Prologue #2
Before Qylar could get away, Lord Libault reached out with one of his tentacles and snatched his arm. It coiled tightly around Qylar’s wrist. “I’ve not discussed the business of your papa yet.”
“Let him rot,” Qylar said, transforming his arm into tentacles, too, and ripping it away.
“Your papa has suffered for nearly twelve years. Is that not enough?”
“According to the Council’s ruling, no.”
Lord Libault ignored his comment. “I’ve been told a single year there feels like a lifetime, and I can believe it. After years of pleading, I was finally allowed an hour of visitation to check on Izzy. Your papa is as worn away as the rock he beats against, his body and soul utterly broken.”
“He should’ve thought about the consequences of his actions beforehand,” Qylar muttered, fighting against the sadness filling him. Old memories of a loving papa made it hard to completely turn off the love he had in his heart.
“I’ve secured a deal. Hellian Prime has offered sanctuary for your papa—if the Council will reconsider and free him.”
Qylar shook his head.
“I know, I know. The planet has little water, and it’s on the edges of the galaxy, but exile there has to be better than the hell of the mines. We only need the Council to be swayed that your papa was not as guilty as your father and has paid for his sins these last twelve years.”
“We?” Qylar asked.
“I need your help.”
“And just what is it you think I can do?”
Lord Libault stood a bit taller. “Your friend’s family has ties to those on the Council.”
Qylar bit his tongue.
“The Duke still holds considerable power. I hear he often has members of the Council as guests at his table. Some of them are even here tonight, making me think that’s true.”
“Then why are you talking to me? Go plants your seeds there.”
Lord Libault smiled. “It’s harder to discuss such matters in large gatherings like this with so many eyes watching.
” He shrugged his shoulders, transforming his tentacles back into an arm.
“A small dinner party? You’d have a better chance pulling them aside and speaking on your papa’s behalf—without being interrupted. ”
“I’m not welcomed at the table when there are guests, especially those of great influence. I can’t pass along any messages for you.”
“Persuade Cryss to help. You say he’s your best friend. I’m sure if you tell him you wish to save your papa from that hell, he’ll agree. You might even convince him to speak on your papa’s behalf, too—which might be even better than you.”
“I won’t use Cryss or his family to save someone I don’t think is worthy of saving.”
“Izzy birthed you from his own body,” Lord Libault said. “You owe him your life.”
“The only people I owe anything to reside in this house.”
Lord Libault smiled contemptuously. “Maybe everyone is right about you after all. Your cruelty is immense.” He stormed off, never looking back at Qylar.
Qylar leaned against the column he stood beside, his body flagging after the confrontation. He separated his legs into tentacles to better support himself.
“I’m proud of you.”
Qylar glanced to the side and found Ommit, the duke’s steward, at his side. He turned away, fighting his warring emotions. “I’m glad one of us is.”
“What is there not to be proud of?”
“They’re still my family.”
“A family who never considered your wellbeing in their greed. Had your parents cared for any of you children, they never would’ve done what they did.”
Qylar knew that was true, but there were also layers to it.
No one was wholly evil, not even his parents.
It had likely been more delusion—them thinking they wouldn’t be caught—that had made them overlook what might’ve happened to him.
At least, that’s what he told himself to prevent him from hating them more.
“I couldn’t believe my papa was guilty. Not at first. I’d only seen love from him.” Tears prickled at the backs of Qylar’s eyes again. “It never made sense. He’d taught me to be a good person all while secretly being a terrible one? How was that possible?”
Qylar hadn’t reconciled it yet. “Then the trials came, and he finally admitted that he’d known. I was… shattered. Everything I’d known was a lie. We were a rotted family, inside and out. All of us.”
Ommit rubbed a hand along Qylar’s back. “All but you, Qy. You were the one good thing they did.”
“But am I? Libault is right. I live in relative comfort compared to those my family harmed. What have I done to help them? Nothing.”
“Your family’s holdings were sold off. The money was used to help free their victims and set them up with a fresh start. Families of those who did not survive were compensated,” Ommit said.
“As if that fixed things,” Qylar said. “It wasn’t enough.”
“What more can you do? You can’t give them back their years of servitude. What you can do is honor the duke and all he’s given you.”
“I’ve been thinking of asking the duke if he might allow me to go into the Nefyrian Services.”
“And do what?”
“They’re begging for more pilots for their relief efforts. There seems to be a new crisis every week.”
Ommit scoffed. “You call yourself a pilot now?”
“I’ve been piloting Cryss’s ship for years. Learning to fly something in the Service’s fleet can’t be all that different.”
“Who’s flying something in the Service’s fleet?”
Qylar’s head whipped toward Cryss’s voice.
“Your friend here,” Ommit replied. “He wants to ask your father if he can join the Services and run relief missions across the galaxy—forgetting his duty to your household. Talk some sense into him, Lord Kreegl. Before your father gets wind of this.”
Ommit walked away, leaving them alone.
Qylar looked at the floor and the tips of his tentacles instead of the disappointment filling Cryss’s eyes.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
Qylar’s gaze lifted to Cryss.
“When do we leave?” Cryss asked.
“We?” Qylar asked, his jaw dropping.
“I’m as good a pilot as you are.”
“The hell you are,” Qylar quipped.
“You know full well my father won’t allow you to enlist. If I do, you can tell my father that I refused to listen to reason and you joined to keep watch over me—as any good friend would do.”
“Ommit knows what I wanted to do. He’ll tell your father.”
“I think you underestimate how much Ommit likes you. I’ve heard him defending you in conversations with my father.” Cryss rested his back against the column and looked out at the party. “I don’t think he’d tell.”
Qylar considered that a few seconds. “You don’t really want to join. You want to escape your parents’ matchmaking efforts.”
“Perhaps choosing to pilot dangerous missions through hostile territory instead of getting mated will impress upon them how much I don’t want them forcing my hand. Maybe it’ll get them to ease up.”
“Your parents are not going to ease up—at least not your father. He lost his chance to be king, and before he dies, he needs to know all his grandchildren will wear crowns.”
“My siblings have all happily and willingly done their duty. That takes the pressure off me.”
Sadly, Qylar knew that wasn’t the case. He’d overheard a conversation he had no business hearing.
Cryss’s father had admitted he’d been so focused on the crowns themselves that he hadn’t properly considered the power each kingdom wielded.
While Cryss’s siblings had made solid matches, they were all to smaller houses with wealth, power, and influence not unlike that of the duke.
Cryss was his last chance to make a connection with a powerhouse.
The duke planned to ensure his final child made the biggest match yet.
Qylar had been weighing his options—whether he told Cryss this news or not.
If he did, Cryss would absolutely confront his father.
If the duke found out it was him who’d told Cryss, he was quite sure it would be the end of him and his life in House Kreegl.
He’d gotten lucky once. There wasn’t going to be a second salvation waiting in the wings for him.
Where could he go in a world that hated him?
“I don’t want a political mating,” Cryss said.
“I want to be with someone I have a connection with—regardless if they’re royal or not.
Not forced into one, but when it’s supposed to happen.
” He smiled. “I need to make my parents see that I control my destiny, not them. Joining the Services would make a statement that I am my own man.”
Qylar nodded. “It would definitely make a statement.”
“If doing this pisses my parents off and does some good in the galaxy, even better. We’ll be helping those in need, and that’s the important part. Right?” Cryss searched Qylar’s face a few seconds. “Earning us some points in the good column and erasing some of the bad stuff.”
“What have you done that’s so bad?”
Cryss glanced around. “Living here isn’t enough?”
“You’re not at fault because your parents are rich,” Qylar muttered. “It’s not like you chose them.”
“Nor are you guilty for your parents, either.”
Qylar met Cryss’s gaze.
“But there’s nothing wrong with getting off our entitled asses and doing something that matters,” Cryss said.
“You’re the entitled one. Not me.”
“Whatever. Are we doing this or not?”
Qylar grinned. “I suppose we are.”
“Can we take a quick visit to Earth first? My grandfather’s been hounding me about coming to see him.”
Qylar grinned. He loved Cryss’s grandfather and the city of San Francisco where the dethroned king had exiled himself. “You don’t even have to ask.”