Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Elaine

“ W ell, my first idea is terrible,” I said as we sat down in the mess, the closest thing to a communal area aboard the Rogue. At least it let us sit facing each other to talk. My cabin would have been more comfortable, but putting Karkonar, myself, and a bed in the same room was asking for trouble.

The best kind of trouble… my libido piped up in the back of my mind, and I did my best to squash her. This wasn’t the time for complications, no matter how deliciously tempting.

“I can reseal the container and deliver it.” Doing my best to ignore my inner turmoil, I carried on. “I didn’t know what was inside, so how should I know where you’d gone? That way I’d have gotten paid, and whoever’s after you would start looking in the wrong place.”

Prince Karkonar shook his head. “That’s a terrible idea. Do you really believe it would work? More likely, they’d murder you on principle. I have a better plan. You go to meet your client, and when you identify him, I pounce from the shadows and tear the information from him.”

Tapping his fingers on the tabletop, Karkonar left scratches where his jet-black claws hit the scuffed metal. I didn’t doubt his ability to get information out of someone, but I hoped it didn’t come to that.

“Okay, fine, it’s a draw. We both have terrible plans. Whoever meets me probably won’t know more than I do.” I shook my head. “Maybe Onyx has a better plan?”

Hearing his name, the cat looked up from licking his wing. “Treat? Food?”

I laughed and even Karkonar cracked a smile. Opening a box of Meatish Treats, (the off-brand synthetic meat replacement your pets will love!), I threw a couple to him and laughed again at his ungainly pounce. “Well, you’re not wrong. Eating something and taking some time to think is probably our best bet, short term. We’re still four days out from Harry’s Moon, so we’ve got time to decide on a plan.”

Karkonar cocked his head to the side, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. “I have been kidnapped, packaged, and shipped across the stars. And you, human, ask me to relax? I may be four days from my foes, but that’s four days to plan my vengeance.”

I know something that’ll help you relax. My cheeks burned as that thought popped unbidden into my mind, and I did the mental equivalent of kicking my libido in the shin.

“You won’t be any good at planning if you’re starving,” I pointed out. “It’s been, what, a week since you ate?”

He grimaced. “With stasis, it’s only two hours since breakfast. But apparently being ambushed takes a lot out of me. Fine.”

I glanced at the tray with my abandoned meal on it. Leaving it sitting for a couple of hours hadn’t made it any more appetizing. With a sigh, I dumped it into the foodmaker’s intake hopper. That got me back a few of the credits I’d spent, and I called up the menu to see what I could afford.

None of my food was fit for a prince. Honestly, it wasn’t fit for anyone sapient enough to leave a review, but I’d put up with that while I was only cooking for myself. Serving a meal to royalty was different. “Onyx, you just had to steal one of the last good foods, didn’t you?”

The winged cat chirped indignantly. “Not Steal. Starving!”

I looked at his half-full food bowl in the corner. Karkonar looked at it. Onyx looked at it. A pause hung in the air before the cat spoke again. “Starving.”

With that, he turned to cleaning his whiskers and pointedly ignoring me. Karkonar chuckled, a dark and dangerous sound but an improvement on stony silence. “Do not be too hard on the creature. If not for his ‘theft’ you wouldn’t have discovered me.”

“Jury’s still out on whether that’s a good thing,” I replied, smiling to take the sting out of it. There was a harsh reality under the joke, though. This would be a very expensive day. “Okay, we’re still talking, not eating. I’m going to make us something, and we can talk afterward.”

I searched the menu for the best options I had the credits to offer. The choice wasn’t great. Nacho-style chips with mock artificial cheese substitute? Had any of that ever so much as seen real food? Then we had a Real* Food Pizza with Genuine Tuna-Equivalent Protein. I’d carefully avoided following that asterisk — whatever explanation it led to couldn’t be good.

“I can’t offer that to a fucking prince,” I muttered under my breath, imagining the feasts he must be used to. Even at my best, I was eating vat-grown foods. The Crown Prince of Aris? Had he ever tasted meat that didn’t come from a living animal?

A giant red hand reached past me to tap the holoscreen. “Is that a Goodhut Pizza?”

Is he mocking me? “You almost sound like you’re pleased to see it.”

He was right there, almost touching me, warming my back with his body heat. My cheeks burned and I kept my face turned away, hoping he wouldn’t notice my reaction. It seemed unlikely that anyone would miss how fast my heart beat; it was deafening to my ears.

“Pleased isn’t the right word.” His deep voice rattled me, sending a tingle down my spine and making my breath catch in my throat. “I have fond memories of it them, that’s all.”

I didn’t voice my doubts, but I must have given some sign of them, because he chuckled. “Oh, don’t think that just because I’m the son of a king I’ve always eaten at the feasting halls of the nobility. At boarding school, we snuck out when we could to eat junk food. For some reason, the nearest shop stocked Goodhut.”

He stepped back, and that was the moment I realized he’d had me trapped against the wall. Apparently, my situational awareness went to shit with him around. Somehow, he just hadn’t triggered my threat response, which was worrying. Fuck.

“I guess it’s pizza for lunch then, if you can call Goodhut pizza.”