Chapter 16

Carmen

“We are on our own,” Arccoo said as he closed the door to Carmen and her sisters’ living quarters. He stood there scowling at nothing for a long and tortured moment.

Picking up on the vibe, Sofia nudged Elena. She cocked her head in the direction of the balcony. Elena replied with a quick nod, and both sisters stepped out of the room, allowing Carmen and Arccoo to have some privacy.

“What happened?” Carmen asked, keeping her voice soft. Arccoo was going through something he didn’t know how to deal with. That much was obvious. The last thing she wanted was to make him feel attacked or pressured to speak in any way.

She trusted they knew each other well enough by now that he would confide in her when he was able. Right then, she thought the most important thing was to let him know that she was there for him.

“My father, the king…” Arccoo paused. He clenched his jaw as if the words tasted sour on his tongue. “He does not agree with our assessment of the situation.”

Carmen brought her hand to his elbow. She slowly grazed it up his triceps and across his shoulders. His muscles were tense bricks. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, keeping her touch light and reassuring. “It’s okay if you don’t.”

“Nothing is okay!” Arccoo snapped, taking a huge step toward the center of the room.

His movement was so abrupt that it caught Carmen off guard. She stood there with her hand up, caressing nothing but air for a full second before turning on her heel to look at him. The outburst was small, but it was enough to raise a few internal alarms. She would be prepared to get the hell out of his way if he started losing his temper.

“Everything’s changing,” her prince said, his breaths picking up speed. “Old, ignorant ways are returning, and I am powerless to stop them.”

“Maybe humans and Thryals aren’t all that different,” Carmen said. She tried to sound casual. The intensity building in Arccoo was radiating off of him like invisible smoke. She could feel it all around her. She could sense it working its way into her, and all she could do to counteract it was to remain calm.

Arccoo coughed out a dry, humorless laugh. “Before your arrival, I would have scoffed at that comment,” he said. “Now, I’m inclined to agree.”

So, this is my fault? she wanted to say. Had me and my sisters not literally flown across space to come here, Thryal would be a serene Utopia? It was hard to stop the one-sided argument in her head once it got going. Did you ever stop to think that these problems were already present? Maybe we were just the catalyst in exposing it .

Although the urge to unload all of this frustration on him was burning a hole in her gut, Carmen forced herself to snuff that fire out. Fighting would only do more harm. Instead, she would try to be more productive.

“You know, on Earth… Well, in America, anyway, a lot of people kept their prejudices quiet for so long that the overwhelming perception was that stupid things like racism had gone away,” Carmen explained. She sat down on the edge of the bed, sounding more like a parent educating a confused child than a woman conversing with her lover.

“That was complete bullshit, obviously,” she continued, sounding more like herself now. “All the same hate, ignorance, and anger were there. The difference was that the media wasn’t discussing it in such frank terms as they had previously. So if a white person attacked a non-white person, they chalked it up to personal differences. Or they claimed that one of them, usually the one with darker skin, must have done something to provoke the other. Sure, the family and friends of the marginalized victim knew the real reason and spoke it plainly to anyone who would listen, but white people weren’t listening.”

She paused, wondering if she was getting lost in the weeds. Almost as if he sensed her trepidation, Arccoo took a long, slow breath in and exhaled. “You’re saying that we’ve been deluding ourselves by believing our baser instincts were things of the past.”

Carmen smiled, relieved that he understood and wasn’t mad. “Exactly.”

Arccoo sat beside her. “You’re right,” he said. “I know you’re right because I’ve seen it in other civilizations all my life. When you attend a diplomatic conference, a ceremony, or a dinner as an outsider, you can see what others can’t. You notice the way previously warring factions tense in each other’s company, how they whisper to each other when another species walks away. But when it’s your own people…” His voice faded, and he lowered his head in shame.

“Missing the forest for the trees,” Carmen said. She laid her head on his big shoulder.

They sat silently with each other, just breathing and existing. Had their situation been less dire, it would have been a sweet moment, the kind of quiet comfort Carmen was longing for in a relationship. Closing her eyes, she could almost imagine they were back home and the biggest problem they had was waiting for a spaceship to arrive.

“Knock, knock,” Sofia said as she entered the room without knocking.

Carmen opened her eyes. Leaving her head right where it was, she looked up at her sister. She felt Arccoo turn his attention from the spot on the floor he’d been studying to peer at her as well.

“Elena and I were talking and think we might have figured out our next steps.” She walked further into the room as Elena came in behind her.

“Your brother always has his guards with him. Right?” Elena asked.

“To protect him, yes,” Arccoo answered.

“Yeah, I know how guards work,” Elena said.

Carmen shot her a look full of daggers. It was her eldest-sister superpower.

Elena seemed to have noticed the dirty look and waved it away. “How do the guards communicate with each other?” she asked. “There has to be a centralized communication system. Right?”

“Yes,” Arccoo said, seemingly nonplussed by Elena’s previous bluntness. “They have their own comms on a separate frequency to ensure clear communications at all times. Why do you ask?”

“If you sit me down in front of one of your computers long enough, I bet I could hack my way into that frequency and track their location,” Elena explained, pointing her finger into her palm emphatically.

Not to be outdone in terms of exaggerated speech, Sofia hopped half a foot forward and slammed her left fist into her right palm. “Then we swoop in and bash that motherfucker—bam!”

Carmen sat up straight. “What?” she asked. “You want the four of us to fight a prince and a bunch of royal guards? Are you space-crazy?”

“What other choice do we have?” Sofia asked. “Arccoo’s people aren’t about to approve any official action. Right?”

“That appears to be so,” Arccoo said, some of that earlier pain finding its way back into his expression.

“Then we go rogue!” Sofia exclaimed. “Stop his ass before he has a chance to do any real damage.”

Assuming Arccoo would never agree to this and wanting to save him his breath, she opened her mouth to explain why this was a bad idea. To her shock, the prince spoke first.

“Okay,” he said. He rose from the bed. “But tracking the guards isn’t going to work. They have all kinds of backup systems and firewalls designed to prevent that exact thing from happening. You’re going to have to find a way to track the parantaa. Can you do that?”

Elena pinched her chin as she thought. “Yeah,” she said. “If he figures out a way to use it, there’s bound to be a unique energy spike I’ll be able to read. It’s going to take some time, though.”

“I can get you whatever you need,” Arccoo said. “Chances are that Rocco hasn’t figured out how to use it yet. He may not for a few days yet. That should buy you the time required.”

“Got it.” Elena nodded.

“Sweet!” Sofia cheered, pumping a fist in the air.

Arccoo held out his hand to Carmen. “In the meantime, why don’t we annoy some people by taking a stroll through the public square?”

The next several days were not easy. As Elena did her best to figure out a way to make Thryal technology bend to her will, the process was more difficult than she’d expected. Carmen and Sofia made sure to give her as much space as she needed to get into her hyper-focused state and work some old Flores tech magic on it.

When they were able to convince her to take a break in order to bathe and eat, the sisters found themselves falling into old routines, playing the kinds of games they hadn’t since childhood. Using their time together, they strengthened that familial bond that all the insanity of their time on Thryal threatened to devour. It was a titanium lining in the hurricane of madness around them. If nothing else, Carmen was grateful for that.

Arccoo’s plan to “annoy” some people was working all too well. He explained that he wanted to double down on the concept that leading by example was the only way to make any real progress. “That’s what marginalized groups on Earth do,” he reasoned. “By being as loud and proud as possible, you normalize the margins.”

In Carmen’s view, he failed to recognize the fact that parading in front of bigots could be extremely dangerous. She tried to make him see that these kinds of movements needed to be organized. Not only would having a larger group of people amplify the message they were trying to send, but it helped to ensure safety. Attacking three people who look different is easy. Attacking three thousand is much harder.

They discussed this over dinner one night in his private dining room.

“No one will listen,” he replied before sipping his drink. He set down his glass. “We have to show them.”

“I think you might be letting your disappointment in your father cloud your thinking a bit,” she said. “Some people here are accepting us. Just yesterday, a woman and her child came up to me and Sofia in the library and said how sorry she was for the way we were being treated. She told us more agree. They’re just scared to come out.”

“Then it’s working,” Arccoo said, beaming with self-satisfaction. “Our walks, trips to the theater and other public events, they’re having an effect.”

Carmen knew he wasn’t listening. He was picking up on the points that he wanted to hear, rather than taking in the message she was trying to impart. She plowed ahead.

“That same afternoon, a man followed us for an hour while you were in your meeting.” She paused to see his response.

He continued eating.

“If we hadn’t ducked down a passage leading back to the annex, he may have hurt us,” she said.

“Where was this?” Arccoo asked. “We can review security footage, and I’ll have him arrested.”

“That’s not going to work!” Carmen shrieked. She had no idea she was this close to losing it. But spending the last few days as a prop in his misguided campaign against anti-human behavior was dehumanizing. She didn’t feel like his lover. She was exactly what Rocco called her when she arrived—a pet.

“I’m not here to be put on fucking display,” she yelled. “I’m not a weapon to use against your father. Stop treating me like a tool and see me as a partner. Please.”

A tear she was oblivious to dripped from her chin. She wiped its wet trail from her cheek with a napkin. “Never mind,” she said, her lips trembling. “What I have to say obviously doesn’t matter.”

Arccoo got out of his chair. Two long steps later, he was at her side. He crouched and wrapped her up in his tree-trunk arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You’re right. I’m not helping you if I won’t listen to what kind of help you even want.”

She cried against his chest. He was still and calm. This was her time to let her guard down, to be vulnerable, to show him just how used she felt. He did not argue. He did not fight. He supported her.

When the troubled waters of her emotions passed, they talked. They had an actual conversation. She suggested holding an event where people could come and learn about Earth. Nothing fancy, just a safe space for the curious to come and satisfy their curiosity.

“Outreach can do amazing things,” she said. “We may change some minds and have the start of a genuine movement on our hands. I can plan it with Sofia, if you could facilitate it.”

“Of course,” he said. “Anything.”

When dinner was done, an unspoken spark ignited between them—a pull to reconnect in a way they hadn’t since she arrived. They went into a guest room. The only light came from the moon outside.

Arccoo unbuttoned his vest as Carmen began to lift off her dress. He stopped her. “Not yet.”

He guided her to the bed and asked her to sit on the edge. She did. He stood in the lunar spotlight and undressed. She watched as he strategically revealed his body to her, warmth building in her abdomen.

Once he was nude, every contour of his impossible physique outlined in silver light, he walked over to her and leaned down for a long, deep kiss.

“Close your eyes and relax,” he said. “This night is for you.”

He laid her back on the bed. Then he raised her dress up over her waist, knelt on his knees, and lowered his head between her thighs. It wasn’t long before she was gripping handfuls of his hair and losing control of herself in mind-bending ecstasy.

They slept on top of the covers, a warm breeze coming in from the window. Before falling asleep, Carmen gave herself permission to let go and trust that he would hold her like this for the rest of their lives.