“I taught you to watch the player,” he corrects. “Not to give in to him. Understand him, that is all. But… when someone comes into your life.” His tone, though the deep timbre of a Xin De male, takes on a thoughtful, meaningful edge. “And you start to feel like an individual, like your motivations are not a collective thought but for your very soul, it's as though you just woke up. You might not have known this person for long, but you'd be a fool to go back to sleep. You know that. All of sudden, you take a backseat in your own life. Out of fucking nowhere, they become the main character in your story.”
I recite my vows, angry. Cold. Wanting the nothingness and boredom I have lived with to return, replace her. “To be a king is to suffer alone under the burden of decisions and the weight of necessary evils and truths.”
“This is love, Rome.”
“Love is for the Common.”
“Love is human!” he spits out. “Do you have any humanity left to see this?”
I will not love her only to have her leave!
With that unwelcome admission, I stand, finished. Need perspective away from her torturous sweetness. “We leave when I wake. We take the CR Guard to the Black Matter Tower in the first-light.”
“It’s a five-day journey.”
“I am aware.”
Kong stares at me. “You have never been to the Black Matter Tower. Why now? The mines are not safe for you, Sire. The water… it’s toxic.”
I stride away, calling over my shoulder, “Good thing I have very little human left then, isn’t it?” I sneer. “I will survive.” I halt and turn to face him. “And bring the House Girls for them to fuck. They all work hard on their Purpose mining and recycling matter for our batteries, Kong. I want to show them my gratitude. Nothing expresses thanks like warm, wet pussy.”
Chapter Nineteen
Aster
“Hello, Aster. You slept in.”
The night was warm, but something inside me felt cold and empty after he left. He seemed to enter my room as a storm, only to exit as a phantom, and leave me wondering which parts of our shadowed intimacy were real.
Paisley brightens the ornamental fire, bathing the room in orange light. “All the lords have left The Estate except for Lord and Warden Turin Two, but he won’t be available.” As she busies herself in my room, collecting the old flowers and ensuring my bathroom is stocked, she says, “He'll be rather occupied. Trade Master Cairo and Sire are both on campaigns, so we have this wing to ourselves. It’s always nice, I mean, I like it when we can relax, and each day we will have a different activity for you. Puzzles. Reading. Dancing. But today is a special day! You have been invited to the aviary.”
Still half-asleep, I sit up in bed and rub my dry eyes. “There's an aviary here?”
“Yes, in the queen's wing.” Her tone is happier than I have heard in days. I smile at that. “You can visit one at a time. Blossom is there now. We have hatchlings, and the mammas can get protective, so it is best to have a very small audience.”
“Wait.” My mind levels. “Did you say the king is away? I mean, Sire. I saw him las— day. I mean, I saw him last—yesterday.” I fumble on my lie. “In the courtyard.”
She stops at the foot of my bed, holding a bundle of used towels and a throw. “Yes, Aster. He has The Cradle to manage, after all. He is not often here. Only for your rite, when the Silk Girls ovulate, which has finished for the month, so you may not see him for a few weeks.”
Her matter-of-fact answer chips at my heart. “Oh.” I draw my knees up and hold them to my chest in case the tiny fragment falls through my flesh.
Tuscany’s words float back to me, along with a sadness I now share. ‘He is always going away. He leaves me here, and I miss him so.’
Nothing lasts forever.
She eyes me, uncaring or clueless, though I prefer the latter. “Are you ready to get up?”
“Is Ana awake?” I ask, accepting she might be the only person to understand my misguided and naïve emotions.
As I suspect, she says, “No. She's still unwell.” The lie barely makes it to my ears. I don’t believe it. “You like birds.” Paisley wiggles her brows. “I know you do.”
Sighing hard, I concede, “Very much. They are the closest thing to a dinosaur.”
“Dinosaur?”
“Yes.” I slide from the bed and drop to the floor. “Great animals. Some like giants. Some like crocodiles.”
Paisley watches me amble across the room toward my closet, her gaze assessing my naked skin; I know she sees evidence of him painted over my thighs.
“But they were real?” she asks, genuine interest pitching her voice.
“Once.” I pull my robe on. “Or so the book said.”
“Which book?”
“One I wasn’t supposed to read.” I walk to the bathroom and pause at the door. Sensing the shower will be my salvation to sit in my sorrow, I anticipate bursting into tears between the cool, tiled walls. A small cry in privacy is not so shameful. “I’ll be ready shortly.”
I move inside, close the door, and as I wash, cleaning his cum from my thighs and stomach, I let myself feel.
Feel anger toward my childish heart, regret for my naïve tongue and wishful utterances under the veil of night when we are alone… And disappointment… Unjustified, unwelcome, disappointment.
Crown-light is nearly over when it is my turn.
Between the queen’s wing and the forest edge, there is a large silvery cage housing hundreds of birds. Birds with bright wings and insects on leaves, flowers in mid-bloom and hidden stony pathways, red-brick bird houses, flapping wings, the sound of freedom and excitement, these things make it difficult not to smile.
Tuscany and I walk a few paces ahead of a member of The Queen’s Army. A brawny, tall woman capable of lifting both of us and rushing us through fire… probably.
The contentment and ease I feel with the queen is immediate, like our brief interaction on the grass.
“I want to apologise,” she offers, “for the other day.”
I shake my head. “Please, my queen, there is no need.”
“Rome…” She sighs. “Never mind.”
I blink a few times, thinking. “I wonder why birds survived when so many other animals became extinct.” I change the subject. “It’s the Redwind that makes The Cradle so uninhabitable.” I look at her profile, her expression soft and quietly filled with contemplations. “I hear the Horizon is thousands of miles of nothing but Redwind and desert ground.”
Gazing ahead, she says, “I have never seen it.”
“No one has seen the Horizon.”
“The Redwind,” she corrects.
“What?” I stop in my tracks, inadvertently touching her shoulder, though one should never touch the queen. I retract my hand instantly. “Sorry. What do you mean?”
The Redwind is everywhere, outside The Estate, outside the towers, the aviaries, it is the atmosphere that cloaks every inch of The Cradle.
She peers over her shoulder, eyes meeting the woman behind us as she says, “You can wait by the entrance. I am in no danger with Aster.”
“But my queen—”
“Leave,” she orders.
I press my lips together under her tone, a strong, curt cadence that somehow has just as much enchanting melody as her softer-spoken words.