Chapter 3 #2
Marina didn't know what to say. She'd organized the meal for practical reasons; morale, alliance-building, demonstrating goodwill.
She hadn't thought of it as anything deeper than that.
But Toren had seen something in the gesture that she'd missed.
Something that apparently mattered to him a great deal.
"It's just dinner," she said.
"No," he replied. "It isn't."
The twin suns dropped below the horizon.
The sky turned from brown to a deep amber, and then to a darkness punctured by more stars than Marina had ever seen.
Someone on the crew pulled out a portable speaker and played music.
It was something old, from Earth, with a guitar and a woman's voice singing about rivers and home.
Toren listened with his head tilted and his eyes closed, and as Marina watched him listen, she didn't pretend it was for scientific reasons.
* * *
The next morning, she found Toren outside the ship at dawn.
He was sitting on the same rocky outcropping where he'd first landed, his legs hanging over the edge, watching the twin suns rise.
The smaller sun came first. It was a white point of intense light that climbed fast and sharp.
The larger sun followed, amber and heavy, filling the sky with heat that made the air shimmer.
"Do you sleep?" Marina asked, climbing up to join him. She'd brought two cups of the terrible instant coffee from the ship's stores. She handed him one.
He took it, sniffed it, and looked at her with an expression of polite alarm. "What is this?"
"Coffee. It's a stimulant. Humans drink it in the morning to feel alive."
"You need a chemical to feel alive?"
"You'd be surprised how much maintenance human consciousness requires.
" She sat beside him, leaving a careful distance between them.
Not too close, not too far. The diplomatic distance.
"We're fragile compared to your species.
No scales, no fire, no wings. We compensate with caffeine and stubbornness. "
He took a sip of the coffee. His reaction was similar to the protein bar; a journey through several emotional stages, ending in grim acceptance. "This is worse than the food."
"That's fair."
They sat in silence for a moment. The twin suns climbed higher, and the heat pressed down on them like a hand.
The red landscape stretched in every direction, broken by smoking vents and the dark ridges that Marina was starting to think of as Ceylara's skeleton; the bones of a planet that had never bothered growing skin.
"Tell me about Dobromia," she said. Toren was quiet for a few seconds. When he spoke, his voice had a quality she hadn't heard before. Something softer. Something that sounded like homesickness.
"It's underground, mostly. The Colony; that's what we call our capital, is built into a network of caves and tunnels beneath the surface.
The surface is too hot during the day, and the Drogs make it dangerous at night.
So, we went down. Carved cities out of stone, used the geothermal vents for power and heat, built a civilization in the dark. "
"That sounds..." She searched for the right word. "Resilient."
"It sounds like a prison," he corrected gently.
"A beautiful prison, with bioluminescent light and waterfalls that generate power and volcanic glass that we carve into everything from tools to art.
But a prison. We don't see the sky, Marina.
We don't feel the wind. When I fly on Ceylara, even in this heat, even with the Drogs, it's the freest I've ever felt. "
She looked at him. He was staring at the horizon with those blue eyes that seemed to catch every shade of light the twin suns threw at them.
His rose-gold scales glinted along his forearms. He looked, she thought, like someone who'd been holding his breath for a very long time and was only now remembering how to exhale.
"Why is your planet dying?" she asked. "You mentioned food shortages."
"The twin suns are destabilizing. The smaller one;" he pointed to the white point in the sky, “is showing early signs of collapse.
It won't happen soon. Maybe decades, maybe centuries.
But the effects are already compounding.
Surface temperatures are rising, the food chains are disrupted, and our population is growing faster than our agriculture can support. "
"Earth could help with that."
"I know."
"Is that why you really approached us? Not just food and resources. You're looking for an ally."
He turned to her, and the honesty in his face was so complete it almost hurt to look at.
"I'm looking for a future. Dobromia doesn't have one.
Not alone. My father doesn't want to hear that.
He believes our problems are ours to solve.
He's wrong, and I think he knows he's wrong, but admitting it would mean admitting that twenty generations of isolation were a mistake. "
"Your father."
"The D'Karr. The king." He said it like it was an afterthought, but Marina caught it.
"Your father is the king."
"Yes."
"Which makes you..."
"The prince. Yes." He had the decency to look sheepish. "I probably should've mentioned that earlier."
"You probably should've mentioned that first." Marina stared at him.
The prince. She'd been negotiating a truce with the prince of an alien species, and he'd introduced himself like he was just some guy on a scouting mission.
"Is there anything else you've forgotten to mention?
Are you also a God? Do you control the weather? "
"I can breathe fire. Isn't that enough?"
She wanted to be angry. She couldn't quite manage it.
The way he'd said it; the self-deprecating honesty, the slight wince of someone who knew he'd been caught, made it impossible to hold a grudge.
He wasn't hiding his identity for strategic advantage.
He was hiding it because he didn't want it to change how she treated him.
That was either very noble or very foolish, and Marina suspected it was both.
"This changes the truce," she said carefully.
"It doesn't have to."
"You're a prince, Toren. You can authorize things that a regular scout can't. You can make promises that actually stick. That's not a small difference."
"I can also invite you to Dobromia to meet my father. To show him what I've already seen; that your species isn't a threat. You're potential allies; partners." He paused. "Would you consider it?"
The question landed heavier than an invitation. Marina looked at the twin suns, at the red landscape, at the broken ship behind them that Rowan still couldn't fix without materials they didn't have.
"Let me talk to my crew," she said. "But yes. I'd consider it."
Toren smiled. It was the same smile from the day they met. The one that showed teeth and that he probably didn't realize he was doing. The one that made her chest do things she was choosing not to analyze.
"Thank you, Marina."
"Don't thank me yet. My sister's going to have a lot of questions about why you didn't mention the prince thing."
"I'm aware. I've seen the way she looks at people who annoy her."
"That's actually her neutral expression. When she's really annoyed, she doesn't look at you at all. She just starts cleaning her weapons."
"Noted," he replied, and she could hear the laugh underneath the word, and the laugh underneath it was the most human sound she'd ever heard from an alien.