by Lucia Ashta
He didn’t look concerned about revealing this other side of himself. But then, perhaps he’d had time to come to terms with it. After all, he’d loved the Princess for years that I either forgot or wasn’t part of. I’d only fallen in love a few days ago.
He spoke in a soft voice, the one that instantly reminded me of the night we’d shared in the village hut. It was a night I wished suddenly to recreate, over and over again. “I missed you so much while you were gone, you have no idea. I resisted falling in love with any woman for so long, because I didn’t want to feel what I felt when you were taken from me. I knew love only created problems. But when I got to know you, I had no choice. And it was then that I realized that love was a problem only when the person you want to share it with isn’t there.”
I melted still sitting there. I’d never dreamed a man would say something like this to me. Love had long been something I thought was for others, not me. I’d convinced myself I did better without the complication.
“I wasn’t laughing at you, love, I was just laughing, I guess. The truth is that your concern surprised me. The Princess never overly concerned herself with what I thought about her interactions with other men—or women.”
Now I arched an eyebrow at him. “Women too, huh?”
When Tanus’ smile fell, I instantly wanted it back. “Oh yes.” He looked at the wall and the framed watercolor landscape hanging on it. An idyllic place, far from here. “You did whatever the King asked of you—ordered you to do—and with whomever.”
How could I forget the fact that my father on Origins was both my sovereign liege and my pimp?
Tanus said, “I grew accustomed to seeing you with others, even though I mostly tried to stay away. It’s not as if absenting myself from the court was difficult for me. I’ve never enjoyed the Vikas vipers with their painted faces and false words. After I loved you, I stayed far away from the court to spare myself from watching you lead men or women off to do the King’s bidding. It was hard enough to know I had to share you with others without seeing it.”
And here I’d been worried about how he’d react to my pressing my boobs against some stranger he understood I had no interest in. “I didn’t realize that’s how it was.” My voice was soft now too, but I was sad. Even if I didn’t remember doing these things, I didn’t imagine it felt good to share myself on command. “So I had, uh, sex with others while we were together on Origins?”
He nodded, sadness written on him as well.
“And did you also... do that?” I understood I had no right to be jealous over a past I didn’t even remember, with a man I’d only just fallen in love with, when I’d apparently been spreading myself around—but I still had to know.
“No. Once we made love, I was never with another woman, not even after you left.” He smiled—a small one, but it looked as if he were far away in that moment, perhaps in the past, the one I didn’t really share with him. “You ruined me for all other women. There never could be another one like you.”
“Yeah, unless there’s another one right here on Earth.” I didn’t bother keeping the sarcasm from my voice. I was either a glorified prostitute who stepped out on the man she loved, or I was a woman in love with a man from the wrong end of the universe. Either way, it stunk.
“Ilara, I love you. I don’t care at all which Ilara you are as long as you’re mine.”
I stared into those brilliant green eyes until all I could see was their earnest entreaty. He meant every word he said. This soldier that everyone on O feared was offering himself to me. In truth, he’d given himself to me already.
He said, “I didn’t scour the universe looking for you to be overly concerned with details now. I’ve found you, that’s all that matters. I want to share the next centuries with you, however long we have, the King and his laws be damned. I want you to join with me, will you?”
I looked at him, unable to respond, but not for the reason he assumed.
“I realize that the King’s laws forbid that any princess of the Andaron Dynasty should join her life force with anyone who isn’t of the appropriate bloodlines, and even though I’m of the appropriate station now that Brachius has bought it—oh wait, I guess I’m not. I’m not Brachius’ son.” He paused, stunned by the ramifications of his suspect heritage.
I understood a bit of what he might be feeling, since I’d only recently learned that my kind, caring father on Earth might not be my father. Instead, I might be the daughter of a domineering king of a foreign planet. But I was too busy stuck on one thing to move on to sympathy. “Centuries?” I whispered.
“What?”
“You said you wanted to join with me for the centuries we have left.”
“I did, and I realize you deserve a far better proposal for joining than the one I’m giving you now. Just as soon as I’m better and there are no emergencies to deal with, I’ll do better, I promise. I want to join with you. You’d do me a great honor by agreeing.” His smile was boyish, shy even. “I think you want to. I hope you do.”
“Of course I want to. But you didn’t understand me. You live centuries. On Earth, people are lucky to live a century. It won’t work.”
“Of course it will. You’re no ordinary person, Ilara, no matter what version of the woman I love you are. You’ve never been ordinary, you never could be ordinary, your eyes alone guarantee it. I miss seeing your eyes, by the way. I don’t like those contact lens things you put over them.”
“Just because you say I’m not ordinary doesn’t mean I’ll magically start living centuries beyond my life expectancy.”
“That’s exactly what it means. It means that you’re only bound by what you believe. If you think you can’t, then you can’t. But if you believe you can do whatever you imagine, then oh, my Ilara, you’re only limited by your imagination. And from what I remember, you have quite a vivid one.”
“What’s that glint in your eyes? How did your thoughts turn to sex from that?”
“Because I was remembering how imaginative you are, in all ways, especially the important ones.” He winked.
I laughed. “Hurry up and get better so I can get you out of that bed and into a bigger one.”
“Is that an order, Your Majesty?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then that is one I’ll be most happy to obey. I can’t wait to pin you to a bed and fill you.” His eyes smoldered and I squirmed. Damn. I was resisting the urge to have at him right then and there.
If we did indeed join, which I assumed meant marrying, we’d never leave the bedroom. Planet Origins would lose its princess to a fine man and his finer lovemaking abilities.
An excellent prospect.
Tanus tried to sit up, but I caught him wincing and guided him back down onto the pillows.
“So, will you join with me or what?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said with my own mischievous smile. I’d never once considered marrying, but this man? Hmmm... this man was unlike any other man. I’d have to make exceptions for someone like him.
“Well don’t think too long. It’s always good to give an ailing man something to look forward to, haven’t you heard that before?”
“Actually, I have. I’ll think about it.” And I would.
“Now, on to other ways you can help me feel better until then...”
I was leaning forward to kiss him when Dolpheus appeared at the door. I looked at Dolpheus, Tanus didn’t, until he said, “You’ve got to be wobbly right now, man.”
“I’m not,” Dolpheus said, sounding extraordinarily sober.
“What? Did he mind speak with you?”
Tanus’ eyes made it clear that he had.
“What is it? What’d he say?”
“That we have a visitor.”
4
“Who is it?” I asked warily. Tanus sat up in bed and started to swing his feet to the floor.
“My boots, Olph, pass them to me,” he said.
“Who is it? Tell me.”
�
�The kind of person you don’t ignore,” Dolpheus said.
“Or receive lying down,” Tanus added.
“Unless you’re on top of her. Sorry, inappropriate, my bad.”
“My bad?”
“A term I picked up from Narcisse. I think it’s one I’ll get lots of use out of.” Dolpheus had the decency to look sheepish, but not to explain who the hell had arrived.
I heard our visitor before I saw her. I sank like lead against the bed while Tanus jumped up from it, surprisingly agile for a man in his condition.
“How is it possible?” I asked, mostly to myself.
Tanus answered anyway. “Because there’s no such thing as the impossible. The real divide is between the possibilities we allow ourselves to believe, and those we don’t.”
By the time the owner of the voice arrived at the door, I was on my feet too. Because even if I was more flummoxed than I’d ever been in my life—and that was saying a lot considering what I’d been through during the last several days—I agreed with Tanus. This was a visitor I wouldn’t greet in any way but proudly upright.
One I knew already would be matched precisely. Just as the voice was, even though hers had an authority I was still trying to learn.
And then she was there. The true princess of Planet Origins, in all her glory.
Now I understood Lila’s original disappointment in my jeans, hiking boots, and rain slicker. If I’d ever thought I could rock the sultry look, I’d been wrong.
This woman oozed sexuality from every one of her gorgeous pores. She also oozed control, and I had no doubt she could’ve had those armed men from earlier groveling for her attention, kneeling on the packed dirt of the desert, in less than five seconds flat. She wouldn’t even have had to say anything, just stand there, looking like she did now.
Even I was in awe, and I looked exactly like her.
5
“Tanus.”
Just that single word contained so much. Here she was, proof that I was the wrong Ilara, speaking to the man I loved like she owned him. Even as strong-willed as Tanus had proven himself to be, I imagined if this Ilara truly wanted to own him, she could have. She seemed as if she could get anything she wanted with a come-hither bend of any of her elegant fingers.
“Ilara,” Tanus said. I strained my ears to discern what he was feeling. But that one word wasn’t enough. He wasn’t revealing anything to her—or to me.
Meanwhile, I, who’d long refused to fall in love for precisely this sort of reason—though not even my imagination was wild enough to imagine this particular situation—was suffocating inside.
“Is that all the greeting you give your lover after all this time? Dolpheus looks happier to see me than you do.”
Tanus tensed and Dolpheus looked at his friend with open concern. That’s when I remembered what they’d spoken of when I first arrived on O, when everything was swirling and I couldn’t make sense of what had happened to me. Dolpheus and this Ilara had sex, lots of times. Tanus had learned of it after the Princess disappeared, and had finally decided it wasn’t a betrayal, that the Princess had sex with Dolpheus on the King’s orders, and Dolpheus with her before he realized his best friend would love her.
It was unlikely that the Princess knew that Tanus had learned of their affair, which made what she was doing more egregious to me. She was poking at Tanus in his assumed ignorance. She was making a private greeting to Dolpheus, thinking he’d understand it, but that Tanus wouldn’t.
“That’s shitty,” I said under my breath before I realized I’d opened my mouth, the one that had a history of getting me in trouble.
The Princess’ eyes snapped toward mine, and I refused to cower from them. She might be a princess on an alien planet that clearly wasn’t mine, and she might be some kind of sexed-up power goddess, but I refused to bow to a woman that was essentially just another version of me.
If she was this big of a badass, then I’d have to be too. Because that man she was secretly poking fun at was my man now, and her secret was out in the open. Even if she took him from me in the end, I wouldn’t shy away from her—or him.
Life was just shitty sometimes. There was nothing new about that. I’d return to being the woman I’d always been, and it wouldn’t be that bad. I’d return to the life of a loner that suited me just fine until I rocketed into Tanus’ arms. With time, I’d forget him. Besides, he’d live far longer on O than I would on Earth. I’d only have to worry about missing him until I forgot him, or I died, eighty or so years from now.
Yeah, this sucks. But in the words of my father, my real one, not the tyrannical pimp on another planet, Chin up, buttercup. I’d been kicking ass and leading my life as I wanted to for long enough to figure out how to pick up the pieces and do it again.
There. I was pep-talked up enough to meet the Princess’ glare with as much attitude as she was throwing at me.
“What did you say?” she asked with a dangerous edge to her sultry voice.
“Nothing of importance. When I have something I want you to hear, I’ll make sure you do.”
If I’d bothered to imagine what it would be like when I met a holographic version of myself from another planet—and why the fuck would I ever do that?—I wouldn’t have thought it would be me against her. There was no real reason for there to be any hostility between the two of us, after all, we were the same person—more or less.
But I’d never been one to back down from a fight, even when I realized it was smart to do just that. With my brain in a jumble trying to process everything that was going down, I didn’t have enough left over to talk any sense into myself. Doing the reasoned thing had never been my strong suit anyway. I was a girl of action, I moved on impulse and intuition.
The Princess was coming toward me.
I took a few steps and closed the space between us.
She looked as if she intended to bulldoze me out of her way, not just out of the room, but out of her life. But she stopped a foot away from me—it seemed she’d succumbed to the same reaction I was having.
“Incredible,” she said. “You look exactly like me.”
“No, you look exactly like me,” I said, realizing full well I sounded like a child, but still unable to keep my mouth shut.
She ignored my infantile retort. She scanned me up and down, and then up again. “Well, not exactly like me. While you’re fortunate enough to have my body, you don’t know how to dress it up to maximize its potential.”
“It’s my body, not yours.” My response sounded embarrassing, even to my ears, and by then our audience had expanded to include Lila, Kai, and Narcisse beyond the door. I assumed Yudelle remained with Aletox, as she had since we returned from the pyramid hours ago.
“I almost feel insulted,” the Princess said, “to see myself like this.”
She did look splendid in her skintight dress with daring slits and low-slung boots. But really, who wore a dress like that to kick butt? Apparently she did, and I had no doubt she could kick some ass no matter what she was wearing—or wasn’t. She obviously waged many of her battles in the bedroom.
But I wouldn’t admit out loud that I was impressed with her. Never. Besides, I knew for a fact that, while I might not rock this body quite like she did, I did it justice. I had a long history of proof that I too could work my powers of persuasion.
I opted not to respond to her insult and instead hold my head high with what I hoped was coming off as dignity. Better that than to hear what might come out of my mouth unintended.
“Ilara,” Tanus said from behind her, and both her eyes and mine found him.
He looked uncomfortable. I’d seen him angry, passionate, defensive, and proud, but never unsure of himself. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t blame him. What was someone supposed to do in a situation like this one? Had there ever been a situation like this one before in the history of all history?
“Yes, Tanus,” the Princess said, walking toward him, her hips swaying in alluring mastery. Suddenly, she sou
nded like the adoring lover.
I tried to keep the flickering speed with which my emotions were shifting from showing on my face.
“Leave her alone,” Tanus, my hero, said. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care for a man standing up for me when I was plenty capable of doing it myself, but in this case, I loved it.
The Princess didn’t. “You’re defending her over me?” Her words sounded dangerous, but Tanus didn’t flinch.
“I’m defending her because you’re the one lashing out, not the other way around.”
By the enraged look that colored her features, but still didn’t detract from her beauty, I figured she wasn’t used to anyone talking to her this way, not even her lover—or her former lover. Was it silly to dare to hope that this man could somehow still love me, even when the universe had pitched us on its opposite sides? Yes, it was silly, surely it was also stupid and irresponsible and a bunch of other things I didn’t have the spare brain power to figure out.
“Oh, I see,” the Princess said, “I see what you’ve done in my absence. Instead of trying to find me, you’ve actually moved on. And since there’s no one who could replace me, and you know it, you sought to find someone close enough to me that you could ignore our differences. Because clearly there are differences.”
“Of course there are differences.” Tanus sounded out of patience already. “You’re holographic copies of the same person, but you aren’t the same person. You’re different from each other.”
“And you know just how different, don’t you?”
Tanus didn’t say anything, but met her eyes without flinching. I was proud of him for not backing down, and I wondered, was she always this way? Surely he wouldn’t have been so smitten with her if this was how she treated him.
“You’ve bedded her.” It wasn’t a question. The Princess knew it just as much as anyone in that village on our one and only night of passion.