I sink to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, and I stare at the ridiculous excess in front of me.
I used to pride myself on not being spoiled, despite my upbringing. Among my friends I was a questioner of rules, insightful and edgy—maybe not sarcastic on Vissa's level, but definitely enlightened. Rebellious. Bold.
Blind.
Frantically I scramble up, stripping off the pale blue suit, tossing it in a corner—it probably costs more than Safi could earn in a year.
I don't know what to do. Dress and go to the kitchen for food? I haven't eaten since the flight, and that wasn't a full meal. I haven't slept in what feels like days. Should I fall into the bed and sleep? Look for a communication device and try to contact General Binney, so I can speak to Rak? He's probably not even on this side of the ocean yet.
Who am I? Where am I, what am I, what should I—
I plunge into the soft pillows of my bed and I scream into them. Muffled shrieks tear from my chest through my throat, again and again, until they break and dissolve into tears, and I cry like I wouldn't let myself cry in Emsalis. Eyes burning, tears sizzling on the sheets, hands fisted in blankets, throat raw.
A knock on the door wakes me. The room is dark. Where am I? Images of Fray rebels and Vilor raiders flit through my brain, but then I see the familiar green-lit readout on the wall panel, and I see that it's late in the evening, and I remember that I'm home, in Ceanna, in the Reigning Complex, the Magnate's residence. I'm in my room.
I stagger out of the bed. "Lights!" I order, and the room illuminates. The closet is still open. With shaking fingers I choose plain pants, dark blue and form-fitting, and a loose white shirt that reminds me of the desert.
Then I stumble to the door as the knock sounds again. "Miss Remay?
I open the door. "Yes?"
"Your mother asked us to check on you, to see if you would like something to eat," says Ridley.
"Why didn't she come herself?"
"She's downstairs having dinner if you'd like to join her."
Dinner. Yes.
Barefoot, I hurry down the stairs to the massive kitchen. One of our chefs is there—he nods politely to me. "Welcome back, Miss Zilara. Anything special tonight?"
"No, thank you—just whatever my mother is having."
"Of course."
I walk to the adjoining room, where a table with ample space for twenty guests stretches out under a ceiling festooned with ornate cut-glass light fixtures. Those fixtures were my mother's choice, and she fought the designer for them with a passion she rarely shows for anything.
She's at the near end of the table, so I sit across from her.
"Did you rest?" she says.
"I did, thank you."
The chef serves me. Delicately roasted meat, shaved into thin slices. Creamy potatoes and herbs. Fresh greens. Sparkling water. Soft white rolls. I eat everything without speaking, worshiping each bite as it slides over my tongue.
My mother watches me, the jewels on her dark fingers glittering as she sips from her wine glass.
"Dad isn't joining us." I speak with my mouth full of the berry tart the chef brought out.
"No."
It's not unusual. We rarely eat together—we're all so busy. I live at Uni, Emret has his own house, and my father is often occupied with affairs of state. But I thought he might make an exception on this, my first night back in Ceanna.
"Did you miss me?" I say.
"Miss you, lovely?" My mother smiles. "You're never here."
"I just meant—did you worry?"
"Of course I worried! I was perfectly crazy with grief. We were sure you were dead at one point—your father told me to resign myself to the inevitable."
I snort. "He gave up easily."
She hesitates, her fingers gliding over the glass. "Your father has never been overly deep or demonstrative with his affections. But he values you, Zilara. You are important to him."
Her fingers flutter to her skull-port, and she activates her holo-screen. She's reading chatfeeds, mostly celebrity gossip. "Here's something about you," she says after a few minutes. "Did you come out of Emsalis with anyone, my lovely?"
Heat rises in my throat. "What do you mean?"
"There's an image here, of you touching a young man's hand. A rough-looking fellow. Here, look." She flicks the image around so I can see it. It's me and Rak, at the moment I said goodbye. The picture isn't clear; the person taking it was clearly doing so surreptitiously. But my heart lurches at the sight of his face, of his smile.
"Oh, that," I say, as casually as I can manage. "I hired him to protect me till I could leave Emsalis. I was thanking him for his help."
"Mm." My mother says nothing else. When one of our house staff brings the silver basin with her pills, she swallows them all and gives me a wan smile. "I'm off to bed," she says. "Will you be all right?"
She doesn't expect an answer other than "yes," so I say, "I'll be fine," even though I'm not sure it's true.
As she rises, I say, "Mom! Do you know how I can contact General Binney? The general who brought me back? I have a few questions for him."
"General Binney? I have no idea. Have the house get him for you." She turns and walks out of the room.
The last thing I want is for the house system to record my conversations with General Binney. As I leave the dining room, Tram and Ridley move from their positions on either side of the door and follow me upstairs again.
"Ridley," I say. "Do you have an external communication device? One that's not linked to your skull-port?"
"Yes, miss."
"May I use it?"
She hesitates. "It's for emergency communications, a backup option. And it's audio only, no holo."
"Just for a few minutes?"
Sighing, she hands over the slim silver square, and I dart into my room before she can change her mind.
The house system gives me General Binney's wavecode, and then I order the system into privacy mode so it can't record my conversation. At least, I hope it can't. Since I found out the truth about the suppressor in my skull-port, I've been much less trusting of the technology around me, and the people who use it.
General Binney doesn't answer my wave. I try once more, but three times might be considered obsessive, so I force myself to return the device to Ridley.
As I hand it back, the house chimes. "Visitor for Miss Zilara Remay."
"Who is it?" I ask.
"Gareth Vandelor, son of Councilwoman Cheni Vandelor and Corporate Commodore Yavin Lurann. Gareth Vandelor is a fourth-year student at—"
"End introduction," I order, and the house obeys. "Let him in. I'll meet him downstairs."
3
The nerve of Gareth, coming here on my first day back in Ceanna. If he were still my boyfriend, he'd be expected to visit—but we haven't been together for months.
My guards follow me down the steps to the front room where my family usually receives guests. The reception room is immense, with a vast stretch of polished stone floor between the carpeted seating areas. I had Gareth's profile erased from the house memory, so instead of customizing the wall decor for him, the house projects a standard series of soothing images—curling green vines studded with blue flowers, along with faint rippling music.
Gareth stands in the center of the room, looking like a piece of breathtaking artwork. His parents had him engineered to their particular specifications—an obscenely expensive practice, one which only the pinnacle of Ceannan society can afford.
As I approach him, I take it all in again. His pale hair. His delicate features, so beautiful they're almost feminine. Full pink lips. A white throat showing through the open collar of his shirt—and under that shirt, as I know too well, a perfectly sculpted body. And his eyes—a strange shade of deep amber, like liquid fire. He's exquisite, alluring.
He's a walking lie.
"What do you want, Gareth?" I halt several steps away from him.
"Zil. It's good to see you again."
His voice is higher and thinner than Rak's, without that low musical quality I love—but there's an airy charm to the way he speaks. He approaches me, closing the distance I left between us. "I came to tell you that I'm here, if you need anything at all."
"You could have told me that with a wave."
"You don't have your skull-port anymore," he says. "And I didn't want to use the house wave-code—it seemed so impersonal. And—" He leans closer. "I wanted to see you, to tell you—"
He hesitates, as if overcome with emotion; but I know him too well. This is a practiced pause. "What did you want to tell me?" I prompt, playing along.
"Zil, what you heard that night, last year—those words were out of context, spoken in an unguarded moment to a friend I was trying to impress. They weren't true. I didn't choose you solely because of who your father is."
I stiffen. Even if his vicious words could be reasoned away, nothing can excuse his response when I told him what I heard—the hardness and cruelty that transformed his beautiful face. The knives in his tone when he told me I was nothing to him after all, that being intimate with me was a chore, that he had his eye on someone else.
That our connection was a lie.
Gareth is still speaking, maybe mistaking my silence for encouragement. "In these past months, I have missed you so much, darling. I've missed your face, your voice—everything we used to share. When I heard you'd been taken—" He closes his eyes, white lashes sweeping across his cheekbones. "I could hardly eat, or sleep. And now that you're safely home, all I can think about is you and me, together again."
He's touching my hands, tracing my arm from wrist to elbow. He bends his head, and that snowy hair falls in a smooth arc over his perfect face as his amber eyes seek mine.
I lean toward him, as if I'm giving in. And then I laugh in his face.
"You pretty little idiot. Did you think that would work?"
He straightens, biting his lip, pale lashes flaring.
"Gareth, I'm over it. All this." I sweep my hand through the air between us. "I don't miss you. I don't want you. We're done. The best thing you can do at this point is to stay far away from me."
His jaw tenses. "You're tired. I should let you rest. I had hoped to be here for you, to help you through this—but maybe that's inadvisable. We'll talk again when you've recovered from your ordeal."
"No, we won't." I follow him as he strides from the room. "Don't come back here, Gareth. You're not welcome."
At the threshold of the house entrance, he turns back to me. "I'll see you at the Council dinner, darling." And with a wink, he leaps into his hoverpod and zooms away.
Of course he's going to be at the Council dinner. His mother is Cheni Vandelor, one of the High Tier of council members. She's allowed to bring her consort and any adult children. And the adult children can also bring a pre-approved guest, which means I'll probably be treated to the sight of Gareth on the arm of some statuesque beauty he's charmed.
Something to look forward to.
Sighing, I retreat to my room again, this time for good. I dress in nightclothes so silky they feel like pure liquid. The bed engulfs me in a sea of softness, smooth sheets caressing my bruised, sun-baked limbs, deep pillows cradling my throbbing head. This comfort, this sense of safety, is what I missed the most in Emsalis.
Still, a hollow place in my soul aches for a heavy arm draped over me, a hard chest at my back, warm breath in my hair.
I swear aloud, sitting up in bed and punching the pillow with my fist. I don't need some man-shaped security blanket to fall asleep here, in my own home. I'm the girl who smiled at her captors, baited and braved them till one of them switched sides. I kept us alive during those cold desert nights. I shot people who were chasing me, exploded a Seeker, defied a rebel commander, and ended the life of the man who wanted to kill me.
I am a survivor. I am enough.
But I am also someone who cares about my friends. Where are they tonight? Somewhere dark, somewhere dangerous?
If I only knew that Rak is safe, I could sleep. He kept me safe when I couldn't do it myself, and it's my duty and delight to return the favor.
He's mine. My own. Part of me. If anyone hurts him, that person will feel every bit of fire I have in my body. I will burn—
A tap at my door.
I fly from the bed to open it.
Ridley holds out her com device. "A wave from General Binney, for you."
"You haven't left yet?" I ask her, glancing down the hall. My night guards are there, consulting quietly together.
"I was on my way out when he called."
I snatch the device and dive back into my room. "Privacy mode!" I snap, and the wall panel blinks the phrase back at me. "General Binney?"
"Miss Remay? You waved?"
"Yes, yes, I did. I wanted to know if my friends are secure. Safe."
"You don't trust me, eh?" There's a smile in his voice.
"It's not that I—with everything that's happened—"
"No offense taken," he assures me. "Yes, your friends are secure. They arrived an hour ago, and we just made it to the safe house. Would you like to speak to them?"
"Yes! Please."
"Do I need to ask which one you want to speak to first?" He chuckles.
A pause, and then a deep voice I've learned by heart says, "Zilara."
My knees weaken, and I sink to the floor. "Rak. Are you all right?"
"Better than all right. This place they brought us to—it's very comfortable."
"Comfortable?" I hear Safi's scoffing voice in the background. "It's a rutting palace. Comfortable, he says."
I smile. "Safi likes it?"
"Oh yes. Alik too. And you, how are you? We saw your arrival in a news vid on the way over. You were smiling, but—"
"But what?"
He lowers his voice. "The smile didn't look real to me. Are you all right?"
"How could I not be? I'm home. Everything is luxury." And loneliness, and uncomfortable history. "I have medicals tomorrow, and psych evals the day after that. And there's to be a private briefing with my father and his council, and a press conference, and a dinner, and then maybe after all that I can come see you."
"You have responsibilities. I understand."
"Rak, you know I want to see you, right now." I put all the urgency I can into the words. "But I can't. Please relax, and rest, and be safe. All of you need to stay indoors until we can get your residence status established, all right?"
Guilt curls my soul as I say the words, because I've brought my wild rebel here and put him in a beautiful box that he can't leave.
"We'll stay here," he promises. But I know that after a day or two of rest, he'll be stalking the rooms, itching for a way out.
"It won't be long," I promise. "Can I talk to General Binney again?"
When the general comes back on, I say, "How long until we can secure residence status for them?"
"For permanent residency, it will take weeks, maybe months, unless we have your father's signature on the papers," he says. "But I can get them visitors' papers within the week, so they can explore the city a bit. Now my dear, as much as I love helping you, I do have official duties to perform. Get some sleep, do your part, and the rest will follow."
The light winks from blue to orange before I can thank him.
The house system rouses me early the next day, informing me of my medical appointments. I dress quickly in the same simple clothes I chose yesterday, and I snatch breakfast from a tray of pastries in the kitchen. My father is there, dressed in a crisp gray suit, signing documents on a large holo-screen.
"I'll be receiving a full report from the medical team tonight," he says. "Please cooperate with them."
Is he referring to the exams, or to the skull-port re-install?
"A pleasant morning to you, too," I say, smiling sweetly. "Of course I'll cooperate."
He narrows his eyes at me. "Still the same sarcastic spirit, I see."
"Aren't you glad I didn't lose
that? I know how much you love my sarcasm."
"Hm." He returns to his documents, and I stalk out of the room, Ridley and Tram keeping step behind me.
"Did you two get enough sleep?" I ask them.
"We went home for several hours, when the night guards took over," Ridley says.
"That doesn't give you much time for your families." I frown.
"Please don't concern yourself," Ridley says.
"We're honored to serve," Tram adds gruffly.
At my order, the house summons a hoverpod to the front door, and we step straight into it. It whisks us away, automatically aware of my appointment and its location. We swerve and swoop around corners and between buildings until the pod smoothly halts at the entrance to the medical wing of the Science and Research Center.
The second I step out of the pod, I'm hurried into a lab, where my guards stand outside the double-locked doors while I'm scanned, prodded, scraped, poked, and questioned by the medical staff. I don't know any of the doctors or techs who examine me. They wear blue visors and white mouth coverings, their fingers encased in nanotech gloves. They pry at parts of me, not seeming to know or care that their touch, their questions, are far more invasive than anything the Fray or the Vilor did to me.
Stay cold, stay calm. It'll be over soon, I tell myself as I lie naked on the table under a blue paper covering. Harsh lights assault my eyes. There are no human faces, just visors and masks. I grip the edges of the table to keep from bolting.
Suddenly the nano-patch behind my ear is ripped away, and fingers press along the edges of the hole in my skull.
"Standard re-install?" asks a voice.
"The Magnate ordered the device; it's been delivered. Should be in compartment A-34."
"Wait." I sit up, but hands push me back down. Gritting my teeth, I reach up and rip the mask and visor off one of the techs. "Listen to me!"
The doctor backs up, shock in her eyes. "Miss Remay—"
"It's Zilara. I'm skipping the re-install in favor of a filling and closure."
She hesitates, glancing at the others. "Miss Remay, your father—"
Princess of Lies and Legends (The Evolved Book 2) Page 3