by Loki Renard
“And I don't trust you anywhere," she rejoined.
Was it still too soon to thrash her? Probably. He should give her at least twenty four hours out of the dungeon. That’s what a decent king would do - at least, that’s what Archon imagined a decent king would do. He’d never met one.
Fortunately for her, they were interrupted at that point by two old men who had apparently never heard of the universal convention of knocking.
“Sire…”
“Brimsley. Smithers. To what do I owe the honor of both your presences?”
“There’s a council meeting. We apprised you of this last month, but your illustrious highness appears to have forgotten. We are due there within a matter of hours.”
Smithers’ tone was even less deferential than usual. Archon began to wonder if his entire royal cabinet needed to be destroyed and replaced with advisors with less attitude. It had been far too long since he had done anything brutal and terrible, and he was starting to think that was a mistake.
“Fine. We will attend the meeting, and then I have other affairs to attend to.”
“Do they involve addressing the unrest on Mars?”
Archon gave Smithers the kind of look which entities usually got seconds before they were destroyed. Smithers looked back, his wrinkled wattle shaking with the motion of his head as he returned the king’s stare.
“I will leave you to prepare,” Smithers said, beating a hasty retreat.
Archon tugged the bed clothes back from his human.
“Get up, put some bloody clothes on, we’re going to a meeting.”
“You promised you’d show me where my family is, what you did with my tribe.”
“And I will, but this is a council of kings, and if I don’t show up they have a tendency to try to invade various parts of my territories.”
“How difficult for you. Do they abduct your entire family as well? Or do they just take some land you don’t even know you rule over?”
“Come and get in the shuttle,” Archon growled. “I don’t have time to argue with you.”
“I don’t know where the shuttle is. I’m in a bedroom. Is the ship in the bathroom? Or are you hiding it in another dimension? Or…”
He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, carrying the human up to the roof where the ship was waiting to conduct them into the most outer of spaces. She felt good over his shoulder. Squirmy and warm and complaining, but good. He no longer felt as though his heart was out wandering around somewhere without him. It was right where it was supposed to be, cursing him over his shoulder.
Once they were in the shuttle, he placed her down on her feet and attempted to explain himself.
“In my culture, we take what we want. We do not ask if it wants to be wanted. We do not consider the feelings of others of lesser stature.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“By way of explanation,” he said. “Because I have been brutal in my treatment of you, and because you hate me for it.”
She looked at him, and gave a little shrug. “I’m not going to forgive you. That wasn’t even an apology. That was just some kind of explanation for why you’re so terrible. But I don’t care why. It’s too late to make anything up to me. Especially when you haven’t taken me to my family.”
“Soon,” he said. “The council comes first.”
He was not looking forward to dealing with the council. Bureaucracy and socialization both failed to appeal to him in equal measure. But it had to be done. Strength had to be displayed. Alliances, such as they were, had to be maintained.
The journey to the council did not take a very long time. A matter of hours, during which Archon slipped into his dress attire. It was mostly black leather, edged with gold in a few places. The mark of Energon was emblazoned across the back and on the left lapel in the form of a dragon’s claw.
Once dressed, he returned to the lounging area where Iris was waiting for him. He noticed the way her eyes widened when she saw him and wondered if it was the uniform she was reacting to, or if she perhaps missed him in the short time he was getting dressed. Wishful thinking. He was not prone to wishful thinking. He didn’t like the way it felt inside his head.
“You look good in those clothes,” she told him. “I was starting to think you didn’t know how to wear a shirt.”
“I don’t like the way clothing feels against my scales,” Archon admitted. “I hardly need a shirt, but the council has rules, and worse than rules, customs.”
“Poor baby,” Iris smirked. “For once in your life you have to do something you don’t want to do. Must be a huge shock to your system.”
“I will shock your system, brat,” Archon growled the threat in return.
“You stay here,” he told her once they had docked at the royal station, a piece of neutral territory at the apex of the quarter dozen kingdoms. “This is the safest place for you.”
“Where are we?”
“The place we are doesn’t formally exist if you are not a royal, so it is best I do not tell you.”
He left Iris behind reluctantly in the shuttle. It was better nobody else saw her. Kings had a habit of trying to take what other kings had.
No sooner had he disembarked than he was greeted by a grizzled old bastard of a king.
“You’re late. Trouble in the colonies?”
He did not like the way King Varin spoke. There was a certain knowingness to his tone. Varin was a smug bastard who had inherited his relatively small kingdom from his addled father, and his addled father before him. Soon, he would go mad, and then his son would inherit the kingdom. It was a facet of their species which was quite tragic. At the age of a hundred and fifty years, every single one of them disengaged from reality and pursued their own variation of existence, which rarely came tangental to common consensus. Varin was a hundred and forty seven years old, which meant he only had three years left before he decided he was a shoe, or something similar.
Archon would never have wasted his time feeling sorry for Varin before he met Iris, but she’d changed him in some intangible way he didn’t care for. Feeling pity for Varin was not useful to him.
“Is everybody here?”
“No, several of them are late as well,” Varin shrugged. “Nice to have all the time in the universe, isn’t it?”
Archon detected a hint of worry in Varin’s tone. He would never have noticed that in the past. Interesting. Perhaps this empathy thing would have some uses. Perhaps he could use it to gain advantage over his enemies. By understanding them, he could destroy them.
“I have other places to be and other things to do,” he said. “This is a waste of my time, and yours, Varin.”
“Then let us try to make this pass as quickly as possible,” Archon suggested. “When the others are all here, we will agree with everything they say until they close proceedings.”
“We may end up agreeing to things we do not agree with,” Varin said. “It could cost us dearly.”
“It could,” Archon shrugged. “We can always call another meeting when we have more time, or when wasting theirs seems more appealing than it does now…”
“ARCHON! YOU ILLEGITIMATE BASTARD!”
Archon turned with a broad smile, for a greeting as honest as that could only come from the mouth of a friend. There was one king he could stand. One king he rather liked, perhaps even admired. Dominax the winged. Half devil, as shown by the proud horns which rose from his head. He was also half angel, as revealed by the big black wings which would unfold from his shoulders when he was flustered or decided to have a little fly about the place. Officially, he was a beast of indeterminate generic origin, but he ruled over his kingdom with what Archon could only describe as an outrageous yet utterly dominant style.
“Dominax! You twisted perversion of a beast!” Archon returned the greeting.
“Neither one of us deserve our crowns, do we,” Dominax laughed, wrapping Archon in a masculine embrace. “You’re still a scaly bastard, aren’t
you.”
“And you still drop feathers wherever you go,” Archon replied. “You need someone to follow you around and sweep up after you.”
Dominax let out a hearty laugh. “Tell me, Archon, while we wait for the stragglers. What is new in your pitiful life?”
“Come to my ship and see,” Archon said with a smirk.
“Oh? You have something you're not supposed to, do you?”
“I have something I never thought I’d have. A mate.”
“A mate? This I have to see.”
“After the council!” Varin called out. “They’re finally all here!”
“Bugger that,” Dominax replied. “I want to see the human.”
“See the human on your own time. We have a universe to run.”
Chapter 22
“So that’s a human, is it?”
Dominax was staring at Iris with great interest. Iris was staring back with much less interest and far more annoyance.
“They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Get yourself a nice Grinklefink girl. They have obedience in their genes. These humans, they’re always getting into something. And they take to disobedience like ducks to water, so there’s nothing to do but beat them regularly.”
“Very intriguing physical structure,” Dominax said, ignoring him. “Sort of… curvy, aren’t they?”
“Yes. They are.”
“Full in the ass, too. A nice round rump, made perfectly for the punishment you say they deserve.”
“Dominax…”
“My last pet died,” he said bluntly. “I’ve been looking for something to replace her. A human might be interesting.”
“Humans are interesting, but be careful. They have a way of… well, capturing you back.”
Dominax grinned broadly. “Don’t tell me you have fallen in love. Don't tell me you intend to make this human thing your queen.”
Archon restrained the urge to bash his skull in for calling Iris a ‘thing’.
“The nobles want an heir. Perhaps it is time I gave them one,” Archon smiled. He had not thought about it before, but now he did, it occurred to him that the nobles of Archaeus would become apoplectic if he were to declare a half-human heir. It would ruin all their plans to eventually suck his seed into the womb of one of their dancing pawns.
“Are you done?”
Iris didn’t mean to sound quite so short with him, but sitting alone on a ship and waiting for him to return left her with nothing but time to think about her family, and all that she had lost. Now she was staring at two kings, the second hardly endearing himself to her with all the talk of pets and rumps.
If Archon was telling the truth, she might see her family again soon. She wondered what she would say to her father, or what her brothers would think of all that had happened. Iris was actually glad that the tribe had been zipped off the planet. It meant they wouldn’t know about the sexual spectacle she had become.
“We are done. We are also giving King Dominax a lift.”
“You’ll barely notice me here,” the king with the horns and the wings said nonchalantly, as if there was some chance he’d blend into the background.
There was absolutely no chance whatsoever. Iris could not stop staring. As much as she was not in the mood to meet new royalty, Dominax was a most compelling beast, with long dark hair cascading over his shoulders in a thick raven fall.
For once, she was silent. Dominax winked at her, then followed Archon into the royal lounge where she had been waiting all this time. It had seemed large when she was alone, now it felt like very close quarters.
“So,” Dominax said. “Earth.”
“I’ve stashed a number of troublesome things there over the years,” Archon admitted. “It’s such a strange little planet, they never seem to notice.”
“I thought there was an accord to avoid that planet.”
“It is within my borders, technically, and I have every right not only to visit it, but to use it as I see fit.”
“Hey, don’t worry, I won't tell,” Dominax smiled. “Your secret is safe with me.”
There was a wicked glint in the king’s eye which suggested absolutely nothing and nobody was safe with him. Iris had to trust that Archon knew what he was doing. She had experience with one corrupt, powerful male which landed her in the dungeon. Gods only knew what Dominax would do with a human if he had the chance.
“Is there somewhere else I can be?” She murmured the question in Archon’s ear.
“Actually, you and I should be getting ready. We will need to change our clothes.”
“These clothes are strange.”
She didn’t like the clothes. She also didn’t like the green and blue ball they were in orbit around. It looked strange and vaguely untrustworthy, even at a distance. Iris was working hard on not getting her hopes up. She did not believe, for a single second, that she was actually going to see her family again. She did not truly believe that Archon had saved them. But some small part of her insisted on holding onto the hope that he was not a complete bloody liar.
“Those clothes are jeans and a t-shirt. They are a common form of apparel, and they will ensure that you blend in.”
“And these rubber shoes?”
“Those are sneakers. They are comfortable, allegedly.”
“I don’t like this place. It is strange.”
“It is where your family have settled, and it is where they will stay. They can never return to Zeta and tell the others there of far off planets and the future which is yet to arrive.”
“Is this how you did it?”
“How I did what?”
“Became king? This is where all the other royals went, isn’t it? All the ones that disappeared? All the ones you are supposed to have killed? You didn’t kill them. Did you?”
Archon smiled.
“You're not brutal, are you. I mean, except with me, obviously. You’re smart.”
Archon tapped her nose with a clawed finger. “I am both. But I am the second before I am the first. Life is easier that way.”
He led her to a room marked “TRANSPORTER BAY” and made her stand on a glowing disc. Iris did as she was told, lost in her thoughts, and paying little attention as the ship seemed to phase out around them and was replaced by a room with a lot of soft furnishings.
There was still so much to forgive. Far more than she thought she was capable of forgiving. The shame. The pain. The public humiliation. The sexual conquest. Archon had shown her his darkest and most terrible sides, he had given her the full benefit of the reality of his monstrous soul. And yet there was something between them, a connection which had no reason to exist.
She looked around herself in concern, temporarily distracted from her emotional quandry by the odd place.
“Why is everything in here stuffed? Are these trophies the inhabitants have killed?”
“No,” Archon laughed. “This is Earth-human furniture. They like padding on almost everything except dining chairs for some reason.”
“Where is my family?”
“Your father runs a dry cleaner, a place people have their clothes cleaned. Your aunts have a small shop which sells crystals and herbal remedies. Your brothers and sisters are being educated in the ways of this world.”
“I want to see them.”
“That is the rub.”
“The what now?”
“In order for them to fit into this world, I erased the memories of the one they lived in before. I also had the basic programming of this culture installed. They know only this new reality…”
“Which I am not part of.” She finished his sentence for him.
“I could make some adjustments, but it would not be the same as it was. I cannot return them to the same emotional states as they experienced in your world. If I did, there would be a chance of the programming crashing. They might go, for want of a better term, insane, if they tried to blend both realities.”
“I’m not insane, and I am aware of both.”
&
nbsp; “You are a somewhat rare creature, Iris. You are one of nature’s rebels. You are uncomfortable everywhere and anywhere, so it does not matter to you what world you are on, or time you are in.”
“Nice of you to decide that for me,” she scowled. “What if I wanted to be brainwashed with the rest of my tribe?”
“Do you want to be brainwashed with the rest of your tribe?”
“No.”
“You just want to argue with me, is that it?”
“I want you to respect me. I want you to ask me what I want before you make a decision for me.”
“I am a king. I do not ask people what they want before I make decisions for them. I make decisions and they are grateful for them.”
“Well I’m not grateful.”
“That is very apparent,” Archon growled. “I understand that you are a rebel, that you come from a line of rebels, and that your main, if not only, mission in life is to rail against authority. But I will not tolerate it. I will break your rebellion. I will break you if you cannot give in to my rule.”
Chapter 23
The tingle which zipped through Iris and terminated between her thighs was not supposed to result from his threat. She was supposed to hate him even more for it - but she didn’t.
He was right. She had her role, and he had his role. They were constantly at never ending odds, and always would be. So perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps there was no way there would ever be peace between them. But there would always be passion of the kind which made her part her lips when he tipped her head up toward him and claimed her mouth in one of those searingly hot kisses which drove all sensible thought from her head.
“We are going to see them now,” Archon said. “Stay close. Hold my hand, and don’t talk to strangers.”
She agreed to his terms and was led from the small room into a much larger world of many people and big tall square rocks which had windows carved into them.