“How can I find mine?” he asks.
“I do not have that answer. We have no idea how this happened to us. We only know we have a common directive. To end your life. It’s a thing some of us are against,” the motherly voice tells him.
“So there’s a chance I can talk you out of this then?” he asks with hope threaded through his voice.
The deep voice comes out quickly, “I am in charge and I am going to follow the command. So to answer your question. No, there is no chance of you talking us out of it. What must be done is set in stone.”
The King says, “Nothing is ever set in stone, Kataline. Nothing!”
The high voice asks, “Weren’t you going to tell us what you did that has someone wanting you dead, Your Highness?”
“The curious part of you, Kataline?” he asks.
“I am that,” it answers.
The King’s voice goes soft as he says, “I have been a man who has made a couple of very bad decisions. I had my reasons at the time, but looking back at them, they were not good reasons. There are no good reasons to have someone killed, and another exiled for the part he played in it.”
“So that’s it then. I thought as much. You are a murderer,” the high voice says.
“I am.”
The darkness is feeling heavy for some reason. Or maybe it’s something inside me. Weight is taking me down. A heavy burden seems to have been placed on my body.
My voice comes out of my mouth as my mind shouts out, “Who am I to judge? Who am I to take his life?”
“Kataline!” The King’s voice sounds excited. “Kataline, stay with me, girl!”
I’m yanked back into the warm liquid. It numbs me again. It feels as if a hand runs over my brow and words are murmured around me, “Rest, sleep, do not worry. Let us do that. You rest.”
The voices are calm and soothing. I relax again and let them do the thinking, the talking.
“I am ready to accept my fate for what I’ve done,” the King says. “My crime is beyond deplorable. Having my brother kill my wife is a thing which I deserve to die for.”
He killed Kerr’s mother!
The deep voice speaks only to me. “See, he deserves to die.”
“That is not up to us,” I say.
It must’ve come out of my mouth as the King says, “It’s not. You’re right. I will confess to the other royals and take the punishment they give me, Kataline. I swear to you I will confess. Give me a chance to tell my story. I will take whatever they give me, even if that is death.”
The deep voice is back and sounds mad, “It’s not up to her. I am the one in charge and I will do what we have been directed to do. Leave us. I tire of your talk. I tire of your manipulations for that is what you’re trying to do. It won’t work. Not with me in charge, it won’t.”
My mind fades quickly as I’m pulled beneath the thick liquid.
Can this be stopped?
Queen Gleeu
Lying on a soft lounge chair out on the balcony of my bedroom, I look up at the stars. My son is up there somewhere. My only child.
When my first-born son was taken from this world as he fell from the top of one of the trees in the red forest, I thought it would kill me as well.
My husband was supposed to be watching him. The two were out for a walk when the accident occurred. I never forgave Hexultan for that.
He allowed him to climb the tree, said every boy should be able to shimmy up a tree if they so desired to. His death was a thing I never forgave him for.
I changed how I treated him from that point forward. I was harsh with him in private and critical of him when alone as well.
On the outside, it all looked rosy. Never did I disrespect the man in front of anyone else, Kerr included. But in the privacy of our quarters I gave him no respect.
I kept my love and body from him. Perhaps that drove him to what he did. Perhaps me never forgiving him for the death of our first-born drove him to have me killed.
Not that I’m approving of that in any way. But just reflecting on why he did it.
Our love had been true. From the first time I laid my eyes on him, I knew he was the one for me. Though a child at the time, something inside me sparked for him.
My father saw it as well and made him a Duke instead of a commoner. And we married. It was a love affair like no other. We couldn’t keep our hands off one another.
It was like Heaven until that fateful day and then it was like Hell.
Our son looked like him. Kerr resembles me, but Hexor looked like his father. And every time I looked at my husband’s face, I saw the child he made us lose.
His rambunctious ways and what I came to call Earthling spirit had him letting our son do a dangerous thing which cost him his young life.
A star flashes through the night sky and it takes my attention back to Kerr. Up there in the complete darkness as the power has been taken from his ship and every other ship in the Armada.
I wonder what they’re all thinking up there. I wonder if they’re afraid. I wonder if Hexultan is lying somewhere, wide awake and knowing this is all his fault.
The directive stated all the others were to be put to sleep, but not Hexultan. I wanted him left awake to live through the fear of knowing his time was limited.
Even though they should all be asleep, I wonder if Kerr is sleeping peacefully or having long nightmares. I hope his sleep is peaceful, but I have no control over that.
As the cool breeze flows over my skin, I recall better days. Back before the accident, before I turned on my husband, before it all. We were happy once upon a time.
Funny how life can change in the blink of an eye. Something inside me is doing battle with the part of me who wants to see the ultimate revenge on the man who ordered my death.
Deep inside I’ve been having doubts about this plan I put in motion nearly a year ago. The girl, Emerald, has made those doubts come much closer to the surface.
Not sure I like that.
Harboring resentment has gotten me through the years since Hexultan ordered my death. And to find out he used his poor brother to do it. Well, that’s just too much, I think.
But maybe if I hadn’t gone about this in the way I have, things could’ve been resolved long ago. Maybe his poor brother wouldn’t have lived for so long on a planet with no other human’s on it.
Maybe the way I’ve been handling things for so long has been wrong.
But what can I do about it all now?
It’s too late to change a thing. The girl who wears my mother’s wedding ring has already been dissected. The directives have been implanted. It’s set in stone.
Nothing can be done to stop it now. The wheels were put in motion far too long ago.
It is Hexultan’s fate now. He will die upon his arrival here. The girl will kill him and then life as we know it will go on.
My eyes close as my heart aches. We were in love once. We had two small sons and were completely in love.
And then we weren’t anymore. In one quick moment, we just weren’t in love any longer.
When you lose a child I think you go a little mad. Could I have made very bad choices after losing Hexor?
Did I have to lose Hexultan too?
My husband tried very hard to help me through the loss, but I pushed him away so hard. Blamed the man so completely for our eldest son’s death.
Life left the man’s eyes. But in all fairness, it had left mine too.
Doubt just keeps running through me, though. How could I stop it anyway, even if I wanted to?
She’s been activated. I can’t have her destroyed for what I did to her. That would be worse than having her kill my husband.
To take her down would take her having to be killed. She’s now a force to be reckoned with thanks to me. She can take a life with a look.
Getting up, I go back inside my bedroom. The one I used to share with my husband. I’ve had his things removed.
They’re in another part of the palace. We
never destroy things here. No waste on Euthenia.
The purple liquor which has helped me survive since Hexor’s death sits in a beautiful clear decanter on the table in my room.
I pour myself a drink and sit down in the soft and well-cushioned chair I used to sit in before I had to hide from the man who wanted me dead.
The first drink burns as it goes down my throat. The fine crystals in the drink make tiny perforations down the throat, allowing the alcohol to penetrate much faster than other liquors.
The burn subsides quickly as the numbing agents go to work. The numbness moves over the body rapidly and the brain decides nothing is all that important any longer.
I glide over the floor to my bed. The one I used to share with my husband. I lay on the soft blanket and look up at the ceiling.
We had an artist paint a mural of our sons when they were children, playing in one of the blue garden’s Hexultan made to capture my attention when we were young.
Pain fills my chest and I turn over and grab my glass and take another drink. Lying back, I feel the effects take me deeper. Further away.
My eyes close. I no longer wish to look at the boys. I’ve neither anymore, anyway. Kerr is grown and soon will have a family of his own.
If he doesn’t help his father that is.
My sister, Nar’s face makes a brief appearance in my head. I hurry to take another drink of the purple forget everything juice to send it away.
Resting my head on the fluffy pillow, I let myself fall. Push it all out of my head.
There is nothing I can do to stop it, anyway.
King Hexultan
The darkness is so complete I had to crawl on my hands and knees to find a place to rest my body. I’ve no idea where I am on the ship, but I have found a soft surface to lie on.
The thoughts won’t leave me alone. I guess that’s what the person or persons who ordered this wants.
Well, they got their wish. I can’t sleep. It’s as if the spell Kataline put on the people who sleep, she put the opposite spell on me.
Memories keep coming to me. The one that keeps coming is the one when our oldest son fell from the top of a tree in the red forest and died.
I was there. I was supposed to be keeping him safe. I failed.
His little lifeless body was so badly broken. My heart aches with the memory. It was all my fault.
I deserved what I got when Glee held me responsible. She never forgave me. In the public’s eye, she did. But not in reality.
No one knew about that. We kept that well hidden. Even Kerr didn’t know how we were in private. She didn’t speak to me once we were alone.
I can’t blame her. It was my fault we lost our first born. I endured the torture of not being able to touch the woman I loved more than life itself.
Glee would look at me with light in her eyes when we had social functions. She turned that light on like a switch. And off as well.
It never failed to give me hope when I’d see it there. It also never failed to tear a little bit more of my heart when she turned it off again when we got back to being alone.
Something happens to a person when their child dies. It shuts something down in them, even if they have others, a piece of them is missing and can’t ever be replaced.
I lost Hexor and at the same moment in time, I lost Glee.
She held my heart in her hands. Since the first time my eyes fell on her sweet face, she had my heart.
I never faulted her for how she treated me after Hexor’s death. But it hurt more than losing him did. He was my son, but she was a part of me.
We used to joke around that she and I shared a soul. We were a couple of half people until we found one another. Only then did we become one.
My body aches as I recall asking my brother to kill her. For the life of me, I don’t know where my mind was at that time. It was gone.
I don’t know who was controlling me. Certainly not myself. Certainly not the man who still completely loved his wife even if she hated him for his role in their son’s death.
All I knew was once her body was found, and I knew he’d done it. I had to get him and take him somewhere else. I couldn’t look at him.
I hated him for doing what I’d asked him to in an obvious moment of madness.
So I snuck away one night and drugged him then put him on a tiny ship and took him to the nearest planet and dumped him off.
Once I made it home, I agonized over what I had done to my brother. Again, the one moment of madness just kept getting bigger. Now it was more like a year of madness, not a mere moment.
Escalating to new depths. I managed to stop the horrible things I was doing, but I never did go back and try to fix any of them.
I could’ve gone and found my brother and brought him home and told the other royals what I had done and faced the consequences, but I didn’t.
I kept quiet and felt I deserved the nightmare that plagued me. Gleeu came to me in the dead of night at times and hovered over me, taking my breath from me.
I’d see her fleeting gown as she moved away from me. I’d chase after the ghost until it disappeared. Her scent left in its wake.
I deserved for her to haunt me. I knew that.
If I could turn back time. Oh, how I’d change it all. But I can’t so I’ll accept my fate.
In the end, maybe on the other side of this life, I will find my Glee again. Perhaps she’ll hate me no longer for the loss of our son who is over there as well. Maybe we can be a family over there.
Kerr can join us when it’s his time. Maybe it won’t be so bad.
The ship lurches and I nearly fall off the bed. I look out the window and see one of the moons is very close. That means we are mere hours away from landing.
Hours away from my fate.
How I wish it didn’t have to end this way…
CHAPTER 2
Kerr
The sun shining out the window wakes me. Confusion fills me as I look around and realize the ship is on the ground.
But where is Kataline?
What’s happened? When did we land? How long have I been asleep?
Getting up, I stagger to wash my face and try to wake up. I feel as if I’ve been drugged.
Running my wet hands over my hair, I look at my reflection and see quite a bit of stubble as it looks as if I haven’t shaved in some time. Though I distinctly recall shaving.
A noise in the corridor has my curiosity piqued and I go and open the door of my room. A few of the royal guards stagger about looking about as confused as I feel.
I stop the one nearest me. “Guard, do you have any idea what has happened?”
“I just woke up. I was on the floor in the galley. There were others sleeping in there as well. I suppose some type of gas was used to put us all to sleep, Prince.” He staggers away, holding onto the wall to keep himself up.
Finding my body weak, I think it’s safe to say we’ve been asleep for some time. I find some water and drink it down to quench a fierce thirst which further convinces me of my suspicions.
The door to the ship is open and the few who are awake, walk out it then come right back in. There were five men and they all have their fingers in their mouths telling the rest of us to be quiet.
Once they get to me, one whispers, “Princess Kataline has the King kneeling on the ground outside.”
“What sort of weapon does she have?” I ask.
Another shakes his head. “None, Sire.”
My heart pounds in my chest as if a thousand equines are charging through it.
I cannot allow her to kill my father!
“Come! She has to be stopped!” I tell them. “Stay behind me, though. I might be able to get through to her.”
Just as I walk out and spot my wife and father, I stop and stare at how she’s looking at him and listen hard.
I hear my father, not pleading but speaking with a calm voice, “Kataline, before you send me from this world, I want to apologize to you. I have been an old
fool and know well what I have done. Please know I take responsibility for all of my actions. I was given great power and did nothing good with it.”
I watch Kataline’s eyes twitch. That deep voice I’ve heard come from her says, “How clever you must think yourself, King. Your apology will not save you.”
I can wait no longer and begin to move out of the cover of the edge of the ship. Just as I am about to speak I hear a shriek coming from Kataline.
Alien Romance Box Set: The Euthenian Battle Complete Series (Books 1-4): A SciFi (Science Fiction) Alien Warrior Romance Page 26