Chapter 30
No one spoke the entire ride.
I would glance at Zale, but he didn’t say anything.
He would just look back at me with a steady, expressionless stare.
He was definitely leaving me. He was having post-nut clarity and couldn’t wait to get away from the crazy clingy alien who expressed her clinginess by flirting with other guys and running away from him.
Yeah, I was not starting that conversation.
I ended up staring out the window.
We approached a floating castle.
Arnina didn’t seem to have noticed, and was busy staring at her hands, lost in thought.
Out of my window I could see the small island of a building floating over a large green patch in a sea of smaller, shorter buildings that were dramatically different than the huge towering skyscrapers in the rest of the city.
There were several lines going up and down from the island to the squatter neighborhood below it.
It was fairly high up and was held in place by huge cables that anchoring it to the ground.
The palace looked like it was carved from one giant white crystal, pearlescent walls rising into the sky with ribbed striation that caught the light and sent rainbows shimmering on the ground and the sides of the surrounding buildings.
It was so pretty I couldn’t stand it.
Where was the metal and space-age shit?
This was some floating crystal palace elf craziness.
I looked up at the sky, expecting to see two moons, but all I saw was that enormous floating purple-white planet. My pop culture expectations had been utterly thwarted. There were no wolf riders here, and even if they were, they were totally not into banging humans.
So I glared back at the floating palace.
“Ostentatious,” I murmured.
The troop carrier landed first, soldiers pouring out of it and rushing into the building. We landed behind the carrier and followed through a small set of golden doors.
Arnina broke into a run, and I followed her.
We burst into what was definitely a throne room.
It was a vast, ethereal chamber adorned with iridescent crystal walls that seemed to shift and shimmer with ever-changing hues.
It made me feel a little nauseated, so I tried to look anywhere but at the walls.
The ceiling stretched high above, creating an illusion of infinite space, and was studded with pulsating stars.
“I demand the right to protect my mate!” Arnina sang in the alien song, her voice echoing through the room with the power of an opera singer. “Release my mate at once!”
My seastar did not waste any time telling everyone what she was about.
I slowed to a stop near the door as she strode ahead of me.
Boy Toy was standing in the center of the room.
Three gnarled-looking cat elves sat on ornate thrones set on a raised dais in front of him. The room was lined with soldiers, and I blinked for a moment, focusing on them for a moment.
They had the exact same uniforms as the soldiers that ran off of the troop carrier ahead of us.
Oh my god - this was totally a coup.
Why were these freaking aliens involving us in a coup?
This was ridiculous. I didn’t even have a weapon.
Why would Boy Toy’s mom tell us to go here, be a part of a coup, and just yell at the three overly flamboyant rulers? At the very least, we could shoot them or something useful that would actually make a difference. Words were not going to do anything.
I definitely did not want to be here, but it was too late.
Fear flashed through me. Arnina just stood there, her fists clenched, utterly defiant and determined to go through with whatever this was.
I looked around me, searching for Zale.
He had hung back near the door with me. Just the sight of him next to me filled me with relief. This was the man who murdered my abusers and panicked at the thought of losing me when I had swum in the ice pool. Even if he was going to leave me soon, he was here now.
He would keep me safe.
Plus, I was pretty sure his soldiers had just infiltrated the ranks of the castle guards.
Whatever was about to go down was going to go down hard.
“What?” One of the clearly soon to be dethroned douche knuckles looked over Neen’s head at his guards. “Who let that thing in here?”
Ewww, he called her a thing.
Definitely worthy of being overthrown.
Yreta leaned over towards Arnina.
“It’s called the mate’s right to protection,” she muttered, quietly correcting Arnina.
“I demand the mate’s right to protection!” Arnina repeated.
“Who exactly is your mate?” a different douche knuckle asked.
Arnina lifted a small tablet and tapped on it, taking a moment to adjust the earbud in her ear.
“Makrus Auro Fironus is my mate,” she called out, her inflection perfect to describe her righteous anger. Gah, she was so good at repeating what she heard sung out on her tablet. What a great use of it.
“He protected me from the sabaxl and saved my life. I now demand my right to have my mate protect me from those who threaten our bond. From those who threaten my life.”
Oh, so she was yelling at them to give her Boy Toy some sort of legal protection?
Not only were we involved in a coup, but we were now offering these cage happy cat elves some sort of legal reasoning for the coup that was about to happen.
The third douche knuckle glanced over to where a cat elf was standing and holding a device with a large lens on it and opened his mouth.
There was no other warning.
The Boy Toy bellowed, roaring over him with a jagged tone that was not like him.
It sounded like someone had taken a bag of dirty rocks and shoved it down his throat to use as a gag.
Given that he was wearing an odd-looking collar, my better guess was that the douche knuckles were using some sort of vocal suppressant on him that was making it hard for him to roar.
He dropped his weight into a deep squat, causing the two guards holding his arms to stagger, suddenly burdened with the entirety of his body weight. It dragged them in towards him just as he launched upwards, pulling his arms free of their grips.
He did a split kick in the air like a gorram ninja, kicking the two of them away from him at the same time.
Ok, I couldn’t call him Boy Toy anymore.
Action figure Boy Toy? No, not that one.
Maybe a ninja toy?
I was going to need a good new nickname.
He landed out of his kick and launched himself straight towards the elevated stage.
He leaped, just like I’d seen the fighters doing in the training room when they practiced sparring. That meant some shit was about to go down. He was totally going to fight them.
Wait, had Arnina just given him the legal right to kick their asses?
Not Boy Toy landed, feet first, in one of the douche knuckles’ guts, his left hand going straight for the jerk's throat.
Suddenly, there was blood.
A lot of blood.
It was spraying out of the doucheknuckle’s throat.
I looked away, uncomfortable by the visceral excitement that rose inside of me.
I should feel nauseous, or scared, or something, but instead, I felt… delighted?
I looked anywhere but at the stage.
Grunts and screams and thuds from the stage echoed in the room to a background of not complete silence.
I stared at the soldiers who were doing absolutely nothing.
No, not nothing. Over there, one of the soldiers was holding another back while whispering in their ear.
Others were looking around, looking for someone to order them, only to see several of their own comrades making gestures to stay still, to not get involved.
Oh, Zale had hardcore planned this.
Not only did he have soldiers in the palace guard uniform, but they were prepped to keep the rest of the guards from interfering with murder mayhem Boy Toy.
“Guards!” Douche knuckle number two screamed, causing me to look back at the stage as he scrambled backward over the arm of his chair.
The other two were dead.
You couldn’t lose that much blood without dying.
Plus, it was definitely impossible to be alive with your throat ripped out like that. The chair climbing douche knuckle number three was the last one left standing.
“Defend the Prince as he protects his rightful claim!” Yreta bellowed at the top of her lungs over the terrified doucheknuckle. “He protects his mate! He has proof that the regents have been up to foul and illegal business!”
Oh yeah, they brought Arnina here because she absolutely just gave her man toy the legal right to destroy his enemies utterly.
These cat elves were violent.
But strangely organized about it.
Pounce happy man toy. Nope, I didn’t like that one, either.
Anyway, the Boy Toy landed in the middle of the last remaining doucheknuckle’s back, taking him down to the floor.
I turned away and tried not to listen to the sound of choking.
“Arnina, come with me,” the Murder Kitty said. “I need you.”
That was it, that was the one - Murder Kitty.
I whipped back around to see him holding out his hand to Arnina, looking all proud and shit while blood dripped off his claws.
“Neen, I got your back if you want to change your mind and run now,” I said. “If you’re not into it, I’m still down to hit that.”
Gah, why did I even say that?
I was not down to hit that.
Arnina bit her lip, and I could tell she was holding in laughter, thank goodness.
Right. That is why I said it.
I said it because we had been kidnapped, frozen in time, sold as captive animals, and then rescued by murderous monster elf cats who wanted to hook up with us. Sometimes, I had to say ridiculous things just to deal with the tension that wound up
in my chest like a spring.
None of this was normal.
I had to forgive myself when I dealt with things in an abnormal way. Just because your average person would run around screaming and crying because they just saw some aliens go ape shit murder happy on each other didn’t mean I had to react that way.
Not all brains worked the same, and mine was strangely calm with this.
Also alarmingly, enchanted.
I was not ready to face that reaction, so I was going to stick with calm instead.
“I got this, seastar,” she said.
She walked up to the Murder Kitty and took his blood slicked hand.
“Yreta, you’re the new captain of the palace guard, as you already know,” the Murder Kitty said. “You know the plan.”
“I’ve already called in the team,” she said. Then she turned to look out at the rest of the guards and people still standing around the edges of the room as Murder Kitty took Arnina to the back of the room and vanished.
“You, you, and you!” Yreta said, pointing to several guards in succession. “We have to get this room revamped in time for the press conference.”
I took a deep breath.
Great.
I followed her to this coup and put myself in danger of being ditched again for a guy.
Typical Arnina, focusing on the man in her life over all else.
It didn’t make her a shit friend unless, of course, that guy in her life was actually evil incarnate, which this guy, despite being coated in the blood of his enemies, did not seem to be.
He wasn’t anything like her ex.
It was fine.
I was fine.
I shook my head. Should I even have come?
Looked around me for Zale, but he had vanished.
And just like that, I was alone.
One of the guards was standing at my elbow.
I turned to look up at him.
“The Emperor is coming,” he said. “You must get ready to meet him. I will take you to your room.”
I was not going to make this mistake again. No following some random person off to who knows where.
I whipped out my translator.
“I don’t know you,” I typed out. “Who told you to escort me?”
The guard half flicked his ears back with minor annoyance.
“The Emperor’s errand boy,” the guard said. Then he reached out and grabbed my bicep, pulling me up painfully so I was forced to stand up on my toes. “Just because he can be dyed and dressed up to be a stand-in for his royal mightiness doesn’t mean he has the right to order us guards around.”
Who was he talking about?
Was he talking about Zale?
His grip on my bicep pinched.
“You’re hurting me,” I said as he half dragged me out a side door and down a hallway. He was so much stronger than I was. I had nothing. No weapon, no one I recognized within sight.
His grip relaxed, but he didn’t release me.
“I’m putting you in your room as I was ordered so you can be summoned at the Emperor’s leisure,” he snapped. “Then I’m getting out of here. I’m not sticking around for the Emperor to show up.”
He pushed me through a doorway and shut it behind me.
I rubbed my bruised elbow to discover small pinpricks of blood from where the guard's claws had pierced my skin.
Zale was the Emperor’s errand boy?