Page 79 of Her Lawless Prince

Payton turned on the funeral pyre to let it burn. She grabbed the shirt from the ground and slipped it over her head. The cougar, Anwir, remained half shifted as he came from the trees to stand next to her. The man was a young guard, maybe only a decade out of his training. She knew him from the palace but had not spoken with him.

Two land crafts emerged from the trees. Armed soldiers leaped down before the vehicles came to a complete stop. The soldiers held blasters at the ready as they searched the sky for dragons.

As attention turned toward her, Payton said, “You’ve done your damage. You’re no longer welcome on this planet. I suggest you leave.”

One of the women motioned toward the pyre, giving a silent order to retrieve it. Her name tag read Robbie.

Payton moved to stand in front of the fire to stop them. She extended her claws. “We bury our own. Leave him.”

Anwir growled in warning to offer his support.

“Gather the prisoner’s remains,” Robbie stated, again motioning her underlings to move. “Bio evidence needs to be logged.”

The heat from the fire became uncomfortable, but Payton didn’t move. She focused past the emotions churning inside of her. “They tested him before the execution. You don’t need more.”

“They’ll test again. Protocol.” Robbie jerked her hand harder than before to punctuate her orders to her men.

The cougar gave another growl of warning, causing the soldiers to hesitate.

“We have orders,” Robbie stated. “You want us gone? We need that pyre. Create trouble, and we’ll take it by force to fulfill our orders. Stop us, and more will come.”

Payton took several deep breaths, staring them down. She slowly stepped aside.

The soldiers swarmed the pyre, switching off the flames. Breeze blew the remaining ash. One of the soldiers punched his finger at the controls without looking at his hands as if it were a task he’d done a million times before. A containment field appeared over the remains, stopping the ash leak, and the pyre lifted to hover over the ground for transport.

“Get it to the ship’s medical team. They’ll confirm,” Robbie said, climbing back onto a transport.

Payton felt her eyes water as she watched them push her friend away. She held on to the hope that they only took a shell, that Nyle would be able to revive Yevgen’s mind, like rebooting a program. But what if everyone was right about the cyborg? People tried to tell her Yevgen was just a machine, that he couldn’t love her.

Payton did not have answers to what it meant to be alive. A feeling was more than a recorded fact. It did not live in programming. But perhaps it did live in memories, and what were those if not a recording of the past?

Humanoid life could not be resurrected from ash. People did not get to come back from that kind of death. Was this the end of her friend? Would anything they found and put into a new body merely be a recording, an echo, of the past? Like a passage scrolled into a book or a holographic image?

Or would replacing his organs be like any alien being cured in a medical booth?

What did it mean to be alive?

Who decided, and by what right, what all this meant?

Payton watched the pyre hovering over the ground. Her thoughts swirled and bubbled like a ceffyl caught in a mud pit. The sound of the soldiers faded, and their bodies blurred until all she could see was that metal device. Her hands shook, and she wanted nothing more than to rewind time, to not have to see this or feel it.

Yevgen was a good man. He was her friend. She’d seen him watch over the people of Shelter City like a guardian. She saw him trying to understand love. And right now, she was mournful at the prospect that he was not coming back.

This was not the funeral a hero deserved.

“Princess?”

Payton jerked at the hand on her arm. The guard’s touch drew her from her thoughts. The soldiers had gone, leaving only flattened plant life in the clearing and the horrible lingering smell from the pyre.

“We should leave,” the cougar insisted. “I’ll escort you back to the palace.”

Payton wiped her eyes and nodded.

“I’m sorry about your grief over Prince Yevgen. Know there are those who support you.”

Payton nodded and began walking toward the trees. It was the fastest route back. Suddenly, she stopped and frowned. “Why do you phrase it like that?”

The cougar hesitated.

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