’ve been just that weak.
I strode over to a faucet, wrenching a rag from the side of the sink and soaking it in cold water.
“Sure, I have the meds, but we’ve only made enough for a few patients.”
I didn’t see how that was a problem. If it was enough for Ellie, that was all that mattered. “Then it’s more than enough. Administer the medication, then get her inside the cryo decompression tube. She’ll need time for the medication to take effect and for her blood chemistry to change. The decompression will help her lungs.”
“Y-yes. As you wish.”
Dravak rushed to the back of the lab, turning on the computers. The lab hummed with the sound of screens turning on. The tubes bubbled. I dabbed Ellie’s skin with the wet rag. She was soaked through her bra and panties, as was the coat around her shoulders. My hand hovered above her blue tinted mout
h, feeling the faint flow of her breath against my palm. She was running out of time.
Had this really been the best option for her? Could I not have found a better solution to her troubles on the Orion? I had the money to hire her a full-time bodyguard, if she really was in that much danger. But the only solution I wanted at the time was to take her to my castle.
And while she saw it as the only solution too, I suspected right about now she would have preferred taking her chances on the Orion.
I should never have agreed to purchase her in the first place. As much as she needed the money and an escape, there must’ve been a better solution than what we came up with in that dank room.
She was not an object. She was a living creature… that I purchased. How dishonorable I had become after all these years. I—the one who fought in the war for equality—I had bought a human girl. I was a hypocrite. I was disgusting. I could have stopped myself, yet after having her touch me the way she did, having her actually become wet because of me… All my better senses disappeared.
No other woman had wanted me as much as she did in that moment.
I shook my head. I was becoming hard just from the memory. I shouldn’t have bought her, no matter how she enticed me, no matter how sweet the smell of her arousal had been on my hand. Her scent overwhelmed my senses and made it impossible for me to breathe anything else.
My tongue licked my lips at the memory. I smacked my head multiple times. When I looked up, Zoe was staring at me as if I had completely lost my mind.
“Are you going to explain?” she asked in her high but not unpleasant voice.
I shook my head and tossed the rag down on the table. My mouth opened, trying to form words, yet even I didn’t know what exactly happened.
“We’re all set,” Dravak called, stepping back from the cryo tube.
“Zoe,” I started. “I can’t talk about this right now. I can’t think of anything else but her recovery.”
Zoe sighed and turned around. She walked back toward the elevator, entering it. “You will explain this later,” she said before the doors slid closed.
She might’ve been just my assistant, but she was loyal to me and deserving of an explanation. Right now, though, I grabbed a metal chair and dragged it over to the front of Ellie’s recovering body.
She looked so peaceful in that tube, but all I wanted was for her to wake up with enough energy to yell at me, pound on my chest, and tell me what a bastard I was.
I deserved nothing more.
Chapter Five
Ellie
I heard a shushing in my ear, a gentle murmuring. “It’s going to be all right,” someone said, pushing my hair away from my forehead.
I groaned, leaning into the touch.
What had happened? I couldn’t remember anything… My brain felt like mush. Turning my head to the side, it felt like pulverized brain bits were sloshing around in my skull. It couldn’t have been that bad though if I could come up with such gross vivid imagery, right?
My chest felt bruised, like my lungs took a beating. My eyes felt like they were sealed closed, so I didn’t know where I was. I just knew I was laying down on a cold metal table.
What was the last thing I remembered?
Ah, yes, the memory of beating, powerful wings pounding through the air. A warm, hard chest against my face. Gentle yet strong arms holding me close as wind whipped by.
Then feeling tired and unable to catch my breath. And drifting off
I actually did it. I let an Adonian take me to his castle. It really wasn’t a dream, was it?
But what had happened to me in the interim? Why was I immobilized now? And fuck, why did my head and chest hurt so much?
“Whatever effects you’re feeling,” a low gravelly voice began, “it’s all normal. It’s the effects of the atmospheric medication.”
Maybe that was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn’t. Vorian hadn’t mentioned any side effects when he said he had medication for the atmospheric sickness. What other effects were in store for me, besides the brain slushy, pounding headache, and chest ache?
I finally managed to crack open my heavy lids and angled my head. Other than the white straps belting my legs and arms down, I was completely naked.
There were long green tubes jutting out from my body, attached to a machine pushing yellow liquid into me. The machine pumped, beeping with each push of medicine into my body. I craned my head and saw in each arm a tube stuck in my forearm and bicep.
I heard someone speaking Adonian and rolled my head to the side, seeing an alien I didn’t recognize. He wore a visor, and looked a bit older than Vorian. A metal device was clipped on his ear and went around one side of his head. A screen projected from it in front of his red eyes, his long hair was tied in a bun on top of his head. He typed on a keyboard attached to his arm, speaking again in Adonian before nodding in my direction.
Was something going wrong with the treatment? I really should have paid attention during my language classes. It was starting to dawn on me what a dumbass I was to not learn the main language of the planet I lived on. Even if I had thought I’d never leave the Orion.
Vorian appeared in front of me. He wiped my face with a cool rag, his touch soft. The water on my skin felt wonderful. He touched my lips delicately with it. I licked at any liquid the rag provided.
He pulled the rag away, saying in English, “Sorry, Ellie. I know you’re thirsty, but you must wait until all of the medication has entered your system. We’ve pulled you out of your cryogenic state to administer the last stage of the treatment.”
Cryogenic state? How long have I been asleep?
The other Adonian spoke again. He shook his head and the rise of his voice made him seem frustrated. His gaze shifted to me, his jaw clenched, his eyebrows pressed together in worry.
Vorian wiped my hair from my face. “Ellie,” he said softly. “I need you to be strong. Can you be strong?”
I opened my mouth, feeling shaky. My eyes were barely open. I tried to open them more, but the weight made it difficult. Everything felt foggy around me. I whimpered, a surge of medicine pushing into me.
Vorian grabbed my hand, his fingers intertwining with mine. “Just a few more minutes and it’s done.” He leaned in close. “Just a few more minutes. You can do that much right?”
It was hard to breathe. My hand gripped his. As the medicine entered, my back arched involuntarily. My mouth opened and I gasped. Vorian held my hand. It didn’t necessarily hurt, but fuck, was it uncomfortable. My veins felt like they were bulging, ballooning up, moments from popping. But when I looked down at my arms, it all looked normal. I just needed to focus on Vorian, not my runaway imagination.
So I did. I focused on the warmth of his hand on mine.
After a minute, Vorian’s assistant nodded and pressed a button. One after another, the tubes retracted from my arms. Vorian pressed his lips to my hand before letting go.
“All right, Ellie. This is the last part, then you’ll be safe in our atmosphere.”
Dammit, I had thought we were done. “Is it going to hurt?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No. We’re putting you back in a stasis so your body has time to adjust. You’ll wake up again once your body is fully acclimated.”
Well, this was one bitch of a process. I had always imagined atmospheric acclimation was simply a matter of getting a shot. “You promise it won’t hurt?”
Vorian took a step forward, looking like he had every intention of kissing me, kissing my fears away. Instead, he held back, the regret in his eyes apparent. “I promise on my life, Ellie. I would never do anything to hurt you. This is an entirely safe process. It’s just… uncomfortable, and a pain in the ass.”
I had to agree with him there. “Okay,” I said, my voice a weak whisper. At this moment, I felt entirely safe under his care. My body relaxed as I gave up control, for what felt like the first time in my life.
The bed clicked and slowly moved upright until I
was standing, the straps holding me so I didn’t fall to my knees. It stopped with a thud and Vorian typed in a code. I looked to one side, seeing a circular glass lid slide into place, locking me into a tube. A pipe at the top opened and warm water rushed inside.
Was I going to drown? No. No, this was how the original colonists traveled through space. I had seen the illustrations. Thousands of humans sealed in cryo tubes, hurtling through space for hundreds of years until they finally reached their destination. My ancestors had gone through this process. Every descendant on the Orion originated from these travelers, in fact.
Still, I didn’t want to breathe in this cryo liquid, even if my lungs would adjust.
Just as I was beginning to get nervous about it, Vorian put his hand on the glass and said, “Sleep now, Ellie.” He pressed a button on the bed panel, and I heard a hissing sound.
The air smelled different, and that was the last thing I sensed before I drifted off into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Vorian
Ellie closed her eyes. Her body jerked for a moment as it took in the water, breathable due to the respiratory drugs I administered in the tank’s pipeline. A soft beep from the machine measured her heart rate, and knowing she would be okay, I allowed myself to release my breath. I sat in a chair in front of Dravak, resting my head in my hands.
I should have realized this would be much more difficult. Humans were frail. She was so small. She was shorter and thinner than Zoe, who was already small for an Adonian. Her unconscious form in my arms when we were flying over Adonia, the way she trembled in the vat, her wide eyes when it was filling with water; I couldn’t stop seeing it.
Had this been the only way?
Now, for the rest of her life, she would be different from her kind. Her lungs and blood chemistry were changing in order to adapt to our atmosphere’s pressure and oxygen levels. She could go back and visit her sister on the Orion, but unless her sister had this treatment, she could never come here. While we could live in their atmosphere, they simply could not live in ours. Not without lifelong medication, or this invasive treatment.
