by Zara Zenia
Why would she, after all she was the Queen of Xicret and her own need for power, respect and riches ruled out any of my father’s relentless behavior. Honor was a monumental thing for my mother.
This was part of the reason I hadn’t wanted to settle down with a bride. I desired a freedom to not be tied down to a nagging wife who would keep a watchful and judgmental eye on me at all times and at any cost.
My own parents failed marriage remained closed and locked up tight behind the palace walls, but I wasn’t immune to seeing their aggression and animosity toward each other. I may have been grown now, but it killed me inside.
I didn’t want to marry someone and be stuck with the same fate of hating my spouse and having to bring up children in a world full of bitter contempt.
I couldn’t stand the image of me with a wife, but the pressure from my parents breathing fire down my neck backed me into the inevitable corner of despair.
I couldn’t foresee any visible alternative until I succumbed to their wishes and commands, if nothing more to get them off my back.
“Father, there you are.” I barreled at him with clinched fists and a snide demeanor.
He spun around in his office chair to size me up with narrowed eyes. “Harkzak, what are you doing here? Are you already back from Earth and without a bride?” He tossed me a look of disgust.
Affection was never my father’s strong suit, and even with four children he never played the part of doting dad.
As the oldest sibling in the family, the sting of emotional wounds registered from neglect still lashed at me from time to time. It left me feisty and made me butt heads with my father more often than my brothers did.
“Why don’t you try to guess, Father?” The smirk I allowed myself to give him brought me increased satisfaction and it welled inside of me like a river down a waterfall.
My father, Carzon, stood and straightened his shoulders. He was never going to be taller than me, no matter how hard he tried to stand the part. It was an advantage I loved holding over his condescending, arrogant head.
Although he was surprisingly still buff for his older age, he had a tuft of graying hair upon his blue head.
The fact that he resented me for my youth and agile athleticism drove me to even greater lengths to compete with him.
The purpose of my invasion into his private king’s quarters was laced with anger. I hated the way my father put the weight of the world on my shoulders and expected me to carry it all the fucking time.
I stood there, staring down at him and leering. “I demand a refund for the winch I bought back on Earth. The stupid bitch will not cooperate.”
I threw my hands up in the air. I was undeniably frustrated and at the end of my rope for what I could handle. I wanted Lucy to cooperate.
I would give anything to keep her here with me, but I knew it was a lost cause. I didn’t have the patience for it. I wanted to vent out my frustrations on my father.
He was my father after all, he had to help me because I was his first born. It wasn’t lost on either of us that I was first heir to his Xicret throne.
“What the hell kind of nonsense are you talking about, Harkzak? You mean to tell me you actually listened to reason and brought back a potential mate?” My father’s voice sounded a little surprised and maybe even a little threatened as he backed a few strides away from me.
I drew in a sharp breath as he then began to backtrack and taper the gap between us. My muscles clinched, and I froze in place as his breath hit my face like a brick wall.
He wasn’t afraid of me. He thought I was weak, but he had no idea how powerful my internal forces were.
His sly grin curled up around the edges of his mouth and he looked even more sinister than usual like a tiger on the hunt. I swallowed hard and waited for him to speak. I held my poker face as long as I could.
“You are going to have to just deal with it.” His voice was tight and barely above a whisper.
I knew he took great pleasure in giving out orders to anyone in his path. For some reason, I had trouble discerning whether his statement was an instruction or a dare.
My shoulders slouched because my father was my one weakness. I hated to see myself cave under his pressure, but we both knew it was an inevitable advancement.
My sight hindered when it came to baring teeth against him, and for whatever reason I wasn’t able to defend myself as effortlessly as I wanted.
I felt full of shame in that moment and embarrassed to show my family a bride who wanted nothing to do with me.
I decided to approach a different method with my father. Perhaps sympathy could play into a factor here. It worth a try, no matter how high the odds were beginning to stack against me.
“Father, you don’t understand. The girl is difficult, I mean terribly complicated. I want nothing to do with her, Father. I never expected her to be this horrendous. She even scared poor Esme! Can you even believe that? Everyone loves dear Esme, and all the other maids won’t even go near her.”
I knew my voice sounded like the whining of a sullen child not getting their way, but I didn’t care anymore. I would get down on my hands and knees if it was what pleased my father and got him to listen to me.
Myself included, I found it increasingly difficult to even go near the door to her room. She had shut herself inside of it, harboring herself a hostage by her own accord. She refused to speak to me, or anyone else on the palace grounds.
The staff kept complaining about her snarling at them and some even went as far as to say she tried to hit them if they approached too close to her.
She was a snake in the grass and a sleeping dragon for all I knew. I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into and honestly, I felt slightly overwhelmed by the situation.
I needed aid from outside forces to help me reason with her or control her to some degree.
If my father gave me my money back, I could always go back to the next auction and find a new girl. It wasn’t my concern for what happened to this one and I’d gladly toss her aside.
There was only one problem with that backup plan. I didn’t know when I’d be able to return to Earth for another auction. If my father knew it was because I wanted to pick another girl, he’d probably withhold having any more of them take place just to be an asshole about it.
The sneer in my father’s eyes softened to a glazing glow. I didn’t know where this paternal instinct was suddenly coming from and I frankly didn’t know my father had it in him to be kind.
“Son, come here. Sit with me a minute.” He beckoned me to his tired old leather couch in his office, where I had sat as a child and watched him work night after night.
I stared at him in cynical disbelief.
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to yell at you or strike you. I mean look at you Harkzak, you are twice my size.” He began to laugh and eventually I started to coyly follow along.
I took a cautious and weary step next to my father.
As I grudgingly sat down beside him, nostalgia crawled its way up into my mind with my boyhood memories front and center. It wasn’t always heated tempers and lashing anger growing up.
“Have you ever heard of the Looking Eye?” His lips pursed in expectancy of my response.
I shook my head, puzzled. “No, sorry.”
“Well, it must be true after all. It was my impression that you and your younger brothers fancied an occasional sneak into my office to lurk around and sniff your nose in my business. I guess I was wrong.” His expression was hard to read, so I just shrugged.
He had my attention captured though, and my ears prickled in anticipation as to what information he might divulge about this Looking Eye thing.
I did laugh at his statement about my brothers and me sneaking into his office and taking a peek through his private items.
“Sometimes we did sneak around,” I admitted with a chuckle.
I grinned and remembered fond memories of my brothers and I tag teaming into mischief. As t
he heirs to the galaxy throne, we had been able to get away with far more than the average male child in most houses around Xicret back then.
Sometimes our nannies would give us a decent swat on the ass, but we got away with tons of shit for the most part.
“Anyway,” my father slapped his knee and the sound pitched me back to reality, “it’s a very special device.” He raised his eyebrows. He was enjoying stringing me along with wonderment.
At the same time, I was still angry and frustrated. Patience wasn’t necessarily my virtuous task. I teetered on the rim of boredom, wishing he would just spit out his explanation already. “So what is this special device?” My voice laced with mockery in my cloud of impatience.
My father looked down at his hands that I noticed were becoming more wrinkled in his later years than they ever had before.
“It’s something I rarely use.” His eyes flashed up and met mine, a warning stare held within. “You must promise to never speak of what I’m about to tell you.”
He behaved as if he were about to disclose the secrets of the universe. I rolled my eyes, annoyed. I didn’t have time to play my father’s little games today. They almost always lead into a trap anyway. I didn’t respond, and my father raised his tone.
“You must not tell anyone! I forbid it.” The muscles in his lips twitched.
Sighing dramatically, I adhered to his wishes. “Fine, whatever, Father, just tell me already.” I folded my arms and leaned back to recline myself on the back of the couch.
I closed my sullen eyes.
“In the Looking Eye, the device is so profound that if a destination is entered onto its screen platform, then a person or whoever is utilizing it can travel anywhere in the galaxy to meet someone or spy on them.”
I raised a questioning eyebrow. It seemed farfetched, but now he had my full throttle attention. “Are you kidding, Father?” This had to be another one of his cruel little jokes.
The deafening silence that thickened the air was not lost on me. My father’s eyes were a testament to solid truth. He was not bluffing in the slightest.
“Show me how it works then.”
In a dramatic huff, I sat up on the edge of the couch, ready to be impressed by this so called device that I had yet to see for myself. If it were in fact real, I’d soon know it.
“It’s in a vault.” My father stood and walked over to the window and stared outside into the morning blanket of fog across the back garden.
Rising frustration threatened to pellet out of me at the expense of my father. “So where is this vault? Why would you tell me about this device if you didn’t intend for me to use it or at least see what it means?”
I joined him by the window and shoved my hands in my pockets. I wanted him to get to the point already and more importantly, I wanted my money back for the Earth bitch. He still had yet to respond to that request of mine.
“I feel terrible about what I’m about to admit, but I don’t know if I have a choice anymore. It wouldn’t do you any good if I didn’t tell you the whole story.”
His eyes looked sad as he glanced in my direction, and then hastily back the window.
I inhaled a deep breath. “Okay…well I’m listening, Father, and you’ve already said too much to keep it a secret any longer.”
He heaved a resigning exhale. “I had been using the device to keep an eye on you out there in the galaxy.”
“What?” Explosive anger boiled to the surface. Rage flooded me, and my fists instinctively clinched by my side.
I wanted to pick up this man who was built scrawnier than me and plow him through the glass window in front of us.
“Hear me out,” my father threw up a hand to stunt me from a violent reaction. “I used it to protect you. You are my son, Harkzak. I always want to look out for you and your brothers. If you got into any sort of trouble, I would be able to get to you more quickly than if I didn’t have the Looking Eye.”
“Okay, I suppose I’ll allow you to continue then.” I kept a watchful eye on him, but I had yet to climb down from my initial anger over his newly disbursed confession.
“The Looking Eye is forbidden to use, so I have to limit when I take it out. If the galactic police got word that I have one, then I would be banished from the throne.”
He peered down at his feet in visible shame, a quality rarely exploited by my father. I finally harbored the upper hand. I had the chance to blackmail my father or get him to obey me if I wanted to.
Still not grasping the point of this story, I pressed my father a little further for more detailed information. He was still acting vague and cloudy.
“I don’t quite understand. Why are you telling me all this? It doesn’t appear that the device is something I’ll ever be able to use.”
He looked me square in the eyes. His jaw was chiseled and prominent, just like mine. “I’m telling you this, Harkzak, because I feel like in this desperate case you need to use it so you can show the girl what it’s like now on Earth, that she has nothing to go home to and it’s a wasted cause for her to even try.”
“You mean I should show her what her family is up to now that she’s gone?”
I’d never thought of that aspect. Then again this was all new to me. I supposed this was my father’s way of beating around the bush to tell me that I wasn’t getting the refund I requested.
“Yes, this is a special case. The girl…what is her name?” He looked at me with a questioning glance and I then realized I had yet to reveal that significant part.
“Lucy. Her name is Lucy Rivers.” I scratched my face, pondering this idea. It could actually work to make her realize she has nothing to run home to on Earth.
“I’ll retrieve this Looking Eye for you, so long as you promise to bring it back immediately after use, and speak nothing of it to anyone.”
His eyes danced with a youthful mischievousness. My father would never let go of his reckless nature and I had to give him respect for that. He must really trust me, and my ego swelled with fresh pride.
“You have my word, Father. Let’s teach this girl a lesson from the both of us.” Excitement fueled me into a plan I hoped could defeat the impossible.
The new goal was going to be getting Lucy to accept Xicret as her new home. I was up for the challenge.
Chapter Eight
Lucy
I was drained from the course of events after arriving on Xicret. I was also tired of waiting to see if Harkzak would ever return. I was impatient and bored.
I finally lifted my cheek off my tear soaked wet pillow. My head felt heavy like it was full of lead. My brain felt soggy and fuzzy.
I had to do something. I couldn’t just cry in this bed for all of eternity and dwell on my problems without doing something about them.
I needed to swiftly get my gears into action to get out of the prison room masquerading as a lavish bedroom suite. Harkzak wasn’t fooling me. I’d heard stories about the Xicret men being ruthless and turning wives into slaves.
Nobody there would speak to me, but it was just as well. I didn’t know their language and I didn’t care to learn it either.
I stood up and yawned, stretching my sore muscles that were still in recovery mode from being in the cell with the tough inflexible concrete floor back on Earth.
I heard a sound on the outside of the door, a rustling and it made my heart pound in my chest. A cold, nervous sweat broke out over my skin which also prickled with chill bumps.
Instinctively I ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. Breathing at a rapid pace, a nervous sweat formed on my brow and my stomach flipped with somersaults that could put an Olympic athlete to shame.
I had no idea who was on the other end of that door trying to bombard me and disrespect the privacy of a closed door, but I didn’t want to find out either.
“Lucy?” I recognized Harkzak’s deep and brooding voice at once.
So, he did come back for me after all. I wasn’t a wilted flower he could just let die in the dark
ness. I wanted to plunge through the door and scream that to him, but instead my feet remained planted on the cool white ceramic tile, unable to move a muscle. I didn’t react, although I felt better visualizing myself pounding his face in with my fists.
“Lucy, I know you’re in there. I heard the door slam shut when I walked into the bedroom. I need to speak with you urgently.”
He did sound desperate, but more so angry and frustrated than anything else. Well, he should join the fucking club because I too was at my boiling over point.
“Please, Lucy.”
A trace of anxiety sung out of his voice like a chirping bird. This caused me to have an instant rush of relief. I might have the upper hand if I blatantly sabotage him for bringing me here in the first place.
“What do you want?” I squeaked out from behind the safety of the closed bathroom door.
My own voice sounded like a fog horn that had not been used in a number of years. At first it was a slow grunt and then it became a more pronounced screech.
“Please come out, Lucy. I have some news about your family that I think you should be aware about.”
Flat as an Oklahoma plain, my stomach stopped its intense flipping and jolted to complete stillness.
Is he telling the truth? Or was this some sort of cruel trick he was playing on me in order to get me to emerge from the bathroom? I paused for a few brief seconds, unsure of whether I should take the risk and believe him.
My heartbeat may have flat lined, and I was certain my spirit rose up out of my body and reviewed the empty shell leaning against the door from down below.
“What?” An echo of a sound caught in my throat. He was playing games with me. The cynical side of me just knew it.
But the hopeful side…well that wanted to hang on for a little while longer.
“If you come out here, I’ll show you.” His voice was taunting, leading me into further curiosity but the gnawing question of whether he was baiting me was still left out in the open.
Then I thought of something else. Wait a minute. He’ll show me? What did that even mean? He could be setting me up.