Authors: Tracy St. John
Tasha’s expression softened. She hurried to Falinset, coming right up to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. While her own rage had made her unapproachable, his brought her close to gaze at him with knowing compassion. She whispered, “You deserve to be free of him.”
He looked into her eyes. The awful darkness that poisoned her was nowhere to be seen. In her need to calm him, the venom of hurt had been countered.
As for Falinset, he had found his breaking point. She stood before him, looking at him with caring he didn’t deserve. For himself, he would not have ever harmed Maf. Nor would he have bothered for the sake of the Empire. Not even for his clanmates had he ever considered killing. But to keep Tasha safe, the answer was yes. Without hesitation.
* * * *
Falinset’s words rang in Wekniz’s ears.
I would kill him
. From the look on his clan leader’s face, the Nobek knew he meant it. Seeing the naked fury in Falinset’s expression woke his own warrior instincts.
However, Falinset would not have to kill Maf. Wekniz decided in an instant that it would be too great a pleasure to show his Dramok … to show them all his worth by committing murder for them. At last he would be the protector he was meant to be. To take care of Falinset, Nur, Tasha, and Noelle was all Wekniz could ask for. The price of such an honor, even should it be his life, was no consideration. If the odds would only move from the impossible end of the scale, he would see to it that all their enemies fell.
As he entertained hopes of rescuing the Earther and the princess and regaining his clan’s pride, he sensed movement behind him. He whirled to face the door that led out into the hall. Noelle stood there, rubbing her eyes sleepily, her steel hair in adorable corkscrews. She was newly awakened from her nap.
Wekniz took a breath and made sure his fangs were hinged. He gave Noelle as gentle a smile as his recent bloodlust and scarred face would allow. “Hello, my princess. How are you feeling?”
She blinked up at him. Early after she’d arrived at the home, Wekniz had made it a point to introduce himself to her. He’d spent time to let her get used to his appearance and learn she had nothing to fear from him. She’d touched his scarred face and asked questions about the fire that had caused them. He held her when she was sad, sung the songs his mother had sung to him as a young boy. The effort to ease her mind had paid off; she showed no sign of being afraid of him.
She came right up to him and took his hand trustingly, her fingers tiny as they wrapped around his. “I had a dream, Nobek Wekniz.”
He bent down and picked her up as Tasha left Falinset to hurry to his side. Wekniz registered how much he liked holding the little girl with Tasha pressed close to him. It warmed him, casting off the recent urge to find someone to kill. It felt right. It made it easy to imagine being a father with a child of his own. With Tasha as his Matara. The impossible fantasy made his throat ache.
Tasha stroked Noelle’s snarled hair, combing a few knots out with her fingers. “Was it a good dream or a bad dream, sweetheart?”
“I dreamed Mommy was carrying me. Then she gave me to you, Tasha. And Clan Falinset was there too.” Her little lip trembled as she looked at her cousin. “We’re never going home, are we? Are you going to be my mommy from now on, Tasha? Are they my daddies?” She looked at Nur, Falinset, and last of all Wekniz, where her overly bright eyes stayed.
The need to shed blood came over the Nobek again. Someone needed to pay for making the child cry, as well as causing the bloodless condition of Tasha’s face. The Earther’s mouth worked soundlessly, in too much shock from Noelle’s question to answer.
Wekniz forced his anger back. His voice was tight, but he managed to keep a pleasant lilt to it. “My princess, there could be no greater honor than to have a daughter as wonderful as you. But no, we are not going to be your new parents.” He took a deep breath, trying to find the right words to reassure her. “Getting you home where you belong is taking a long time because the bad men are making things hard for us. But I will do everything possible to get you home. On my honor, with every last breath, I will try.”
His words, which sounded so inadequate to him, offered the little girl comfort. She blinked back the unfallen tears and smiled at him. “Okay, Nobek Wekniz. I like you, but I want my parent clan.”
Falinset stepped forward. “Of course you do, my princess. We are doing our best to get you back to them.”
Wekniz noted his Dramok didn’t look strong with anger any longer. He smiled pleasantly at Noelle, but his eyes held a hectic, desperate gleam. Tasha and Nur shared that look.
I will find a way. It is in my nature. I will use Sitrel for a hostage.
Wekniz vowed to himself that if anyone got in his way, he’d kill them to a man. Noelle and Tasha had to get home by any means possible.
“What do you mean you haven’t left yet?”
Sitrel winced at the incredulous tone in Maf’s voice coming out of his personal com. If there was anything he hated, it was disappointing his leader. Especially when circumstances that led to said disappointment were no fault of his own.
He sighed. A large industrial hovercart loaded with a number of travel bins trundled past him. It floated to the waiting shuttle in Maf’s private bay. He rolled his eyes at the excess.
Not my fault, he wanted to whine, but whiners got no respect. He knew that, and since much of what Sitrel thought came in the form of complaints, he usually kept his mouth shut. Instead, he kept his tone even as he explained, “Narpok’s cases have just arrived. It’s going to take a little while to stow them in the cargo compartment.”
Maf’s voice had an edge to it, one that Sitrel had heard more frequently as the time to begin the fight against the current government grew shorter. “You know the timeline, Sitrel. Lobam’s cities are now under my control. My ships have come out of hiding and are en route to take up orbit there. My followers are getting nervous because I haven’t shown the promised vid of the unharmed princess. I need you on that moon.”
“Yes, my leader, but Narpok – well, she’s Narpok.” All at once he couldn’t take it anymore. The grievances poured from his lips. “She’s as self-absorbed as she was before her breakdown. Everything has to be her way and on her schedule. She doesn’t care about what anyone else wants or needs.”
With the cargo bay’s lights beaming brightly in the white walled bay, his head ached. The banging of carts and bins didn’t help, but Sitrel knew they had little to do with the pain he was in. His skull had been pounding almost from the moment Narpok had left the meeting with the Basma. With a potential clanning in the offing, she’d started making demands right away.
Sitrel’s cousin made him glad he had dedicated his life to serving Maf instead of clanning anyone. He couldn’t imagine dealing with a woman like her, much less an Imdiko and Nobek as well. Life was much simpler serving the Basma alone.
Thank the ancestors that Maf softened in the wake of Sitrel’s grumbling. His tone more understanding, Maf said, “You only have to keep her happy for a little while longer. Long enough for Falinset to see her.”
While Sitrel took comfort in the Basma’s generous attitude, he frowned. He wasn’t so sure Falinset would find Narpok enticing. Even with fine gowns, she still looked wan and sickly. Disguising her for their shopping foray hadn’t been difficult at all.
He had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that Narpok had done her part to remain incognito. She had managed to turn off her usual entitled airs when dealing with dressmakers who measured her for clothes. Her demeanor had been deferential while choosing fabrics and styles, constantly apologizing for not knowing exactly what she should buy. However, once she’d been given direction she spent without restraint, showing she was still Narpok through and through.
When it was just her and Sitrel, Narpok was as snobbish and spoiled as ever. She looked down her aristocratic nose at her cousin, sniffed unimpressed at his home, and asked condescendingly why he’d not managed to attract clanmates yet.
Feeling it was his duty to warn Maf that Clan Falinset might not immediately fall for Narpok’s dubious charms, Sitrel muttered into the com, “I hope her attitude doesn’t scare them off.”
“She is Kalquorian and rare even if she can’t bear children. Our women deserve to be indulged. Falinset can’t help but see her worth.” On the heels of that, Maf turned demanding once more. “Get yourselves off Kalquor, Sitrel. I can’t rely on Ket to not ruin things before you get to Falinset. This is my last chance to bring my son into the fold. When the fighting starts, it will be too late.”
“Yes, my leader. We will leave within the hour,” Sitrel promised
. Even if I have to drag that silly twit onto the shuttle by her hair.
He switched his com off and shoved it in its pouch on his belt. His irritation was reaching the breaking point. Ancestors help him if Maf knew the real reason they ran so far behind schedule. He’d have Sitrel’s head if he found out Narpok had gotten away from him.
His ridiculous cousin had wandered off during their shopping trip in the underground market, disappearing in the few seconds he’d been distracted by a street performer telling bawdy jokes. As soon as he’d realized she’d left him, he’d spent more than a frantic hour trying to find her. At last he caught up to her in a shoe shop with a pile of merchandise that would have shod five Mataras for several years.
Thinking about that terrible hour during which he’d tried to imagine himself explaining to the Basma how he’d lost the woman destined to be his daughter-in-law, Sitrel shook his head.
Then to top it off, she’d demanded to visit her childhood home. If Maf learned Sitrel had given in to her tantrum, throwing a tantrum of his own and endangering the whole fucking mission…
No. Maf must never hear of his mistakes. But Narpok would get no more chances with Sitrel. If he had to tie the sorry bitch up and bring her to Clan Falinset bound and gagged, so much the better. He was ready to wash his hands of anything to do with his cousin. He’d rather be on the front lines of the coming war rather than have to go through such an ordeal again.
After all this, Falinset had damned sure better want her. She’s not coming home with me again. I’ll space her first,
he vowed.
He headed towards the crew loading the cargo. Yelling at them to hurry up would not be his usual careful way of doing things, but it would feel damned good. And if Narpok’s expensive new luggage bins were dented in the rush, so be it. His greedy bitch of a cousin could cry to her new clanmates for another set.
* * * *
Falinset spent a couple of days coming to grips with the sudden realization that he could take the life of Dramok Maf if the opportunity arose. He sat with it, turned it over, examined it, and brooded over it. In the end he decided he truly felt that way. The man had robbed him and almost everyone who meant something to him of all that mattered. Maf would take away even more if he wasn’t stopped, particularly where Tasha and Noelle were concerned. He did not deserve to live.
Falinset kept waiting to feel the bite of conscience over wanting Maf dead. He thought at least some small part of him should be recoiling in horror. Yet the only thing that had that affect was the sight of Noelle hurting. Of Tasha’s sweet nature being twisted into something brutal in her anger over their helplessness. Those were the things that kept him awake at night.
“Maf has to die,” he said to himself, tasting the words. “I will kill him if I get the chance.” No, those words did not curdle his guts at all. In fact, they felt more right than almost anything else he’d ever uttered.
When not ruminating about the change in his mindset, he found himself wandering to wherever Tasha happened to be. He felt a constant need to be in her presence, even if it was only to look at her. Many times she had no idea he was around, quietly gazing at her. He drank in the loveliness that seemed enhanced by the moment. When she spoke, he devoured every word like a deaf man suddenly given the ability to hear. More and more he thought of how he wished he was free to pursue her, to be more than a fellow prisoner trapped in his house. He wanted to matter to her.
He knew he’d crossed the line from being merely fascinated with her. He hung on her every move, her every word. It didn’t matter that he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he should keep his distance as he had in the beginning. He had no business thinking the things he did about her.
He couldn’t help but wonder, though. How would it be if she looked at him the way he looked at her? What joy would be his if he knew she could rely on him for safety, for strength, for everything she would ever need?
Falinset would laugh at himself when he began musing along those lines. How could Tasha ever rely on him? He couldn’t even get her off this damned moon to somewhere safe. He failed her every second she was stuck here, failed her as he had failed his clan for so long.
It didn’t matter that once Maf’s evil was known Falinset would never attract any Matara to his clan. He knew Tasha was the only one for them, and she was the farthest out of reach of any woman. He was the son of a traitor. She was a member of the Imperial Family. There was no hope for him to gain her trust or … even more laughable … her love.
He was thinking such dreary thoughts as he gazed at Tasha, sitting alone in the common room as she stared at one of the window vids. It showed a blameless blue sky hanging over the nearby ornamental garden Nur had planted on the east side of the home. Flowers of the deepest shades of blue, purple, and green bloomed in an exuberant display. They were at their height of beauty and Tasha had commented only yesterday how much she wished she could go out and see them in person.