Beauty and the Fleet (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 2) (15 page)

Darkness fell, shifting the colors in the room from golden to a subtle blue emphasized by the sparkling lights that hung from the ceiling. It was like dancing under the night sky. She knew there were other people he should be dancing with; he was an important person, but she couldn't convince herself to let him go. His intense yellow gaze made her feel protected and loved. She longed to kiss him, even if it wouldn't be appropriate public behavior. The Leothen could be a bit prudish. She could wait for the ball to end. Then she would have him to herself and it would be better anyway. She didn't want to share him.

Beatrix woke slowly as the light shone on her bed. There was an ache in her chest that it took several minutes to place. When the dream filtered back in pieces, she only sighed and closed her eyes. She told herself that she wasn't really awake, so that's why the revulsion hadn't returned. It wasn't until much later that she realized that neither of them had a symbiont in her dream.

The dream lingered in the back of her thoughts until she dismissed it as a peculiar effect from falling asleep while thinking so intensely about
Song of Shadow.
She still wanted very much to talk about it, even as she dressed in her new outfit for the day. This time it was a pleated blue skirt and white t-shirt. They fit her perfectly, and the skirt flared beautifully when she spun. She'd loved to spin in her skirts when she was little. She thought about telling Josh that he could give her outfits in different colors, but they never discussed her clothes, so it seemed rude. Besides, having a variety of styles was more important anyway. The matching color scheme made them feel like a uniform, and that was a good reminder of her ultimate goal.

Once she was presentable, Beatrix grabbed the book off her bedside table and laughed at the hideous cover. The longer she looked at it, the sillier it became. The woman writhing on the throne was actually the main character. The guy holding the obscene sword was the king and he was only a bit player. He was eaten by a dragon less than fifty pages into the book. The main character never even came near the throne, and she later slew that dragon. Why couldn't they have put her in the foreground of the cover fighting a dragon with the king in its claws? It probably would have wounded too many men's fragile masculinity.

She wasn't paying attention to where she was walking and bumped into Josh's chest with surprising force. He steadied her arm and kept her from taking an embarrassing tumble. He smiled down at her and pointed at the book. "So you read it?" he asked, his yellow eyes practically glowing.

Beatrix looked down at the arm that he still held and he pulled his hand away quickly, apologizing far too profusely. Beatrix ignored it because she wasn't sure how to feel about it. She looked up and found that his enthusiasm hadn't faded. The lie was ready on her lips and died before she could speak it. "Yes, it was every bit as amazing as you said it was. Maybe more."

He let out a breath that she realized he had been holding. "Good, we weren't sure because it is quite vulgar in some places. It's not a book for everyone."

"We need to talk more, because you obviously don't know me well enough if you think that would be a problem." Beatrix couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

He went on chattering about the book, and Beatrix only paid enough attention to nod in the right places, and prompt him to go on. They made their way over to his reading nook and sat in the chairs. The whole time Beatrix's mind churned. She had to figure out what was going on in her own head. How could she sit down with this monster and not lunge across the space between them and choke him to death? She summoned up the image of his attack on their home and then watched him speaking animatedly about the powerful female character in
Song of Shadow
and couldn't reconcile the two. She knew they were one and the same, but this wasn't the beast, this was Josh, and he'd become her friend. "Goddammit," she shouted, cutting Josh off in the middle of a sentence. She jumped to her feet and raced out of the library and into her bedroom, slamming the door. Even then, all she could think about was the stricken look on his face when she'd stormed off.

She hadn't even had breakfast yet, and she already wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. There was no way she could talk to Josh any more; not about books, not about anything. He was clearly playing her, with some nefarious goal that she couldn't fathom. Maybe he was just trying to get her to willingly cooperate in destroying Nedra. He'd decided that forcing her wouldn't work, so he'd warp her mind slowly over time until she loved him and would do it to please him. She'd read that—that prisoners sometimes came to like their captors. It made sense, in a psychology book, but she never could have imagined it happening to her. Then again, she was a different person now. Who was she becoming? Someone who sympathized with the monster that held her prisoner? Well, if she was, it stopped now!

That's totally it
, said Pillow Dave from beneath her head.
He's
diabolically
making you breakfast and giving you good books to read.

Beatrix ignored him. She'd come to grips with the fact that he was a coping mechanism she'd come up with during her isolation in the hospital. He mostly just contradicted everything that she thought and it was starting to piss her off. She punched the pillow in its stupid wrinkled face. When it didn't react, she punched it again. It felt good. The punches kept flying, each one more forceful than the last until there was a cloud of feathers in the air. Beatrix screamed and laughed and then screamed some more. She poured all of her impotent rage into hitting Pillow Dave until he didn't resemble a pillow any more; he was just a sagging husk, half-filled with feathers. "Dave?" she asked tentatively.

There was no response. She had killed Dave. She fought down the urge to sob. It was irrational. He wasn't a real person; he was just a way for her to push away the thoughts she wasn't comfortable with. Now she had to deal with them all herself. That thought was enough to make the tears fall. Once she was already crying she could admit the tears were, at least a little, for Pillow Dave.

She lay on the bed in the mess of feathers and ignored her hunger pains until a deep, dreamless sleep claimed her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Beatrix fought hard to stay asleep for the rest of the day. Finally, once darkness had fallen, she gave in and crawled out of bed. Her body wouldn't be denied its needs any longer. She needed to go to the bathroom and eat. There was already a new bundle of clothes in the bathroom. She tried not to look at it while she relieved herself. She didn't want to think about Josh doing anything nice for her. She didn't want to think about him at all, but she knew she had to. She had to figure out a way to get her and her friends out of this place. Maybe since he was being so friendly, it was time to use that to her advantage. She'd lost her chance to explore the west wing. Maybe she could get some information out of him about when he would leave and she could get another chance. It was worth a shot. He'd warned her to be indirect, but that was probably just a silencing tactic. She was not someone who could be easily silenced.

She washed her hands and left the package unopened. The kitchen was dark and empty when she arrived. There were some leftovers in the refrigerator, so she threw them in a pan on the stove. Her coordination still wasn't the best after all the extra sleep she'd gotten, so it wasn't a good idea to try and prepare her own meal. While she waited for the food to warm up, she thought over the last couple of days. She'd been hiding from her responsibilities because she didn't know what else to do. She'd grown so desperate for distraction that she'd resorted to chatting with the enemy. There was no more time for that. The next time she saw Josh she would force him outside of his comfort zone and see what happened.

The rich aroma of the food brought her out of her sleepy daze and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She was being watched. The house was normally abandoned at this time of night. Standing in the doorway that led to the west wing was Woolly. She was struck again by how much his thick, tan fur made him look like he was wearing a ridiculous wool sweater underneath his Colarian grey clothes. The look on his face was hard to read. There was much more than his usual contempt. He looked deeply concerned. His mouth worked up and down as if he were going to say something, but he thought better of it and stomped off, his heavy boots vibrating the floor enough that she felt it in her bare feet.

Beatrix shivered and pulled her pan of gravy off the stove and grabbed some bread out of the old fashioned breadbox on the counter. Seeing Woolly coming out of the west wing made it all the more interesting. Josh had said there was no hierarchy among the Anthrak, but Josh and Woolly were in charge as far as she could tell. Either Josh did stay in the west wing, or there was something really important inside. Possibly both.

Her bread and gravy was delicious. She was thinking so hard, she almost didn't pay any attention to it. She savored the last few bites and decided she would make a big breakfast and question Josh once he had a stomach full of her cooking. It would catch him off guard.

With that decided and her belly full, Beatrix slipped down to the library. She reasoned that she wasn't distracting herself from her objective, just killing time until she could implement it. She headed straight for Josh's reading alcove, determined to quickly grab a book and take it to her room so she could read peacefully until morning. She was in such a hurry that she didn't realize Josh was slumped in one of the chairs until she was practically on top of him.

"Beatrix," he said, his voice softer, with more round edges than it usually had. He pulled himself to his feet, reached out a hand, and gently squeezed her shoulder. "Please don't run. We need to apologize."

Beatrix pulled back and glared at him. "No, you have nothing to apologize for. You're just working your agenda, whatever it is. You wanted to get close to me. My contact with my friends is monitored, so I don't feel truly connected to them, so I got closer to you because you pretended to care about me. It makes sense. I don't know what your end game is, but I'm not playing any more, so there's no need to apologize." So much for her plan to fill him up with food and interrogate him. She turned and started to walk away when there was a loud, meaty thump.

"Beatrix, please don't go." There was another thump and Josh grunted.

She wanted to flee, but her curiosity got the best of her. She turned in time to see Josh smash himself in the forehead with a book. It hit with enough force to rock his head backward. He did it one more time and then slumped into his chair. He sat there dazed for a few seconds and Beatrix stepped forward, her rage growing. He was playing more games. She grabbed a large book off the shelf and held it above her head, intent on smashing him with it. Slowly his eyes cleared and looked up at her. He didn't grab her, or jerk away. Instead, he smiled, in such an unguarded, adoring way that she couldn't bring herself to hit him. "Why are you smiling? I was about to brain you with one of your own books."

"Well, I did give you the idea, and your fierce spirit is why I like you so much, so I could hardly be upset when it comes back to bite me." His voice was so smooth and clear that she barely recognized it. A lot of her time spent in the hospital was fuzzy and hard to recall, but she did remember him speaking in that voice.

Beatrix lowered the book and dropped it on the floor, her anger transforming into confusion. "What's the game this time?" She hadn't missed the sudden change to referring to himself in the singular.

"No games. I just needed to talk to you and apologize for how confusing this must all be for you. I should have just let you go about your business, but I couldn't resist. The more I talked to you, the more I found I was able to assert my will over that of the leech." He tapped the black strip of flesh on his forehead. "I was able to show you more of who I truly am. I love books and talking about them. I enjoy making people laugh by being ridiculous. Every day I find new ways to express myself that I wasn't capable of before. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to advance the porcine wingman plan so much in such a short period of time."

Beatrix slumped into her chair, trying to absorb everything he'd thrown at her. He whacked himself in the forehead again. She thought back to what he'd said that day in her hospital room. He'd called himself Arryn and he'd apologized for killing her father. He hadn't talked to her like that since then. Their conversations had slowly gotten less antagonistic, but there was always an edge to his voice and a cagey look in his eyes. That was gone now. If he was acting, it was the performance of a lifetime. She decided it would be more expedient to go along with it and try to puzzle it out later, rather than wasting her time arguing with him. "So, are you going to tell me the plan, or do I have to guess?"

Josh frowned and rubbed his chin. "I would, but there are still some elements that I have to put into place, so it's not safe yet."

Beatrix growled in frustration. "So if that's not what this whole thing is about, what is it?"

Josh looked down and to the side, fidgeting with a rip in the arm of his chair. "I, um, just really couldn't stand having you be angry with me. I know you must be conflicted at the very least. You saw me kill your father, and here I am trying to be your friend." He looked up, shyly. "At the very least, I owe you an explanation—one that is nearly impossible to give—but I have to try. I am Arryn. It was the Anthrak that killed your father. I was not able to stop it. For that I am so sorry." A small tear trickled down his black cheek. "When you cut the leech from my head, you changed something. You gave me some freedom from the Anthrak. In essence, you created the person you call Josh. He is a diluted version of my true self, mixed with the Anthrak. I could never repay you enough for that, but I will do my best if you'll let me. If you won't allow me any more than what you've given me these last few days, I understand, but know that I truly cherish them."