8. ALICE

ALICE

I couldn't help but feel that I had, just like he had said, cut off my nose to spite my face—funny how we seemed to have the same expression, but it was possible that he had said something different, but the translator had turned it into these familiar words.

Either way, his kiss robbed me of any clear thought, and I responded in kind and with a desperation that was new to me. He was the first to break it, and not long after that, I found myself in my own suite of rooms.

A sort of antechamber, a living room, a bedroom, a spacious closet, and an even more spacious bathroom. There was even a balcony, smaller but similar to Zayden's, with the same view, making me wonder if he had selected this room for me because he knew how much I had enjoyed looking out at the ocean.

A commotion behind made me whirl around, and astonished, I watched an entire procession of greyish aliens, much shorter than the Zypherians and even me. They bowed their heads slightly and awkwardly because of the loads they were each carrying.

One of the greyish aliens stepped forward. "I am Mach-Nak-Tho, your personal servant, Lady Alice."

A personal servant?

She resembled the proverbial alien plastered all over UFO sides. Short, skinny with an oversized hairless head and large, slanted black eyes that stared unblinking and… disapprovingly? at me.

"Uhm, nice to meet you." I smiled.

"Don't worry, we will get all this ready for you in no time. Nef-Tel-Cor, you idiot, not there, in there." Her long, slender arms cartwheeled through the air, one long, out of three fingers, pointed in the direction of my bathroom, where the closet was located.

"It will be a tight fit. I'm afraid I won't be able to transfer your entire wardrobe here," she fretted.

"Entire wardrobe? Transfer?" I asked, surprised.

This time her nonexistent facial features definitely turned downward into a frown. "His Majesty ordered an entire wardrobe for you before you arrived," she explained in a sour tone. "Now I must not only call myself the servant of a lady instead of the servant of a queen, but I also have to rearrange everything."

She huffed, and I noticed the thin skin by the holes on each side of her head push out, like a frog's about to croak. In time I would learn that this meant she was annoyed with me, but right then, it was merely startling.

"Tell me, what did you do to anger him so that he banished you from the royal chambers? Maybe it's not too late to fix it."

I wasn't sure if I was surprised or annoyed with her forward manner, because whenever I read about servants or saw them on TV, they were… subservient, pleasant. Not this creature, though.

"I didn't do anything to… anger him. I'm just not sure I want to be his queen," I defended myself morosely, wondering why I felt the need to defend myself to her.

"Well, that is a fine mess you got us in." She shook her head. "Mach-Nak-Tho will have to work very hard to rectify this. I will not be the servant of a lady." She stuck her sharp little chin forward. "I will not."

"Okay-y," I drew the word out, while some amusement rose in my throat. That, however, was quickly drowned out when I kept watching the amount of servants march from the entrance into the closet, loaded with armfuls of garments, shoes, scarves, accessories I had never used before as well as underwear, and… was that jewelry?

"Did he order all this for me?" I asked, stunned.

Had Mach-Nak-Tho's eyes not been black pools, I was sure I would have seen her roll them. "Ra, you fool. He was so excited for your arrival. What did you do?"

Her words stabbed me in the heart lightly. Zayden had ordered all this for me? He had been excited for my arrival?

He bought you, I reminded myself.

Yes, he did, and better him than another. You were bound to be sold, so why are you being such a bitch, throwing your good fortune into the wind? My practical self reprimanded, very much in tune with Mach-Nak-Tho.

Because I can't allow him to think he owns me, I argued back.

Right, because that is sooo much worse than working in an alien whorehouse or being eaten? I snarked at myself. To that, I didn't have a comeback, so I stayed quiet. I couldn't discount the fact that I was here, that he had picked me. It was hard to decide, though, if that thought pleased or repelled me. After all, he bought me. I liked to think that I would have protested just as much in an alien whorehouse as I did here.

Where you probably would have been whipped instead of being treated like a fucking queen, you idiot. Somehow my snarky voice was starting to sound like Mach-Nak-Tho.

"You." Mach-Nak-Tho homed in on one little grey alien and snatched a bloodred dress out of his arms. "That," she said, nodding her oversized head up and down, satisfied, as she held it up against me.

"Go, take a bath, wash your hair, and I will see how I can rectify your stupid behavior," she scolded, pointing at me and the bathroom. "Or do you need Mach-Nak-Tho's assistance?"

I'd much rather bathe by myself, but my quarrelsome nature, which had already gotten me in trouble once today, couldn't stop me from asking, "Shouldn't a servant be… nicer to their lady?"

She rolled her head over her shoulders as if praying for strength. "If you were my queen, I would be nice. But you are not, are you? I made it clear to His Majesty that I will only serve the queen, so if you are not it, our… relationship will only be temporary, in which case I don't see the need to be nice when you threw away an opportunity any other female would have gladly died for."

Throughout her lengthy speech, I stared at her while my mouth dropped open. Laughter bubbled up inside my chest, but I suppressed it. Still, I had to ask, "How many queens are there for this kind of opportunity?"

"In the universe?" Mach-Nak-Tho retorted, and again, she looked as if rolling her eyes, "Thousands. If he doesn't pick you, I will go somewhere else. Kara-Lator maybe. I hear the planet has a new queen and a pleasant temperature."

Realizing I had a lot to learn and wasn't likely to win any argument with Mach-Nak-Tho as long as I stayed ignorant to her, her race, Zypheria, and all this alienness around me, I huffed and made my way around the still arriving, loaded servants. I would have loved to slam the bathroom door, but they retracted silently into the wall to allow me passage and closed behind me, leaving me to my own musings. Wondering how much I had truly fucked up this time.