by Lucia Ashta
Planet Origins
Lucía Ashta
Awaken to Peace Press
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Original Elements
Original Elements Preview
A Note to Readers
Also by Lucía Ashta
About the Author
Copyright 2017 Lucía Ashta
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction.
Cover design by Lou Harper of Harper by Design
Awaken to Peace Press
Sedona, Arizona
www.awakentopeace.com
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For the real Ilara, who revels in her true nature
The most terrible of limitations are those we impose upon ourselves. Free your mind, and you free yourself.
One
Planet Origins
Year 3,069 of the Andaron Dynasty rule
The threat of death stares everyone in the face at one time or another, though it doesn’t usually come in the form of an eyeball. This one eyeball was swiveling furiously, reminding me of the many reasons that I didn’t normally let the King see me.
Even if he hadn’t noticed me, I’d seen the King many times, always from afar; I allowed the masses to conceal me with their fervor. In the current political environment, the King—always guarded—made regular public appearances. It was important that the people of Planet Origins—Planet O for short—remember that he was still in control. It was important for the King to remember that the people of Planet O still wanted him as their king as they’d wanted his ancestors before him.
I lied and told myself that this latest near death experience might have gifted the King with uncommon patience and understanding. His legendary sharp mind and quick instincts to punish might have dulled since the attack that left him temporarily bedridden. Comforted by these lies, I took one step forward, out of the shadows that clung to the walls of the royal infirmary.
That one gray eye honed in on me as devastatingly as an asteroid on an inevitable trajectory predicted to bring terrible destruction. It undressed me, doing away with all pretense as quickly as a man could undress a woman with his sight. Already, my comforts were revealed for the falsehoods they were.
With my next step toward the King’s prostrate form, I could feel the King’s eye on me as if it were a hand, already attempting to throttle me for a sin worse than any against his empire. I would have turned around right then, no matter what I’d resolved to do, but I couldn’t. Retreat wasn’t an option. Not when this was about her. I couldn’t turn away from her.
I stepped directly into the light that filtered from the glass bed the King lay on. I bowed from a respectable distance. “Good morning, your Majesty.” My voice squeaked at the start.
“You may rise,” a voice said from the corner. I swiveled. The King’s presence was imposing, even in his debilitated condition. I hadn’t noticed the man whose job appeared to be to interpret the King’s subtle gestures and thus to conserve his energy for healing. Ordinarily, I noticed every detail of my surroundings. I tried to shake off the realization that I wasn’t as sharp as I normally was.
At close range, the King pinned me with both cold gray eyes, not just the one. Together, their impact doubled, and it was easy to believe that this man had ruled Planet Origins for nearly a millennium.
Those two eyes narrowed with obvious impatience. I didn’t need anyone to interpret that look. I hurried to speak. I was lucky to have been granted an audience in the first place. If I hadn’t said those two words—Princess Ilara—I would never have made it past the King’s antechambers. I’d invoked her to gain access. After all, this was about her, as it had been for years.
“Your Majesty, I’m here about Princess Ilara,” I said, never taking my eyes from those that held mine. Before a man like this, one could not show weakness—I couldn’t show weakness. My entire plan depended on this man trusting me, and the King didn’t trust anyone.
“So I’ve been told,” the King croaked. I hoped I hid my reaction to the King’s audible frailty in time and averted my eyes for a moment. But when I looked up again, I knew that I hadn’t. Anger flared in the King’s eyes, and I knew that time, once again, was not on my side.
“You are Lord Brachius’ son.” The statement was both factual and accusatory.
I didn’t bother drawing up tall. I took no pride in being a potential tyrant’s son. “I am. And there is nothing I can do to change that, regrettably.”
Curiosity flashed across eyes that had grown still though I didn’t presume to be safe in their stare. Animals of prey watched the target of their kill with deceptive calm before they ripped the throats out of victims that couldn’t run fast enough to escape the inevitable.
In this room with softly glowing yellow lights, a glass bed, and nothing more, I had nowhere to run. “I understand the risk I took in coming to see you. But I had to. You see, I know that Princess Ilara still lives,” I whispered so that only the King could hear.
One of the King’s raspy breaths cut short in his chest, the sudden silence echoing in the sterile room. He flicked a nervous glance at his servant. When the King returned his gaze to me, rage brewed. I took a small step back before noticing what I’d done. I couldn’t give up any progress. My visit today was too important. The King was a wild beast that had been civilized. To rule Planet O the way he had all these years, he had to be a bit like the hairy moabs of the deserted wildernesses: fierce. Everyone on Planet O knew not to mess with the moabs.
This king was groomed and polished, his gray beard trimmed into precision despite his convalescence. But the moab in him still reared forth. “Lord Tanus, do not play with me.”
I nodded without wanting to.
“You will find yourself in a game of cat and mouse, with me the cat.”
Obviously, I thought. There wasn’t a trace of mouse in the King of Planet Origins.
“If you’ve come here thinking you would take advantage of a flailing king, you were mistaken.” The King’s words could cut metal. The servant stepped out of the shadows in concern. He was there to ensure that the King rested when he should. Upon his recovery and his broad shoulders depended the future well-being of a planet.
And upon my shoulders rested the well-being of a princess. I took that responsibility as seriously as the King took his responsibility to rule. The King cut the servant short with one look, and the shadows swallowed the servant once more.
The King would do as he chose during his recovery, and he would do what he wanted with me as well. All it would take was a flick of a finger and I would be taken to the holds beneath the palace, where my screams of protest couldn’t travel high enough to disturb the royal court.
King Oderon ruled with an iron fist. He showed compassion when necessary to appease his people. But it wasn’t often necessary in a rule such as his. I’d heard nearly every rumor about him. I
feared that most of them were true.
“Has your father sent you here?”
If I answered yes, I would be guilty of treason. My father had been suspected of betraying the Crown many times before. I presumed that he was trying to betray it once and for all right now.
“He did not. He doesn’t know that I’m here, your Majesty.”
The King’s eyes roved, taking in my tall frame, sweeping all the places one could hide a weapon. Then he nodded. Continue.
“Milord, do not hold the son accountable for the sins of his father. He and I are nothing alike.” I had to tread carefully here. I didn’t care for the man my father had become, but neither did I wish to fill the role of his official accuser. My father still lived despite the attacks against the King because no links survived between the assassination attempts and him. He was cunning and meticulous.
The King waited. Obviously, there was more. With a slight nod of his head, he gave me leave to speak of his daughter, but quietly. No one—not even the servant in the corner—needed to hear what I had to say.
“I know that your daughter lives. And I know that she was sent off planet.” I whispered. The surprise in the King’s face confirmed that he heard.
“And what,” the King hissed back, “makes you think this?”
“I know this because I feel her alive.” I let my statement sink in. “At first, I didn’t understand how she could have lived. Everything that I suspected went contrary to what was being said.” There was no accusation there. No pointing fingers. The King did what he had to do to protect his family. I would have done the same.
“But then I began to look for her, to follow leads and dead ends, until finally, I discovered what I think now must be the truth. I broke into my father’s facility to confirm it.”
Neither astonishment nor alarm flared in King Oderon’s eyes. What I saw was much worse: It was a promise, a promise that the King would use his last strength to fulfill. He would kill anyone that betrayed his daughter.
I had nothing of which to be ashamed. I forced myself to meet the King’s challenge. I needed the King to understand. I couldn’t get to Ilara without his help. And if the King were to die before sharing this secret I sought, I would never find her. She would be lost to me forever, and that was much worse than anything the King could do to me.
“Does Lord Brachius know?” The King waited for my answer, prepared to identify the truth or the lie within it.
I shook my head, brown hair cascading across my forehead. “No. And he’ll never know. I’ll take the secret of Princess Ilara’s survival to my grave with me, if I must.”
The King nodded. He could recognize a duty to protect a loved one so much like his own. “And why is it that the Princess is so important to you? Is it that you are a loyal subject with interest in protecting the royal family?”
I took a deep breath and made the right choice: Truth, blunt truth. “No. I don’t particularly care who rules as long as he rules fairly. I know that I don’t want my father to rule because he wouldn’t rule fairly.”
The King nodded curtly. There were certain types of men that could respect the truth more than the content of what was said; the King was such a man. “Then, what is your interest in the Princess?”
The King still hadn’t confirmed my theory. My next words were the best chance I had at getting through to a father who happened to be a king. “I love her. I’ve loved her for years.”
I forced myself not to shrink from the King, even though I’d just revealed that the Princess and I had sneaked and hidden our relationship from him, the most powerful man on the entire planet, with a reach that extended much farther than one planet’s orbit.
“And she loves me.”
Two
The moments that ticked by did so slowly. I experienced each one as a spasm in my chest. The divide between life and death—and how swiftly the King could bring about either—was louder than anything else in the room. The glass bed emitted a constant stream of healing rays for the King, without sound or other evidence of the work it did. The attendant was invisible as he was expected to be.
Yet my fear was palpable, thrumming audibly in a loop between my ears. I’d prepared to face the King so exhaustively that it seemed impossible that he could crush the hope from me so easily. I’d known what King Oderon was like. Everyone knew what King Oderon was like. His reputation for ruthlessness and strength was how he maintained his rule without opposition for so long. Until my father.
And I’d just admitted to an illicit love affair between his only living child and myself.
A bead of salt water, a traitor to my resolve, erupted on my temple. It began its descent down my face. I didn’t move to brush it away. I didn’t want to call the cat’s attention to evidence of the mouse’s weakness.
The King’s mouth rose on one side, and I knew he’d spotted it. Even infirm, atop a healing bed, he wasn’t just a cat but a lion. If he’d been standing, he might have rushed and pinned me to a wall—if kings did things like that. Or maybe he would have had one of his servants do it for him and then come around for the kill.
“So you and my daughter love each other? Well isn’t that nice?” The edge in his voice revealed that he didn’t think it one bit nice. Without thinking, I bent my head to my shoulder to wipe the dripping sweat against my coat. The King’s half smile expanded into a sneer.
“And what makes you think that is permissible?” The words dripped with venom. Nothing of importance happened in his kingdom without his knowledge; it wasn’t supposed to, at least. Now, another attack on the throne, one that had almost cost him his life. And worse, his daughter illicitly consorting with the heir of his enemy.
I gulped but plowed forward. It was now or never. And never could arrive all too swiftly. A signal from the King would be all it took. “It wasn’t what we intended. It wasn’t planned.” The words many terrified men had uttered to furious potential fathers-in-law across the worlds. Some things didn’t change no matter where you lived or what air you breathed. “We would have never chosen each other and the attendant complications that come from who we are. But…”
“But what? Do not make your king wait!”
His voice thundered, and without looking up from the terrifying eyes that still seized mine, I felt the attendant stiffen across the room. “Pardon me, your Majesty, it’s just that, well…” At the bulging of his eyes I nearly tripped over my tongue to complete my sentence. “We fell in love with each other.”
I waited, but nothing came. Still, the tension in my shoulders didn’t ease. I didn’t know that love—true love—was one thing King Oderon did value. I didn’t realize that his marriage to the recently deceased Queen had been more than an obligation to the royal bloodlines.
For the first time since I entered the room, the King brought his eyes to rest on something other than me. He stared at the ceiling. I swept the backs of my hands against my sideburns and then wiped them along my pants. When the King still hadn’t returned his attention to me, I looked to the ceiling.
The ceiling was designed to mimic the sky. It was as if the room weren’t buried deep within the palace’s illusion of safety, it was as if there were no ceiling at all. Stars, planets, and clouds swirled above us, suggesting that troubles even as great as mine were insignificant.
The King startled me away from the view when he finally spoke. “How can I be certain that what you tell me is the truth?” He wouldn’t ask me that question if he didn’t believe me already, at least some. I allowed real hope to flutter to life for the first time since I crossed the threshold into the golden yellow light of this room.
Flattery wouldn’t work. I couldn’t praise his ability to discern the truth. The King had a reputation for smelling out deviousness before it could begin to stink. I possessed nothing tangible to prove my love for Ilara and hers for me. We’d had to be careful. We understood better than most how easy it would be for our affair to be discovered if we left a trail of it. More than one scan
dal had initiated with love letters that the lovers assumed would never be discovered.
I did, however, have a way to access incontrovertible proof. I wished so desperately that there was another way. But there was none. The only chance to save Ilara’s life lay in giving myself entirely to the lion, like sacrificial prey.
There was only one part of me that I’d been able to keep from the prying eyes of my father all these many years. It was this part that made me who I was. I shared it with no one. Had I been forced to share it with anyone, I’d have chosen Ilara.
There was no point in delaying the awful. I took a small step forward. The attendant reemerged from the shadows, alarm on his otherwise blank face. Without looking at the attendant, the King raised a hand to stay him. However, I wouldn’t draw closer. Already, it was unprecedented that I should be allowed to be so close to him without his guards surrounding us.
I’d said the magic words. The King was in too tenuous of a position to turn away his curiosity at what the son of his sworn enemy could have to say about his daughter, the one that no one was supposed to know was still alive.
“I can prove that what I say is true, that Ilara—Princess Ilara—and I love each other. I can also prove that my intentions are good. That I mean only to help her.”
“Go on.”
“I can share my memories with you.”
Something akin to respect flashed across the King’s face for a moment before he stashed it away. It took one level of courage to fight in battles or to face a king with a reputation for dealing death daily. It took an entirely different level of courage to reveal what one is really made of, to show the tender parts of a man that only he—and perhaps a special woman—should ever truly know. It was the ultimate sacrifice. I would be giving a man everything he would ever need to destroy me—as if this particular man needed any more.