Page 55 of Crown Prince's Mate

The dining room is grand, with a high ceiling that looms above the extraordinary table. The room would dwarf anyone but the triad, who sit in three large chairs at the head of the wide table.

The table is hewn from a giant slab of raw wood, harvested from a tree that would rival the oldest growth on Virelia. Down the center of the table, it is lightning-scarred, blackened, the wound covered by crystal. I like that. It’s a small thing, but it means they used a tree that was destroyed instead of cutting down a mighty spruce in its prime. Twenty of the huge aliens could sit comfortably. Candles light the room, so much more alive than the sterile white of the corridors of the alien ship.

Gallien rises, dressed in formal white robes that envelop him up to his neck, leaving his muscled right arm bare. “The purest pleasure in the world. To imagine something and see it come to life before you.” His voice is deep and rumbly as his eyes run down from my head to my feet, taking me in luxuriously, not rushing the moment before he walks to the far end of the table, pulling out the wooden chair.

I give him the slightest smile. “Playing the gentleman, are we?”

He smiles as I pull myself up onto the huge chair. It’s fit for a seven-foot-tall alien, but any smaller, and I wouldn’t be able to see over the huge table. I may be tall and willowy for a Pentarian, but my feet still dangle. Before me are chopsticks and a crystal glass.

Gallien pauses for a moment. “And for the first time, you’re not playing at anything at all,” he replies, and takes his place at Doman’s left, across the table. There’s twenty feet between us, but words travel easily in the silence of the dining hall, and I’m reminded of how quickly Doman crossed the throne room when he pulled the ring from his finger.

Twenty feet would give me half a second to run.

The three Aurelians watch me. There doesn’t seem to be a cultural prohibition against staring, and the way they look at me can only be described as awe.

But when Gallien’s eyes roam over the diamonds surrounding my neck and downwards, there’s something else in his eyes.

It was his purest pleasure to see me exactly how he imagined me, but I am not so innocent to think that this is the only thing he’s pictured. The three of them are obsessed in a way that both terrifies and excites. Gallien has pictured a thousand dark desires, and he wants to make each one a reality…

He wants to Bond me to him, and if he does, we’ll have thousands of years together, for every one of those dark images to play out in real life. It makes me shiver.

I run my hands over the live wood. “I had expected you to dine on tables of marble,” I say.

“We had this made from a tree struck by lightning when we felt you in our minds. We thought it would remind you of Virelia,” says Doman.

“Did you come to Pentaris for your Empire or for me?”

“It’s a question I ask myself every day,” says Doman, and claps his hands. Doors open, and young Aurelians, perhaps in their late teens, which means they have lived over a century longer than I have, bring in white plates laden with sliced seafood. Another triad of youngsters carry carafes of white wine. They are about to fill Doman’s glass, when he gives the young Aurelian a look that stiffens the servant. He strides to me, carefully making sure not a single drop spills in his haste, and fills my glass, before the crown prince.

Once my glass is filled, the Aurelian youths pour wine into the much larger glasses before the triad. Then they leave us, and I am alone in the grand dining room with the royal triad.

“To you,” says Doman simply, raising his glass. I take a sip. The wine is sweet and cool.

“Shouldn’t those young Aurelians be in Academy? Are your battle-lines so stretched you need to draft teenagers?”

Titus uses his chopsticks to bring a piece of red fish to his mouth before answering. “Squires. In their final decade of Academy.”

I raise my eyebrow, bringing a scallop to my mouth, which pairs perfectly with the wine. When I’ve swallowed, I cock my head slightly. “And did even the crown prince serve at tables?”

Doman smiles. “Yes. There are no favors.”

I laugh. “I can’t picture. You would look out of place, standing at attention.”

Titus picks up his glass, swirling clear liquid, while the other two eat, experts at chopsticks. There’s this physicality to them, a precision, complete control over their bodies. Even the way they dip their sashimi in the bright green algae-infused soy sauce and bring it to their mouths. It seems an impossibility that even a single drop would fall and mar their perfect white robes.

“We worked for the general on this very ship,” says Titus, the light of the candles dancing against his crystal glass. “Not that long ago, it was us bringing out wine.”

“On the triple!” barks out Doman, imitating the general.

Titus grins. “The carafes had to be filled to the very brim with red wine, and we had to nearly sprint to each one of his captains, filling them.”

“Why?”

Titus takes a sip, then shrugs, putting his glass down against the table without a sound. “He wanted to see if we’d spill a drop. If we did, he’d have an excuse to replace us with another triad of squires. We chose the Imperator to serve on. Top of our class, so we had the first pick of placement. But because of Doman, here, the general hated us. Thought we were spoiled.”

“We never spilled a drop,” says Doman. “Poor General Cr’aal. He tried everything. Four years. Four years he worked us to the bone, testing us to see if we would break. That’s how long it took to earn his respect. And in the next six years under his service, I learned a great deal.”

Time is so different for them. Four years under a tyrant boss would drive a human mad, but to them, it’s like a few months.

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