Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance (17 page)

My silence was all Tierney needed to confirm her assumptions. She smirked. “Ironic, isn’t it? To trade your freedom for that?”

I scowled. “I traded my freedom to help you, you thankless ass.”

“Help me?” she echoed. “You took me away from the only man I’ve ever loved. That doesn’t help me. And I have no idea how to get back to him!” Tierney broke down then into wracking sobs, and I was left gobsmacked in the aftermath. Sara went to her side and tried to comfort her, but Tierney shot to her feet and retreated to a far corner of the room. She did not dare leave. No, she was too well-trained for that.

And that’s when I understood. “Stockholm syndrome,” I said. “Or…or brainwashing. Something happened to you, to all of you.”

Sara nodded. She was the only one with any clarity. “I think, after we were in the hands of the slavers themselves, the buyers seemed a bit like saviors in their own right. Our buyers were with us aboard the slave ship. They were using it as a transport vessel as well as an auction block, so we stayed with them aboard the ship. The men who bought Teldara and Ciara docked with their own shuttles and left with their purchases.”

“Do you have any information about who took them?” I asked, desperate to find them before they were lost for good.

But Sara shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know a thing.”

I proffered a thin-lipped smile and squeezed her arm. “Why is it that you aren’t…you know…”

“Acting like them?” she said, finishing my thought for me. “Because my buyer didn’t spend any time with me. I never met him. Once I’d been purchased, I was left entirely alone. A blessing, I think, but it also didn’t give me the opportunity to forge any type of bond.” She looked at the other three girls. “I don’t know what their experiences were like, but they must have been profound for them to be as devastated as they are.”

I nodded my head, and turned to Calder, speaking to him in his mother tongue. “Let us give them some rest.”

“Of course,” he said. “Tell them that I will have private rooms made ready for them, along with a hot bath.”

I translated for the girls, and they looked up and protested in unison, “No! No, please don’t separate us.”

I relayed this to Calder, and he nodded gravely. “One room, then. As you wish.”

They thanked us, and Calder and I slipped quietly from the room. Once in the hall, I collapsed back against the cold metal walls of the Spire, and heaved a heavy sigh. “I did not expect that,” I murmured to Calder. “They miss their masters.”

“They will adjust,” he said, squeezing my arm. “Surely, they will adjust.”

I nodded, trying to clear my head. “I have to get to the
Atria
, I have to find Ciara and Tel before it’s too late. Before they’re taken to some…some remote corner of some distant galaxy. I have to find them.”

Calder bent forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “And I will help you,” he said. “Come.” He took my hand. “There is much to do.”

Tierney basically hated me. She sulked around the Spire, and she treated me as though I were the worst thing to ever happen to her. At first, I resented it because I remembered that she was just as scared as the rest of us when this whole thing began. But I tried to remember what my parents had taught me about compassion, something about being kind to one another because we were all fighting an unseen battle. Even if she had been brainwashed, she didn’t know the difference between that and overwhelming, uncompromising love. Her heartbreak was real and I knew that if she and I were ever going to be friends, I needed to treat it as such.

I knocked on her bedroom door one morning after she had missed breakfast, and peeked my head inside the dark chamber after I thought I’d heard her say “Come in”. She was still in bed, her long, blond hair a matted coil on the pillow beneath her head.

The chambers were small but well-appointed, with a canopy bed in the center boasting gossamer curtains that could be drawn to create a warm enclosure around the pillowy down mattress.

I approached the bed and tugged the curtain to the side. She rolled over, turning her back to me as she saw me approach, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she’d been weeping. “Tierney?” I said gently. “Don’t you want to come have something to eat?”

“What’s the point?” she responded, her voice tremulous.

The room smelled of sweat, and I wondered just how long she’d lain there like that, tossing and turning in her bed sheets, and crying until her eyes went dry.

“Well, I usually eat my feelings when I’m sad,” I quipped, proffering a smile. But humor was definitely not the tack to take with this despondent beauty. I cleared my throat and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “I just wanted to apologize to you.”

“What for?” It was more of a statement than a question, really, and her tone indicated she didn’t much care what I had to say either way.

“For your suffering.” I tried to be as earnest as possible, but it was actually really difficult to apologize for rescuing someone from a master who’d purchased them from a slave ship. I tried not to let that attitude come through my voice. “Would you, er... “ I reached a tentative hand out to place it on her shoulder, but she shrugged me off. “Would you like to tell me about him?”

She sniffled, and her voice came back thick with tears and snot. “You don’t really want to hear about him,” she said.

“That isn’t true,” I said. “I really do.”

She turned over quickly and I saw her glassy blue eyes were ringed in red. “You do?”

“Of course.”

She lifted herself up onto her elbows, adjusting her nightgown so she could sit cross legged on the mattress in front of me without damaging her remaining modesty. “I was scared, you know,” she began, bending her head so that I could barely see her face behind the curtain of her hair. “I was terrified of the Keldeeri, who wouldn’t be? They look like giant, fleshy insects.”

A genuine shudder ran down her spine as she began to pick absently at her nail beds. “But my…master…” She broke off in a low chuckle, and it was the first time I’d seen her smile. “It’s so absurd to call him that. But I suppose that’s what he was, as I was bought and paid for.”

I quirked a brow in silent question, and she looked up at me and gave a slow shake of her head. “That isn’t what it was like between us.”

“What was his name?” I asked quietly, afraid that if I spoke too loudly she would stop telling her story.

“Does it matter?” Her tone was sharp, but I thought perhaps it might pain her to think of his name, and hurt even more to say it out loud. “He was good to me. When he bought me...” She arched one delicate shoulder in a shrug. “I was so scared that he would be this revolting creature who would use me for his own pleasure and keep me locked up in a cage. But he was sweet. Shy, even. He brought me back to his chambers, and he gave me fine silk robes, and he…” She smiled faintly, and averted her eyes. “He asked to brush my hair. And he did it with such tenderness.”

She shook her head, her expression changing. This was a woman in pain. I narrowed my eyes, doing my best to ascertain whether this was brain washing, or if this was earnest. But not being a specialist, I hadn’t the faintest notion one way or the other.

“Tierney,” I said softly. “Did you ever…lie with him?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Well, yes,” she said. “But he never made me.”

“I’m not saying he did, but I do want to remind you as to what purpose you were purchased to serve.”

She threw the covers from her body, her white shift falling past her knees as she scrambled to get off the bed, away from me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” She spat.

“Tierney—”

“No, I don’t have to listen to this!”

“Please, just listen to me for one second,” I said, standing and rounding the bed to corner her. I took her hands in mine, and she glared.

“No, I want you to get out!” She jerked free of me, like I singed her with my skin.

“Tierney, please. Why are you fighting me?”

“Because you are trying to keep me from him!” she spat, her voice thick with emotion. “You’re trying to keep us apart forever, and that makes you my enemy.”

“Tierney,” I said again, holding my hands out in front of me, “I never once said you could never see this man again.” She blinked, but remained frozen with that grimace on her otherwise lovely face. “I never would want to keep you from someone you love. That wasn’t my intention. But your family doesn’t know where you are, and they deserve to, don’t you think?”

She didn’t agree, but neither did she argue, so I counted that as a win and continued. “I will return you to your family on the
Atria
, and then if you still want to find this man of yours, I’m sure they will help you.”

“Do you think…” she began, inclining her head slightly.

“Of course. If they love you as I’m sure they do, they’ll only want for you to be happy. And if he makes you happy, I’m sure they will help you find him. But you must admit,” I added, “you were brought together under dubious circumstances at best.”

A sigh emanated from her rosy pink lips and she could do nothing but nod her head in agreement. “I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

At least she was able to see some reason. “How could I have known that you would fall in love? I thought you were in danger, I was trying to help you.”

She sniffled, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, bobbing her head in a nod. “I suppose I see that now.”

“So let us have no more sulking,” I said, taking her by the arm and walking in step with her toward a decorated bureau at the far end of the room. “Let’s get you bathed and dressed, and ready to walk the road that will lead you down the honest path toward the love you left behind.”

She was nodding; I’d made some progress. “I was, like I said, rather frightened of the Quarter Moon,” she said.

“Of course you were. So was I. Deathly afraid.” I shuddered to think of them. It was a wonder I was able to keep my cool when Thassian was there, when I could see the revolting saliva drip down his mandibles. “But just think, now when you’re returned to him, it’ll be as equals. You’ll be free to love openly amongst your family. You could marry him if you were so inclined—”

“He’s already married,” she said quietly. Ah, I thought, so that’s it, then. But who am I to judge? I let the comment slide.

“I’ve had my ladies put some clothes in here for you. Some of them were supposed to be mine, but I was the only plump human among a coterie of lithe Europax, so I’m sure they’ll look better on you.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, looking up at me. “Am I supposed to call you ‘your highness’?”

I laughed. “No, it’s…no. It’s fine, don’t worry.”

She tried on a smile and it lit up her face. Good. Two of them didn’t hate me, at least. Two more to go.

The four women joined Calder, Waelden, and me for a large banquet supper. He was really rolling out the red carpet for them, trying to do his best to make them feel like welcome guests instead of rescued slaves. It made my heart swell to see it. The fine dining table in the Spire sat heavy with exotic meats and cheeses, fruits and pastries. It all looked wonderful, and mostly it smelled wonderful too, but there was this strange paste by my place at the table that was putting me off my meal entirely, so I signaled to one of our wait staff to take it away. As soon as it was gone, I was ravenous.

“I hope you ladies are settling in well,” Calder said, after sipping wine from his chalice.

“We are, thank you,” Sara said, and she smiled so her dimples showed. I caught Waelden staring at her, grinning back, their smiles a mirror for one another. Hmmm, I thought. And where was Vanixa?

“Have you heard anything from the
Atria
yet?” Tierney asked, and I was just glad she was talking. Calder looked a little startled to hear her voice, high pitched and quiet like the twittering of a lark, and he smiled a little.

“Ah, not yet,” he said.

“When do you expect to?”

He cast a desperate glance my way, but I had a mouthful of mashed fruit, so much my cheeks puffed out chipmunk-like. Like I said: I was ravenous.

“It’s impossible to say, unfortunately,” he went on, averting his attention to his meat, which he was carving at quite vigorously, I thought, so that red juices pooled on his plate.

A silence fell over the lot of us, though I could swear that I saw electricity flying between Sara and Waelden, but maybe it was only my imagination. I was doing everything I could not to look at my Calder. I knew that when the
Atria
arrived I would have to board it, and I also knew that his people needed him.

He could not come with me.

Not yet, not yet. I pushed the thought from my mind.

“Well, in any case,” Sara said, jerked back from her reverie to join the conversation, “we do appreciate everything you’ve done for us.” Sara’s eyes alighted on me, then. “Both of you.”

“I swore to you that I would do everything in my power to find you and bring you home,” I reminded her. “And so I have. Well, for two of you at least. But my journey isn’t done yet. I will find Tel and Ciara, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” Sara said, and raised her glass to me.

“To Her Majesty, Lorelei Vauss — or is it Fev’Rosk now?” Sara grinned at me, and I could feel the color rise into my cheeks.

“Well, er…I don’t know. Vauss, I think.” I looked at Calder, and searched his face for answers. But he said nothing, nor did he give anything away with his typically expressive features. Instead, he simply raised his glass.

“To Her Majesty, the Queen,” he said, and everybody drank deeply of their wine.

After dinner, the ladies retired to their room, and Calder and I went to ours. “We should stay in the Spire now that the girls are here,” he said, and I agreed. Though, I had to admit that I missed Calder’s cozy little cottage.

“You were rather quiet at dinner,” I said, running my hand absently over the soft animal skin throw draped over a the back of a wooden rocking chair. The craftsmanship was truly remarkable. Every item in the Spire was more beautiful than the last. The artisan’s attention to detail was unparalleled, and I knew that pieces like these would fetch quite a hefty sum if they were ever to be sold to the people of the Echelon.