Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince (5 page)

“
Your hands are
freezing,” she said with a smile that he supposed was meant to make
him feel as though that wasn’t a bad thing.

She was trying not to
offend him.

He smiled at her, showing
that he wasn’t at all offended. He knew that he was cold compared
to her. His species relied on the strong sun of their planet and
thermal suits to keep them alive. In deep space, and with his suit
broken, he was so cold that it was difficult to move.
Painful.

Still, as he looked at
her, he found that he didn’t feel the cold. He didn’t feel the
pain. He felt only warmth. A strange warmth that suffused his
entire body.

“
Tres?” she
said and his eyes half-closed on hearing her soft voice speak his
name.

He managed a nod in
response and clawed the scattered pieces of his mind back together.
Something about her made him lose all reason and control. He wished
that he was able to get closer to her. He wanted to feel her body
against every inch of his and needed to help her get away from this
dark place. The Black Zone was no place for her and the Vegan
commander of this vessel was intent on hurting her, or at least
damaging relations between Vega and Lyra. He had to stop that from
happening. He looked around him at the cells. Trapped here, he
wouldn’t be able to do anything.

“
Do you think
my brother is going to be all right?” She leaned back against the
wall near him and pulled her knees up to her chest.

The vulnerability in her
look made him frown and a dark feeling filled him, an urge to
escape the cell at any cost to set her free and take vengeance on
the commander who had captured her. Her near-black eyes shifted to
meet his, sending another bolt of warmth through him. She gave him
another little smile, a faint curving of her lips that spoke of
hurt. Her brow furrowed.

“
He will be all
right, won’t he?” she whispered, her look almost pleading him to
lie to her.

He didn’t need to
lie.

“
Nothing will
happen to him,” Tres whispered in return and moved closer to her.
He leaned his back into the wall and kept his head turned towards
her, watching her closely. She was beautifully unguarded with her
feelings and the depth of her love for her brother stunned Tres. He
was sure that his sister, Tesia, loved him, but it couldn’t
possibly extend to this. Renie looked as though she would die if
anything happened to her brother.

For some reason, that made
him a little jealous.

Jealous.

It was a new feeling for
him. He had never had a reason to feel it before.

He held a high position
within society, so admired and feared that he wanted for nothing.
Only his family could refuse him something. Yet he craved more. He
stared into Renie’s eyes, reading all the love in them. He longed
for a life where he was treated differently. An existence where
there was more. More. He didn’t know exactly what it was that he
craved, but he knew that he would find it on the other side of the
barrier, away from the Black Zone.

Freedom. Feelings.
Life.

All the things he had ever
wanted but had never had. The things that he couldn’t ask for. The
things that were denied him.

He wanted to live. He
desired to see how others lived. He longed to experience life in a
place less dark than the Black Zone.

Something dawned on him,
something that made him feel the depth of his loneliness and the
hollowness of his existence, something that made him despair at the
thought that he might lose what he had found. He didn’t want to go
back, didn’t want to continue his old life now that he had
discovered what was missing from it.

He wanted to live. He
desired to see how others lived. He longed to experience life in a
place less dark than the Black zone. But he didn’t want to do it
alone.

He wanted to do it all
with a female like Renie.

She was everything that he
had ever wanted.

****

Chapter
4

The door
opened.

Renie’s heart leapt into
her throat when the Vegan commander walked in, flanked by two
soldiers. He still frightened her. She stood, unwilling to let him
see that fear, and walked to the bars of her cell, coming face to
face with him.

“
We have
contacted your family,” he said, his eyes showing a smile that his
lips hid. He seemed pleased with himself. Renie’s heart pounded at
the thought that her family were coming. She hated the position she
was in, but the knowledge that her father was coming for her
lightened her heart and made her feel better. The commander’s gaze
raked over her and then met hers again. “It will be a while before
they reach us. You would be wise to make yourself
comfortable.”

Renie glanced back at the
bench and then at Tres. He was still sitting with his back to the
wall, his strange eyes fixed on the commander in a venomous
stare.

“
You will eat,”
the commander said.

Renie looked at him,
shaking her head. He wasn’t going to order her around. She might be
his prisoner but she wasn’t about to let him take all her strength
from her. Tres had refused to eat and she was going to as well. She
wasn’t going to make things easy on the Vegans. It could be days
before her family arrived. When they did, she wanted them to see
exactly how poorly the Vegans had treated her.

“
What do you
intend to do with myself and my brother?” she said, straightening
her back and standing tall. She was a princess of Lyra. This
commander wasn’t going to frighten her.

But her heart thundered in
her ears and her palms sweated as she stood before him, staring up
into his golden eyes and waiting to hear her fate.

The commander smiled,
thin-lipped and evil. “We have discovered something most
interesting about your brother. It seems he is in line for the
throne.”

Renie didn’t like the way
his smile widened, his eyes narrowing with it. It scared her. She
frowned and stepped right up to the bars. She could see in the
Vegan’s eyes what he was thinking and she wasn’t going to let that
happen. Rezic didn’t care about the throne. He didn’t want it. He
didn’t want to be Lyra V.

All of the malicious
thoughts crossing the Vegan commander’s face frightened her. They
confirmed her fear that he was thinking of hurting her brother. He
was going to punish Rezic for being in line to the throne of
Lyra.

Her resolve melted away
and her brow furrowed. She stared into the commander’s eyes, no
longer able to hide her fear. He grinned when he saw it and that
only frightened her more. The idea that he was feeding off her fear
only increased it. Would he hurt her brother just to make her
suffer?

“
Please,” Renie
whispered, hating herself for showing such weakness but needing to
protect her brother. He couldn’t fend for himself. He was already
injured. He had been so close to death. If they tortured him for
information, he might not survive. “Don’t hurt him. Please? I’ll do
anything you ask of me. Please... just don’t harm my
brother.”

Tears blurred her vision.
She couldn’t bear the thought of them hurting Rezic. She could
almost feel his pain already. If they tortured him, he wouldn’t
tell them a thing. He would die before he revealed any of Lyra’s
secrets. She didn’t want him to die for a throne that he didn’t
want. Without him, the galaxy would be an empty soulless place. He
was everything to her.

“
Please?” she
whispered again, reaching up and wishing she could take hold of the
bars, could get closer to the commander so he would see that she
truly would do anything for her brother. “Take me instead. Don’t
hurt him. If you want to hurt someone—”

“
Enough,” Tres
snapped in a firm voice, making her jump.

Her head shot around to
face him. He was on his feet and approaching the
commander.

“
The treaty of
Espacia forbids this kind of action.” Tres stepped right up the
bars of his cell, his dark blue eyebrows knit tight into a frown.
He was taller than she had expected and when he looked like this,
so commanding and confident, she realised how handsome he really
was. She moved closer to him, her eyes fixed on his face, wondering
what he was going to do.

What could he
do?

They were both trapped
here. Mentioning the treaty wouldn’t change a thing. They couldn’t
stop the Vegans from hurting her brother. She felt helpless.
Useless. Rezic was hurt and there wasn’t a thing she could do to
help him.

No one could help
him.

“
You are in no
position to speak,” the Vegan commander said to Tres.

The determined look on
Tres’s face didn’t change. He held the commander’s gaze, unwavering
in the face of a man she found so frightening.

“
We have
contacted your family too,” the commander whispered and a flicker
of something crossed Tres’s face. Anguish? Fear? She couldn’t
determine the emotion. It was too brief, nothing more than a flash.
In less than a heartbeat, it was gone, replaced by a glare so
murderous and dark that Renie almost stepped back.

Tres slammed his fists
against the light bars, making them crackle and fizz. The commander
retreated a step. Tres hit the bars again, his eyes narrowed into
dark blue slits. Not a trace of pain touched his features although
it must have hurt him to touch the energy bars.

Renie watched in silence,
witnessing an unspoken exchange of threats between the two males.
She glanced down to see that Tres had his hands clenched into tight
fists at his sides. They were steady, not trembling in the
slightest. The control he had over his obvious anger was incredible
and stunned Renie as much as the hatred in his eyes. He had known
what he was doing when he had hit the bars and he hadn’t cared
about the pain it would cause him. Had he wanted to scare the
commander?

Or was it the thought of
his family coming for him that had made him react so violently, had
made him want to fight?

Tres heaved a sigh and
visibly relaxed. Renie’s gaze shifted to his face again. He looked
calm at last, his head tilted back and his shoulders lowered. His
blue pupils remained fixed on the commander though.

The commander grinned, as
though Tres’s change in temperament was a victory for
him.

Tres frowned and then
relaxed again.

“
If I eat,” he
said slowly, his voice smooth and calm, “you will leave her brother
alone.”

Renie frowned now,
confused by the exchange. How was Tres finally eating important
enough to the Vegans that they wouldn’t hurt her brother? If it was
true and they would do as he had asked then she didn’t care about
the reasoning behind it. She looked at Tres and then at the
commander. No. Tres hadn’t asked the commander. He had told the
commander that he would leave Rezic alone.

Was Tres of high standing
within society on this side of the barrier? High enough that he
could order the Vegan commander? She almost laughed at that. Given
their current situation, he couldn’t be that important. If he were
then the commander wouldn’t have been holding him in the cells. If
this ship was anything like a Lyran military vessel, then it would
have guest quarters. They would have held Tres in one of those if
he were that important. Perhaps he was trying his luck. Perhaps he
had only risked it sounding like an order to force commander into
making a decision.

But still.

How was Tres’s offer of
eating equivalent to the safety of her brother? It didn’t seem like
an equivalent exchange to her.

Renie looked at the
commander to see what he would do. He looked pensive for a moment
and then nodded.

“
Bring food for
him, and make sure that he eats it.” The commander’s gaze slid to
her and she stepped back, away from him. “If he doesn’t, then we go
ahead as planned.”

Renie swallowed and
glanced at Tres. He was looking at her, his expression serene and
unwavering. If it was supposed to reassure her, it did, but she
still wasn’t about to trust these Vegans with her
brother.

“
You’ll leave
Rezic alone as promised, yes?” she said as the commander went to
pass her.

He paused and looked down
at her, across his broad shoulders. There was something in his
strange yellow irises that looked like reluctance. He nodded and
then stormed out of the room. One of the guards followed him. The
other remained in the corner, watching her, his expression
empty.

Renie turned to Tres. He
had sat down again in the same spot that he had occupied before,
leaning with his back against the wall between the light bars of
her cell and the bench in his.

She walked over and sat
down too. Her hands slipped from her bent knees to the floor and
she looked down at Tres’s hand. Carefully reaching through the
bars, she tentatively stroked the burns on his hand, black marks
against white skin.

“
I’m sorry,”
she whispered and looked at him, tears trembling on the brink of
falling again. She cursed them, wishing to Iskara that she wasn’t
so weak. The thought of them hurting her brother made her sick
though and she couldn’t stop the tears from coming whenever she
thought about him. She couldn’t lose Rezic. “You’re
hurt.”