Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
FERCER
There’s a woman in my closet.
A human woman, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve seen enough HoloNet coverage to recognize the species: small, soft-looking, utterly without horns or claws or any natural defenses whatsoever.
She’s also wrapped in my second-most-expensive jacket, the midnight blue one with the silver threading that cost more than most people’s ships. She’s wearing it like a blanket—like it’s nothing.
And she’s eating something that is getting crumbs all over the material.
Her cheeks are stuffed full, her jaw working furiously as she stares up at me with wide eyes. In one hand, she clutches what appears to be half of some kind of… lump? The smell hits me, sweet, unfamiliar, clearly handmade. Not replicated.
My hand freezes halfway to the comm device on my belt.
Stalker, my brain screams. Someone broke into my closet. Someone is in my space again, just like the worms, just like all the other violations.
But stalkers don’t usually look this panicked. Or this hungry. And they definitely don’t offer you their food.
Because that’s what she’s doing. She’s extending the half-eaten dumpling toward me like some kind of deranged peace offering, her expression caught somewhere between terror and what I can only describe as aggressive hospitality.
“Wmph wm?” she manages around her mouthful.
I stare at her.
She stares at me.
The dumpling hovers between us.
“Did you just—” I trail off, genuinely unsure how to finish that sentence.
Did she just offer me her partially chewed food?
Did she just break into my ship to have a snack?
Did she just look at me—me, Fercer, the most recognized face in three star systems—and decide the appropriate response was a mumbled greeting and a soggy dumpling?
She holds up one finger in the universal gesture for “wait,” then chews with renewed determination. Her throat works as she swallows.
“Sorry about that,” she says, voice slightly hoarse. “Want some? It’s good. Well, it was good. It’s a bit cold now. And I’ve already eaten half of it. So maybe don’t want some, actually. Forget I offered.”
She pulls the dumpling back toward her chest protectively, as if I might suddenly lunge for it.
I have performed for crowds of fifty thousand screaming fans. I have charmed diplomats, seduced nobles, and talked my way out of three separate backstage ambushes by fans who wanted to smell my horns. I have never, in my entire career, been this lost for words.
“Who are you?” I demand, finally finding my voice. “How did you get on my ship?”
“I’m Sandra.” She says it like that explains everything—like I should know who Sandra is, like Sandra is a household name.
She waits.
I wait.
She frowns. “This is the part where you introduce yourself.”
“I… what?”
“It’s basic manners.” She shifts slightly, and the jacket—my jacket—slips off one shoulder. She tugs it back up absently, like she’s done this a hundred times. Like she lives here and this is hers, not mine. “I give you my name, you give me yours. It’s how civilized species communicate.”
I feel my eye twitch.
She doesn’t know who I am.
That’s… that’s not possible. My face is on billboards across half the galaxy. My songs play in every spaceport, every station, every—
“Well?” She raises an eyebrow. Actually raises an eyebrow at me, like I’m the one being difficult here. “Do you have a name, or should I just call you Jacket Guy? Since you apparently need this many.”
She gestures at the racks of clothing surrounding her. “Seventeen, by the way. I counted. You have seventeen jackets. That seems excessive.”
“Fifteen of those are performance costumes,” I say, before I can stop myself. Why am I defending my wardrobe to a stowaway? “And I know you snuck aboard my ship, hid in my closet, ate your…” I gesture vaguely at the dumpling. “Your whatever that is, and now you’re critiquing my fashion choices?”
“It’s a dumpling. Or at least it’s close to an Earth dumpling.
And I’m not critiquing; I’m observing. There’s a difference.
” She takes another bite, apparently deciding that if she’s going to be arrested, she might as well not be hungry when it happens.
“Also, again, not critiquing, but I am concerned. Seventeen jackets suggests a deeply unstable personality. Or a theater kid. Same thing, really.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
Who is this woman?
My hand moves back toward my comm. One call to security and this will all be over. She’ll be escorted to the brig. We don’t actually have a brig, but we have a storage closet that locks from the outside, and I can go back to my regularly scheduled existential crisis in peace.
“Please don’t.”
Her voice has changed. The sharp humor drains away, her face changing color from a delicate pink to an off-white—the kind of color that a Volscian gets when dead or severely sick, which is deeply unsettling.
She’s not looking at my face anymore. She’s looking at my hand, at the comm device, and there’s real fear there.
The kind of fear I recognize from my own mirror on bad nights when I don’t even recognize myself.
“Please,” she says again, quieter. “I just… I needed to get to Cardonia. That’s all. I wasn’t going to steal anything or cause trouble. I just needed passage, and your ship was going to the right place, and I didn’t have any other options.”
She swallows hard. Her fingers have gone white around the remains of her dumpling.
“I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll hide the whole trip. You won’t even know I’m here. Just—please don’t call security. Please don’t—“ She trails off, but I can fill in the rest. Please don’t throw me out. Please don’t send me back. Please don’t make me face whatever I’m running from.
I know that fear. I’ve been living with a version of it for months now: the feeling of being hunted. Trapped. Desperate for any escape route, even a bad one.
My hand drops away from the comm.
Her shoulders sag with relief. “Thank you. Really. I… thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” I fold my arms across my chest, trying to project authority, unnerved by what appears to be such an earnest and genuine response. “I haven’t decided what to do with you.”
“Fair enough.” She takes another bite. Another bite. “I appreciate the not-immediately-calling-security, though. That’s more than most people would do.”
Something in her tone makes my chest tighten unexpectedly. Most people. What kind of life has this small, hungry, jacket-stealing human lived that “not immediately calling security” counts as kindness?
Before I can respond, a knock echoes through the suite.
We both freeze.
“Fercer?” Vyla’s voice, honey-sweet, filters through the door. “I thought we could have dinner together. Just the two of us. I’ve already had the chef prepare your favorites.”
My mind races. If Vyla finds a stowaway in my closet, a female stowaway, all hell will break loose.
My instincts tell me that this little human isn’t my stalker.
She’s too… innocent. But if she’s caught here, now, she will be thrown in jail.
Especially since the label is wanting to be done with this whole stalker situation wrapped up as fast as possible, all so I can go back on tour. Keep working. No break at all.
I want my break. Vyla’s convinced me I should take it, and I definitely one hundred and ten percent deserve it. The vacation that was supposed to be an escape will become an even smaller cage.
Another knock, more insistent. “Is everything all right? You’re not answering.”
The human, Sandra, is staring at me with wide eyes, clearly calculating her odds of fitting further into the closet. She’s started chewing faster, like she’s trying to destroy the evidence of her existence.
And my brain—my traitorous romance-novel-saturated brain—suddenly offers up an absolutely unhinged solution.
Fake relationship. Forced proximity. The perfect cover.
It’s the plot of literally every third book I’ve ever read. It never works. It always gets complicated. People catch feelings. Misunderstandings abound. Hearts get broken.
It’s also the only plan I have.
And let’s face it: I am definitely not going to fall in love with a sticky-fingered, crumb-covered human female.
So that makes it a great plan.
“I need you to be my fiancée,” I blurt out.
Sandra chokes on her dumpling.
“What?”
“Just for the trip. Just until we reach Cardonia.” The words are tumbling out now, faster than I can think them through. “That woman at the door—she’s my manager. If she finds you here… If she thinks I’m in danger, I’m never going to get my holiday. She’ll be stuck to me like gum on a shoe.”
“And this is my problem how?” Sandra asks.
“Look, you need passage, and I want a holiday. If I tell her we’re secretly engaged, she’ll leave things be. Then when we reach Cardonia, you can go your way and I’ll get my vacation. So this is… it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“You want me to pretend to be engaged to you.” Sandra’s voice is flat. “To a man whose name I still don’t know.”
How can she seriously not know my name!? Holographic billboards, virtual reality, holovids, entire amphitheaters, and yet—
“Fercer,” I say, drawing myself up to my full height. “My name is Fercer. The Devil of Volscian Rock.”
I wait for the gasp. The sudden recognition. The stammered apology for not immediately recognizing me.
Sandra snorts.
“Devil… So you’re like a bad boy, huh?” She looks me up and down—me, in my performance costume, horn caps gleaming, standing in front of my wall of jackets—and her mouth twitches. “Let me guess. You stay up past your bedtime. You jaywalked once and felt guilty about it for a week.”
“I’m a rock star,” I say flatly. “I’ve performed for crowds of fifty thousand. My face is on billboards across three star systems.”
She takes another bite of her dumpling, completely unbothered. “Sure you are.”
“I…” I gesture at myself. At the silver threading. At the horn caps. “I literally just finished a concert. There were encores.”
“Mmhmm.” She nods the way someone nods when humoring a small child’s elaborate fantasy. “Very impressive. Love the commitment to the bit.”
She thinks I’m joking. She genuinely thinks I’m making this up.
My eye twitches.
“The bit,” I repeat.
“The whole Devil thing.” She waves her dumpling at me. “It’s cute. Goes with the leather jackets, your spiky tail and horns.”
I have never, in my entire career, been this lost for words.
I have charmed diplomats, seduced nobles, and talked my way out of three separate backstage ambushes by fans who wanted to smell my horns.
And this woman—this dumpling-stealing, jacket-wearing, complete disaster of a stowaway—thinks I’m doing a bit.
It’s the most refreshing thing that’s happened to me in years.
Also incredibly annoying.
Before I can decide which emotion to lead with, a knock echoes through the suite.
“Fercer.” Another knock. Vyla’s voice has taken on an edge. “I’m getting concerned. Should I call security?”
“One minute!” I call back, then drop my voice to an urgent whisper. “Look, I know this is insane. But you need safe passage and I want my holiday. We help each other, we go our separate ways on Cardonia, everyone wins.”
Sandra stares at me for a long moment. I can practically see her weighing the options: bizarre fake engagement versus whatever she’s running from.
“I want meals,” she says finally.
“What?”
“Meals. Included. I’m hungry.” She lifts the sad remains of her dumpling as evidence. “This is the last of my food.”
“Fine. Meals.”
“And you stop looking at me like I’m something you scraped off your boot.”
“I wasn’t—” I stop, because honestly, I might have been. “Fine.”
“FERCER.” The door handle rattles. “I’m coming in.”
Sandra shoves the last bite of dumpling in her mouth, wipes her hands on my extremely expensive jacket, and stands up.
“Okay,” she says, cheeks bulging slightly. “Let’s do this.”
She looks ridiculous. She looks like a disaster. She looks absolutely nothing like someone I would ever actually be engaged to.
I open the door anyway.
Vyla stands in the doorway, hand raised to knock again, mouth already forming words of concern. Her eyes sweep past me, land on Sandra. She goes very, very still.
“Vyla.” I summon every ounce of performance training I have. I reach back, find Sandra’s hand, small and slightly sticky from the dumpling, and lace my fingers through hers. “I’d like you to meet Sandra. My fiancée.”
The silence stretches.
Vyla’s expression cycles through shock and disbelief. “Your fiancée?”
Her gaze drops to our joined hands, then back up to Sandra, definitely wearing my clothes. “You’ve never mentioned her before.”
“A rock star has to have some secrets.” I pull Sandra closer to my side. She stumbles slightly. She’s even shorter than I realized, barely reaching my chest. “It would ruin my image if everyone knew I was taken.”
“Indeed.” Vyla’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” I say, guilt borrowing its way in. “I was planning on telling you—it’s just everything moved so fast, and—”
“I get it.” Vyla smiles, holding a placating hand up between us. “So where exactly did you two meet?”
“Oh, you know,” Sandra says, her voice only slightly strangled. “Around.”
I resist the urge to close my eyes in despair.
“Around,” Vyla repeats. Her eyes jump to mine, as if she’s trying to ascertain whether I’m in danger.
“We’re very private about it,” I jump in. “You understand. With the current situation, we wanted to keep things quiet. For our safety. But Sandra insisted on coming with me to Cardonia, and I couldn’t bear to be apart from her. Could I?”
I look down at Sandra. She looks up at me. Her expression very clearly says, I cannot believe I agreed to this.
“No,” she manages. “You couldn’t. Because of... love. And things.”
Love. And things.
We are so incredibly doomed.
“She’s also really shy,” I add, hoping that it sounds more like a statement and less like a question.
Whatever Vyla suspects, she can’t prove anything. Not yet. Her lips press into a thin line. We just have to keep this ruse up long enough for me to get my holiday.
“Well,” she says, her voice perfectly controlled. “I suppose I’ll leave the two of you to your dinner, then. I’ll inform the chef that we need an extra portion.” She turns on her heel. “So lovely to meet you, Sandra.”
The door clicks shut behind her.
Sandra and I stand frozen, hands still clasped, staring at the closed door.
“That went well,” Sandra says weakly.
I look down at the woman I’ve just claimed as my fiancée—a stowaway, a human, a complete stranger who didn’t even know my name five minutes ago.
What have I done?