Page 27 of Alien God

I seized the chance, bringing the spoon upward. But before I could shove it in her mouth, she fixed me with a burning gaze and hissed something that threw me utterly off-balance. Off-balance because, somehow, we’d ended up in the bizarrely uneven position of her knowing my name when I did not know hers.

“Lord Wylfrael.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Torrance

The alien’s fist in my hair grew tighter, and I knew that my instinct was correct. So that is his name. I’d heard the phrase several times down in the entrance hall, and then the tall fox-looking alien who’d brought me to this room had mentioned it many times as well, her voice curving with deference around the syllables. AH-sha WOLF-rye-elle.

I didn’t have any clever follow-up to that, though. I’d simply wanted to make him stop, just for a moment. To see that I was smart, that I could listen, that I knew more about him than he’d maybe planned for. It seemed to have worked. Me calling him by his name had frozen him into a statue.

It was an absurd reaction. A reaction that might have gotten me killed. But I couldn’t help the exhausted giddiness that suddenly rose in my throat. My lips parted. I started to laugh.

Instantly, the statue thawed. His eyes narrowed viciously, flashing to my mouth. The next thing I knew, I was coughing and spluttering, half choking on warm, salty liquid, my teeth banging against a stone spoon. Asha Wylfrael released my hair, and I leaned forward, hacking and wheezing. When I’d recovered from my coughing fit, I raised my streaming eyes to find Asha Wylfrael coolly poised and waiting, his face smoothed into expressionlessness. The spoon he held was already filled with more soup, an unspoken but easily understood threat.

“Fine,” I croaked, holding out my hand for the spoon. It didn’t seem like there was any way to avoid eating it now, and by this point, I doubted it was poison. Why get me all the way up here just to poison me, when Asha Wylfrael could have killed me with a flick of his black-clawed fingers?

Defeated, I scooted my butt forward on the huge, flat seat of the pink crystal chair, taking the spoon and eating. The meaty soup’s flavours were unusual, the herbs more bitter than I was used to, but not necessarily unpleasant. A worrisome thought entered my mind – that even if it wasn’t intentionally poisoned, it might still make me sick. But I couldn’t do anything about that now. The ship, with all the human-safe rations, was gone. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to eat.

I should have thought of that before, I bemoaned silently, trying and failing to ignore the blue heat of Asha Wylfrael’s gaze on my mouth. I shouldn’t have refused the soup when she brought it. If I’d just eaten it in the first place, he wouldn’t have had to come up here.

But the fox-looking alien (whom I was pretty sure now was a “she”) was so gentle, so soft-spoken compared to him, that for the first time since Asha Wylfrael had pulled me from the snow, I hadn’t been afraid. I hadn’t been afraid to say no, to choose something for myself, even if it was as small as deciding not to eat the dinner. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Because now, he was here, my momentary illusion of safety and freedom evaporated under the cold scorch of his eyes.

I was too exhausted to maintain the defiance required to look at him, so I looked around the room instead. It was no prison cell. At least, not one with bars that I could see. It was fucking gorgeous, is what it was.

This was the highest room of the conical structure, and the ceiling arrowed upward into a point that gave the room a cathedral-like ceiling. The room wasn’t terribly large, since this was the narrowest point of the tower, after all, but the high, pointed ceiling made it feel expansive.

It seemed the aliens used their crystal trees in a similar way we’d use wood on Earth. The table and massive chair, built for an alien much larger than me, were carved from pink crystal, glinting like rose quartz. The walls were the same colour, and I was now fairly certain that the towers hadn’t been constructed from crystal, but rather carved out of gigantic trees that had grown up naturally in these spots. Behind me was a sumptuous-looking bed, its frame dark green, and ahead was a huge fireplace with a hearty fire that warmed the room. Still no wood there. Like I’d seen in the entry hall with the odd rock-like lanterns, this fire, too, seemed to have a large stone for fuel, a white boulder engulfed in a flickering, tear-drop-shaped flame. Beside the fire was a large indent carved into the floor and inlaid with spiralling designs of tile. I wasn’t sure what that was for, yet. Beyond that was what looked like a small room built out of the crystal wall. The door was shut, and the fact I couldn’t see inside unnerved me. A spark of panic ignited when I thought that it could be some kind of interrogation room.

My stomach churned, and I put down my spoon in the now-empty bowl. Asha Wylfrael said something above me, his tone biting, and I jumped, my gaze swinging wildly to meet his. He was frowning. At least, I thought he was. His features were arranged similarly to a human’s, but who knew if the expressions meant the same thing? But I heard him laugh... In the entrance hall, I’m sure I heard him laugh.

He spoke again, gesturing a black claw at my bowl. Confused, I followed the line of his finger until I saw a few bits of stringy material left. Some kind of fibrous root vegetable, I was pretty sure.

I hesitated for a moment before clarity dawned.

“Are you seriously telling me to eat all my vegetables right now?” I asked, tone rising in disbelief. It was so absurd I wanted to laugh. But the last time I’d done that in front of him, I’d nearly choked to death on the spoon he’d shoved in there, and I wasn’t looking to repeat that experience anytime soon. Under his relentlessly stern observation, I scooped up the last bites and ate them.

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