by Zara Zenia
"Your eyes remind me of the mountains on the southern tip of Norna."
Kelly blinked. "E-excuse me, your Highness?"
Damn it, look away! I didn't have the will to look away from her. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a breath. Another wave of piss and rotten garbage, but also wild flowers and fresh herbs, a scent that could only have come from Kelly.
"Why would I stay and give you an interview, when I've already decided I'm leaving for the day?"
She smiled again and tilted her chin toward the other end of the alley. "Because there's another reporter and a camera crew on that side, and I'm about sixty percent sure the only thing keeping them from coming over here is the fact they think you're already doing an interview with me."
I glanced over my shoulder and sure enough three people with various kinds of recording equipment stood near the other entrance to the alley. I didn't recognize either of the men, but the woman was the journalist whose question had driven me over the edge. Their eyes were locked on Kelly and me, their bodies ready to break into a run the moment we parted company.
"Guess I wasn't the only one who figured you'd duck out," Kelly whispered.
"So it would seem," I said turning back to the slender brunette. "I have an idea why she would make that guess. That doesn't explain how you did, Ms. Fillmore."
She shrugged. "Actually, I didn't. What I guessed what that you didn't like the attention and by the time you were done you'd had your fill. Since everybody and their mother is camped out front, I figured you would take the back."
I had to admit, it seemed plausible, but it was equally likely that my sudden fascination with her made me eager to accept any explanation she offered. "And you hoped you could squeeze in another interview question if you had me to yourself." I stepped around her and continued on my path. Back to my transport. Back to my responsibilities. Away from Kelly. "That wouldn't be fair to the others, nor would it solve my problems. Why would it be worth my time?"
"Because a hell of a lot of people on this planet are afraid they're gonna get caught in an intergalactic war, your Highness."
Her words sent a shiver down my spine, stopping me in my tracks. She moved in front of me again. There was no smile on her face this time. Only fierce determination.
"They deserve to know the truth and my guess is those assholes only cared about the flash."
"And you want to give them that truth, Miss Grant? Is that what you want?"
"I grew up thirty minutes from this city, your Highness," she said. "You're damn right it's what I want."
From the passion in her face and the sparkle in her eye... I believed her.
Chapter 6
Kelly
Prince Lortnam stared hard at my face, plainly reading me for any hidden agenda. He wouldn't find one. I had rules for undercover work— like most of my work —and the first one was if I had to lie, it needed to be so close to the truth even I couldn't tell the difference. I knew the cops were lying. I knew Nora Morse was pissed off and looking for someone to blame. Prince Lortnam didn't need to know which one of those facts led to me standing in front of him.
I had spent hours the night before combing over information about the Prince with Mei. News alerts from overenthusiastic outlets about their "exclusive" with the Prince gave me my cover. I couldn't take credit for noticing that he hated crowds. It was Mei that noticed he shied away from the camera. A man who hated the spotlight would be crawling out of his skin by the end of a full day of interviews. I knew I would be. That gave me a point of contact to go with my cover without the additional trouble/legal hassle of bribing the greediest looking security guard. It was just a matter of finding the right in with the alien blue blood to put my plan in action.
A marathon night of planning followed by hours staking out a garbage dumpster, and the Prince and the nosey camera crew had almost blown the whole thing. I couldn't judge by the Princes' expression how close I was to pulling it off.
The pictures and camera footage didn't do the Prince justice. He was well over six-feet-tall, with a thick muscular body that would have been the envy of every powerlifter in the gym. Every time my eyes drifted to his arms— or rather the thick fabric straining at the seams to contain his arms as he flexed them behind his back —I couldn't let go of the idea that he could do whatever he wanted to me, and I would be powerless to stop him. But there was something about the way he carried himself that side-stepped my warning alarms. He didn't use his size to hover over me and impose his will, although under normal circumstances it would have been the fastest way to get me to piss off. He didn't pull rank, he didn't command, and so far, his only demand had been answers and solitude.
Nothing about him screamed jerk or intergalactic playboy. His sagging shoulders and deep-set eyes made him look more like an exhausted business man.
The Prince heaved a sigh, giving the seams on his tunic another workout. "Not here. The others have already asked me their questions, I want no more."
I tried as hard as I could to keep the smile from my face, but the ache in my cheeks told me I had failed. I could only hope the Prince took it as professional excitement— technically, it was.
"I'm staying in a hotel a few blocks from here," I said, pointing to the street behind me. "It's just a short—"
"No." Short, clipped, and with no room for argument. That was more in line with what I expected from royalty. "We'll take my transport and go to my palace. I've had enough of this, too." He looked about the alley as if it was the whole of Baltimore.
I blinked in surprise, diving deep into my brain for any excuse to refuse the offer half the women in the city were waiting for. If I were a woman of the wave, I'd probably jump at it, too. But since I was spying on the Prince for a client, my perspective was a little different. The last thing I wanted was to get caught in a lie or have my cover blown while I was in his fortress, where his word was law. I was trying to get away from the fortress, not see the inside!
"Your Highness, I'm afraid that would—”
"Lortnam, please." He closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping again. The official biography said he was only in his twenties, but when he frowned, his eyes wrinkled at the corners, making him look older than his years. "Even more than I've had enough of reporters, I've had enough of the formality."
"All... right..." A royal who wasn't big on formality? Wasn't that the entire point of them? "You're sure that's not against some law or something?"
He shrugged and reached for my hand. His thick palm was twice the size of mine, and pleasantly warm in the chill air. "When we get to my palace, it won't matter. No one will arrest you unless you harm me."
Famous last words. Did publicly embarrassing the Prince by proving he was a liar count as harm? It didn't on Earth, but it sure as hell could on Trilyn. I had a vague thought that I should pull my hand away, but by the time it solidified, he had walked on, guiding me toward the street.
A sleek, shiny, oblong vehicle was parked next to the curb. A Trilyn in a plan tunic stood beside it, his hands clasped in front of him. He was nearly as tall and broad shouldered as the Prince, but with a softer angle to his jaw that made me think he was younger, maybe only a teenager. Otherwise, the street was empty. I guessed nobody inside had gotten the message about the cancelled press conference.
"You're just going to let them wait?" I asked as I climbed in after the Prince.
The interior of the transport was arranged like a typical car, but the luxury had been turned up to thirty. The deep, wide seats were upholstered with dark blue fabric as soft as downy fur. A privacy screen separated the passenger cabin from the driver's seat. Tiny lights embedded in the ceiling reminded me of a night sky, but when the guard closed the door they dimmed until the cabin was dark. Seconds later, my stomach shifted uncomfortably as the transport hummed to life and zoomed forward. We were airborne.
"My assistant stayed behind." Lortnam pressed a button on the console and the lights in the ceiling rose to half brightness. "She'll pa
ss them a statement and send them back to their editors. They all had what they wanted anyway."
There was a note of bitterness in the Prince's voice that caught me off guard. I'd expected him to revel in the attention. After all, why pack a day full of interviews if you didn't crave the spotlight? But from the look on his face, he would have rather fallen into a sewer than be interviewed.
"Did you get what you wanted?" I asked. "For a man who saved a lot of lives, you look pretty ill at ease in yours."
It took a few seconds of silence for me to realize the Prince wasn't going to answer me.
"Not here," he said, finally. "I'll answer your questions when we get to my home."
He pressed another button and the upper half of the wall next to me turned transparent, revealing the city below us. I wasn't afraid of heights but realizing just how far away the ground would be if I needed to make a quick exit was sobering enough to make me look away. We spent the rest of the ten-minute trip in silence, the Prince looking out his window and me staring intently at my shoes. I didn't look up again until my door opened. The urge to jump out— to a few seconds of safety followed by my inevitable death —was strong enough.
When the car landed, Lortnam took my hand again. I fought the urge to pull mine away so I wouldn’t accidentally offend him, but inside I had never wanted space between me and another person so badly. Ten Trilyns scurried around the hanger. None of them went out of their way to avoid Prince Lortnam, the way they would if he were a raging asshole. But they didn't try to catch his eye either, the way they would if he were prone to showering his underlings with rewards. There were two other transports in the hanger, both of them twice the size of the Prince’s. They were blockier than the Prince's sleek luxury pod, with a rough exterior that reminded me of a city bus.
"Who takes those?" I asked.
"Whoever on the staff needs to use it," he said. "Mostly the support staff, of which there are many."
I could believe it. From the outside, the thing looked like it could hold a few hundred people comfortably. That was assuming the engineers hadn't used any space saving tricks in the lower ranking resident's living quarters.
The Prince led me to a lift and through a series of corridors. The walls on both sides were lined with landscape art. Each piece depicted a different angle of the same rugged landscape. Haphazard mountains filled the upper portion of the canvases while tall trees and brilliant green grasses dotted the lower half.
"Is that your home?" I asked, hoping to get the Prince talking again.
He paused in front of a door and pressed his hand against a recessed portion of the wall. As his hand sank in, the door chimed and slid open.
"Technically the palace is my home," he said. "It hasn't rested on the soil of Norna in many years."
A journalist would ask about that, wouldn't they? I cleared my throat. "Right, you've been on Earth for four years, all of it spent here in Baltimore. You ever get the urge to pack up and move someplace else?"
The fancy auto-lights turned on as soon as the Prince entered. There were no landscapes on these walls, only heavy bookshelves of red lacquered wood that stretched from floor to ceiling. Each bookshelf held at least one hundred books carefully arranged in precise rows. I stared at the bounty in wonder. It would take me a lifetime to read them all, assuming they were in English.
The centerpiece of the room was an oversized desk in the back near the only window. It was made from the same red-stained wood as the bookshelves, but wear had worn the lacquer on the top down to a subtle sheen.
"The High Prince sent us where he thought we'd have the best chance of finding mates," Lortnam said, sliding behind his desk and taking a seat. "To move would be to question his reasoning."
He gestured for me to take the chair opposite him. As I did, I reached into my purse and pulled out a notebook and pen. Both were new purchases I made especially for this meeting, courtesy of Nora Morse. I figured it and a broke woman's version of business casual attire were the cheapest way to pass for a reporter. I hadn't actually expected him to take me up on my interview request. Definitely wasn't expecting to get it for the low cost of promising to tell the truth. What did the Trilyns care about the truth? Or justice? Or the scared people living in their shadows?
"I see. And you can't be seen to question the High Prince's orders." I crossed my legs and leaned back in the chair, forcing myself to look more at ease than I felt. "He's Prince...Gardax, right? How does he feel about the press junket today?"
He let out a humorless laugh. "The outreach was his idea. He's most eager to see this project completed and his brothers happily settled."
I'll bet he is. "He was the first of you to be mated, right? With Darbnix, then Manzar and then just a few weeks ago, Akrawn, correct?"
The Prince leaned back in his seat, bracing his elbows against the arm rest. "You've done your homework. That was a disappointing rarity among your colleagues today. Where are these questions leading, Ms. Fillmore?"
"Do you envy them?" I asked, holding his gaze. The icy blue stuck out against his satiny bronze skin. He was handsome, he had a palace, and he was rich. On paper, that should have been more than enough for Prince Lortnam to find a match. Yet here he sat, four years into the mating project and still single.
That might be enough to make a man desperate. Certainly desperate enough to stage an attack and get some free press. Maybe the day-long round of interviews was more than he bargained for.
"Only a fool wouldn't envy them," he said. "You didn't come here to ask me about my brothers or our potential mates, Ms. Fillmore."
"No, but I find people answer questions more freely if they think I know them. They think I'll see their side of things."
That wasn't a lie. I once convinced a bastard CEO to admit he'd hidden half a million dollars from his wife, just because I let him tell me how he started skimming money over a cup of coffee.
Prince Lortnam shook his head. "Humans are easily manipulated."
"Frightened people are easily manipulated, your Highness. I bet it's the same where you're from," I said, struggling to keep the acid out of my tongue. It was easy to call people gullible when you lorded over them with a literal fortress in their backyard.
"Where I'm from, journalists aren't allowed to report lies purely for entertainment and ratings. The truth matters there, even when we would prefer it didn't."
Prince Lortnam looked down at his hands for a moment, then pushed back from the desk so suddenly I flinched in surprise. He stalked to the window, turning his back to me to stare through the thin transparent shield that separated us from the outside.
"Are you saying the press isn't telling the truth?" This time I couldn't keep the tremor from my voice. "Is there more to this story?"
The Prince didn't answer at first. His broad shoulders slumped forward, as if the weight of both our worlds lay on his shoulders and he only just now found the burden too much to handle. A rumble of excitement hummed through my body. That was the look of a man with something to hide if ever I had seen it. I'd expected this job to take days— maybe weeks —and still lead to a load of nothing.
To hell with the notepad, I should have brought a recorder.
"What happened that day, Prince Lortnam?" I pressed again.
"I went to the culture center that evening to give a lecture on Trilyn mating customs," he said.
That wasn't what I meant, but if it was where his highness needed to start, I could roll with that. "What was the subtopic? Courtship?"
"The first voyage and consummation." He glanced at me over his shoulder as if to gauge my reaction.
"What is the first voyage?" I asked, keeping my face devoid of emotion. If he thought I was judging him for using such a clinical term for sex, he might clam up.
Apparently satisfied, the Prince turned back to the window. "When a genetic match is confirmed, the Prince and his new Princess depart for their seat of power on our home world. The journey takes weeks, long enough for the new couple
to learn each other's habits and needs. At least that is supposed to be what takes place."
"Because the matches are meant to be blind, right? In theory the women have never met you before they are matched to you?"
"In theory," he said. "In practice... we know the situation is not ideal. That's why my brothers organize the parties."
"But you organized a lecture. Do you think that's a little impersonal for speed dating?"
The Prince furrowed his brow. "Speed dating?"
Right, so the Prince with the library for an office wasn't hip to Human mating culture.
"I'll rephrase. How can you get to know a woman if you're doing all the talking?"
The Prince snorted. "For starters, the patience she has for listening to me talk tells me a great deal. As does her tolerance for my preferred subjects. The lecture that night was to be the first in a series. If anyone had come back, well that persistence and continued interest would have spoken as well."
There was a strange, almost wistful quality to the Prince's voice. It made me uncomfortable, like I was listening to a confession meant for a close friend.
"What were you hoping it would say?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter. The center was damaged in the attack and it will take weeks, perhaps months to repair. There weren't seven armed men in the cultural center."
Since the Prince had his back to me, there was no reason to conceal my shock at his admission. It was one thing for me to bust a reporter on the evening news repeating a bullshit story. It was another for the most famous man on the planet to admit it was an outright lie.
"H-how many were there?" I knew that stand in was lying through her veneers!
"There were two. Brothers. Your law enforcement officers have one in custody. As far as I know, the other escaped shortly before they arrived. The other was captured after I encountered him in a back corridor. I overpowered him, but only him."