Chapter 2

My cheeks are hot, my chest is hot, and it’s absolutely all I can do to keep from screaming a victory cry to the rafters of the Roth palace.

I’ve spent weeks now trying to get Lyko’s damned attention, trying to get a kernel of conversation from him.

He’s a hard nut to crack.

Until one of the Roth priests let slip something I wasn’t supposed to hear. My skirts swish noisily around my calves, but triumph rings through me even louder. My mouth twists to the side. He didn’t so much let it slip as I was eavesdropping on a meeting I wasn’t supposed to be in.

Turns out torches and pockets of darkness are perfect for snooping around an oversized castle. Especially when everyone treats me like I’m a fragile alien idiot and doesn’t suspect me to sneak around, much less scheme.

I sniff, then startle.

“What happened?” Billie hisses, popping out from behind one of the huge carved columns that hold the roof up. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Not that it’s visible in this part of the palace. The high-ceilinged ceremonial rooms all disappear into darkness, thanks to the lack of tech and preponderance of torches and strategically placed wells of fire.

I love it. It’s mysterious and dramatic and thrilling.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” She raises an eyebrow, clearly misreading my silence. “Are you okay? It went badly, huh?”

“We’re getting married in a week,” I squeak at her.

“Shut the fuck up.” She throws her arms around me in a bear hug of excitement. “I knew you could do it, you sly little minx, you.”

An excited giggle slips out of me, and then I look around guiltily. If Lyko—or any of the Roth—knew I’d manipulated everyone into allowing me to marry him… well, it wouldn’t be great.

Much better to let everyone misjudge me as shy, sweet Piper. Much more fun that way.

Much easier to get things done like that, too.

“You’re sure about this?” she asks, pursing her lips. “Getting married here… I don’t think divorce is an option.”

“He’s the king, and I’ll be his queen, and he’ll have to stop ignoring me and my ideas.” I take a deep breath, repeating out loud the words I’ve said over and over in my head for the last few weeks. “I didn’t have my future stolen by the Roth on Earth only to not seize the opportunity to make things better now that it presents itself.”

Our footsteps echo off the cavernous stone walls, our arms slipped around each other’s waists as we practically jog back to the wing we’re housed in.

“You can be so devious, you know that? It’s a little freaky.”

“That’s why the Federation took me.” I grin at her, all teeth and not a little vicious. “I didn’t graduate top of my class in political science to not use it.”

“The ends justify the means?” She waggles her eyebrows, but I’m not sure if she’s kidding.

“Always.” I’m not sure if I’m kidding either. “You know me better than anyone, Billie.”

Her nose scrunches. “Yeah, being kidnapped by the Roth will do that.”

“Do you think I can handle this? For Earth? For our survival? For stability among the Roth?” I take a deep breath, pushing my shoulders back and pausing.

One of the faceless stone statues of a Roth god is behind us, and a creeping situation seats itself between my shoulders, like it’s watching.

Which is stupid, because it’s faceless, and because statues can’t watch.

“If you could lie to Leigh about who you are—what you can do—to continue your Federation mission of exerting influence on the Roth, then yeah, I think you can do it.”

I wince. “I feel bad about that.”

“Lying to Leigh?” Billie sighs, taking my hands in hers. “You did what you had to do, right?”

I nod. “I didn’t really lie to her,” I hedge.

“You just didn’t tell her everything in case you could leverage Nydo’s position and infatuation with her.” Billie grins at me as she parrots my own words back to me, and I scowl at her.

“The Federation ordered me to do nearly anything necessary to ensure the Roth weren’t going to invade Earth again.” I roll my eyes. “It’s not like I enjoyed lying to?—”

“To Leigh? You didn’t enjoy lying to Leigh, sure. But you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” She squeezes my hands, but I let them drop. We continue walking through the near-empty castle corridors, the torchlight finally giving way to the glow of tech as we enter the living areas.

“Yes and no,” I finally answer. “I like Lyko. I think he’s… different from the rest. He keeps himself away from me, though,” I murmur. “I thought I had him in the palm of my hand when we had to visit that settlement, but he brushed me away. I thought I had him.” I shake my head, frustrated all over again.

Leigh would have been easy enough to manipulate, as her goals for protecting Earth aligned with mine and the Federation, but having the brother of the king in my back pocket would have been a nice contingency plan.

If only he’d deigned to even speak to me. Ugh. That was a failure.

“I just…” Billie hedges.

“What?” I poke her in the side as she opens the door to the suite of rooms we share. I plunk down on a cushioned bench in a green jewel tone, glancing out the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the Roth landscape. I cross my legs, bouncing the heel of one foot on the floor.

“I worry about you. You know? We’ve been friends since boot camp, since before the Federation figured out what a master manipulator you are. I worry that you don’t need to do this. The Overlord is dead. The Suevans are firmly in the hands of the Federation officers they married. Earth is as safe as can be.”

“They want to start an interspecies marriage program,” I remind her, as if we haven’t been over and over and over this a million times. “The best way to make sure no humans are taken advantage of is to be in the room where the decisions are made.”

She snorts, arching a brow at me as she tosses me a pair of pants. “Right. Because the Roth are well-known for listening to the opinions of human women playing Pretty, Pretty Princess.”

“Rude,” I say, but I smile, too. Playing Pretty Princess at a famous theme park on Earth paid my college tuition and kept me fed.

It also taught me a shit ton about how to read people, how to keep my mouth closed, and how to pretend my insides matched my outsides.

“It was good training for playing it in real life,” I say, much more somberly than I meant for it to come out. “The stakes are too high for me to give up the mission now,” I tell her.

“So how are you planning on talking him into letting you make decisions?”

“By doing the same thing women have done on Earth for centuries.” I uncross my legs slowly, doing my best sensuous impression. “Seduce the hell out of him until he can’t think straight without me by his side.”

Billie rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “God help us all.”

A female laugh sounds outside the door, and we share a confused look before it dies away.

“Those priests creep me out,” I confess.

“I don’t think that was a priest,” Billie mutters.

A shiver runs down my spine. “Right. Sure. Just a phantom voice.”

“How much cultural study have you done between eavesdropping and reading all the Roth communications I hacked for you?”

I shrug a shoulder.

“That’s what I thought.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I tug the pants on under my skirt, then turn, motioning for Billie to help me get the hell out of this frothy confection of a purple dress. Purple, I’ve noticed, seems to be Lyko’s favorite color. I did everything I could to make sure he would say yes to my proposal today, including dressing the part.

“It means that I don’t think you have a fucking clue what you’re getting into.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a man. Male. Whatever. He thinks with his dick like the rest of them.”

My eyes narrow. What if I’m wrong? What if I’ve misjudged him completely? I could have sworn he wanted to fuck me, and then… nothing. Barely even a hello in passing once we landed on Roth.

Frustrates the hell out of me.

Suddenly, Billie’s words click. “You mean, you think what Leigh told us about…” my voice drops to a whisper, “the voices she was hearing are true? You think the Roth gods are talking to her or whatever?”

“Or whatever,” Billie agrees, jerking the laces on the dress a little too hard. I wince.

“Leigh suffers from massive PTSD, so auditory hallucinations are possible,” I say, my mind racing. “Especially under extreme duress.”

“Leigh knows the difference between hallucinations and whatever the hell she was experiencing.”

Unease settles deep in my bones, and I hold the top of the dress up with my hands, turning to stare at Billie. “Are you really trying to tell me you think the Roth gods are speaking to us?” I nearly drop the dress as I point to the door. “That you think there was a god listening at the door?”

She shrugs, handing me a shirt. “I think that we are in unknown territory now, friend. I think that you may be underestimating what you have to do and Lyko, if you think seducing him is going to be enough. I think you’re in over your head.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re wrong. I can manage him. I’ve got this.” I pull the shirt on over my head and let the hideous purple dress fall to the floor.

“Good to hear. You ready to spar now?” She shifts her weight, dancing from foot to foot. “Let’s go get some training in before you have to plan your stupid wedding.”

“It’s not going to be stupid, rude face.”

“Good one,” Billie snorts, and I follow her to the room we’ve turned into our personal gym with the help of the bewildered Roth priests who’ve appointed themselves our butlers.

Which… is pretty weird. I chalked up their fascination with keeping us happy as some kind of perversion after all the Roth females died, but what if… what if Billie and Leigh are right?

What if the gods are real? What if they’re talking to us?

My mouth scrunches to the side as I consider, and a half second later, Billie’s hooked her foot around one leg and thrown me off balance.

I land on the floor with a thud, rage blazing through me. “A warning would be nice,” I spit.

“You’re the mastermind, bitch. You’re not going to get warnings in the game you’re about to play.”

I lunge for her, then jump to my feet as she slides out of my reach.

“I’m not going to play the game,” I say in a low voice, watching her for an opening. “I’m going to win the whole damned thing.”

I trained with the top spies across the world before deploying into space with my Federation-given mission to influence the Roth. We were a last-ditch effort, in case the Suevan team failed.

I know everything there is to know about reading people.

I know everything they could teach me about how to work an asset.

Which is all my new husband will be—a way to keep Earth safe.

I won’t fail.