Seduced By The Alien (2 page)

Chapter Three

When Crystal woke up, she was alone, and someone had draped a sheet over her. Her purse was still sitting on the vanity, but the crown was gone, so she was going to take that as a sign that Gerralt would be busy for quite a while. Good.

She found clothing sitting on the end of the chaise, and she stripped out of the sleepwear and dressed quickly, pausing for only a moment to look at herself in the mirror. The top was sleeveless, loose, and flowing, with a heavy gold chain in place of any sort of shirt collar. The fabric was pale gold and nearly sheer, though she supposed that made sense, given the heat. The skirt was less transparent, and a darker shade of gold, but no less flow-y. Longer in the back than in the front, it floated dramatically behind her as she moved.

As for the shoes…well, they were less like shoes and more like slip-on slippers. She stepped into them, grabbed her purse, and stepped out of the room.

Servants and workers watched her curiously as she strode through the towering corridors at a brisk walk, following the path as closely as she could remember from the impromptu tour the day before.

By some stroke of luck, they left her alone. Perhaps they didn’t want to risk angering their king, she supposed. It meant her path to the servant’s entrance was mostly clear, and in less than fifteen minutes, she was outside (and most of that time was just spent jogging down flights of stairs).

The air was close and hot, and Crystal paused outside the door and fanned herself with her purse, giving herself a few moments to adjust to the heat at least a little bit. She would probably be sunburned to Hell and back by the time the sun set, but she would tan eventually, and really, she had to assume there were worse things in life than a vague possibility of skin cancer.

She didn’t stop for long. Within a couple minutes, she pushed herself away from the wall and started walking. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t even know what she was going to find. But wherever she wound up and whatever she stumbled upon, at least she would be away from Gerralt.

Her resolve hardening, she put one foot in front of the other and slowly left the castle and its king behind.

The water flowed calmly, and Crystal sat beside the stream, her feet in the water, her shoes in her lap, and her skirt gathered to keep it dry. She watched Beta Hydri’s reflection on the stream’s surface, occasionally dragging her fingers through it, as if disrupting the reflection would somehow make it go away, somehow turn it into Sol.

Something similar to a butterfly fluttered past, but with six wings and too many eyes. Its translucent wings cast the stream below in rainbow colors, and at last Crystal looked up to watch it leave, admiring the way it bobbed through the air.

A bird landed on the branch of a tree over Crystal’s head, where it sat and stared at her for a moment before it flapped down to the ground. It settled on the opposite side of the stream, and then it was close enough for Crystal to realize it wasn’t exactly a bird, as she knew.

It had feathers and wings, true, but rather than a beak it had a scaly face and a toothy snout. Small, clawed hands protruded from the joints of its wings, and it had a long, scaly tail with a tuft of feathers at the end. It was also nearly the size of a red tailed hawk. Despite its unsettling teeth and size, though, it was still pretty. It had bright, bead-like eyes and its feathers would put a bird of paradise to shame.

It stared up at her with glittering eyes, and then it chirped and promptly darted its head down into the water, snatching up a small, shimmering fish and devouring it before it flew away. Crystal couldn’t help but think of the gulls that danced in the under toe on the beach, and slowly her eyes began to well up, until the tears spilled over and fell down her cheeks.

She leaned over, her elbows settling on her thighs and her hands hiding her face. She sniffled quietly at first, but within only a couple minutes, she was sobbing into her hands.

She was never going to get home. Earth was light years away, and the friendliest person she had met on this planet didn’t seem to see any issues with Gerralt being a kidnapper.

Crystal was never going to get to see her cottage, her beach, or the bar again. She would never get to talk to her friends again. She didn’t even know what Gerralt was going to do to her, or how long he would humor her saying no before he decided to press matters.

So what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know how to hunt. She didn’t know what plants might make her sick or even kill her. She didn’t know how to ward off heatstroke.

Getting away from the castle was all well and good, but she couldn’t stay gone. Not when she had all the survival skills of a concussed kiwi. She would have to go back to the castle, and soon.

So she did the only thing she could do at that point, that she refused to do in front of Gerralt. She pulled her knees up close to her chest, hid her face against her legs, and wrapped her arms around herself as if to hide, and she sobbed, pouring out her despair where only the trees, the flowers, and the birds could hear her.

The entire world could have broken apart and gone crumbling into the too close, foreign sun and at that point Crystal most likely would not have even noticed (after all, she doubted if it could get much hotter).

She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when a hand landed gently on her shoulder. Crystal’s head jerked up from where it was tucked against her knees, and she quickly scrubbed one hand over her eyes.

“I am not Gerralt,” the man informed her, his words stiffer than the king’s and his accent stronger.

Thus appeased (mildly), Crystal looked up into Kelso’s now-red gaze, and she blinked up at him.

“Came to drag me back?” she asked quietly, her voice still soggy.

“Dragging seems drastic,” he replied, “so I think I would prefer to simply escort you.”

Crystal hugged her knees closer to her chest and rested her chin on top of them, her gaze falling back to the stream. “Gerralt sent you, I take it?”

She heard Kelso shift beside her and watched his shadow clasp his hands together behind his back.

“He did ask me to keep an eye on you when I am not otherwise occupied with him, but beyond that, he does not actually know you left,” he replied.

Crystal looked up sharply. “You didn’t tell him?”

“He would have been displeased,” Kelso replied simply. “It would be better for all involved if we were spared one of his temper tantrums.”

Crystal snorted, but there was little humor behind it. “So if you know what he’s like, why not just let me go?” she asked. “It would certainly be better for
me
.”

He rolled his eyes. “You are foreign here; leaving you in the woods would not benefit you. Besides, I
do
know what he is like. You do not.” Irritation crept into his voice.

“I acknowledge his temper, but he is a good man. He is the reason I am alive.”

Crystal slapped at the water with one hand, droplets flying up in all directions. Her voice rose sharply as she demanded, “Why doesn’t anyone think it’s
wrong
that he
fucking abducted me
? I’m never going to see my home again, and it’s his fault! Is that just how things are done here?”

Kelso sighed, and his tone was softer when he replied.

“He went about it wrong, but no one here is under any sort of misconception that your life on Earth would be better. Familiar, perhaps, but that is not the same.”

“Care to explain why?” Crystal grumbled towards the ground.

“Earth is…simple,” Kelso replied after a moment.

“Riddled with rabid creatures, diseases you have not yet found ways to treat, and monsters that crawl through the night. You would have died had he not found you. You are to be our king’s mate—the one who will complete him—so why would we lament you being taken away from such a place?” He shook his head slightly.

“It should have been handled differently, but I will not say that it should not have happened at all.”

Crystal squeezed her eyes shut and grit her teeth. So they weren’t just being callous. They truly did believe it was for the best. That…didn’t actually help Crystal’s situation at all. She was still stuck. She was still largely alone. Now she just couldn’t justify hating everyone around her.

“What if I don’t want to be his mate?” she asked, her voice petulant even to her own ears. “Why can’t he just pick someone else?”

“That is not how it works,” Kelso returned gently.

“So explain it to me,” she snapped in reply. “At least tell me
why
I’m stuck here. I deserve that much.”

“You are familiar with the term ‘mates for life,’ I would assume,” Kelso said. “It is a similar concept, but it does not begin with intercourse. It begins with time; a true mate is destined, and everyone has only one destined mate.”

Crystal was quiet for a moment, before she asked, “What if someone doesn’t find theirs?” If someone’s soul mate could be on a completely different planet, she had to assume there were a lot of populi who had never met theirs.”

“Then they make do with who they have,” Kelso answered simply, “and they ignore the hole in their souls.”

Crystal fell silent once more, staring at the stream, watching the way Beta Hydri’s light reflected off of it. She was a simple girl. She liked simple things. She didn’t want to be as important as these people were making her out to be. She just wanted to live her life and be happy.

But the idea that her version of happiness could directly deprive someone of their own…it didn’t sit well with her. Besides, she could find other ways to be happy. Someone couldn’t just replace a piece of their soul, though.

Maybe the castle would grow on her, eventually, if she gave it time to. Maybe
Gerralt
would grow on her, if she managed to get him to understand that he couldn’t make decisions about her body. Maybe she could find the man that Kelso and Mellia knew. But that all meant getting up, getting out of the woods, and going back to Castle Trevelyan. She supposed it was time to head back.

As if he had read her mind, Kelso offered her a hand.

“Shall we return?” he wondered. “It will most likely be best if you return before you are
too
burned.”

Well, that was a good point, at least. Her shoulders were already starting to itch. She accepted his offered hand and let him pull her to her feet, and she fell into step beside him as he began walking back to the castle.

They walked in silence, Crystal’s mind busy chasing itself in circles. She didn’t know what she was going to do, or even what she wanted to do (well, alright, she
wanted
to go home, but that option was off the table, for various reasons). Everything was just…wrong.

Chapter Four

When Crystal awoke the next morning, Gerralt was still asleep, his face mashed against his pillow and one arm hanging off of the bed. When he wasn’t awake to glower or furrow his brow, his sharp features softened somewhat.

While he did look a bit silly, Crystal couldn’t help but stare. He really was quite attractive. Soon enough, though, he began to stir, and Crystal pulled her attention away from him before he could catch her staring, to instead focus on getting dressed for the day.

She could feel Gerralt’s eyes on her as she stripped and dressed, but she wasn’t going to hide. Whether she would actually give him a chance or not was up in the air, but she wasn’t going to act as if she was doing something shameful just by going through the day’s motions.

By the time she dressed and turned back around, though, Gerralt was gone, and Mellia was standing by the door. Crystal couldn’t even bring herself to be surprised.

“Where does he go, anyway?” she asked, staring at the empty bed.

“The throne room or the court room, usually,” Mellia answered. She gestured for Crystal to follow her out of the room, and then simply took her by the hand instead.

“It’s a bit odd for anyone to be in there without a specific reason, so I guess you’re stuck with me,” she added cheerfully.

“Let’s go get food!”

Breakfast with Mellia and Kelso was a simple but decadent affair. Colorful, sweet-smelling fruits. Sugar-glazed rolls sprinkled in seeds that tasted like Crystal’s limited experiences with sweet clover. A sweet, crackling beverage that left Crystal feeling as if she would never need to sleep again. She was beginning to assume the entire planet had a massive sweet tooth.

From breakfast, they went out into the courtyard, where Mellia insisted on disappearing into the maze and forcing Crystal and Kelso to track her down. She pouted when they found her surprisingly quickly—left and right were still left and right, regardless of the planet, so the ‘only make left turns’ trick was still valid—and then insisted that Crystal hide.

That was how she found herself crouched between a bench and a shimmering, metallic shrub towards the maze’s far west corner. She could hear Mellia drawing closer, but the princess paused a stone’s throw away, just out of sight around a maze wall.

Instead, she began speaking with someone. Shamelessly, Crystal settled in a bit more comfortably to listen.

“Gerralt!” Mellia exclaimed in excitement, and Crystal could just imagine her bouncing on her feet.

The king sounded far less pleased, though. “Mellia,” he greeted placidly. “Your gloves were found in your dressing room.”

Startled, Crystal thought back to that morning, and it only then occurred to her that Mellia hadn’t been wearing gloves when she grabbed Crystal’s hand, and Crystal had to wonder what kinds of emotions the princess had been trying to find.

Mellia sighed slowly. “I left them off willingly, you massive worrier,” she replied. “I’m not going to have some sort of massive break down the minute I take them off.”

Gerralt huffed out a breath. “But what if—“

“What if the castle walls come crashing down?” Mellia interrupted.

“What if I get kidnapped by pirates? Or what if a flock of carriers decide to turn me into a meal for their hatchlings?” She laughed. “
Relax
. I’m fine. I can handle myself and you know it.”

Gerralt grumbled for a moment and then his footsteps began tromping away. Mellia’s more delicate steps began approaching again, and Crystal ducked further back into the shrub. Alas, the branches parted a moment later and Mellia beamed down at her.

“Found you,” she announced cheerfully. “Come on, let’s go track down Kelso again.”

At the hottest part of the day, the entire castle seemed to just…stop. Court was not in session. The king wasn’t meeting with anyone. The chefs left out a few light snacks for those wandering past, but other than that they took off their aprons. The maids and servants and stable hands all left their chores. Everyone simply found a comfortable spot and relaxed until the heat got a little less oppressive.

Crystal sat in one of the courtyard gardens, a pond and a waterfall to her left and some sort of fan contraption set up to spray mist out of the waterfall. A tent with heavy, dark red cloth for a roof and intricate lattices of dark metal for the sides was set up, shading her from the sun, and the mist carried with it all the scents of the garden.

Her eyes were closed, and her arms were folded under her head as she relaxed on a padded bench. Mellia was inside—she had said something about a sewing circle with her handmaids—but Crystal could just hear the rustling of Kelso turning pages to her left.

She heard footsteps approach, but she didn’t think much of it. There were a few people, with hats and shades and parasols, strolling the gardens. But then she heard Gerralt’s voice.

“You’re supposed to be avoiding this sort of heat,” he pointed out.

Kelso sounded disinterested as he replied. “That is what the tent is for. And the mist.” There was a beat of silence. “Well, technically they are for her, but I can reap the benefits as well.”

Gerralt sighed in exasperation. “Very clever loophole. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to listen to your doctors more than I do.”

“What for?” Kelso asked, as perfectly innocently as he could manage. “You remember all of the details, I pick out the important parts.”

There was the sound of a hand meeting skin, and when Gerralt next spoke, his voice was slightly muffled. Crystal had to hold back the urge to start laughing at the mental image of him covering his face with one hand.

“Kelso,” Gerralt groaned.

Kelso sighed and there was the quiet ‘thwap’ of him putting his book on his lap. “I am your bodyguard,” he pointed out.

“When you are outside Castle Trevelyan’s walls, it is my job to protect you. That does not mean it is your job to protect me within the walls.”

Gerralt groaned again, and his footsteps began to retreat. “Fine, fine. Have it your way. Don’t blame me if you keel over from heatstroke out here.” His steps tromped away.

Crystal was silent for a time, but eventually her curiosity got the better of her.

“What was all that about?” she asked, cracking one eye open at last to look at Kelso and his platinum blond hair.

Kelso glanced up from his book again, but his gaze dropped back to the page after a couple seconds. “When Gerralt and I met, I did not instantly become his bodyguard; I was rather ill at the time. The only reason I had a chance to recover was because he paid for treatment.”

Crystal blinked at him. The concern over Mellia and her gift, the concern over Kelso and his health, neither of those seemed like the stoic asshole who had told Crystal that she would be his mate and she had no choice.

Complicated. Life was too damned complicated sometimes.

At dinner, Crystal sat to Gerralt’s left, across the table from Mellia. She picked at her food and ate in silence, doing her best to ignore the stares that periodically wandered towards her.

She didn’t expect anything particularly interesting to happen during the meal, but eventually, as a conversation on a shipment of some sort of vehicle occupied the rest of the table, Gerralt turned to her. With his voice pitched so only Crystal could hear, he said, “Mellia mentioned you were…longing for something.”

Crystal gave a puzzled look for a moment, before she recalled Mellia’s bare fingers against hers, and realization dawned. But what was she supposed to say? Just saying ‘I want to go home’ wasn’t going to get her anywhere, and it could very well just annoy him.

“I miss the beach,” she replied, the words slipping out before she was even aware that she was saying them.

Gerralt contemplated those words for a moment, before he said, “Meet me by the great entrance after dinner,” and he turned back to his meal.

The great entrance was not called such because it was small, obviously. The great hall’s vaulted ceilings were over two stories high, and the great entrance filled most of that space.

The door was made of some sort of wood, thick and dark but deceptively lightweight, and it was stained so darkly it was nearly black. Bright, platinum-bright metal curled over and across the wood in swirls and curls, turning the entirety of both doors into an elegant maze of metal.

So distracted trying to follow one branch of metal from the beginning to its end was Crystal, she didn’t notice Gerralt approaching until he laid a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, her shoulders jerking, and she turned quickly, winding up nose-to-neck with him. She blinked, cleared her throat, and stepped back.

“What have you got planned?” she asked.

He simply gestured with one hand for her to follow, and he hit the button to open the massive doors. Crystal followed him outside, glancing over her shoulder briefly to see Kelso following them at enough of a distance to give them some semblance of privacy.

Crystal followed Gerralt to the stable, where two beasts were already saddled. They were both tall and broad, like the largest draft horses back on Earth, but their long faces were a strange mix of equine, canine, and cervidae aspects, and their tails were long and thin with tufts of flowing hair on the end. Short, bristly manes trailed down their long necks, and each one had a single two-foot horn protruding from their faces, gently curving to point towards the sky.

As Kelso mounted the black one, Gerralt boosted Crystal up into the gray and black speckled one’s saddle and then climbed on in front of her. They spent only a moment adjusting themselves in the saddles, and then they were off, riding out of the stable.

‘
I’m on an alien planet, riding a unicorn,
’ Crystal reflected, as the steed veered sharply off of the path and angled towards the west.

It was almost enough to make her burst out laughing. Her good humor was tempered, however, by the knowledge that she still had no idea where they were going as the two steeds galloped along, Kelso riding a healthy distance behind them.

Well, at first she had no idea where they were going. Until she heard a very familiar noise. The distant rumbling, rushing sound of waves rolling towards the beach and retreating once more, and before she could stop herself, she lifted herself up in the saddle, her hands on Gerralt’s shoulders to hold herself up, so she could peer over the next hill. She drew in a sharp, startled gasp when she could just make out the white, foaming tops of the waves over the grass.

The unicorn crested the hill and paused at the sight of the water, but then continued onwards at Gerralt’s urging. It snorted as its cloven hooves sank into the sand that the grass steadily bled into, but it continued forward, stopping only when it was up to its stomach in the ocean, water rushing around its legs.

Crystal stared in wonder at the ocean spreading out endlessly before them, and she leaned down carefully, running her fingers through the water as it rose into her reach in its rush to the shore.

“It’s warm,” she breathed, more to herself than to anyone else.

She straightened back up quickly as the unicorn began to move once again, her hands flying to Gerralt’s shoulders as the steed began backing out of the surf. Not far, though. It was still up to its knees in water when it stopped, craning its head back to look at its passengers.

“You’ll want to hold on,” Gerralt advised.

Crystal wrapped her arms around his chest, and the unicorn burst into a gallop, like a rocket ship taking off. Water sprayed up around them in all directions as the unicorn crashed through it, barreling along the shore like a four-legged freight train.

Finally, Crystal laughed, throwing her head back and tossing her arms out to either side to bask in the moment as much as she could.

Eventually, as the steed slowed until it was simply trotting through the under toe, Crystal leaned closer to Gerralt’s back, for just long enough to whisper, “Thank you,” in his ear.