Page 12 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“That sounds lonely.”
He says it simply, not pitying. It lands somewhere tender. I study his face as we turn: the practiced smile, the bright eyes that flick around the crowd the way mine do—measuring, filing, planning routes of escape. He’s handsome in a brochure way, the kind you see on recruitment holos and think, oh, that man stands up straight. But as we circle, his smile tugs wrong at one edge, like a thread caught under a ring.
“You’re nervous,” I say.
“Only charmingly so.” He grins, then drops it, the honesty showing. “All right. Very. I kept imagining you with horns.”
“Same,” I deadpan. “But the tailor hid mine in the bodice.”
He barks a laugh, quick and real, and I hate the little flash of satisfaction that zips through me when I make him do that. He doesn’t deserve my grudging delight. None of this does.
The music swells; my skirts shiver against his trousers as he turns me. The lanterns tilting overhead make the world swing. He smells faintly of cedar and some oceanic note I can’t place, like wind over salt. I can almost see the mountain house he grew in, the etiquette tutors, the rooms that smelled like waxed floors and disapproval. He is not a villain.
It is, somehow, worse.
“May I confess something?” he asks, voice low enough that the quartet doesn’t drown it.
“If it’s something scandalous, absolutely.”
“I meant harmless.” His mouth twitches. “I don’t like being paraded. I don’t like being an emblem, or a treaty you can pour a drink for. I told my mother this was indecent. She said that’s what nobility is.”
“That sounds exactly like something a mother would say.”
“You know she’s terrifying.”
“I can tell from your posture.”
He laughs again, and this time the sound does something awful to me, because it warms the space we occupy and I don’t want warmth here. I want to be hard granite. I want to be impossible to hold.
My throat tightens. I drag my attention away from his face and let it snag where it always does: the edge of the lanternlight, where shadows stack into a deeper night. Arms crossed. Jaw a hard line. Rayek leans against a fluted pillar half-swallowed in ivy like he’s part of the architecture, but he’s the only thing that looks honest out here.
He isn’t dressed for the ceremony; he’s in formal guard black—fitted jacket, high collar—polished boots that make no sound. The floodlights etch silver along the scars at his temple, catching on the rim of his left horn ridge. He’s not wearing his weapons, but he doesn’t need them. His eyes are enough.
My pulse stumbles so hard the step goes wrong. Kaspian adjusts instinctively, steadying me without a blink, and that tiny kindness makes me want to scream.
“You all right?” he asks softly.
“Shoes too tight,” I lie. The bodice, too. The future, too. I make my smile polite. If I look south, past the wisteria arch and the hedged labyrinth, I can feel Rayek’s gaze the way you feel sunlight when your eyes are closed, a warmth with weight, a line drawn across my bare upper back. I should not turn. Every lesson in my bones says: do not turn. But my body is already leaning, my attention is already there.
“Your guard,” Kaspian says, matter-of-fact. “He looks like he’d rather be flayed than at a garden party.”
“He would.” The answer comes out on a shaky breath I hope he doesn’t hear. “He’s not much for…this.”
“The spectacle?”
“The pretending.”
Kaspian considers that, then gives the smallest nod, like he files it away under Useful Truths. “He watches you like a man reads a map when the bridge is out.”
My laugh is too quick and too loud; a couple turns to look. Kaspian squeezes my fingers, subtle, pulling me back into the rhythm. I want to say don’t, you’re nice, and I don’t want your niceness, but my teeth are clenched on a scream I can’t let out.
“Lady Star?” Sneed is suddenly there as if conjured from ivy, moving with that precise, noiseless glide he has, a tray appearing on a waiter’s hands behind him like he willed it. His elongated pupils gleam politely. “A word regarding the procession order for the toast.”
“We’re not toasting yet,” I say, too sweet.
“In eight minutes,” he returns, and something about his smile says he’s known it would be eight minutes since sunrise. “The chamberlain has a question about your positioning.Closer to the dais will photograph better.” His gaze flits to Rayek’s shadow and back to me with surgical restraint. “And appearances matter.”
Kaspian’s grip loosens; he understands the cue. “Duty calls,” he says, more wry than wounded.
