30. Jasmine

30

JASMINE

" G ood morning, Bridget." Jasmine handed the doctor a large cappuccino and a bag with a warmed-up chocolate croissant. "Enjoy."

The doctor smiled. "Thank you, I will." She took both to her office while Jasmine headed to the prince's room.

"Good morning, my prince." She leaned over and gently kissed his cheek.

He was still unconscious, and he didn't react to the kiss, but something told her that he could feel it. It was probably her imagination, but it seemed like his lips curved up a little.

Yeah, she was hallucinating.

Sitting on her chair, she put the coffee on the floor and bit into the croissant. After Kian had told her that she was part of the team and that her job was to talk to the prince and princess and stimulate them with her acting and singing, he'd also reminded her that the credit card he'd given her was still at her disposal and she could buy whatever she wanted with it. He had still advised against using her cards, to be on the safe side.

It was nice to stop at the café in the lobby and get coffee and something to eat. She would have ordered delivery from a supermarket and cooked proper meals, but not if she was the only one to cook for.

Margo and Frankie had started training in the Perfect Match center, Ella had returned to the village, and Gabi was busy working or visiting her family there. The gods spent most of their days in the bowels of the keep, working on the salvaged equipment, and she had no idea where they were getting their food from. Maybe they ordered deliveries, collected them at the guard station, and ate them where they worked.

Talk about dedication.

Pulling the teardrop from her pocket, Jasmine regarded it with suspicion.

She was not tech-savvy, and it took her time to adapt to new gadgets. She already had the earpieces, which she had to wear all day long, and now she needed to program the teardrop so it would sound like her.

It was important that she did that before the prince woke up.

He was used to the sound of her voice, or so she hoped, and when she used the teardrop to translate for her, it would confuse him if it didn't sound like her.

In fact, perhaps she should start talking to him through the device while he slept. If he could hear her, it would be good if he could also understand her.

Activating the device, she spoke a few lines from a play, but even though it got the tonality right so that it didn't sound flat, it still sounded strange and distorted. Then again, she'd recorded herself speaking enough times to know that she sounded different to herself than she did to others and that the way her voice resonated in her head was not the same as how the outside world perceived it.

Which gave her an idea.

She pulled out her phone and recorded herself speaking to have a baseline.

Next, she recorded the teardrop's output and compared the two. It was the start of a long, painstaking process of training the device to reproduce her voice accurately. She recorded herself repeatedly, listening to the playback and making tiny adjustments until the words that came out sounded more like her own.

It was a tedious task that required patience, persistence, and a willingness to listen to her voice until it began to sound like a stranger's. But Jasmine was determined and refused to give up until she had achieved the perfect balance of tone and inflection and the near-perfect replication of her own cadence.

Even then, however, the device had its limitations. When Jasmine tried to sing, the teardrop spoke the lyrics, translating them into the harsh, guttural sounds of the Kra-ell language without any of the melody or rhythm that made music powerful. She remembered then that William had told her to deactivate the device when she wanted to sing.

Jasmine considered transcribing the lyrics herself, trying to capture the essence of the songs in the alien tongue. But as she listened to the Kra-ell words that the device produced, she realized it would be impossible. The language was too different, too foreign to her ears and her understanding.

What about Shakespeare, though? Would the teardrop be able to tackle that?

She began to recite lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream , the words flowing from her lips in a steady stream of iambic pentameter. But even as she spoke, she could hear the way the teardrop struggled to keep up, and she did not doubt that the meaning of the words was lost in the translation.

She activated her earpieces in a stroke of inspiration, letting them translate the Kra-ell translation back to English. She'd been right. It was a mess.

Switching to a more contemporary play, Jasmine watched the prince's face for any sign of awareness, not expecting to see anything, but then she saw something that hadn't happened before.

The prince's eyes were moving beneath his closed lids.

Her heart racing with excitement, Jasmine rushed out of the room and ran into Bridget's office.

"You have to see this." She waved the doctor on and rushed back into the prince's room.

Bridget came running, her forehead creased with concern as she hurried to his bedside.

"Look at his eyelids," Jasmine said. "They are twitching."

"I can see that. He's dreaming. His brain activity is increasing, and his eyes are moving, suggesting he's experiencing REM sleep. It's a good sign, Jasmine. A very good sign." Bridget spent a few more moments checking the readouts on the equipment before leaving the room.

Jasmine felt a wave of emotion washing over her as she looked down at the prince's face. He looked so peaceful, so vulnerable in his sleep.

"I'm here for you," she said.

Then, realizing that she hadn't activated the translating device, she turned it on and repeated the same sentence. "You are not alone. Your sister is in the next room, and the doctor is taking good care of you both. You are safe, and you are going to be okay. I promise." She leaned down and brushed her lips over the back of his hand.