“Those treaties – the ones I translated in Monaco – you need to go through them in depth if your father can’t. Thrash things out so your father just has to sign them. I can help with that.”
He looked at me. We both knew it wasn’t about the treaties.
“Lucy, if you stay here—”
“I know, Your Highness.”
He stared at me, either frustrated by my stubbornness or impressed by it. Then he opened the door and told the bodyguards we were going to the palace.
***
Jagor rode with me in the limo, but Medenko climbed in with him: giving me a long, hard look. Jagor and I sat opposite each other; close enough to touch but forced to remain coolly distant. It was torture: but the knowledge that I was staying with him made it bearable. It didn’t quell the fear, though.
The convoy drove slowly up out of the city, and I drew in my breath as I caught my first glimpse of the palace. People have described it as fairy-tale, with its white stone and pointed turrets. That fails to communicate the sheer scale of the thing. It looked big even when we were a few miles away: as we drew closer, zig-zagging up the long mountain road, it loomed over us. It stood secure on its own cliff top, a sheer drop on three sides and the mountain rising behind it. The only way in or out was the stone bridge that led directly to the main gates.
When we pulled up, I had to just stand there and gape for a moment: not just at the size of the palace but at everything that went with it. The Asterian flag, flying high above. The ceremonial guards, in their deep blue, gold-buttoned uniforms. The servants, waiting to greet the Prince. We swept inside, Jagor leading the way.
And then, coming out of a side door in front of us, we saw Queen Larissa.
I was in the middle of the pack, which gave me a few second’s warning. I pulled up short, as did everyone behind me. Jagor ran forward and embraced her.
She reminded me of a French Grande Dame. She shared Jagor’s thick, dark hair – shot through with silver, now, but I swore it wasn’t dyed. She was beautiful, in a severe sort of a way, and her elegant blue dress showed how well she’d kept her figure: the subject of about a million speculative magazine articles.
Around her neck, a smooth, white leather band with a silver lock at the back. It was beautifully made, with the same sort of hugely expensive but stylishly understated look as her dress. But it was still a collar.
She talked with Jagor for a few moments, getting the latest on the King. Then she turned to look over the retinue, and stopped when she got to me.
“Who is this?” she asked Jagor.
“My aide, for the Americans.”
Don’t mess this up, Lucy.
I’d spent part of the limo journey on my smartphone, piecing together etiquette from Wikipedia articles and news reports. I took one step forward and did my best attempt at a curtsey, my head bowed low. “Your Majesty,” I offered in Asterian.
“You’re American?”
I slowly straightened up. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
She regarded me for a long while. “Your accent is quite good.” I’d never heard praise so grudgingly given.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“Do you understand our ways?”
I had to tread very carefully here. “As well as I can, Your Majesty,” I said meekly.
She sniffed, but not unkindly. “You’re courting trouble,” she told Jagor reproachfully. “Make sure everyone’s clear on what she is.”
He nodded, and the Queen swept out. After a while, I remembered to start breathing again.
***
A whole wing of the palace was devoted to the staff – the publicists, the dressers, the official royal photographer and many more. Few of them lived at the palace; they just came there each day to work. But there were plenty of staff guest rooms and I was told by Medenko that I could stay in one “until the situation stabilized.” He seemed too distracted by the King’s condition to be suspicious of me, at least for now.
It was the early hours of the morning. We’d all been up all night, so even as dawn broke I collapsed into bed and fell into a troubled, broken sleep.
Just a few hours later, there was a soft knock at the door. I knew instinctively it was Jagor, and we couldn’t risk him being seen lurking outside my door so I ran to answer it. The bed had a goose down quilt, so I’d stripped down to my panties again to sleep. I hid behind the door as I opened it and nodded him inside, my arms covering my breasts.
I don’t know why I was suddenly shy. Partially because it was about seven a.m. and I knew I looked a state and partially because I knew he wasn’t there to seduce me, and being mostly naked felt completely inappropriate. I dived back under the quilt and pulled it up around me. Jagor was still in his suit: he hadn’t been to bed. His face was pale, some of the confidence missing from his beautiful eyes.
“You must be exhausted, Your Highness. Is there any news?”
“He’s stable. The doctors are happy.”
“Do they know who did this?”
“No. But SSV will find out.” SSV was the Asterian equivalent of the FBI, but with a far darker reputation.
“I brought you something,” he told me. For a split second, my face lit up, thinking it was going to be a gift. Then he showed it to me.
It was a velvet collar – symbolic, rather than practical. The band was deep, rich purple, a couple of inches wide, flaring to a point at the front. The palace seal was there, picked out in silver thread, and below it hung a silver ring. At the back, there were rows of metal eyelets, so the size could be adjusted.
“It’s a palace collar,” he said guiltily. “It’s what the palace slaves wear. It’ll prevent any trouble, here or outside.”
I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice.
“I’m sorry, Lucy: I didn’t plan for it to be this way.”
“How—” My voice broke, and I stopped and got myself under control, bringing up my knees under the bedclothes and resting my cheek on them so I looked sideways at him. “How did you mean it to be, Your Highness?”
He sighed. “You know I love you.” My heart seemed to blossom, a warm glow flooding through me. I must have smiled, for a second, because he smiled back. “Since I met you, I wanted you to be mine.”
With any other man, that word would have been so simple.
“Yours?”
He stared back at me. “Mine.”
“Collared?”
He nodded. Then, quickly, “But that would have come later. I never thought we’d go to Asteria this early...I just wanted us to be together.”
I nodded. So did I.
“Lucy, you don’t have to do this. If you want to just fly home....”
I gazed into his eyes. I didn’t want to be owned – even by him. At least not yet.
But I didn’t want to lose him, either.
I was resting my cheek on my knees. I turned my head so that my chin rested on them instead, gathered up my hair and held it clear of my neck.
I didn’t look at him as he approached me, or as he slipped the band around my neck. He did something at the back and there was a sudden
clu-clik.
He stepped back and I was wearing a collar.
I sat up. The actual band weighed almost nothing, but the padlock at the back moved with every turn of my head: it was impossible to forget I was wearing it. I felt around the back, where it locked. The padlock was small, but felt sturdy. For all that the collar was about appearances, I wouldn’t be able to take it off.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I looked at him and cracked a fake smile. “Of course, Your Highness,” and almost started crying. He pulled me into a hug, those huge arms immediately making everything alright. I just wanted to run away with him, take him back to New York, or Monaco: anywhere but here.
I gradually calmed down, snuggled in against his chest. He slowly released me and kissed the top of my head. “I have to go. We’re going into the city this morning: you’ll need to be ready by nine.”
I stiffened. “So soon?” I asked plaintively. I’d wanted to at least get used to wearing the thing around the palace before I ventured outside.
“I’ll send someone up to help you. You’ll be fine.” And after a final, lingering kiss he hurried off.
***
I showered, put on a suit and unpacked the rest of my clothes. A woman in a palace uniform brought a breakfast tray to my room. I thanked her and went to take it, but she shook her head and marched inside. “I’m Doracella,” she told me brusquely. “The Prince asked me to get you ready to go out.”
I glanced down at myself. I was already dressed, hair done and make-up on.
She shook her head. “Not like that. You need to learn how to behave – so you don’t embarrass him.”
I think my mouth dropped open at that point.
Doracella sighed. “Look. Most slaves are owned by a single man. A man will have his wife, then maybe one other slave. If he’s rich, sometimes two. Some slaves have a job: some don’t. Either way, they’re still owned by their man. With me so far?”
I nodded.
“But some big businesses, and traditional institutions like the palace, like to own their own slaves. Like me. I’m not owned by a man: I’m owned by the palace. Being a palace slave is a
huge
honor: we represent the royal family. It’s very important that we behave correctly.”
My head was spinning. “Wait: I thought women
gave
themselves to a man at twenty-one, because they loved him.” I was so curious that I continued without thinking: “Why would anyone
give
themselves to a business?”
Doracella just stared at me, and I winced, realizing I’d put my foot in it. Her voice was carefully neutral. “They don’t. Businesses buy their slaves from an owner. In my case, the slave market.”
I wondered how she’d wound up in the slave market, but I wasn’t about to ask and risk offending her again. I nodded, and she began my training.
“You will walk behind the Prince
at all times,”
she told me. “If he sits, you remain standing unless he tells you to sit. Kneel down.”
I blinked stupidly and got down on my knees.
“No. Do it like this.” She elegantly lowered herself to her knees without using her hands. She knelt with her head slightly bowed and her hands behind her back. Then, as if called to attention, she got to her feet again, still without using her hands. It was like watching a swan awaken from a nap. “You try it.”
I tried it. I was distinctly less swan-like.
“Practice. Get used to not using your hands.”
“Because it looks better?”
“In case they’re tied.”
I looked at her, horrified, and she laughed. “The palace owns us: not a man,” she told me. “There’s no demand on us for sex, but it’s still traditional to kneel correctly. We’re still slaves.”
“We have to act as if our hands might be tied, even if they’re not?”
She sighed. “You shake hands in America, yes?”
“Yes….”
“Do you know how shaking hands started? It was a gesture of peace, between soldiers. It showed you’d laid down your weapons. You don’t carry a sword anymore, but you still shake hands.”
Okay: that sort of made sense. “But if I was owned by a man, and not a business...then it would be different.”
“Then he could take you any time he wanted. And tie your hands, or feet, or loan you to another, or do anything else he pleased.”
My heart beat faster as I imagined being owned by Jagor.
Doracella saw my expression and misread it as fear. “Lucy, relax. No-one’s going to own you. You don’t even know any Asterian men.”
I smiled weakly.
“You’re not even a palace slave, really: this is just for convenience. All your duties will be for the Prince, but we can’t have you wearing his collar: people would think there was something between you.” She laughed at this idea. “And we can’t have you walking around without a collar on. So, for as long as you’re here, we’ll pass you off as a palace slave: and that means you need to act like one.”
I nodded, and we continued.
***
By the time Jagor called me into his office, my head felt like it was going to burst if it had to absorb another piece of intricate slave etiquette. I tried to stop playing with my collar, and knocked.
I saw the change as soon as he called me in: his voice had lost some of the strain it had carried earlier. He sat confidently again, dwarfing the big leather chair. I shut the door behind me.
“My father’s doing better,” he smiled. “The antidote is doing its job. He’ll be fine.”
I let out a long sigh of relief. “That’s wonderful, Your Highness.” I looked at him. The old sparkle was definitely back, although he still looked older. No, not older: more mature. Statesmanlike, I realized. Now that he was back in Asteria, he had to be the heir to the throne, not the playboy.
“Do you think you’re ready, Your Highness?”
He understood immediately what I meant. “Thankfully I don’t get to find out.” He looked relieved – just because his father was getting better, or because he really didn’t want to rule?
His brother
, I thought,
his brother was the first born: he was always meant to be the ruler
. How much had it damaged him, having that mantle thrust upon him?
He was watching me carefully. Knowing Jagor, he probably had a pretty good idea what was going through my head: the questions I wanted to ask. But he had enough to deal with right now without me trying to analyze him, so I simply smiled.
“Come here,” he told me.
With a quick glance at the door, I hurried around the edge of the desk and into his arms. He pulled me down onto his lap, drawing a delighted little shriek from me. I sat on his lap while we kissed, my hair falling around us as our lips met and our tongues entwined.
There was a knock at the door. I sat bolt upright and started to get up, but he held me tight.
“No,” he told me, managing to do that low, throaty growl that made me weak, even in a whisper. “No, it’s been too long.” He looked at me. “Get under the desk.”
It was an order, and it sent a hot thrill of lust rippling down my body, the heat hitting me in the groin. I knew exactly what he had in mind: I wasn’t
that
naive.