Seduce Me in Flames (10 page)

It amused Rush how, no matter what was thrown at her, she always seemed to radiate perfect decorum and grace. The trousers and wrapped shirt she wore were probably unlike anything she’d ever found herself in before, the clothing being the fashion of a commoner. Even imprisoned, she had been in a long, simple, elegant dress shot through with beautiful rays of Delran. Her bare feet had boasted delicately painted nails and foot jewelry, albeit they were a bit dirty from walking the unkempt floors of her catacomb cell.

He watched her struggle to tie back her hair within itself. He remembered that hair as a phenomenal, rich
red when dry, with shining gold and copper penny highlights streaked through the long, easy tendrils that reached nearly to her feet.

Shame, he thought
.

Rush made his way over to her, watching her eyes go wide, like two big blue gems, as he loomed over her with his significant height. Then he reached out to grip hold of her heavy, wet hair at the midpoint and unsheathed the knife he’d brought with him. In a single stroke he ripped the blade through the mass, shearing it off. He ignored her shocked cry and walked away, tying the tail he’d retrieved into a knot and dumping it down the hole with the rest of the now-useless equipment.

“How dare you!” the one called Suna squawked, rushing up to him and having the audacity to smack him on the arm. He had no doubt she would have hit him in the face had she been tall enough. “How dare you lay violent hands on her most imperial majesty, you brutish pig! No one touches her without an express permission that I daresay you will
never
earn! Do you have any idea what you’ve just done? You’ve assaulted her crowning glory! The one thing that outwardly marks her for who she is! No one in Allay may grow their hair longer than the princess!”

“It was in the way,” he said with a shrug, the whole thing very obvious to him. “And if you hadn’t noticed, the idea is to keep anyone from identifying her for who she is. For the time being anyway. One look at all that hair on her head and, like you said, everyone will know exactly who she is, and that she’s alive. That she needs to be hunted down and gutted publicly so there will be no doubt that Ambrea Vas Allay is as dead as it gets.”

The princess came around from behind her furious servant, again with all the pride and dignity she could muster settled on her long frame. Rush hadn’t realized it in the press of their short acquaintance, but though the princess was a long, lean thing, she had quite the girlish
curves that her court dress had done little to flatter. Come to think of it, it wasn’t as though that dress had been the height of fashion. Allayan fashion was often the center of all fashion on the planet Ulrike. What the aristocracy wore in Allay set the tone for the entire world. Even over those who were famous or in power in the larger continent that Allay stood in the shadow of, also named Ulrike. But now that her majesty was in snug, comfortable, casual clothes, she looked far more the woman than she had before, in his opinion.

She looked up at him with those eyes, the ones he found to be far too big for her face and an uncanny sort of teal blue. He waited for her to throw a tantrum like Suna was doing, but instead she laid a hand on her companion’s arm. It had an immediate calming effect, the servant clearly trained over many years to respond to even the smallest silent request.

“But majesty,” Suna did protest quietly. But she turned her eyes down, lowering her head and making certain that her mistress knew it was an emotional protest and not a direct flouting of her mistress’s command.

“Suna, he speaks the truth. This glory will pin a target on me. I have no majesty if I don’t make it to my throne alive.” She turned her attention back to him. “I have been fairly acquiescent so far, doing everything you’ve asked of me. Now you don’t even ask? You just do? As if I am a creature of no intelligence, as if I can’t be reasoned with or have logic wasted on me? Or is it just that you despise any authority and feel it necessary to literally cut it off at the knees to make yourself feel the better for it?”

Rush felt a chill of discomfort walk down his spine, the sensation alien and awkward for him, so he busied himself with sheathing his knife before he looked back into those extraordinarily big eyes.

“Not at all. I’m a soldier. Efficiency is only my nature.”

“A soldier?” She turned to assess the group with sharp
eyes. “Is that what you all are? Soldiers? From what army?”

“The IM,” Bronse spoke up, castigating Rush with a hard look. “Didn’t he tell you anything about what’s going on here?”

“Wasn’t any time,” Rush excused himself with a shrug.

Ambrea watched the big Tarian throw off the matter as easily as he was throwing debris from the camp down the hole they had come up. She had to admit, though, she was incredibly relieved to hear they were from the Interplanetary Militia. It changed the face of everything. Until now she had thought him some kind of mercenary for hire, someone engaged by a powerful Allayan noble, perhaps, who wished to fetch the power of the throne by using her.

“So you’re with the IM,” she said with a breathless sort of relief. “But I don’t understand. What does the IM want with me?”

The Tarian named Ender’s static answer seemed to be to simply shrug one of those big shoulders of his. But she did not mistake him for being as clueless as he would have her believe. For all that brawn, there was great intelligence beneath. But he wasn’t interested in answering her question, so he blocked her focused attention on him by grabbing a shirt and working it over his head. The Skintex fabric was tight and clung comfortably to every contour of his chest. Somehow seeing him clothed accentuated all those muscular hills and valleys even better than seeing him barechested.

“I apologize,” said the man whom Ambrea recognized as the group leader simply by his mannerisms and bearing. She recognized it in him because she had it within herself. He was tall, though still quite shy of the Tarian, and well built in his own right. The most unusual thing about him, though, was his eyes. They were
a soft periwinkle color, too pretty by far to belong to a hardened military man. “I thought Lieutenant Blakely would have explained things to you a bit more. I’m sorry for the deficit in information. My name is Commander Bronse Chapel. This is Special Agent Fallon, and this is Captain Justice Muleterre,” he said, pointing to the tough little Tarian female. “We’re part of a Special Active team for the Interplanetary Militia. We’re here to … well—”

“Stage a coup,” Justice said with a grin of irreverence that lit up her entire face. “I love staging a coup.”

“You love fucking up the works,” Ender rejoined with a roll of his eyes.

“Anyway, as per our charter with the Three Worlds, we’re here to see you take your rightful place as heir to the Allay throne,” Commander Chapel said.

Ambrea should have known. She should have realized they were a military outfit the instant they surrounded her. Even everything about Ender’s rescue had shouted a sharp, methodical efficiency that the military was famous for. But she had been thrown off by his savage Tarian act when she’d first seen him. Now, watching him gird himself to fit in with the normal Allay populace and also hide a significant number of arms on his person, she realized just how disciplined he really was. There was a quiet, deadly strength to him that was probably far more dangerous than any visual prejudice anyone could have about Tarian savagery.

That hard brunette was Tarian, too, Ambrea realized. It was in her facial structure and in her athletic shape. Certainly it was in the rolling depth of her accent. The two of them could try to dress the part of an Allayan civilian all they wanted, but their exotic looks and the strangeness in their eyes were as good as that blaring tribal tattoo on Ender’s chest and arm. He may have since covered it up, but he may as well have not.

“I thank you for your rescue,” Ambrea said softly. “But I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”

That made the entire camp go quiet and still.

“Excuse me?” Ender barked the politesse at her, making it anything but polite. “Listen, sweetheart, I just risked my ass to get you out of that hole.”

“And as I said, I thank you for your rescue,” she bit back with firmness and as much strength as she could muster. “But if your coup means harming a single hair on my brother’s head, I will not take part in it. I have sworn to myself and to the Great Being that I will abide by the law as it now stands and will recognize him as the true emperor of Allay. I will not now, or ever, start any would-be reign of mine with the bloodshed of any innocent of my line. In that way I will see myself different than all the Allay line before me.”

She watched as he took this in, actually finding herself curious as to how he would react. She really was having a hard time getting a good read on him. One minute he played coarse and brutish, the next cocky and amused, the next quiet and reserved. He seemed to fluctuate between it all as if he didn’t know what to settle on, which face to show.

She wasn’t expecting his eyes to turn genuinely troubled.

“You don’t know, do you? I would have thought that even in prison you’d hear things.” He hesitated, looking to his leader for guidance. The commander nodded briefly and the Tarian squared his shoulders before meeting her gaze.

“Your brother is dead.”

“Eirie!”

Balkin crashed into his rooms, startling the servants who were waiting on the lovely and calm creature in the center of the main salon. Eirie didn’t so much as bat an
eyelash, not even when he roared at the servants to be gone or he’d whip them to the bone. When one fell in his haste to make it to the door, Balkin couldn’t seem to stop himself from planting his boot in his ribs in several rapid successive beats. There was something satisfying in the servant’s squeals and pained coughs. Then Balkin picked him up and threw him into the hallway, slamming the door and sealing himself away with his treacherous little witch.

She was eating kio fruits, popping the round, juicy things into her mouth slowly, watching his actions dispassionately. Her long, lush body was lounging out on a chaise, her day dress of lightly draped silk that glistened with platinum threading and a fair violet color that was no doubt going to be all the rage that week. Eirie was proud of her trendsetting ways, of being the one who was followed rather than emulating others. She would rather choke than be seen copying some lesser-ranked woman. Her bare feet were peeking out from the hem of the gown, sparkling platinum toe rings on all but her big toes and an exotic skin-tinting pattern freshly painted in a wreath around her ankle, a line down the length of the top of her foot, and a painstakingly executed tiny flowered pattern all around her toes.

“What have you done?” he demanded of her, marching across the room and flinging things off any table he passed. He was, perhaps, trying to vent his fury enough so that he wouldn’t grab her around her delicate little throat and choke the bloody life out of her when he reached her.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said with a sigh.

“The boy is dead! A healthy, young boy! And mere weeks ago every other word out of your mouth was about poison. Give me good reason to think you didn’t have anything to do with it!”

“I can hardly prove a negative,” she noted with a
shrug. “How can I prove I
didn’t
do something? And really, darling, must you treat the servants so ill? That one won’t be able to stand for days now. And he does such a lovely cross braid.” She touched her hairline where it had been cross-braided in tiny loops and twists.

“I could give a hair on the Great Being’s ass about your cross braids, Eirie! Qua fell ill only two days ago, and he suffered terribly from the moment the ‘illness’ struck him. The doctors are baffled and everyone is looking to
me
. First the father, then the son so quickly? I am the only one with anything to gain. They will think I plotted this all along!”

“And so what if they think that? What can they do about it?” She leaned forward a little, her eyes flashing with a special sort of avarice. “You will be the only prince of the blood left, Balkin. The only heir to this throne. Benit destroyed all other contenders long, long ago, making the way clear and secure for his idiot child. Even if they could prove that you had a hand in this, there’s nothing they can do. They would have to leave you to rule or else risk turning all of Allay on its ear and screaming for a new government. But,” she said with a smile as she relaxed back again, “they can’t prove any foul play, so it’s no matter.”

“You seem so cocksure about that! With today’s technologies and forensics, no one can get away with something like murder. There is always a trail. Always someone who saw something who can be made to talk.”

“I refuse to entertain all these supposed scenarios of doom and gloom and what may or may not happen.” She stood up and gave a dismissive sniff, tossing back a long, curling lock of her hair. “I prefer to deal in cold, hard facts.” She looked at him, snaring his gaze with hers. “And the fact is, you are the emperor of Allay.”

She turned to face him and, in a rush of swishing silk, she knelt at his feet. She bowed until her forehead
touched the toe of his boot, her graceful arms curling around his ankles. Balkin couldn’t help the sudden racing of his heart and the clutch of excitement gripping at his soul. Just the same, he crouched down as she lifted her head, grabbed her by the chin, and gave her a mean little shake.

“And what about that little bitch in my jail? What do you propose I do with the empress of Allay? In truth I have nothing, my pretty love, as long as she is breathing!”

“Kill her. She is not your daughter, your mother, or your sister, and therefore not of your direct blood. There is no law against killing her to secure your throne.”

He laughed coldly. “It’s all so easy for you. You think you can simply discard the entire Allay line and there won’t be repercussions? The IM—”

“The IM can interfere only if there’s a crime against the laws of our country or some kind of mass brutality at your hands. An act of genocide or terrorism. An act of war against another country of Ulrike or any of the Three Worlds. An overthrow of the natural order of government in a given country. But this is the natural order of our government. You are the proper heir by blood and divine right. And as I said, there is no proof of any foul play. Nor will there be. Balkin suffered a massive stroke. His son’s death was an unfortunate fluke. People die for unexplainable reasons all the time.”