by Desiree Hunt
“Ivar told you, huh?” Mother says, her eyes narrowing, a sure sign that her anger is rising. “And what did you tell you to do? Or, does Ivar have complete control of your synapses? Has he implanted a mesmer scarab in your brain?” Her words drip with thinly controlled venom, and my lungs want to stop working. It takes focused effort for me to keep a steady breath.
“Son,” she goes on when I don’t respond right away, “I asked you a question. Were you or were you not forced—beyond any control of your own—to turn to Celestial Mates?”
“I was not,” I answer, my voice raspy as I fight my fear. The air around Mother is shimmering with her anger, and I feel her energy dance over my skin like tiny lightening storms that have yet to strike full force to ground themselves.
“So… who decided for you to go to Celestial Mates?”
“I did… ma’am.”
The intensifying shimmer in the air around her stabilizes and the minutiae, needle-like spikes of pain all over my body vanish.
“You did,” she says almost cheerily with a light smile on her face. “Go on then, tell me about your trip to Celestial Mates and why it has filled my ears with stories of a barbarian subspecies humanoid running naked through my halls.”
I swallow again, aware that these could be my last moments in my home. I could be a penniless pauper with nowhere to live and nothing to eat before the first sun sets.
I have really, really got to get my shit together. There has got to be more to me than what comes to me by way of birth and name.
I square my shoulders and steady my heartbeat as best I’m able. “Her name is Aisha, Mother. And, according to the Celestial Mates agency, she is my mate. My soulmate.”
Mother snorts. “Those little vermin. I wouldn’t trust them more than I could use them to remove the stars from the skies. I still fail to see the problem.”
I swallow again. I now have to admit to Mother the depth of my ineptitude. “They won’t send her back.”
Mother drops her chin and gazes at me with large, round, mercurial eyes that I have witnessed first hand being used to cower hardened war generals. “They won’t send her back…” she repeats.
“No, ma’am. They said that matches are final.”
“Then why don’t you send her back?”
“She’s from the Uncharted Territories, and we have not yet been able to locate her solar system.”
This time both of Mother’s brow ridges arch. “The Uncharted Territories?”
To my surprise, her interest appears to be piqued rather than put off.
“Yes,” I say, with a sense of tentative hopefulness. “She’s unlike anyone I’ve met before, I have to admit.”
“And, did they get it right, is she your mate?”
I feel my cheeks heat and the knowing look on Mother’s face lets me know that she has her answer.
“Can you even mate? Are you even genetically compatible?” she asks, starting now to pace the room herself. “And, what assets can she bring to the family?” She stops and looks at me sternly. “You know that I had planned on you wedding Rekaia. This ball was just a pretense to force you to get on with what had already been decided for you. Rekaia is from a prominent family and is driven in her aspirations. She would have been an asset.”
I wince. “Mother, she would have seen to Ivar’s death—and your own if she could manage it.”
Mother breaks out in a heartfelt belly laugh that ends in a sigh. “I do like that girl,” she says, smiling wistfully.
“Mother!”
“Oh, don’t get so upset. I would have never allowed her to harm your brother. Now you…”—she shrugs—“I could have only offered limited protection given that you would be sharing bedchambers, but if you and she gave me offspring,”—she shrugs again—“it could have been a decent tradeoff.”
“Mother!” Maybe she could kill me as easily as look at me, but I’m indignant enough to openly show it at her lack of maternal protectiveness.
“Oh please,” she says, waving a hand dismissively at my impotent objection. “I have given you every opportunity to excel and find a direction for your talents. It appears the only talent you have chosen to develop is the one between your legs. Well then, so be it. You reap what you sow. If the only thing you are good for is to give me grandkin and further the line of our genetics, I will take that and be done with you.”
Again, her words fill me with ice at my core because I know that she is not speaking just to hear herself talk. She means exactly what she says.
I am disposable to her… a stepping stone. A tool to utilize and then throw away.
Sighing heavily, Mother’s gaze softens as she perches atop a low credenza.
“You know that I loved your father,” she says. “He was a cheating sack of bat shit, but I loved him anyway—even after I had to exile him from our lives after he risked you and your brother’s life when that assassin seduced him to get close to you.” She shifted and ran her hands over the cloth of her long, draping gown. “I loved him past the point of harm, Volex, and it was a mistake. I loved him with all my heart—as I do you. I will not allow you to bring harm to this family through your indiscretions and lack of respect for the role you might someday perform. Even worse, I refuse to risk the damage you may do to our subjects whom you seem not to understand or seriously value their concerns. You can’t even manage yourself, let alone take responsibility for others. How could I ever imagine that you could handle being shouldered with carrying the responsibilities of all your many people?”
Crossing the room, I sit heavily on the bed. “Am I that much of a failure to you, Mother?”
“No, my love,” she says, standing and crossing to me so that she can take my chin in her hand. “You are that much a lack of success.”
Her way of saying it does not make the truth hurt less. Yet, it is the truth. I know it.
“Tell me of this mate… Aisha, did you say?”
I think a moment, trying to find my words as Mother sits down on the bed beside me. It never fails to unnerve me how tiny she is. It is as if her size distills her strengths, making her all the more powerful.
Knowing it best not to weave fabrications, I start with the truths that I think that my Mother will appreciate.
“Aisha is… raw.” I again get a brow raise from her. “It is as if her manners and thoughts are untempered by the constraints of having grown up within our way of thinking. She sees what she aspires to achieve. In her mind there is a straight line between her and this end.”
Mother nods. “That is not necessarily a bad thing. I am tired of the dust that has settled within the cogs of the high royalty. The habit of following convention and propriety has made royals stiff and brittle. Most of the aristocracy would sooner break trying to adhere to the old rather than adjust to anything new. This Aisha could be useful.”
Warning bells sound within my head.
“Mother, though they may be vermin, the cupids of Celestial Mates have shown themselves to be profoundly deft at their job.”
Mother’s smile slowly grows yet I see maneuvering behind her eyes. “She is your mate, then?”
“It is hard for me to admit that she is, but I do know that I would stand armor-less and weaponless before a giant crongynt to protect her.”
Mother narrows her eyes knowingly. “Yet you don’t want her?”
I look down at my hands. “I’m not ready for her. I’m… not ready for what she means.”
“Which is putting someone else before yourself…”
I nod. “I thought they would dig some girl out of the rubbish, I would show her off on my arm to appease you, and then when I was bored with her I would toss her aside.”
“And you cannot toss this girl aside?”
I shake my head. “Not without ripping out my soul.”
Mother sucks in a surprised gasp, and then to my utter shock, she stretches up as she pulls me down to kiss me on my cheek. “My little boy is growing up,” she coos, and I cannot but
smile. “And when do I get to meet this girl? She does have a ball to attend tonight.”
I lift my gaze to look at her sharply. Standing, I step away from the bed and then turn on her. “No.”
“What do you mean, ’No’?” Mother asks. She does not stand when I challenge her, and I understand why. I am no challenge to her. I am no threat, no matter my size or bearing or intensity of passion. I am like a gnat under her finger.
“She is not ready to be presented to court.”
“And why not?”
“Like I said, she is raw. She might as well be wild from the deserts. She does not know the dance of etiquette: how to keep one’s head on one’s shoulders and kingdoms from going to war.”
“I don’t care.” Mother stands now, and I take an involuntary step back as my heartbeat quickens.
“She will attend the ball tonight as your mate. If she survives the night...” She shrugs. “Then you will have her.”
“Does her survival mean nothing to you?” I bark, taking a step forward in challenge. Mother’s eyes widen but her mouth curls up. She is pleased, I realize with a start, at my willingness to fight for the girl.
“Put her needs before your own, and I have faith that you will succeed in keeping her alive tonight, Volex.” She pats my chest dismissively with the palm of her hand as she walks ahead. “Now, show me this wild girl…”
Chapter 10
Aisha
As I pace the small chamber in which I’m trapped, I’m no longer screaming. I force the screams to remain caged inside my throat.
I’m on an alien world… or I’ve gone insane and I’m locked up in restraints in an insane asylum.
So… if I’m in an insane asylum, I have to focus on being calm. I have to work on being sane.
But… if I am on an alien planet, so help me I will rip Volex’s flesh off his face!
This is the rant that repeats over and over in my head as I pace the cramped space, and it is what I use to keep my growing terror in check. Tears sting at my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.
“I want to go home,” I whimper, shaking my hands as I pace in an effort to release some of my anxious energy.
I think of Mr. Cuddles and ache to hold the comforting fur ball in my arms. I think of my test and all the hours of study and work that it’s taken me to get this far. I think of how I resisted parties and even possible boyfriends. I no longer care how amazing this place is or how beautiful its architecture. I want to go home, and I want to go now!
The heavy double doors—the ones directly before the shimmering wall of my cell—open, and I freeze. Every muscle in my body is tight and ready to leap, and my hands become rigid and splayed, my fingers could double as talons. When I see a tiny woman walk through the huge doors, my body relaxes its stance though I still take a step back.
Warily, I eye the woman, wondering what new troubles she’s bringing me. She is beautiful—really beautiful—and there is something regal about her. Then, the door pushes open again behind her and Volex steps into the entryway, his giant size looming behind the small woman.
“Volex, you never said she was so… large.”
My jaw drops, and my mind flashes with the innumerable hours I’ve spent at the gym or simply doing yoga at home. I want to tell her what she can do with her “large” comment.
Just because I’m not the size of a hiccup doesn’t mean you gotta be rude about it, I inwardly fume.
Gritting my teeth and clenching my hands into fists so tight that my nails threaten to cut the palms of my hands, I say, “Let me the fuck out of here.”
I give myself a mental back-slap and a high five since I spoke those words instead of screamed them in a spitting fury. I am literally shaking with rage.
Yet, neither the tiny woman or Volex move to let me out.
In an instant, everything within me breaks and I throw myself at the invisible barrier, beating on it and screaming. The only thing it does is turn opaque from my berating kicks and fist slams.
Out of breath and accepting that my tirade is getting me nowhere, I step back away from the door. My breath heaves with a rapid rise and fall of my chest. My robe is barely succeeding to keep me covered, and I don’t give a damn about any of it.
“Let me out of this room,” I growl.
The small woman’s eyes are large and round, and she looks at Volex over her shoulder and says, “She is a wild one.” Then turning to refocus her gaze on me, her face brightens into a large smile and she says with huge enthusiasm, “I like her!”
My panic driven fear subsides the tiniest bit at her words, and then it subsides a little bit more when the small woman steps up to the barrier that’s keeping me in.
“It is my understanding that you are my son’s mate,” she says and then passes her hand over the wall to the side of the door. The shimmer that has been there since the moment I was locked in disappears.
I consider running forward and ramming the small woman out of the way like a rushing quarterback, but something about her holds my feet in place. I move them experimentally, just a wiggle in each direction, to make sure that they haven’t been somehow glued to the floor.
“If you are my son’s mate, that makes you my future daughter,” the tiny woman says, extending her hands to me. As if reading the trepidation on my face, she steps back away from the door to give me room to exit.
My feet cannot move fast enough. I am outside the door instantly and trembling with the effort not to break into a run and keep on going. But, you know… alien planet and all. Where would I go?
I need allies. I need someone on my side.
“Can you send me home?” I ask, doing an excellent job of keeping the tremble out of my voice.
“And where is home, my dear,” Volex’s mother asks in a not unkind way but also the way someone might speak to a child of five who has misplaced her parents in the grocery store.
“Earth.” I hold my breath and watch her face, hoping to see some spark of recognition, but there’s none. A sense of infinite doom settles in on me and wraps me up as if in a suffocating blanket before I burn it away with my fury once more.
Locking my gaze on Volex, I advance on him. When I reach him, I only have to lift up onto my fuzzy covered tip-toes a little bit in order to send two hard slaps crashing across his face. “You did this,” I fume. “You fix it.”
“Volex, sweetheart, I like her more and more.”
I round on Volex’s mother.
“Can you send me home?” I’m more than two feet taller than her and even though I lean forward and tower over her, she is completely unfazed. To the contrary, she looks delighted, but then her expression morphs into sympathy—though I get the impression that her show of concern is more for my benefit that anything she actually feels.
“My dear, I cannot send you home this minute. However, I do have a swarm of astronomers who work just for me and I am happy to put every one of them to work on this very question. But—in the meantime—there is something I’d like you to do for me.”
“Mother…” There was warning in Volex’s voice. Not complaint. Not petulance. Warning. And, it caused my spidey sense to go on high alert.
“We are having a ball tonight in Volex’s honor, and I want you to be there,” Volex’s mother says without any sign of even having noticed Volex speak.
He’s got no sway over her. This was important information. Volex was a big man, the biggest I’d ever seen, but he did not outrank this woman in any way.
And, he doesn’t want me to go to the ball… Why? And, why does his mom want me to go?
I decide to err on the side of caution.
“I don’t know anything about balls. I’ve never been to a formal dance,” I say as a way to politely tell her no. It doesn’t work.
“That is of no matter,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand, and I see Volex stiffen out of the corner of my eye. “What is important is that you be there on my son’s arm.” Her eyes narrow, and I feel the emphasis tha
t she gives her words even though her voice never changes.
I can see of Volex stiffen without actually looking away from his mother.
I smile at the tiny woman politely. “Thank you, but I can’t.” I don’t offer a reason why this time. People can’t argue your logic if you don’t offer a reason.
“You can, and you will,” she says simply, not deterred in the slightest by my polite refusal, but this time she takes one of my hands and holds it between both of her own.
She’s so small! I begin to wonder whether I was wise to underestimate her size when my entire body starts to tingle.
“Mother…”
I can hear Volex’s sharp voice yet somehow it feels distant, as if it’s coming from another room or even from another dimension, separated from me by the thinnest of veils. Even though the dimension of Volex’s mother’s body is the same, she feels bigger. It feels as though she is taking up all of my reality.
“Mother!” Volex says again, the rebuke comes much stronger this time, and this time Volex’s mother’s hands slip away from mine.
I stare into her face, and I can only describe her expression as charming, yet I am suddenly terrified again—this time of her.
“I need for you to understand how important it is that you attend the ball tonight,” she says.
“It wouldn’t be safe—” Volex’s complaint stops dead with the lift of his mother’s hand, yet her expression remains gentle with me.
“Ladies from prominent families from around the globe will be there tonight, and each one will try to be the woman who is standing next to Volex at the end of the evening’s festivities. I will be happy to see that that woman is you.”
I manage to find my voice. “Volex said it wouldn’t be safe. How will it not be safe?”
Her benign expression adjusts to include a tiny lift of her eyebrow and a slight tilt of her head. My belly responds by trying to twist upside down.
How the hell did he survive growing up with this woman? I feel sudden pity for Volex and am amazed that he’s managed to make it to adulthood.
“Do you or do you not feel a connection between yourself and my son?” she asks.