The Bastard Prince (Blue Moon Rising Book 3)

by Blair Bancroft

  “I . . . can’t.”

  “You have to. If you don’t, the Herc high command won’t. And they won’t believe the rebels can win. What’s the use of joining a lost cause?”

  Alala sat very still, letting Kelan’s words filter through her head. “Kass told me that’s why Captain Rigel agreed to take me to Regula Prime. So I could see K’kadi for what he truly is, although I don’t think she expected to have to use her powers at all.”

  “And . . . ?” Kelan prompted.

  “They are both very scary. They make me . . . uncomfortable.”

  “My brothers’s pretty scary too.”

  “That,” Alala declared, “is a scary I understand.”

  Kelan flashed the Rigel grin. “Your day will come, Alala. I only wish Tal would let me stick around to see it. But I’m told another Rigel lost in space might be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Our dear emperor might decide to put the family on his pok list.”

  Alala laughed. “I have been around long enough to know that is bad.”

  With mock solemnity, Kelan declared in an ominous and guttural bass, “Very bad.”

  “Thank you, Kelan Rigel,” Alala returned, her face sobering to heartfelt sincerity. “I have spent too much time feeling sorry for myself, too much time refusing to understand, refusing to accept what I cannot understand, even when it is as plain as the nose on my face. May all the gods protect you on your journey home, and on the dangerous days that follow.”

  With the courtly manners instilled since birth—and well understood by Alala, whose home planet was as rigidly formal as Regula Prime—Kelan stood, raised her hand, and bowed, bestowing an air kiss just above her knuckles. “To better days, Colonel Thanos.”

  And he was gone, his long legs striding down the path toward Veranelle with all the jauntiness of a man without a care in the world.

  Amazing men, the Rigels, Alala had to admit. Yet the only male pursuing her was a man-child not quite of this world.

  Alala’s breath caught in her throat. She was wrong. K’kadi was not pursuing her. When he could not avoid her, he was ignoring her. The forced intimacy of their days on Regula Prime had been but a momentary respite. Now that they were back on Blue Moon . . .

  Gloom resettled over Alala’s sculptured warrior’s face. Her lower lip extended into even greater disgust and frustration than before Kelan Rigel broke her reverie.

  It did not matter in the least that she was no longer the center of K’kadi Amund’s universe. Who was the bastard son of the king of a small planet in an insignificant star system to upset the life of a warrior from Hercula?

  A bastard with powers so terrifying they sent shivers up her spine.

  And yet . . .

  Chapter 15

  “K’kadi, come in. Sit.”

  Sit? K’kadi frowned. Sitting usually meant Tal’s scold was going to be long and serious. What had he done to offend Alala this time? Or . . . was it something more obscure, some mistake he didn’t even know he’d made? Tal was putting up an amazingly strong barrier today. For a Reg, that is. Powers like that were what made him boss, but K’kadi could still feel the turmoil inside. Ah! Whyever he was here, the problem was Tal’s, not his.

  “There’s something I have to do,” Tal said. “And for a rather long list of reasons, I can’t do it alone.” He paused, his customary control of every situation, faltering. “K’kadi, does the name Liona Dann mean anything to you.”

  Know about you, Kass, krall.

  Tal nodded, clearly relieved he didn’t have to repeat the story of how his one-time mistress had tried to kill his wife. “After months of therapy, Dann was allowed to return to work, but only as an assistant, primarily testing and preparing drugs for those with psychological problems.

  Like her.

  Tal managed a wan smile. “Exactly. She lives and works in an area about five kilometers from here and is not allowed to come any closer to Veranelle than the village. Essentially, she has been exiled. I’ve seen her just once since the krall incident—on the day Torvik Vaden and I delivered her sentence. She ranted. She cried.” Tal ran a hand through his waving blond hair. “Believe me, it wasn’t easy. At the time I thought leniency was the right way to go. After all, Liona was with me when the rebellion began. She knew too much for us to send her off Blue Moon, and the doctors were certain they could cure her. But now . . . now I suspect I may have made a mistake. I need to talk with her, K’kadi. Secretly, and in private, but I’m not fool enough to do it alone. Which is why I need you.”

  Not good.

  “Not good that I need you?”

  She not good. Hurt if can.

  “How the hell do you know that when you’ve never met her?”

  K’kadi shrugged, rather enjoying the sight of an agitated Tal Rigel falling off his pedestal.

  Tal flipped a hand, dismissing a question he should have known had no answer. “This isn’t easy to say,” he admitted, “but I need you not only for your skill as an empath but as family. I need to know if Liona’s become an enemy, perhaps even a tool of the emperor. I also need you to keep me from strangling her! Well?” he barked. Can you do that?”

  Needs strangling.

  “Fyd, K’kadi! You’re a Psy. Peace, love, and the Psyclid Way. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

  Krall evil. Woman evil.

  “Not always. There was a time . . .” Pressing his fingers against his forehead, Tal made a wry face. “Sometimes I look back and wonder who that arrogant idiot, Fleet Captain Tal Rigel, thought he was. I was a citizen of the most powerful planet in the sector, a huntership captain at thirty. The universe was mine.”

  A Rigel.

  Tal groaned. “Little did I dream how that would turn out. The rebellious Rigels. We’ll likely end up hanging side by side in the courtyard at Kraslenka.” Reverting to his role as S’sorrokan, Tal threw off this worst-case look into the future. “I have another favor to ask, K’kadi. I need a safe and very private place to meet with Dr. Dann. Do you think your mother would allow us to meet at your house?”

  At mention of his mother, K’kadi cocked his head. Slowly, he nodded. Like help. No, that wasn’t clear, he had to do better. Why, why were words so hard to form? He could create a rainbow, a battleship, a whole fleet, yet every word was a struggle.

  Mo-ther like . . . help. Call.

  After a swift nod of approval for K’kadi’s effort, Tal took up his handheld. “Dama Amund . . . Anneli. This is Tal Rigel . . .”

  Anneli Amund, at thirty-nine, was still one of the most beautiful women in the entire Psyclid system. The few times Tal had met her, he’d viewed her as a work of art. K’kadi might have been a genetic experiment, but trust the king to choose the most exquisitely lovely of what must have been a long line of candidates. Not surprisingly, she was a blonde, with hair only slightly darker than her son’s white-blond mane. Tonight her pale hair was done in an elaborate upsweep that had Tal speculating that, unbound, it probably fell to her waist. Her long, flowing Psyclid gown—lavender with shimmering glints of silver echoed by the brilliants in her hair—was elegant enough for court. Tal appreciated the effort.

  A remarkable creature, Anneli Amund—soft-spoken, self-effacing, and never so much as a hint that there had been any man in her life but Ryal, King of Psyclid. Yet raising a boy like K’kadi must have taken every ounce of strength and courage she had. That her beauty survived was a miracle.

  Tal bowed over her hand. “Thank you for allowing us to impose on you, Dama Amund. This is an awkward situation, and I knew I could trust your discretion.”

  “Understood, Captain.”

  “Tal.”

  Anneli inclined her head in a gracious nod. “Of course, Tal. I shall order refreshments sent to the study then make myself scarce. From what I understand, the situation is extremely delicate.”

  “Far more than I like,” Tal admitted.

  “This way, please,” she said, leading them across a formal sitting room almost as well appoi
nted as the state rooms at Veranelle and into a smaller and obviously more frequently used room filled with comfortable furniture, including a vid screen, desk, and softly glowing lighting.

  “Perfect,” Tal said. “I see where K’kadi got his empathic gifts.”

  Anneli, clearly pleased, shot him a saucy look from witch-green eyes, inclined her head in a regal nod, and left them.

  “A delightful woman, your mother,” Tal said, his eyes still fixed on the door Anneli shut behind her.

  Good. Not like krall woman.

  Just rub it in, why don’t you?

  Sorry.

  “Dimmit, K’kadi, you’re a menace. I was talking to myself.”

  Told you sorry. K’kadi sat down, crossed his arms over his chest, slipping into a pout reminiscent of the days when Tal first met him. Great, that’s all he needed.

  Tal spoke a few words into his handheld. “They’re five minutes out, K’kadi, so save the sulks for later. I need a right hand, not a kid begging for a spanking.” And at last the truth occurred to him. “Guess I should have had this meeting somewhere else. Coming home turns back the clock, doesn’t it? It’s hard to be a grown-up when under your mother’s roof.”

  K’kadi hung his head.

  “My turn to say sorry,” Tal muttered, then straightened in his chair as he heard the sound of approaching feet. “We’re on, K’kadi. Look alive.”

  K’kadi had known when it happened. The deadly snake sent to kill his sister. Kass’s fury had exploded inside his head. He’d lived her righteous rage. The imprisoned princess, rescued after four long years only to be attacked by Regs now living on her own beloved Blue Moon. A princess of the blood targeted in her father’s summer palace!

  He’d been lost in one of his waking dreams—that was how he spent most of his days back than—but Princess L’ira’s anguish had brought him bolt upright and wide awake. Where? Who? His mother hadn’t believed him. Much as she loved him, she was certain L’ira had been lost on Regula Prime, was likely dead. His sister most certainly was not in Veranelle throwing a krall—whoever heard of a krall on Blue Moon?—in the face of Tal Rigel’s mistress!

  So he’d gone alone, the whole thirty K. Hitched a couple of rides—after all, there wasn’t a resident on Blue Moon who didn’t recognize their fey young prince on sight. He’d homed in on his sister, like a dog tracking a scent. And found her in the refectory, once the royal ballroom, where he’d been flattened by security guards for his trouble. But L’ira had chased them away, taken him in her arms. He’d learned he was to call her Kass. And oh, bless the goddess, what a time she’d had teaching him discipline. How to use his powers for something more than painting pictures in the air. And how to shut out the thoughts and emotions of the people around him. Which worked most of the time—until he crossed his mother’s threshold and tumbled back to all the times his mother had tried and failed to give him at least the façade of a normal boy. Which he’d never be.

  K’kadi stood as Liona Dann was escorted into the room by two armed guards. He was a man now. And his discipline held fast. Well, most of the time. As Dann took the chair in front of the desk and the guards departed, shutting the door behind them, K’kadi sat back in a chair in the corner and followed his orders: Watch, listen, feel her words. Were they true or false?

  And keep Tal from killing her.

  Her sandy blonde hair had dulled, Tal thought. Her cheekbones were sharper, her eyes and lips no longer as highly defined by facial enhancements. Or maybe the guards had interrupted her while she was getting ready for bed. A clear vision of her naked body popped up before him, no way could he keep it out. They’d spent too many nights together, thought they knew each other . . . perhaps they had. Except Cadet Kass Kiolani had been tossed into his life—just a slightly intriguing anomaly at first. Until the cadet team started trouncing his battle-tried veterans in war games . . .

  Enough!

  Liona was regarding him steadily through gray-blue eyes. “Really, Captain, if you wanted to talk, you could have just asked. Not sent men to my door in the middle of the night.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to give you enough time to whip up another bomb.”

  “Bomb! Omnovah, Tal, you know I don’t do bombs.” She appeared genuinely shocked.

  “But you’re acquainted with those who do.”

  “Don’t be ridi—”

  “Did you know there was a bomb on board Pegasus?”

  “No!” She shrieked the word. “I would never . . . I would have said something. Really.”

  “But you know who did it,” Tal repeated. “Don’t you?” He glanced at K’kadi, who nodded.

  “Fyddit, Liona. I need to know now. We came close to dying out there, every last one of us, so I’m calling on whatever we once were to each other. Tell me who my enemies are.”

  “They’ll know. They’ll kill me,” she whispered.

  “I’ll send you to Psyclid. Believe me, the planet’s big enough to get lost in. I have people who will see you settled, get you a job.” He flattened both hands on the desk, catching and holding her terrified gaze. “But only if you tell me what I need to know.”

  “You already know,” she muttered.

  “Vaden yes, but not the others. Name them!” Tal, implacable, got up, moved around the desk, looming over her. “Last chance, Commander Dann. Give us the names and you get a second chance. The alternative you don’t want, believe me.”

  She crumpled, face in her hands, silent tears spilling off her chin, her mouth still a thin, firm line.

  “Look up!” Tal demanded in the tone no one disobeyed, not even his wife.

  Liona jerked upright. And gasped. Her mouth sagged in a face twisted in terror. Her arms stretched out, fingers splayed, attempting to push away the vision hovering at eye level a meter from her face. “No-o-o!” Her cry was no more than a choked whisper, fading into horrified silence.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the carefully arranged but shroudless corpse of Dr. Liona Dann slid toward the open maw of the fiery furnace waiting to consume it.

  Consume her.

  She shuddered. Tal grasped her hand. “Your choice, Liona. Mercy or death. Either you talk or we tell everyone that you did. The truth”—Tal gestured toward K’kadi’s all-too-realistic illusion—“or that’s your fate.”

  Between heaving sobs, the names spilled out. A longer list than Tal could like, but at least he now knew where he stood. Though he was still taking no chances. “K’kadi?”

  Bad woman. Tell truth.

  Tal almost smiled. Until the latest illusion he hadn’t realized the boy’s animosity toward Liona Dann was as strong as his own. It was beginning to look more like he’d need to restrain K’kadi than the other way around. “Is there anything else you can tell us?” he asked. “Is Vaden working for Darroch? Or perhaps he fancies himself as emperor?” Tal handed his former lover a handkerchief.

  With her choice made and the room clear of terrifying visions, Liona settled into some semblance of the responsible officer she once had been. “I’m truly not certain about that,” she said. “I’m inclined to think Vaden has a conduit to the emperor, but he presents as more of a megalomaniac every day. I admit I’ll be glad to be out of it. As so many old adages point out, my anger, my jealousy, have hurt only me. A second chance is more than welcome.”

  “K’kadi?” Tal asked.

  Looking thoroughly disgusted, K’kadi grumbled, Truth. Still don’t like her.

  “How soon can I leave for Psyclid?” Liona asked. “If Vaden hears of this—”

  “He won’t. I gave orders for the guards to pick you up only when no one was around.”

  “Is there a flight out tomorrow?”

  Tal leaned back in his chair, his fingers drumming a tattoo on the desktop. “Do Vaden and his associates meet on a regular basis?”

  Liona frowned. “I’m not sure. “I’ve attended three or four meetings. How many they’ve held without me I have no idea.”

  “So they do meet, all of t
hem together?” Tal pressed.

  “Yes, of course,” she snapped in the superior tone reminiscent of a time long gone. “They’d scarcely trust their discussion to electronic devices!”

  “Then I’m afraid your trip to Psyclid is postponed. I very much want to attend one of those meetings.”

  “You can’t do that!” she shrieked. “You promised.”

  “I did,” Tal agreed equably, “but not before you’ve helped us catch the miserable slimeworms red-handed.”

  “I can’t, I won’t. I’m not going to risk my life for you!”

  “Bye-bye, Psyclid.” Tal offered a thin smile so deadly, Liona quailed.

  But not for long. After all, Captain Talryn Rigel had not singled her out during their time on Orion because she was weak. “One condition, Tal. If the rebels win, I go home to Regula Prime.”

  When win!

  Liona’s eyes widened. “What was that?”

  “That, Commander, was K’kadi expressing himself. Rather well, I thought. But, yes, I accept your condition. When we win, you will be repatriated to Regula Prime.”

  After a short silence while all three absorbed the results of the meeting, Tal raised his voice, calling the guards. “Take her home. Make sure no one sees you.” And then she was gone, K’kadi continued to scowl at the door long after she was gone.

  Chapter 16

  “You what?”

  Tal anticipated outrage in Kass’s tone when he confessed to meeting with Liona Dann, but he’d hoped to avoid ominous. Clearly, he hadn’t. “It was necessary,” he asserted. “I hoped to confirm Vaden’s involvement, and I did. And don’t tell me you wanted to be there. The words ‘I never want to see that woman again as long as I live’ are still ringing in my years.”

  Kass glared, huffed a disgusted breath. “You actually think she’s going to set Vaden up?”

  “A new life on Psyclid, the promise of repatriation . . . why wouldn’t she?”