Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Emperor (3 page)

Sophia eagerly read the
passage of text below it and frowned when she realised that the
building was the emperor’s palace.

Her frown increased when a
lilting male voice drifted through her window, singing in a
language she didn’t recognise. She tapped the translator in her ear
and wondered if it was working. The song was beautiful, so soft and
melodious that she needed to hear it clearer. She slipped from her
bed, leaving the computer pad there, and crossed her room to the
balcony.

The sky was stunning
tonight, the moons shining so bright that they lit the world in
silver. She looked down at the garden and her frown melted away
when she saw who was singing. It couldn’t be. The Count of
Sagres?

Her gaze followed him as
he walked slowly through the garden, seemingly oblivious to
everything, even her.

His song was like that of
the Sonaran, a mythical sea creature that lived on Lyra Seven, her
system’s outermost planet. Apparently, its song lured you to a
sweet death. His song lured her.

Conscious of her bare feet
and nightdress but not caring about either, Sophia snuck through
the palace and out into the garden. She needed to hear it closer.
She had never heard such a sombre but beautiful song.

Her footsteps were silent
on the pale stone path that wound through the garden. She
approached the count from behind, slow and cautious, remembering
how the Varkans had reacted earlier today when she had moved too
quickly. His hand drifted out to brush the pale blue rose heads as
he passed and he raised his face to the moons. It felt as though he
was singing to them.

He was stunning even in
the low light, his uniform cut to show his figure. The jaw length
strands of his black hair shifted in the breeze, the moonlight
making them shine. She wanted to look into his eyes again, to see
his handsome face.

The small white pebbles of
the path near the fountain scrunched when she stepped on them and
she lifted her foot, cringing at the noise. Too late. The singing
had stopped and she could feel him looking at her.

“
Please, don’t
stop,” Sophia said and smiled her apology into his eyes. “Continue.
Do continue.”

He shook his head, the jaw
length dark ribbons of his hair moving with the motion. In this
light, he looked even paler and his eyes were pools of
midnight.

“
I apologise
for disturbing you, your highness.” His voice was as deep and
smooth as she remembered it from his introduction, its echo no
longer startling her. The sound of his voice sent her insides
trembling in a strange way.

“
You weren’t,
really you weren’t,” Sophia said and stepped forwards, her brow
furrowing as she tried to convince him to continue. If anyone had
disturbed someone, she had disturbed him. She shouldn’t have come
down. She should have known that he would stop if he realised
someone was listening. A frown crossed her face when she realised
that the translator wasn’t broken. She could understand what he was
saying. Had he been singing in a language that the device didn’t
recognise? “It was beautiful, although I couldn’t understand it.
Was it a song for the moon?”

He smiled, sending her
heart pounding. “A song for a goddess, sung in the old language as
it should be.”

Her cheeks
flushed.

“
I am sorry,”
he said and stepped up to her, holding his hand out. “I have not
properly introduced myself. Regis, Count of Sagres.”

She placed her hand into
his and his thumb closed over her fingers. His gaze held hers.
Regis. A count. She hadn’t found anything about the societal
structure of the Varkans so far. Was a count high up in court? Her
cheeks blazed again when she realised that he wasn’t letting go of
her hand.

“
I’ve been
reading about Varka,” she said to break the silence and his fingers
left hers.

He held his hand out to
one side and she started walking with him, nerves fluttering in her
stomach. She hadn’t asked the emperor anything about his species.
They had only talked about the glory of Varka and the things that
she would gain from marrying him.

“
Is it true
that one of the planets in your system rotates?”

He nodded and placed his
hands behind his back, locking them in the curve above his
backside. “It is. It is uninhabited for that reason.”

She frowned.
“Why?”

“
Because we
cannot bear the light for too long, and the Wraiths cannot bear the
darkness. We occupy only the planets that keep one face to the
sun.”

“
What side are
the Varkans from?” She glanced at him, her gaze tracing his noble
profile and committing it to memory. He was a count and he
travelled with the emperor, which meant that he had to be
important. But would he be important enough for her father? In her
heart, she knew that her father intended her to marry someone of a
higher rank—a prince, a king or an emperor. She hoped with that
same heart that she could change his mind and make him see that she
had to marry for love, had to marry a man who she had feelings for,
or she would never be happy.

“
The side of
darkness, as I am certain you suspected,” Regis said, drawing her
out of her thoughts and bringing her attention back to
him.

She nodded this time. He
seemed at home in the dark and all of them had made it clear they
were uncomfortable with the bright Lyran sun.

“
Is it always
dark? I saw a city in a picture. It had looked like evening
there.”

“
The dark side
we live on is freezing. We have built a series of interconnected
shielded cities where a dim day is artificially created and the
temperature is controlled.” He looked up at the moon.

Varkan technology sounded
as amazing as her uncles and father had told her it was.

“
Is it always
so dark though? It looked like night was falling.”

“
It is set to a
preferable brightness, otherwise it hurts our eyes.”

“
It looks too
dark to me.” She looked up at the moon he seemed so fascinated by.
Or was it moons? Did Varka Prime have only one, or none at all? She
hadn’t read anything about it.

Her eyes fell back to him.
She had never met a man as handsome as he was. There was such
beauty in his features, such elegance, but there was strength too.
His whole air spoke of it, of power and authority. It stirred her
blood and made a warm feeling settle in the depths of her chest.
She would give anything to have him command her, to have his
demanding lips on hers and his hands gripping her with all of his
strength.

“
When you marry
the emperor you will live on the dark side. You will need to become
accust—”

“
Marry the
emperor?” Sophia interjected, stunned to a standstill by what he
had said.

He turned and looked at
her, a single dark eyebrow raised in intrigue at her outburst. She
didn’t care if it wasn’t very princess-like to speak in such a
fashion.

“
That’s a
little presumptuous,” she continued with a glare. “I’m never
leaving Lyra and I’m certainly not going to marry your
emperor.”

His dark eyes narrowed as
he frowned. “Why not?”

There was an edge of
malice to his tone that she didn’t like. Suddenly she could sense
his feelings and they were all anger. Had she offended him with her
rejection of his emperor?

“
I don’t love
him!”

His frown didn’t shift.
“What does love have to do with breeding?”

Her eyes widened and she
stared at him, unsure what to say and wondering if he really had
just said that.

“
Breeding?”
Mortified, she trembled on the brink of unleashing her own anger
but clenched her fists instead, desperate not to do anything that
would disturb relations between Varka and Lyra. This man was a
count and the first attendant to the emperor. He could have power
enough over the emperor and his species to sway them into war with
Lyra. She bit her tongue but it was no use. She couldn’t stand
there and let him say such things about her. What sort of picture
had he made of her in his mind? What kind of person would marry
purely for the sake of breeding? “I... I won’t marry someone that I
don’t love.”

It was his turn to look
shocked but there was something else in his eyes that didn’t quite
match his expression.

She reached out to his
feelings, trying to discern them. The anger had gone. No, perhaps a
little remained. Something else was crushing it though, consuming
him. Some sort of upset. She couldn’t quite tell what it
was.

“
What is love
that you place such great importance on it?” Regis snarled and
stepped up to her, towering over her in a menacing way that made
her heart pound painfully against her ribs. His lips compressed
into a thin line of fury.

What was love?

The question threw her
long enough that before she could find an answer, he was gone,
striding away and leaving a trail of anger in his wake that
surrounded her and made her heart heavy.

What was love that she
placed such great importance on it?

What sort of question was
that?

Now that she was alone,
she realised how cold it was and how numb her toes had become. She
went back to her room, mulling over his reaction to what she had
said as well as his question, and thinking about the fact that she
had sensed his emotions when she hadn’t be able to
before.

Closing her door, she
threw herself onto the bed and picked up the computer pad. The
answer had to be in there somewhere. There had to be a reason for
his outburst and the fact that she could suddenly feel
him.

She would find it, even if
she had to read all night.

****

Chapter
3

Sophia peeked around the
corner and watched with relief as her father disappeared into the
distance, surrounded by guards and taking the dreaded emperor with
him. She had told her attendants to inform the party that she
wasn’t feeling well and it seemed her father had decided to take
the tour of the city without her. A fatigued smile touched her lips
but quickly faded when she remembered what she had learnt by
reading all night. She just couldn’t believe it.

She had to find the count
and find out for sure.

Her plan could have easily
backfired. She had realised that as she had watched her father
leave with the emperor. The emperor might have asked his attendants
to go with him and then she would have had to find another
opportunity to speak with the count alone.

She leaned against the
wall behind her and wondered where he could be. The emperor would
be gone for a few hours. The palace was so large that it could take
her that long just to find the count. She had once spent a whole
day trying to find her cousin, Amerii, in this place. They had kept
missing each other by seconds. She hoped that didn’t happen with
the count.

Regis.

He had said that his name
was Regis. And he had taken her hand. And his touch had been far
warmer than she had expected.

With a sigh, she started
her search, making sure to hide whenever someone passed, ready to
pounce if it was him or disappear if it was her mother or a guard.
She had sworn her attendants to secrecy and told them to stay in
her room. She couldn’t risk them revealing that she wasn’t
sick.

An hour into her search
and she was beginning to wonder if the count was in the palace at
all. Her feet hurt from walking in the delicate shoes her
attendants had chosen for her and more than once she had almost
tripped over the long skirt of her deep blue corseted dress. She
could barely breathe in it now. Perhaps she should have convinced
her attendants to choose something a little more suitable for an
expedition. Trousers and flat boots sounded good.

Those two things made her
think of Amerii again. It had been a while since she had seen her
younger cousin and she wondered where she was in the galaxy. She
was probably making a name for herself in the army, just as her
father, Uncle Acer, had done.

Blindly turning a corner,
Sophia started when she saw someone was there and didn’t relax even
when she realised it was Regis. He stopped walking and stared at
her. He still made her heart pound whenever she saw him, his beauty
otherworldly and entrancing. He straightened his back, standing
tall, his long black jacket emphasising his figure, and then his
gaze shifted to one side. Sensing he was about to leave down the
nearest corridor, she hurried to him.

“
I never
realised,” she said, the words coming out as one. She took a deep
breath to steady her nerves. “I’m sorry if I offended you last
night. I never realised that Varkans didn’t know love.”

It had taken her almost an
hour to absorb that information and make sense of it. The thought
that a species in the universe didn’t know love seemed
unbelievable. It was something that she had presumed happened to
everyone.

“
I want to
know,” he said with a solemn edge to his voice, his gaze not
leaving hers. “I have studied it but do not understand it. I want
to feel what it is that other species in this galaxy place such
importance on... but I never will.”