Okay, now my head is ready to explode with anger. I take a step, this time advancing on him, so that I’m the one leaning up into his face. “What? You’re using barbaric, archaic, completely unacceptable backward customs to excuse yourself?”
“You’re the one who brought up barbarians!” he retorts in a hard, sarcastic voice, but he does not move away. In that instant we are so close that his lips are almost touching mine. . . .
“Incidentally,” he continues, “here on Atlantis we have perfectly civilized similar laws and human rights. But you need to understand that what happened to you was a special case, a very particular exception! And I’ve already given you a sufficiently logical explanation. So, enough! No more excuses from me, it is done! You are my Bride under the law of Atlantida, and you will be my Wife—something for which you will thank me later.”
“Oh, yeah?” I am shaking, this time in pure white-hot anger. “Well, guess what, my so-called ‘Imperial Lord,’ I am not your anything, and you are so not touching me! You have not asked me, and I have not given my consent to be your Wife, and this is just unbelievable!”
Yes, I know I’m being irrational, all things considered. But I’m just so worked up right now that all reason can go to hell. . . .
Aeson Kassiopei looks at me with a flicker of sorrow and then steps back, moving away from me unexpectedly. He stands watching me from a few feet away, and I can see his chest rise and fall, and the focused intensity in his face—every muscle under control, the straight austere line of his mouth held in check.
“It is done,” he says coldly. “Look, I know you don’t want this, and any feelings that you might have for me are uncertain at best. But you are now mine by Atlantean law, and all I can do is make your life the best it can be under the circumstances. I hope you learn to tolerate me, and I’ll do my best to keep out of your way. But we will be married, and you will be my Wife, with all that it entails—eventually.”
“Oh, that’s just great! Does that mean that you won’t be ravishing me tonight—as you told your Father and everyone at the Imperial Court you’ll be doing, your so-called Bridegroom Privilege—but only eventually?” I exclaim with angry sarcasm.
He shakes his head with disgust. “Lark, I don’t ‘ravish.’ I only said those things to get you out of there, so that my Father would allow us to leave the Pharikoneon chamber.”
Aeson pauses, glances away briefly, then back at me. His expression is suddenly reserved and oh-so familiar—he is once again my commanding officer, the Command Pilot of the Fleet, and the Imperial Crown Prince, rolled into one—while his posture is stiff with pride. He looks down at me coldly. “Don’t worry, I will not touch you tonight—or any other night, indefinitely. It is not in my habit to force myself upon anyone, especially not on a young innocent girl such as yourself who might have mixed feelings about me. . . .”
“Seriously?” I take another step forward. “You are going to use the ‘I’m too noble to impose on you’ nonsense with me? And we’re back to ‘Lark,’ are we? And, ‘mixed feelings?’ Are you kidding me?”
He makes a low sound of frustration and his eyes are again desperate. “Well, what do you want me to say to you? I’ve apologized, I’ve explained . . . and now you’re apparently concerned that I will force you into physical intimacy? Is that what you really think of me, of what I’m capable—”
“No! Oh, God, no!” I exclaim, and my voice breaks again. “That is not what this is about! I need you to—I need you to stop—just stop being a goddamn Prince for a moment and just be a human being, an ordinary guy who doesn’t make grand announcements on my behalf, who—who simply talks to me normally—”
I grow silent and look at him fiercely, willing him to understand me, my hands at my sides, balled into fists with tension. He meanwhile stares at me, and his gaze is wild. . . .
Several long seconds pass.
He exhales loudly and turns away at last, runs his hands through his long metallic gold hair. “Gwen . . .” he says in a voice that’s gone soft once more, glancing back at me with his oh-so-blue eyes that cut right through me. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please . . . be my Bride and my Wife. I am asking you—asking you right now.”
I freeze, breathing hard, looking at him, looking into his eyes. “You think this is going to make up for everything?”
“No. . . .” His voice is now but a whisper, and his eyes are imploring. “But I am asking you now.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
I bite my lip and do not blink, meeting his gaze as sternly as possible. “I mean, why do you want to marry me?”
His lips part, and he takes a step toward me. “Because I—”
“You what?”
“I need you.” He blinks, and then pauses, while a sudden fierce blush floods his face, and at the same time an odd vulnerable fear lurks in his eyes. “I am—I am in love with you.”
I feel faint now, and forget to breathe. The world, the room, everything seems to be spinning around me. . . . At the same time, everything is suddenly rendered into sharp, vivid focus. “You are? Or—you’re just saying this crap now, aren’t you, to shut me up?”
“Gwen!” There is a flash of genuine hurt in his expression, and he looks at me with hunger. “Listen to me, Gwenevere Lark, you matter to me. You matter to me so much—more than anything or anyone! You—you—I can’t even begin to tell you how much, because I don’t think I understand it myself. I am in love with you, and have been for so long now that I don’t remember how it is not to love you. . . .”
As he says this, I feel a new lump forming in my throat, and suddenly water is running down my face in a torrent.
“You . . . love me?” I whisper in a voice without any strength, as I stand there, bawling, looking at him.
He nods and moves toward me. His large hands surround my face from both sides, warm strong palms enclosing me, gentle fingers stroking my cheeks, wiping the tears. He turns my head so that I am looking up at him directly. “Gwen . . .” he whispers. “Amrevu.”
Beloved.
The Atlantean word caresses me, and gives me chills of awe, and wrenches my heart.
His forehead rests against mine, and the golden tendrils of his hair fall around me like a curtain, and our breath mingles.
“Gwen Lark, im amrevu . . . will you marry me and live your life with me and be my Wife?”
I open my mouth and somehow I can hear myself speak even before I do, as though I am on the outside witnessing myself in the act of living, witnessing one of the most important moments of my existence.
“Yes . . .” I utter softly. “Yes, I will marry you. But not because it will keep me safe. Because I love you so much that I can’t imagine doing anything else!”
He makes a muffled joyful noise that sounds like a sigh, or an exclamation, or a gasp of surprise—but I can’t be sure, because the next instant I feel his mouth covering mine, and it is hard and soft and scalding all at once. . . . A sudden tidal wave of feeling slams me, and immediately I drown in him, and sweetly die. . . .
When we come apart a few moments later, my lips have been stung, and I am ringing with music, as though a great tolling bell has come alive inside my head.
Get a grip, you giddy idiot Gwen! I tell myself in a fit of euphoria. And then I tell myself to shut up.
“Yes!” he exclaims meanwhile, and then I am lifted full-body, and he embraces me so hard that I almost feel my bones cracking.
“Whoa! Gently now, mister! Command Pilot Kassiopei—I mean, my Prince, My Imperial Lord—”
He laughs, and lets me go, but only enough so that he can face me and look at me. I have never seen such a soft expression on his face as there is now. “Stop. . . . No more need for title or rank. My name—it is yours, along with everything else. You may call me ‘Aeson.’”
“Aeson . . .” I whisper. Tentatively I reach out with my hand and touch the soft pale locks of his hair, th
en run my fingers over his forehead, smoothing back the tendrils, like silk—and unexpectedly his eyelids flutter while he lets out a faint shuddering breath.
“Aeson . . .” I repeat in wonder.
And then, sliding my other hand behind his strong neck, I pull him down toward me, and I kiss him thoroughly, with all my own fierce, pent-up intensity.
Chapter 2
We are both flushed with heightened color when we come apart again from the kiss to catch a breath. My heart, oh, my heart—it’s beating a thousand times a second! Aeson does not let go of me even as he maneuvers us into the middle of the grand softly-lit chamber in which we stand.
“Gwen,” he says, turning me around so that I face the room, and then embracing me from behind so that I lean back against his chest. At first his touch is cautious, almost shy. But then suddenly he is no longer holding back, and his hands tighten around my waist. He bends down, rests his chin intimately in the curve of my neck and shoulder—so that I feel an indescribable welling of joy at his presence directly against the pulse point at my throat—and speaks close to my ear. “Look around you, you are home.”
For the first time I allow myself to relax enough to comprehend my immediate surroundings.
“Wow, what is this place?” I say shyly. “Is this your apartment? It’s so big!”
Honestly, saying the place around us is “big” is a wild understatement. The chamber is easily the size of an entire three-bedroom in the suburbs, or maybe a meeting hall, considering the height of the cathedral ceiling. It is vaguely rectangular, with one wall made almost entirely of grand floor-to-ceiling windows, leading to what appears to be a long balcony terrace bordering it.
Outside it is late sunset, and I see my first Atlantean nightfall, with the sky turning a strange teal-violet with mauve at the horizon where Hel must have set very recently. . . . I stare out at the windows, mesmerized by the sight and the surreal thought of what is happening, and it occurs to me to wonder if the direction where the sun sets is called “west” here on Atlantis, or there’s some other local designation.
I blink, staring at the fading alien sky and then return my full attention to the room. There are several long divans and upholstered sofas lining the back wall directly opposite the windows. The luxurious seats are interspersed with ornate side tables and upright torchieres in which frosted glass sconces sit like lotus blossoms and give forth a soft warm radiance of honey and peach. The light is soothing, artificial, and again my curiosity is engaged—does it use electricity or some other technology?
The walls above the seating area are covered with works of art, both ancient and modern digital, similar to what I have seen in my own far more modest Palace apartment earlier today. I see antique stylized landscapes and moving digital scenes including gorgeous 3D holograms, old-fashioned portraits of people both austere and in finery, and fascinating modern patterns.
Everywhere there’s a lot of what appears to be dark wood trim, lacquered and carved, and chiseled stone that must be marble or its Atlantean counterpart—in particular the decorative columns that stand every few feet, lining the two side walls. Between each column, the walls have built-in oval niches containing elegant statuary of black polished metal and stone ornamented with gold . . . so much gold!
I’m reminded yet again that, here on Atlantis, gold is everywhere, and that I am inside what has to be some of the fanciest royal apartments in the Imperial Palace.
And then as I look closer, I forget gold. Instead, I open my mouth in wonder. . . . The statues in the niches are backlit by delicate floating celestial lights—hologram objects hovering like dislocated suns and microscopic constellations of stars—all of it suspended in the very air around them.
This place is a museum of wonders!
As I stare in amazement, Aeson speaks near my ear, still holding me, and his tone is slightly embarrassed. “Yes, these are my Quarters—and now yours too. This is the ante-chamber, and beyond are more rooms—far too many, I admit—since the suite of the Imperial Crown Prince takes up this entire floor.”
My mouth falls open yet again. At this rate I might as well just leave it permanently stuck that way. . . .
“Would you like to see the rest?” he says, letting go of my waist and coming around to face me.
“Okay . . .” I mutter.
In response he takes me by the hand and we walk to the opposite end of the chamber to a hidden set of ornate doors.
Aeson opens each one, and takes me through rooms that lead into yet other rooms, all decorated with ridiculous luxury and full of marvelous objects. There are sitting rooms, libraries filled with scrolls and books and modern storage media, a well-equipped gym and sparring dojo with a bamboo-like wooden floor polished to a shine, an indoor swimming pool framed in mosaic tile (at which I exclaim in amazement), several guest bedrooms, luxury bathrooms with sunken granite and marble pools and showers, and then the master bedroom suite.
Good lord! The Imperial Crown Prince’s master bedroom is an immense chamber with a dais in the center, and upon it—underneath a canopy of translucent fabrics that cascade from the ceiling—is a grandiose bed draped in deep dark shades of burgundy, clay, coral, and sienna red, that is the size of three king-sized beds on Earth put together, and can probably fit a dozen people.
A disturbing idea of why a bed might need to be so large, or fit so many people, comes to me. . . . I blink, trying not to let my overactive imagination roam too far into that direction.
Aeson, who’s been watching my reaction to everything with intense fascination—almost as much fascination as I’ve been devoting to the surroundings—notices my alarm at the sight of the immense bedroom, and the bed in particular.
“The Prince sleeps alone, until he is wed to his Bride,” he tells me softly. “But it is the traditional custom for families to sleep together, parents with small children, until the little ones are old enough to sleep alone.”
“Oh . . .” I say in some relief. “So that’s why the bed is so large, to fit an entire family? Not for wild partying and orgies.”
He holds his mouth tight, repressing a smile. “Not . . . commonly.”
“What?” My jaw drops again. “Are you saying you might have occasional orgies?”
“Gwen,” he says, highly amused with me. “Not in a hundred years. While it’s true that some of my ancestors were less—shall we say—inhibited than we are, in general—” and here he grows serious as the smile leaves his eyes—“in modern times, especially in the more recent generations, the Imperial Kassiopei have chosen to adhere to some very strict rules of personal conduct when it comes to physical relations and the act of procreation.”
“Rules? Such as what?” I ask.
“Such as abstinence.” With a faint surge in color, he glances away from me as he speaks. “In any case, this is a very old bed, not my favorite. And there are far more interesting things to see.”
“Oh . . . okay.”
Seeing how uncomfortable this turn of conversation seems to make him, I wisely choose to let it go for the moment. But my curiosity has definitely been piqued. . . . I admit, now my thoughts race like crazy. Abstinence? Does this mean that my Bridegroom is—
Wherever the thought crazy train was about to take me is interrupted, as Aeson claims my hand again and directs me gently to follow him. We walk out of the master bedroom to a smaller set of suites, and these appear to be more casually furnished and more lived-in.
We come to a large comfortable bedroom with a far more modest king-sized bed decorated in soft earth tones and dark shades of blue. Adjacent to it is an elegant bathroom suite, a closet storage area, and then a smaller workroom with a large neatly organized desk and a wall of computer tech equipment and display screens that bring to mind Aeson Kassiopei’s usual office arrangements.
“These are my actual living quarters,” he tells me with a smile, as he flicks on a wall switch and suddenly the space is filled with a warm golden glow from several softly illuminated can
delabras on the walls and ceiling. “This is where I sleep and work whenever I am home. I prefer this by far to the formal master bedroom.”
“I can see why,” I say, while a little smile starts to bloom on my lips. These rooms, I suddenly realize, they really seem to fit Aeson’s personality—ordered yet elegant, slightly austere and yet somehow profound and comfortable.
Aeson stops in the middle of his bedroom and looks at me. “Gwen, you are the first female non-relative who has set foot here, not counting the Palace servants who come to clean.”
“Oh,” I say. And this time my smile deepens. “I am . . . really glad. And kind of honored.”
At that he makes an easy sound that could be a pleased chuckle. I say “could be,” because I’m just beginning to discover this new and relaxed Aeson Kassiopei who’s not on guard every second. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh casually so much as I have in the last hour—ever since we arrived here in his personal quarters, and our very intense (or should I say, crazed) conversation happened, followed by all that amazing kissing. . . .
I begin to examine his room with the same eagerness that I feel when I look at him—after all, this is his personal place, filled with so many revealing private details about him—but he does not let me linger, and instead says, “Come along, there’s more.”
“Okay . . .” And I follow him back into his workroom office and then through a small inconspicuous door that connects his bedroom suite with another.
This bedroom suite is smaller, and decorated in tones of dusky rose and deep mauve. It has a similar large-but-not-excessive, comfortable bed, and an exterior wall with an amazing focal-point window shaped like a four-point star with long extended rays. Through the window I get an outside view of the darkening teal sky, densely filled with stars.
“Oh, wow!” I exclaim, forgetting everything but the window and those incredible stars that seem to be clustered so thickly that they look unreal—nowhere on Earth is the proliferation of stars so dense in the sky. It is another reminder that I am on an alien world, and this is a very different place. . . .