Chapter 2 #2
The docking bay stretched in every direction, a cathedral of gleaming metal and soaring arches.
Ships of varying sizes sat in orderly rows, their hulls catching the artificial light.
After the cramped filth of the alley and the claustrophobic darkness of the dropship, the sheer scale of it made her feel like an ant stumbling into a museum.
Then they descended on her.
They came from everywhere. Not warriors, but slender alien men in flowing robes of iridescent grey. They lacked the sheer, overpowering bulk of the Lathar warriors and moved with a fluid energy. Their hands were soft, their voices high and overlapping, punctuated by sharp gestures and nods.
"The Match has arrived—"
"Inform the Emperor—“
"—her condition, look at her condition—"
One grabbed her other arm as another touched her hair. A third was speaking directly into her face in accented English, something about protocols and timing, but the words blurred together into white noise.
"Hey!" She tried to pull back. "Excuse me, I—"
Nobody gave a flying rat's ass. They moved, and she was forced to move along with them, swept along like debris in a current. She craned her neck, looking for Raaevik, and found him a couple of steps behind. He stalked after her like a shadow, his violet eyes tracking every hand that touched her.
Good. At least the fanatic was consistent.
They herded her through a set of massive doors and down a corridor that seemed to stretch forever.
The walls were inlaid with something that looked like mother-of-pearl, catching the light and fracturing it into rainbows.
It would have been beautiful if she hadn’t been frog-marched through it like a prisoner.
There was another door and another room.
This one was smaller. Private. And packed with even more of the fussy, robed male attendants.
"In here, Your Grace."
The title made her blink. She opened her mouth to correct them, but hands were already pulling at her jacket.
"Wait! Stop—“
They didn't wait.
The jacket came off. Then her shirt. Then everything else.
She stood frozen, stunned into immobility as strangers stripped her with the efficiency of a pit crew. Her brain couldn't catch up. Shit. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. She was standing in a room full of alien men in her underwear, without so much as a by-your-leave.
"The fabric is unsuitable," one announced, holding up her pants like they were contaminated. "Dispose of it."
“Hey! They’re mine!" she managed, but the bustle around her swallowed her voice.
"Unsanitary."
They peeled off her bra. Her underwear.
"Eep!" She squeaked as heat flooded her face, burning all the way to her hairline. She slapped her hands over her chest and groin, curling in on herself as her gaze shot toward the door.
Oh god. Raaevik.
He was right there.
But he wasn't looking.
The big warrior stood just inside the threshold, feet planted wide, arms crossed over that massive chest, staring fixedly at one of the ceiling panels. The leather of his jacket strained across a chest broad enough to land a dropship on.
He was guarding the room. But he was giving her the only thing these other men wouldn’t… Privacy.
The attendants tutted at her modesty, pulling at her hands. “Please, Your Grace. We must assess the canvas."
Canvas. She was just a freaking canvas to them.
They guided her into an adjoining room. A bath…
no, not a bath. It was a damn pool. The water was warm and smelled of flowers she didn't recognize, sweet and cloying.
She was all but shoved into the water, and myriad hands scrubbed at her skin with soft brushes.
Fingers worked through her hair, untangling the curls that had become matted during her alley adventure.
Something oily was massaged into her scalp, her shoulders, the small of her back.
She stood in the center of it all like a prize poodle being groomed, or… cargo being polished for delivery.
One of the attendants pressed something against her upper arm. A small, cool square that tingled for half a second and then dissolved into her skin before she could look at it. A second followed on the other arm, gone just as fast.
"Hey, what was—"
"Standard preparation, Your Grace."
That was it. No explanation, no asking permission.
Just two somethings absorbed into her body and an attendant already moving on to her hair.
Just another indignity in a long line of them.
The anger was there, buried under layers of shock and smothered by the sheer overwhelming wrongness of everything.
They lifted her out of the pool and patted her dry with towels softer than anything she'd ever felt. The air was cool against her damp skin, raising goosebumps on her arms.
“Her grace is cold."
"The robes."
Someone approached with fabric draped over their arms. It looked like silk, and they wrapped it around her, layer after layer.
It was deep blue shot through with threads of silver that caught the light and clung to her, highlighting the curves she'd spent years learning not to hate.
Her mother's voice echoed in her head: If you'd just lose ten pounds, Emily. If you'd just try a little harder.
The attendants stepped back to admire their work.
"Perfect… The Emperor will be pleased."
"Your Grace looks radiant."
Your Grace.
This time, the words stuck and burrowed under her skin. Your Grace. As in, the future Empress. As in, the woman who would marry a man she'd never met. As in, property of the Latharian Empire.
Panic rose to lock off her throat.
She looked around the room, searching for something… anything. The attendants moved around her in their endless circles, like sharks, adjusting a hem here and smoothing a wrinkle there, utterly oblivious to the fact that she was drowning.
Oh god, the walls were too close. The silk was too tight around her. The scent of alien flowers was too strong… she couldn’t breathe.
Lifting her eyes, she caught Raaevik’s gaze. No longer studying the ceiling now that she was dressed, he was looking right at her. Watching her with those unsettling violet eyes.
She stared at him, clinging to his presence like a lifeline.
He crossed the room in three strides. The attendants parted around him without comment, their hands never pausing in their work. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to crane her neck to look at his face.
Fuck, he was big. Up close, he seemed even bigger.
"You are distressed.” It wasn’t a question.
"Brilliant observation." Her voice cracked. "Did the advanced alien technology tell you that, or did you figure it out from the hyperventilating?"
His jaw tightened. For a moment, she thought he would snap back at her—or worse, ignore her the way everyone else was. Instead, he leaned down.
His breath was warm against her ear, and his voice was soft, pitched so that only she could hear. "You outrank everyone in this room."
She blinked. "What?"
"You are the Emperor's Match. The future Empress. Your authority exceeds theirs." He leaned back to look at her. "If you want them gone, tell them to leave."
She stared at him. "I... they won't listen."
"They will."
"I tried. I told them to stop, and they—"
"You asked. Politely." An expression flickered in his gaze—not quite amusement, but close. "You are the Empress to be. You do not ask. You command. There is a difference."
She swallowed hard. Her throat was dry, her heart still racing. But something in his certainty sparked a tiny ember of defiance in her chest.
She was Emily freaking Evans. She'd survived twenty-eight years of Miranda Evans.
She could certainly handle a room full of fussy alien beauticians.
"Everyone," she said.
Her voice came out thin and wispy. The attendants didn't even look up.
"Everyone," she tried again, louder this time. "I need you to—"
Nothing. They kept adjusting, smoothing, pinning.
The panic clawed at her again, and this time her voice cracked entirely. "Please, I just need a minute, I—"
Raaevik moved.
He straightened to his full height, all seven feet of hard muscle and violence, and his voice snapped through the room like a thunderclap.
"OUT."
The word wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Every attendant in the room froze.
"Now," Raaevik added, his tone deadly soft.
They scattered, brushes clattering to the floor. The door hissed open, and they poured through it, moving with the speed of people who had just realized they were in the presence of a predator.
In five seconds, the room was empty.
The silence was deafening.
Standing in the center of the space, wrapped in silk worth a fortune, she stared at the closed door. Her ears rang, and her hands trembled, but she could breathe.
She rubbed at her upper arm absently. The skin where the patches had been felt normal. No mark, no residue. Nothing to show that anything had been there at all, which somehow made it worse.
"What did they put on me?"
Raaevik's gaze dropped to where her fingers were pressing into her arm. "A biotic. Standard immunization against anything aboard the station that your body hasn't encountered. And a neuro-translator."
"A what?"
"It will allow you to understand Latharian common speech. And most other languages used aboard."
She stared at him. "They put something in my brain. Without asking."
He didn't flinch. "Yes."
"And you didn't stop them."
"It is standard procedure for all—"
"Standard procedure." She laughed, and it came out high and brittle. "Someone put something in my brain that will change how I think, and it's standard procedure."
"It changes how you hear. Not how you think."
She opened her mouth to fire back, but the correction was so matter-of-fact, so devoid of condescension, that it took the wind out of her sails. She rubbed at her arm again. The skin was smooth. Unmarked. As though nothing had happened.
Story of her life today.
Sighing, she turned to look at Raaevik.
He stood exactly where he had been, arms at his sides, watching her with that unreadable expression. He didn't look proud of himself. He didn't seem to expect gratitude. He just waited.
Then he moved.
Not toward her. Toward the corner of the room, where the attendants had discarded her clothes. Her jeans were gone, vaporized or whatever they did with "unsuitable fabric." But her boots sat in a heap by the wall, scuffed leather and worn soles, the only piece of Earth she had left.
He picked them up and walked back to her.
Holding her gaze, he knelt in front of her while she stared at him in shock. What was this… some kind of weird alien ritual? He’d kidnapped her, and now he had a submissive thing going on?
“Lift up,” he ordered, motioning to her foot. She obeyed automatically.
“Good girl,” he murmured, sliding her boots onto her feet one by one.
"The silk slippers they provided have no traction," he said, not looking up. "The floors in the Great Hall are polished stone. You will slip."
She stared at the top of his head. At the boots. At him kneeling at her feet.
He'd noticed. When everyone else was busy erasing her, he'd noticed they were trying to throw away her boots. She blinked hard against the sting behind her eyes.
No, absolutely not.
There was no way she was going to cry over a pair of boots.