Grant’s got no idea how the tiny Taiikari women eat as much as their larger counterparts. The main course is a thick slab of gamey meat coated with pumpkin-orange chutney and Sykora eats hers faster than he does. The heat she’s always radiating makes sense, he supposes, if this is the metabolism Taiikari have.
As they decamp from the table, it coasts smoothly away from them on floor-bound casters, and the dance floor is left unoccupied. A polite cough draws Grant’s fascinated eye away.
A slim, black-clad servant is at his arm. “From the Baroness Konia, sir.” He presents Grant with a small burgundy envelope and departs.
Grant paces to the edge of the populating dance floor. At its center, the young man whose paintings he was admiring is being presented to polite society. A dour, slim Taiikari youth, whose spidery wire spectacles mark him as the only one in the hall with anticomps. Grant joins in the applause from the periphery, then opens the envelope.
The Baroness Arenta Konia kindly requests your presence at the Fifty-Eighth Ptolek Cloudsprint, in one tenday and three.
“What’s that?” Sykora’s followed him to the hexagonal rim of the floor. He passes her the invitation. He sees just a moment of elation cross her face, before a stormy expression bumps it away. She huffs in annoyance and gestures him down to a knee.
“You are my fucking hero and I would kiss you dizzy,” she murmurs, “but Konia’s surely got eyes on us. When you stand up, act like we’re fighting.”
He straightens up again, doing his best to look chastened and upset. Sykora’s got her arms crossed tight. “Horns,” he whispers.
She tosses her dark hair over the little blue nubs poking out of her scalp and pointedly avoids his eyes.
He watches the dancers gather on the floor. The music is a curious admixture of classical and electronic: legato string-instrument washes over an insistent rhythmic pulse of digital percussion. Grant wondered how a species with such a wide variance in height dances: the answer, it turns out, is “with great concentration.” The moves are acrobatic and precise, with husbands acting as platforms and bolsters for their wives. It’s all Grant can do not to gasp when, at the song’s swelling apex, a woman in flowing black is tossed into a twirling 720-degree spin and caught by her stonefaced beau.
“That’s Duchess Ixima. She never misses a chance to show off.” Sykora breaks her fake silent treatment.
“I’d ask you to dance,” he says out the corner of his mouth. “But I’d be terrified of dropping you.”
She glances his way. “Let’s not terrify you. I’ll teach you the steps sometime and we’ll be ready for the next one.” She steers him toward the ballroom doors. “How about we actually give that art gallery the time of day, hmm? And find a place to talk.”
He takes her arm and they leave the technicolor dance behind.
“I got you in hot water,” he says, keeping his voice quiet in the echoing hallway.
She shrugs. “You were confrontational. But what you said made sense. I’ll come up with a way to smooth it over with Reka. A privately given gift ought to suffice. She knows she overstepped.”
“I worry I did, too.”
Sykora sighs. “I wouldn’t say so. Some people at that table would.” Her tail brushes him. “But fuck them.”
Grant smiles. But the guilt doesn’t fade. This no apologies thing is harder than he thought it would be.
“There are things you think about that very few in the Empire do. That I don’t,” Sykora says. “There are contradictions. Sometimes I hold two different things in my head at once. Sometimes I’m not… good. Not like you are.”
“You are, Grant.” Her eyes burn. “You’re good and I’m not. I am ambitious and cruel and I subjugate planets, and it’s selfish of me to want your love anyway, but I do. I want you to promise me something.”
“When I get too evil, when what I choose will make you think less of me, challenge me.” She holds his hand tight as they enter the gallery. “Please. It might not change what I do. But at least I’ll… I’ll try. To explain myself, or mitigate, or make recompense.”
Her shoulders are tense. She’s been thinking the same things he has, he realizes, about her job. In reverse.
Her tail wraps around his leg. “But do it when we’re alone. That’s all I ask. So that we don’t have to pretend in front of my crew or those n’vekai at the table.”
“I promise.” He takes a knee and folds her into an embrace.
“Thank you.” Her little fingers rub his beard. She kisses his jaw. “Thank you, dove.”
I can change her, he realizes, as he feels the skin of her cheek on his. I’ve done it already. I can keep going. I can change her and she can change the Empire.
He stands up. “I didn’t get that last word, by the way. N’vekai?”
“An ugly little scavenger thing. I’ll show you a picture.” She snaps her fingers. “Picture! That’s reminded me. I promised I’d get you something from here. If you’d like.”
“I was looking at one earlier, actually.”
“Oh?” She takes his hand. “Which one?”
He leads her through the gallery. She looks warily around at the sea of eyes. “It’s very red.”
Grant points out the mural he was looking at earlier, the one with the black-on-black figures suspended within. “I love that big one, but I don’t know if we’ll get it to fit in the shuttle. What do you think of it?”
“It’s nice. I like the composition.” She tilts her head. “It’s a bit—abstract.”
“It is. But, uh. He captures it. The feeling. It doesn’t happen for me like it happens for the rest, of course, especially on the Pike, with the anticomps. But that’s the feeling.”
Sykora’s smile goes flat and contemplative at the edges. “It is?”
He nods. “Not with you, though.” His fingers glide through her hair and rub the choker on the back of her neck. “Not anymore.”
He sees the little nubs of her horns begin to poke out again. “How about I get you this painting,” she says. “And we’ll go back to the shuttle and see if we can make it fit.”
Sykora disengages the escape velocity thrusters. They float through silent firmament. “Was I cutthroat enough for you, Grantyde?”
Grant unbuckles from his seat. “You were downright merciless, Majesty.”
“I had a man to defend.” She punches the artificial gravity on and they settle into their seats. “Your first taste of the coterie in full force. Well done getting through it.”
His wife’s tail is wagging. His wife. Grant grins. That amrita’s had its desired effect. He feels loose and lifted.
Sykora glances his way. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“You are fascinating, do you know that? I watched you peel a woman apart in front of the entire coterie, and then you asked for permission before you ate.”
“What, the food?” She reddens. He loves the shade she turns when she blushes. “That was nothing. I just wasn’t particularly hungry today.”
“You’re imagining things.” Her horns are slowly rising further, parting her elegant hair. She coasts them slower, away from the holographically displayed route back to the Pike. Grant watches the speedometer zero out. “And you have a promise to keep, you know.”
She clicks herself free of her harness. “You said if I was cutthroat, you’d take me home and undress me.”
“We’re not all the way home yet.”
She pouts. “We’re on the shuttle. It’s my shuttle.” She pokes his knee. “The shuttle counts.”
“What about chasing those pirates off?”
“I’ve chased thousands of pirates off. I’ve only gotten fucked once.” She crosses her arms.
“Two rounds counts as one time.”
“Let’s make a deal.” Grant straightens his legs out and climbs from his seat. “I’ll give you what you’re looking for.” He pushes his thumbs lightly into her shoulders and watches her back arch. “But I won’t take that dress off you yet.”
“Deal.” She hops up so quick he needs to juke to avoid her horns bonking him. She scurries to the back of the shuttle. “Watch this.” She pushes two buttons on a console on the back seat. It folds down and rotates as it descends. A twin-sized mattress is now laying across the back of the shuttle.
“Pretty good, right?” Sykora bobs her eyebrows at him as she looks back. Her hips are wiggling. The frilly garters hugging her thighs peek into view. She cranes her neck up to him as he steps into the rear of the shuttle with her. “Well. Maybe it’s a little small, actually.”
He laughs. “It’s perfect. And we have the floor if we need it.” He sits at the edge of the bed. “Come here.”
With him sitting and her standing, she still needs to go on tiptoes to kiss him. His hands cup her heart-shaped butt over her satiny dress as she wiggles further into the space between his legs.
“Grant.” She pulls from the kiss and nuzzles against his scruff. “You’ll say if these little, uh… hijinks I’m doing unsettle you. Yes?”
“What, the submissive stuff? It’s new.” He braces himself. “But it’s hard to be upset when you’re being such a good girl.”
The little molten noise in her throat makes him chuckle. “Big pink smug bastard. I’m not a good girl. I’m a Princess. A Princess does not submit to a commoner.”
“My mistake.” He cups her cheek. “Do you want to get tied up?”
Her ears perk. “Yes.”
“Then get on your knees for me, Princess.”
She eagerly drops to the carpeted floor of the shuttle, smoothing the hem of her dress as she goes. Grant stands over her. His shadow looms across her face. He pauses in the middle of undoing his belt. “Uh. Maybe stand up again, actually. I forgot how short you are.”
She giggles. Her tail swats his thigh. “I’m not short. You’re too tall.”
“A majority opinion shared by you and half the doors. Hands behind your back, Majesty.”
She folds her arms back and lets him tie her wrists together. “I’m not submissive. I’m quite assertive. It’s just a matter of keeping things fair.”
“Uh huh.” He puts the buckle in her palm so she can undo it if she needs to. “Comfortable?”
“Very, thank you. On days we do what you want, I will be so dominant. You’ll see.”
With both of them standing, she’s at the perfect height for what he’s about to do to her. His hand rests on her cheek as he unbuttons his waistband. “I believe you.” Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on novel⁂fire.net
“I don’t want to owe debt. That’s all.”
His finger hooks under her choker and pulls her face gently forward. “Sure.”
“I’m a Princess, you know,” she says, and tugs down his fly with her teeth.