Chapter 4

Questioning my sanity and impatiently awaiting the merrily, I paced my living quarters where I had ordered the food to be brought tonight. Right after running into her at the park today, I made the plan to invite her for dinner. Now hours later, I questioned my—so unlike me—impulsive behavior.

I had never invited merrilies to dine with me, alone, hating the idea of the ensuing gossip afterward. The speculations.

My councilors, advisors, and various committee members had made it abundantly clear that it was time for me to find an empress and beget a little emperor who would follow in my footsteps should the unthinkable happen. The unthinkable, as in my death.

I was aware of my responsibilities as an emperor and, most of all, of my duty to procreate. I gave the empire my all, day in and day out. I had not only inherited this title, but I had also fought to keep it. Hard. So why was I lacking in the one thing that would surely topple the Pandraxian Empire, or at least cause a ripple of unimaginable proportions? My indecision to find an empress could cost the lives of many of my subjects.

I wiggled my fingers in my clasped hands behind my back and stared out through the window at the part of my empire that literally lay in front of my feet. So many people were coming and going, strato gliders flew this way and that, and were stuck in traffic one behind the other on invisible tracks.

Deep inside my heart was an ache that had been there ever since I could remember. An ache for something I could never define. It was always with me, the same as the seemingly perpetual anger and frustration. My trustworthy companions through thick and thin.

There were only a few times when I experienced neither of these discomforts, but they were few and far between. They only happened when I was alone or with either of my friends, my brothers of the heart, Garth and Xandros. When we let loose and were just us. Not the emperor, not the lord protector, and not the superior commander. When we behaved just as the terrible triplets were expected to behave, having fun.

I didn’t even remember the last time we shared a moment like that, or where even just two of us were together without having to talk about this burden or that. When was the last time I felt like I could breathe freely?

Last night and this afternoon, the answer came unspoken, lingering in the back of my mind. Last night and this afternoon, in the company of the human merrily. Unexpected encounters that left me soothed and relaxed.

Something I had never experienced in the company of any other merrily. Encounters with them usually left me more unnerved than anything. No merrily had ever come to me without requesting something. None had ever seen the male in me. Only the emperor and the power a union with him would bring.

Granted, I didn’t know what Heather might think of my invitation or my interest in her. So far our encounters had been purely by chance, or so I believed at least. The possibility that she had arranged them had entered my mind—I was a very distrustful male—but I had dismissed the idea, for now. I would see what tonight would bring.

I sensed her spirit was just as adrift as mine in this vast universe. A spirit I very much wanted to get to know better.

An emperor couldn’t just meet with a merrily without considering her as a possible mate, so I had seriously contemplated inviting Heather to dinner, tried to look at it from all angles. What it boiled down to though, was that I simply yearned to experience her marvelously soothing company again.

Deep down I feared I was already becoming addicted to the soothing influence she had on me. But I was also aware that considering Heather as a prospective empress was preposterous. Another human merrily in a place of power was unthinkable.

I didn’t begrudge Garth and Xandros having found their mekarries, but with them mated to humans, I could only imagine the outcry should I consider such an arrangement for myself.

And yet…

The Cryons would have an easy way out when I brought the empire’s accusations against them to the GTU after having been corrupted by the very humans they were suppressing. Me being one of them would weaken any of our arguments.

And yet…

None of my advisors would agree with me. They would argue that marrying outside our species without her bringing anything but trouble to the table would be a catastrophe.

And yet…

I sighed. I was inviting trouble into my chambers, trouble I did not need on top of all the other things I had to deal with.

And yet…

It’s not too late, my rational mind cried, you can make an excuse, send her back to her rooms…

Her blue eyes danced in front of my field of vision. I knew it sounded ludicrous, but just thinking of her soothed the constant churning in my stomach. Replaced the anger that always bubbled inside me with a calm I had never experienced before. The same calm even my rational mind couldn’t object to, even yearned for.

“Lady Heather, Your Imperial Highness,” a Myx announced.

“Show her in,” I ordered, turning to watch her enter.

But the human merrily who entered bore little to no likeliness to the merrily I met last night or saw earlier this afternoon. That merrily had been dressed in sensible clothing—attractive, expensive clothing—but nothing that resembled the garish outfits my ladies at court preferred of late.

Heather looked like a cloud filled in by a child in all the colors available to him or her. Puffs of material billowed from her arms, her hips, down her long legs. Granted, it made her appear as if she were levitating above the floor, not walking, but the entirety of her ensemble incited a deep chuckle inside me.

Twenty feet before me, she came to a standstill, falling into a deep curtesy, graceful despite the flowing material all around her. Only when she looked up with an expression of annoyance to blow some of the gauzy material out of her face, which had fallen down it from her just-as-ridiculous-looking headdress, did she remind me of the Heather I had expected.

“Lady Heather,” I managed without betraying the chuckle over her garish outfit that sat deep inside my chest, burning to be let out. My years as an emperor had taught me enough self-control, to step forward and take her offered hand to raise her to her feet.

“You look…”

“Like I was bathed in overcolored cotton candy,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes.

I didn’t have the faintest idea what cotton candy was, but the last thing I wanted to do was make her uncomfortable, so I said, “Look beautiful.”

Her eyes searched mine and I put my most sincere, convincing face on. The same face I used during council and GTU meetings. The same face that fooled ambassadors, lord protectors, and other highly powerful rulers, but she saw right through it. I had no idea how, but she did.

“I look ridiculous,” she stated with conviction and since she seemed to read the truth in my eyes, I didn’t deny it.

“I’m sorry. But honestly, your beauty shines through whatever you wear,” I heard myself say and cringed inwardly.

She gave me an incredulous look, before she broke out in pealing laughter. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “But that is the most terrible line I’ve ever heard.”

Flabbergasted, I stared at her for a moment before my own chuckles broke through. “That bad, uh?”

She nodded, wiping tears from her eyes. “As bad as this dress, so I suppose we’re even.”

“I take it this dress wasn’t of your choosing?”

“Hell no,” she exclaimed, slapping her palms to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

I gently took her wrists and lowered her hands, “Don’t apologize. Please, promise me to always speak your mind when we are alone.”

She cocked her head to the side, a faint smile played around her lips. “I fear you might regret those words.”

Another chuckle moved inside my chest and this time I allowed it out. I had asked her to speak freely and so would I.

“Try me,” I challenged and took her hand to lead her to the table. “Are you hungry?”

“Truth?” she asked, and I nodded. “Lady Natoi made me eat a large dinner with her. She said it would be unseemly for a lady to stuff herself in the emperor’s presence.”

Familiar rage filled my stomach. How dare Lady Natoi try to ruin this dinner for me?! Oh, she was doing all the right things, things that would have been expected from any sentinel guardian, she had just taken it to the extreme, knowing me well enough to annoy me.

“I’m sorry,” Heather repeated.

I forced my anger down and a smile to spread across my lips. “I don’t want to hear another apology from you. What’s done is done and truth be told, I’m not that hungry either, would you like to have a seat?” I pointed to the seating arrangement before the open balcony.

“That would be nice,” she agreed, and I led her to the couches, taking a seat opposite from her, watching her arrange the various layers of her skirt.

“My apologies, I didn’t mean to put you in a difficult position with Lady Natoi.”

She looked up from fiddling with her dress, allowing it to fall where it liked. “No apologies necessary. Lady Natoi can be… overbearing at times, but she means well.”

I stopped myself from rolling my eyes, not sure she believed her own words and was just trying to be polite or wondered if she was that naive. She didn’t strike me to be a naive person, but I didn’t know her that well yet.

“So your stay so far has been pleasant then?” I inquired, wondering why I was making such stupid small talk when a thousand other questions hovered on the tip of my tongue.

She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everything your people and Lady Natoi have done for me, but…” She stopped, waited for my encouraging nod before she continued. “Going out to dinner every night with a different man, who looks so expectantly at me with such hope in his eyes that I’m his mekarry, is… disheartening.”

Exhausting, getting to me, too much, I filled in other words for her that I imagined lay on the tip of her tongue, but were left unspoken, just as another surge of anger flared through me at the thought that she was being paraded around like this. Had spent time with other males… talked to them, allowed them to… touch her?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to complain… Your Royal… I mean Imperial Highness,” she corrected herself, after she must have noticed my darkening mood.

I needed to be more careful with her. She was extremely perceptive. Thankfully, my anger boiled only low so far. Not many other people had been able to recognize it at this stage, because I had become very adept at masking it.

“Please don’t apologize,” I repeated again, taking a deep breath to calm my temper down. “Your feelings are valid and to be expected. I just wasn’t aware that the sentinel guardians would parade you around like this. Are the other ladies like Lady Natoi?”

“Pretty much. They’re all very nice though,” she assured me again, and I began to suspect that she was trying to assure herself as much as me.

“I promise I will look into it and find a better way to arrange the meeting of possible mekarry bonds instead of having you and the others paraded like… livestock,” I offered.

“It hasn’t been that bad,” she tried, but I suspected it to be more of a polite objection than a real one. And there was that damned word again, polite. I wanted to have an honest conversation with her, not a polite one. Damnit.

I raised an eyebrow to encourage just that.

“Well, it can be tiring,” she admitted. Good. Finally.

After a moment’s hesitation and an encouraging nod from me, she continued, “It’s just all these men look at me with so much hope when I enter the room, waiting for… I don’t know, lightning to strike? How exactly does this mekarry bond work?”

How indeed?I wondered.

“I’m not quite certain either. For some, I’ve heard it’s like recognition when they meet, as if seeing someone they’ve known their entire lives, without knowing they existed. For others, it’s a strong sense of protectiveness, possessiveness.” I moved my hand through my hair, tried to remember what Garth, Xandros, and the other Pandraxians I met with who had found their mekarry bonds told me. “It’s not always instant, but it seems that a sense of something always accompanies the first meeting.”

“Something?” she asked innocently enough.

I nodded. “Vra, something that changes their…” Behavior, emotions, my mind supplied. Vra, go on, it challenged, and I nearly smirked. But then I realized that this was exactly what I was experiencing when I was with her. The sudden dampening of my flaring temper?

Heat broke out at my neck, so much so, small beads of sweat trickled down my back. Nocc, I thought, that can’t be. She can’t…

And yet.

Abruptly I rose. “I’m sorry, I forgot I need to… to…”

Confused, she looked up. I had every intention of asking her to leave, but those deep, dark sapphire eyes on me made it impossible to think, impossible to cut our visit short.

“How about a walk?” I asked instead.

“A walk sounds nice.” With difficulty, she arranged the many folds of her clothing so she wouldn’t trip over the hems, and got up from the couch.

What was I thinking? I couldn’t take her to the park or down the hallways. People would see us, stop, and… gossip. Damnit.

“Let me show you my private garden,” I compromised.

Gently, I placed my hand on the small of her back and guided her to another door that led toward a corridor and an elevator, taking us up to the top floor.

The garden here wasn’t as large as the park, but it was decently sized and high enough for the plants to get fresh air.

Since it was dependent on the weather here, despite the dome covering the entire palace, it wasn’t as sprawling as the park in its perpetual springtime. Some leaves were already turning color as fall approached in the real world.