Kyla held her breath as she waited for the royal court to take its traditional place around the throne.
This wasn’t smart—at all. It was one of the ceremonies that had been done away with when the Coalition came into power. But hopefully it wouldn’t last long and Patrice wouldn’t pair it with any words.
Someone moved so he was standing beside Kyla. “She shouldn’t be doing this,” a familiar male voice said.
Tor. She recognized his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and his voice. “I know. I told her.”
“She doesn’t know who is in this room. She doesn’t know where their loyalties lie.”
“I know.” Kyla’s voice cracked slightly. “She won’t listen.”
“Her pride and silliness are going to bring down five-hundred years of a royal family.”
“It may be okay,” Kyla said, starting to tremble in fear at the somber note in Tor’s voice. “As long as she doesn’t….”
She trailed off when four drumbeats sounded and Patrice started to speak.
“Four hundred and ninety-six years ago, the first Empress of Evalon took the throne.”
Murmurs of reaction spilled out among the crowds, and Kyla swallowed over a rising nausea. She turned her head and hid her face briefly against Tor’s shoulder. “Oh, no.”
Patrice went on, in words that had been said for hundreds of years at royal celebrations. “Her home world and its four surrounding planets had been destroyed by a cruel, invading force, and the brave survivors all gathered here. She built this world and declared it to be beautiful. Having survived hell, she declared this world to be paradise, with pleasure to be its only end. She declared herself Empress of the Five Destroyed Worlds. Beauty is in our nature, and pleasure is in our blood. Enjoy it now, once again—as we have for four-hundred and ninety-six years. Your Empress commands it.”
“Stupid,” Tor was muttering under his breath. “Stupid, stupid.”
Kyla hung onto his arm for support. “Is it really that bad?”
“Bad?” His eyes widened behind his plain black mask. “It’s insanity. Someone will report this to a Coalition official. Someone will have to. It’s outright defiance.”
“Maybe everyone will be so hungover from the drunken orgies that they won’t remember.” Kyla looked around, where the ballroom had exploded into excitement and renewed energy, as the musicians began to play again.
Tor shook his head. “We can hope.”
He didn’t sound hopeful, and Kyla drooped against him. Her eyes flew over to the group of Potentials and landed unerringly on Hall.
He seemed to be watching her. She could tell even across the wild room. She had no idea what he might be thinking.
Clearing Hall from her mind, she focused back on what was more important. “She thinks it’s just a game. She’s never experienced the Coalition for real. Neither have I, for that matter.”
“You don’t want to. Believe me.” He reached down and tilted her head up. “Their authority isn’t a game to them. They’ve arrested people for far less and sent them to die in prison planets. It’s not a pretty end.”
“I know.” She swallowed again and shook herself off. “I’ll talk to her again tomorrow. We won’t let her do it again.”
“It might already be too late.”
Kyla didn’t answer. She had no idea what to say. She was terrified, almost dizzy from it. But Patrice had done foolish things in the past, and so far no one had ever reported it. The members of the Court were to be trusted completely, and the tourists had too good a time here to want the vacation spot to be threatened in any way.
Chances were no one would report this—despite what Tor had warned.
She suddenly felt exhausted, and she couldn’t stay in the room anymore. She said goodnight to Tor and then made her way out.
Hall couldn’t follow her this time. He was trapped among the rest of the Potentials, required to do the pleasure of Lady Patrice.
She couldn’t believe what had happened with him earlier. She’d never felt so much pleasure in her life. But she couldn’t trust it—just like she couldn’t trust Hall.
And so she forced her mind away from tempting avenues of thought and instead set herself to find a way to convince Patrice not to be so stupid again.
Five
The next day, Kyla didn’t show up on the trail where Hall normally met her.
He waited almost thirty minutes, but eventually had to accept that she wasn’t planning to meet with him today.
She must have been rattled by what happened between them last night. Hall was rattled too. He’d never connected with anyone so deeply before. He’d never felt so much pleasure—hers as well as his—that he’d almost come right there in the middle of a crowded room. He was confused and overwhelmed and incredibly excited, and he’d been waiting all day to see Kyla again, to feel that same way again.
But he’d tasted what she’d been feeling last night, and beneath her pleasure had been bone-deep fear. He knew that fear must be what was keeping her away from him today.
He tried to be reasonable and tell himself she might just need some time¸ but every fiber of his being needed to be with her again. He was tempted to storm her room and confront her, but that would be foolish in every possible way—including jeopardizing the job that had brought him here in the first place.
He remembered that she’d mentioned that she liked to walk in the afternoons but that she didn’t always follow the same paths. If she wanted to avoid him today, she might just be walking somewhere else. That possibility spurred him on enough to leave the familiar trail through the woods and make a circuit around the palace, checking out some of the other locations Kyla might have ventured today.
The palace grounds were vast, however. Finding her was a long shot. He walked for an hour anyway. If he couldn’t see Kyla, then the next best thing was actively looking for her.
He was wandering around the far edges of the woods, where they started to transition into cultivated meadows for the Evalonian sheep, when he saw a small building almost hidden by a cluster of evergreen trees. It was so isolated and so out of place that he immediately approached it, and his heart jumped embarrassingly when he saw there was a woman inside.
He recognized the light auburn hair, the curvy figure, the line of her jaw. Kyla. He’d found her at last. She was just standing in the building, her back to the door.
“What is this place?” he asked softly, not wanting to spook her but wanting to make sure she was aware of his presence.
She gave a visible start, but then took a breath and turned to face him. “It was my father’s workshop.”
The small structure was almost completely empty now, except for a wooden box and a few stray leaves that had blown in. “What kind of workshop?”
“He made shoes. He was a cobbler on an undeveloped planet before he became my mother’s consort. He enjoyed the work and kept it up all his life, in private, just for something to do.”
He grasped at the small detail, another piece of the puzzle that was Kyla. “How did he become her consort, if he was from such a primitive planet?”
“He lived in poverty most of his life. The entire planet was barely scratching by. They got travelers occasionally, and one of them told them about Evalon. My father was incredibly handsome, and his family encouraged him to give it a try, so he could send money home. He hitched a ride on a ship heading this direction, and my mother fell hard for him, the first time she saw him.”
Hall couldn’t imagine what the life of a consort would be like. It might be full of luxury, but it could also be like servitude—being kept for only one purpose. It definitely wasn’t for him. “Did he like it?”
Kyla gave a delicate little shrug. She was still staring at the empty building, as she’d been doing when he approached. “It was hard for him, I think. He was used to working, and he wasn’t used to dominant women. That’s why he came here to keep making shoes—it reminded him of who he really was.”
&n
bsp; “He taught you how to make shoes, then? That’s why you make boots?”
“Yes.” She gave him a slanting little smile. “I moved all his tools to my suite. It makes me feel connected to him.”
“You miss him.”
“Every day.”
“And your mother?”
Her expression changed. “Yes, of course. I wasn’t as close to her, though. Patrice was always her favorite.”
“What happened to them?” It seemed strange to Hall that, even after so many days spent with her, he still had no idea what had happened to her parents. She and Patrice were both younger than thirty. Their parents couldn’t have been very old.
“They died. They caught a fever during a vacation they were taking off-world. One of those unpredictable viruses they had no immunity to. It acted too quickly for the doctors to help. They were dead by the end of the day.”
“That’s terrible,” Hall said, shaking his head. Advances in medical technology had taken care of most Earth-born illnesses, but the farther humans spread into the universe, the more new diseases they encountered.
Kyla gave another little shrug. She’d barely met his eyes at all this afternoon. He recognized the difference and felt an irresistible urge to change it. “I was fourteen. I’d left the palace grounds that day to explore the village. I was shocked that no one had come to find me, but when I returned I discovered why.” She let out a long breath. “I haven’t left the palace grounds unaccompanied since.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he murmured, forgetting his own frustration in the face of the pain she was trying to hide. “You know it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.” Her voice was very small. “But what you know doesn’t always change how you feel.”
Hall knew that to be true—very deeply.
She sighed. “My father always told me not to trust Court. He told me to never stop looking for what was real.”
He suddenly understood another piece of what had made her who she was—why she was always holding back, why she’d never let herself go to enjoy the physical pleasures available to her.
Her father had taught her not to.
“I miss him,” she whispered.
He made a throaty sound and reached out to her, following the instinctive need to comfort her, to make her feel better.
Before his hand could reach her arm, she jerked away from him, out of his reach.
It hurt like a blow, her obvious desire to keep away from him. “You’re afraid of me,” he said softly, thickly.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You don’t want me to touch you.”
Her cheeks had been pale, but now they flushed. She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “A lot happens to me when you touch me.”
“But it’s not bad, is it?”
“Maybe not. But too much.”
He told himself she was just afraid. He told himself she needed time. But a panic was rising inside him, the possibility that he might be losing her, that she might be slipping out of his hands. “I know it’s new to you, but you don’t have to be afraid of it.”
“I’m afraid of a lot of things.”
“The first time I saw you, you were fighting off a man who was attacking you. He was twice your size, but you brought him down anyway.”
“I was afraid then too.”
“But you still did what you needed to do. Who cares if you were afraid while you were doing it?”
She turned to look at him, meeting his eyes, as if she were checking to see what he was thinking.
He stepped closer to her, refraining from touching her, no matter how hard it was to hold back. “You can do something now too, even if you’re afraid.”
She dropped her eyes. “I don’t even know what to do.”
“That’s because you’ve never believed you had the freedom to do anything. You do, though. And you’ll know what you want to do when you find it.”
She looked back up, and they held the gaze for a silent minute. Hall’s heart felt like it would pound its way out of his chest. He didn’t even know what he thought might happen, but he knew there was something lingering in the air at the moment.
“What about you?” she asked, her voice no more than a rasp.
“I’ve already found it.”
He heard the words as he said them, although he couldn’t believe they’d actually come out of him. He certainly hadn’t intended to say anything like that.
Kyla gasped and turned away from him, showing him her shiny hair and straight back.
Heat flooded through him as he saw her reaction to his words. He felt naked. Completely vulnerable. He’d expressed his deepest feelings, and she didn’t want them.
He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He’d learned long ago that you had to be careful which parts of yourself you showed to others. Kyla might be making him want that to change, but wanting didn’t alter his reality. He’d been careful all this life. He could be careful now too.
As his eyes ran over her back, he felt a stirring of desire at the sight of the lush curve of her ass beneath her trousers. It was a normal reaction to a beautiful body, but he greeted it like an old friend.
Desire was familiar. It was known. It was safe.
It was a part of himself he was used to—a part he knew how to use.
“Why are you surprised?” he murmured, making sure his voice was thick and sultry. “You saw last night how much I want you, didn’t you?”
Kyla gave another little gasp and turned back around. Her eyes searched his face.
“I found what I want,” he said, making the nuance different this time. “Why shouldn’t I try to get it?”
She took a shaky breath, her features relaxing into understanding. There might have been some disappointment underlying the expression, but it was too slight to know for sure. “I told you I’m not into sex. That kind of wanting is just physical.”
He stepped closer to her, resting in the fact that he was good at this, at seduction. “What’s wrong with the physical?”
She shook her head and turned away from him again, but this time he was sure it was because she was starting to respond to his hot look. He moved behind her, almost touching her.
“There’s nothing wrong with the physical. It can feel good.” He raised a hand and traced the line of her breasts, skimming over her curves with his palm. “I can make your body feel good.”
She was panting now, and her cheeks had flushed even hotter. Her head had fallen back slightly, and her arousal was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. His groin hardened improbably quickly as he watched her.
He kept caressing her, keeping his touches delicate and teasing and making sure to not touch her bare skin, lest he accidently open a connection between them again.
Her spine was arching slightly as her lips parted deliciously. He couldn’t help but press his hips into her back, stifling a moan at the pressure on his erection.
Then she was suddenly pulling away from him, and he groaned in frustration at the loss.
“The physical is fine,” Kyla said, turning to look at him, “if that’s all that you’re looking for. But we all seem to have forgotten that we can be more than that. We need more than that.” She took a shaky breath. “Even you.”
The words felt like a slap in the face, since she’d evidently read exactly what he was doing, how he was trying to take control of the encounter. “Kyla,” he began, reaching out to her, for real this time. “Wait—”
She jerked away from him, moving to the door of the building. “No. I don’t know what game you’re playing with me, Hall. Sometime you seem like you’re…real, but then you’ll…” She shook her head hard. “I don’t know what game you’re playing with me, but I’m done. I’m not playing anymore.”
He started after her as she left the building, but then he stopped himself.
He had no idea what he would say when he caught her.
She was right, after all. Just now, he’d been trying to t
urn this thing into a game—make it safe, make it familiar—when he knew very well that it wasn’t.
***
Kyla woke up the next morning with a migraine.
It got bad during the night, so it was full-blown by the time she woke up. Those were always the worst, and the injection she gave herself first thing wasn’t enough to completely knock the migraine out.
She spent the morning in bed, and she was still groggy with a dull throbbing behind her right eye after lunch. She got up to go to the bathroom and throw some water on her face, and she stared at her pale face in the mirror, glad that no one was around to see her like this. She felt so bad and so depressed that she just went back to bed.
She was trying to sleep—clearing her mind and willing away the throbbing pain—when she became aware of someone else in the room.
There wasn’t any sound, so she wasn’t sure why she’d even noticed the presence. But she could feel something so she turned over and opened her eyes, blinking vaguely into the unlit room.
The curtains were closed, but it wasn’t dark enough to hide the man who stood in the middle of her floor.
Her first reaction was faint pleasure, since she immediately recognized Hall. Then his presence penetrated through the fog in her brain. She gasped and sat up abruptly. “What…what?” That was as lucid as she got at the moment.
“Sorry to scare you,” he murmured, walking over toward the bed. “Are you okay?”
She could see his face more clearly now, and he looked genuinely concerned. But she didn’t know if she could believe what she saw in his face. “Migraine,” she mumbled, laying back down since the throbbing in her head had intensified at the abrupt motion.
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought you were avoiding me. You didn’t take a walk today.”
“So you snuck into my room?” She was torn between indignation and something else—something completely inappropriate. “How did you get past the hall guard?”
He gave a half-shrug. “You look like you feel terrible.”