Chapter 11

I hummed happily to myself on my way back to Lady Natoi’s suite. My body thrummed with satisfaction. Every cell in my body was alive and bursting with bliss. How can one person be this happy? I wondered.

Daryus turned out to be an incredible lover, thoughtful and self-sacrificing. We made love twice more, and every time he ensured I came first. He was giving, generous and observant, by far the best lover I had ever had.

I didn’t know where this was going, the word mekarry never entered our conversation and it left me strangely insecure. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it. Did I hope to be his mekarry? Or was that an outlandish assumption? As much as I tried to forget it, he was an emperor. A man with so much power it was still hard for me to wrap my head around. We clicked on many levels, and by his own admission I liked the effect I had on him, but I wasn’t a fool. Somebody like him would not marry somebody like me.

Not to mention that marriage shouldn’t even enter my mind at this point. We had barely known each other for a few days, but still… did emperors date?

He would have said something if he thought you were his mekarry, my mind whispered. I remembered all the men I met over the last few weeks, men who had looked at me with so much hope, waiting for a sort of revelation. But try as I might, I couldn’t recall a single face.

All I saw was Daryus’s face and his desire for me reflected in his eyes, something that had been lacking in the others’. Still, that didn’t mean he thought I was his mekarry.

I realized I stopped humming, because these thoughts were darkening my mood, so I pushed them away from me and forced myself to hum another happy song, making sure I smiled at people as I passed them during the late hours of the evening.

Daryus had invited me to stay the night with him, but since I wasn’t sure if he asked out of politeness or if he truly wanted me to stay I decided to go back to Lady Natoi’s suite. Besides, I could only imagine what she would have said had I stayed out all night.

He offered to walk me back, but then we both agreed that it was a bad idea. Not many people knew that he had hosted me twice for dinner now, that we had met in the park, but I was sure the entire court would be buzzing come the next day if we were seen walking the halls together, staring into each other’s eyes as besotted as I felt right now in the middle of the night.

The door to Lady Natoi’s suite slid open and I entered the living room through the antechamber, surprised by the sound of low voices. It was late and I hadn’t expected Lady Natoi to stay up and see me return. Even less having a visitor.

“… I will take care of it,” a strange female said, whose voice sounded vaguely familiar.

“As long as it doesn’t come back to me,” Lady Natoi hissed.

I entered and the two women stared at me. I had never seen the other lady before whose skin glimmered metallic in a garnet red.

“Oh, I didn’t know you had company,” I lied, smiling at the two ladies.

“Good evening, Heather, this is Lady Ma—”

“I’m about ready to leave,” the other interrupted, clearly not wanting me to know her name. Confused, I wasn’t sure about what to do and watched her pat Lady Natoi on the shoulder. “Don’t worry.”

When she strode out, I looked at Lady Natoi. “Don’t worry? Is everything alright?”

“Nocc, but it will be,” she said, looking derisively at me with a hostile glint in her eyes that made me shudder. “Are you just now coming back from the emperor?”

Numbly, I nodded. Lady Natoi and I hadn’t been getting along as well as I had seen other humans with their mentors, but so far we had always been civil with one another. Her clear dislike for me distorted her features.

“Well, I hope it was worth it to you,” she said ominously and left the living room for her bed chamber.

Confused, I followed her example.

I didn’t want to wash Daryus off me, but I knew I was sweaty and stinky, so I took a quick shower before I went to bed, where predictably my skin began to hum again when I thought of Daryus.

I closed my eyes in memory of his touches and kisses, and a smile spread across my lips as I slowly drifted off into sleep.

Only to be rudely awakened by a hand pressing hard against my mouth.

Horror and fear warred with drowsiness as my mind tried to puzzle out what was happening. Hands grabbed my arms, my legs, stuffed something into my mouth just as I was about to take a deep inhale to prepare for an ear-shattering scream. The scream died into a muffled, hmmm, hmmm, which ended with me choking and panicking when I didn’t seem to be able to get air into my lungs.

Writhing crazily, tied down like a carpet, I was lifted off my bed. My eyes moved frantically without seeing anything, because panic flooded me from all sides, panic of what was happening, while I was fighting to breathe.

Flashes of metallic, glowing skin—orange, green, and purple—danced in front of my vision but they all blurred together as my eyes were unable to focus on anything in the darkness of my room.

I was still struggling to breathe. My nostrils flared and the rush of oxygen made me just as dizzy as the momentum when one of my attackers swung me over his shoulder, head and hair dangling down.

“Let’s go,” one snarled, and the other two grunted their assent. Were there three? Or more? I didn’t know as I was jostled out of my room, into Lady Natoi’s living room, where I prayed for the first time ever she would come out and raise an alarm.

Nothing happened. We moved through the antechamber into the hallway.

“Clear!” one of the men shouted.

“Move,” another instructed.

We went down seemingly endless corridors. I wiggled as much as possible, but it was of no use. The man’s arms holding me might as well have been iron clasps. His step didn’t falter, I didn’t slide down his shoulder.

Guards, where were the guards? On any given day or night, there were always guards patrolling the hallways, stationed in front of doors housing more important people than Lady Natoi and me. But tonight there were none. Or maybe my abductors just knew where they were and avoided those hallways. If they had that kind of knowledge, that meant somebody very powerful had ordered my abduction.

This isn’t some random act of violence, I realized even through my panicked mind. But who would order such a thing? And why?

That they hadn’t just killed me in my sleep gave me hope that my death wasn’t their ultimate goal, but that hope quickly evaporated when other reasons sprang to my mind. What would they do to me?

I squirmed some more when we entered a shorter hallway, one I recognized, one that would lead to a port where strato gliders waited. But all my efforts were in vain and I was pushed into a gleaming strato liner like a rolled-up carpet, where I hit the ground painfully. My head banged against the metallic floor and I saw stars for a few minutes.

Doors closed and we took off.

Bile rose in my throat. I forced myself to swallow it down, fearing I would suffocate on my own vomit if it came up with the gag firmly planted in my mouth. That wasn’t the way I wanted to die.

Not that I wanted to die, period.

The men didn’t speak as the strato liner moved us closer to wherever it was they were taking me.

On the ground, my field of vision was filled with boots—boots like the guards wore—and slowly I realized that all three men were wearing guard uniforms. Not the imperial uniforms, darker ones, ones I hadn’t seen before, but definitely uniforms with insignias whose meanings escaped me.