We have several shifts—or half-days, basically—until my audience with the emperor, and I intend to use them.
Ranse sets up the meeting with his brother while the nightclub patrons begin filing in, and then I’m starving and exhausted, so he guides me back to his private rooms for a meal. I intend to do a little light reading—of his budgets, again—and instead, I fall into his arms for a languorous, sexy good night. I do wake up when he leaves me to do something in his nightclub, but I definitely don’t wake up when he returns.
In the morning, he’s awake again before me, this time lying on his belly reading a tablet. He tosses the tablet out of the resting pod to give me a sizzling good morning, and we prep for the day with sweet caresses and casual, devastating smiles.
I guess this is being in love. I never felt anything like it before, but the old movies are right. That flutter does feel like soft, precious wings. And even though Humana is in danger, I’m not worried. With him on my side, we’re going to succeed, I just know we are.
Ranse shows me how to call to home, and I use the information on Catarine’s data card to dial directly to my target.
A professional young man answers. “Representative Khan’s office.”
“This is Allie,” I say. “I need to talk with the representative right away.”
“I’ll tell her you called.” He reaches forward to terminate the connection.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. If she’s in bed, you better get her up. I have an audience with the emperor, and I need her help.”
“The emperor?” the receptionist repeats, tone neutral, but with raised brows.
“Exactly, and she’s supposed to help me. I need to get this snowball rolling. Let’s go.”
“The representative is very busy,” he intones, “safeguarding Humana during these difficult times, so—”
“What’s more important than this? You can see I’m calling from Arris Central.”
“You look like you’re calling from your bedroom.”
I turn around.
Honestly, I’m still sleeping with Ranse on the firm sex pedestal, so I kind of forgot about the new arrivals. The resting pod was detached from the floor and moved across the room, and a genuine gold bed frame has been moved in, complete with night table and empty bookshelf. Yeah, it does look a little like home.
Except Ranse is now sitting at the wall table by the food processor. It must be outside the view of the camera. He’s eating a bowl of Puffy-Os and scrolling through what, from this angle, looks like a furniture catalog.
This man will not cease to amaze me.
“Well, it is my bedroom,” I say, “but it’s on Arris Central.”
“I see,” the receptionist says, unexpressive. “I’ll tell the representative you—”
“You want proof?” I stand and motion to Ranse, who obliges me by ambling into the camera’s view, swallowing. I take his elbow. “This is an Arrisan. Now get Representative Khan.”
The receptionist blinks at Ranse. “He…doesn’t look like an Arrisan…”
Ranse sets his feet, giving the receptionist a commanding glare that makes the young man pale, and turns his wrists up. His barbed lances emerge, and his dark growl makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Do I look like a blade?”
The receptionist swallows. “Hold, please.”
The screen goes fuzzy. I scratch the back of my neck, ticklish, and Ranse snaps his blades back into his wrists with an easy grin. “That never gets old.”
“I would love a pair of my own.” I lift my fists. “This isn’t the same.”
He pops the metal in and out of the sheaths, then dances his fingertips along the rounded edges. “I was angry to get sent away to the Arsenal, but I’m not going to lie, the blades were worth it.”
“Yeah?”
“Most days I think so.” He holds my gaze for a moment, then lifts his wrist, allowing me to touch the deadly metal.
I reach out.
The viewscreen abruptly sharpens, and I jump back as though caught. Ranse sucks in his blades, and we face the screen.
An elderly Chinese woman greets us with a commanding presence, although she seems to be slightly out of breath. She touches her chest. “Allie, thank you so much for your patience. And your friend?”
“Ranse,” I supply. “Heir to the empire.”
“Of course, it’s an honor.” There’s a commotion behind her, as though someone in the background has fainted and the others are clustering around them, but she focuses on us with the intensity of a laser. “And I understand you have an audience with the emperor. When is it?”
“Five shifts,” Ranse answers. “Just before the funeral.”
Representative Khan nods. “Then you will already be at the palace? You’ll attend the funeral with the other planetary representatives as the ambassador to Humana?”
“Uh…” I look at Ranse, who looks right back at me without a care. “It never came up.”
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to represent us to both the Arrisans and our future allies.” She takes another quick breath and lets it out. “And how long is your audience with the emperor?”
I look at Ranse.
He shrugs. “How long do you need?”
“As long as it takes,” I say.
At the same moment, Representative Khan suggests, “Until he stops the orbital move.”
I gesture at her. “Exactly.”
“I can promise you a few clicks.” Ranse crosses his arms and sets his feet. “Erion will agree or he won’t. But you may get him to tell you his reason. You have a little under a kortan until the orbital mover actually reaches Humana space, plenty of time to speak with him again.”
A little under a kortan until the end of days…
Representative Khan clears her throat. “I would prefer stopping the orbital mover over the alternatives.”
“Alternatives?” Ranse leans in, causing the representative to stand more firmly on her side of the screen. “Who contacted you? Other Arrisans? Or the Vanadisans?”
She studies him for a long moment, expressionless as Catarine used to be, then she looks at me.
“Ranse has tried to stop the move several times,” I say. “He’s our best bet for stopping it now.”
She returns to Ranse. “The Vanadisans offered to fly our population into space for the duration of the orbital move.”
“How?” he asks. “They have no ships committed to your region of space.”
“We’re negotiating. They want to scan everyone first. Humans with particular genes will be given priority.”
“Genes compatible with lusteal.” Ranse squints at the far wall in thought. “Their experimental subjects won’t survive long.”
“Yes, I’ve been made aware of the Vanadisan method of developing ‘cures.’” She makes a light gesture toward her forehead where it would pass in the path of a scientific laser saw. “As I said, I prefer stopping the move over the alternatives.”
“Where are they getting the ships?” he muses, then refocuses and reaches for the controls.
“Ah!” I lift my hand to stop him, but he terminates the connection on the representative’s startled face. “I was talking to her.”
“You can talk again.” He sits in my vacated chair and twists, pulling the entire wall around out to encase him in a massive command center, and clicks something on his armrest.
Whoa.
But wait. “I didn’t get to ask about my family.”
“Your family has no bearing on the security of the planet.” He brings up spatial maps with blinking lights. I recognize Humana’s map with our planet off in a corner. He has to force it to the center because it wants to orient on a high-value target behind us.
The viewscreen blackens. A crossed-blade crest flashes, and then the video resolves into a pallid, sharp Arrisan with slightly older features full of icy aggression. “Ranse.”
“General Master Zai. The Vanadisans are exporting subjects from Humana during the orbital move, starting with a full population scan to make sure they get the lusteal-compatible ones off first. What ships are they using?”
The cold man is silent for a moment, clicking through other reports. While he’s searching, he murmurs, “Are you coming back to work for us here at the Arsenal?”
“No, it’s purely a business interest.” He starts to glance back at me, then averts his gaze. “A personal and business interest.”
“There are no Vanadisan ships near Humana. However, one of my blades clocked a small fleet traveling in that direction from Eruvis.”
“The Eruvisans have no trade with Humana.”
“But they have a vassal relationship with Vanadis, and the Eruvisans my blades have encountered have been very angry with us. Angry to the point of suicide if it will cause us an inconvenience.”
They chat about military movements and special forces.
Ranse thought this call was important, and I’m sure it is.
But…
Does he not have two viewscreens? Did he have to kick me off? Does he really understand about equality and partnership and respect?
“We’re spread too thin to stop the Eruvisans ourselves,” Zai is telling Ranse. “We’re still searching Vanadisan space for the other stolen humans.”
“There are other kidnapped humans?” I blurt. “Who?”
Zai’s gaze stabs in my direction, then he tilts his head at Ranse. “You intercepted the human we were forced to send to your father?”
“He didn’t need her anymore,” Ranse says breezily.
“You’re lucky you got to her before the science center did.”
“Hey, is she here?” Another Arrisan pushes Zai to the side. The shadowed hood hides her face, but the familiar voice catches me by surprise. “Allie? Are you alive?”
My throat tightens. “Esme?”
She squeals and jumps, clasping her hands in happiness, then hangs on Zai’s shoulder to peer in. “Where are you? I can’t see you.”
I move closer to Ranse. “I can’t see you either.”
“Huh? Oh, this hood.” She yanks it off, revealing her thick, glossy black hair, golden skin, and a brilliant, freckled smile. “You look so good! I’m glad my worries were for nothing.”
“You lost your helmet.”
“Yep, and my blood was so potent I caused riots, but now I can go out in public.” She nuzzles Zai, who blinks once, slowly, like a human-shaped block of ice. “It’s all thanks to his bite.”
“Bite?”
“You know. The inside teeth?” She presses her thumb to the roof of her mouth to demonstrate, then pulls back her hair. Like Catarine, Esme has a red spiral pattern on her neck and lower, beneath the skinsuit. She releases her hair. “It’s just like the mark you have.”
I clap my hand to my neck and look down.
A blur of red just out of sight…
I hook my thumb in the collar of my suit and rip it open.
Sharp red lines spiral out from four raised points, two on the front of my shoulder and two on the back. They’re stark in the reflective glass of a dark viewscreen, tangling in a geometrical-biological way like the Fibonacci sequence, or like the coils of snap peas climbing a trellis—if the dangling fruit were actually ruby-colored razor blades.
A small hum, like a warning, sounds in my jawbone, just below the threshold of hearing. “This is a bite?”
“Crazy, right?” Esme grins. “I wanted one ever since I saw Catarine’s. Yours is even more clearly an Arrisan ninety-six.”
“What is it?”
“Their holy number, the number on their medical kits and in the origin myths. Not just a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“But what is it?”
“Oh, you mean what causes it? It’s like an allergic reaction. They inject the venom, and our skin reacts.”
“Venom!”
“It’s harmless. Except under the skin, it changes colors and makes a very sweet tattoo.”
Ranse bit me the first time we had sex. He even talked about it. I trace the smooth foreign marks embedded beneath the skin. “It’s permanent?”
“Absolutely.” Esme is unsettlingly cheery. “Now you can go out in public without causing a riot.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It causes a subconscious warning to other Arrisans to stay away because you belong to Ranse.”
“I belong to…?” The whine increases. “Like a brand?”
“Sure.”
I dig my nails into my skin, but the red remains too deep to scrape away. “I don’t…understand…”
But I do.
Of course I do.
I’m a human. A helpless victim. A lesser.
He put his brand on me.
My body is marked. Different. No longer mine.
My stomach acid boils. “And it doesn’t come off?”
“Nah.” Esme squeezes Zai like it’s the best thing ever. “You’re bound to Ranse for all eternity.”