“And you stayed behind.”
“Yes.”
“And got caught.”
“Yes.”
“And they found you guilty, so you escaped too.”
“Yes. I was supposed to meet her—”
“Where?”
“Bull Station.”
“Oh, for sun’s sake. You didn’t go there, did you?”
“Yes,” I say. “I had to. She was all alone. But I got caught right away and thrown into a cell. Then some dirty old man stole me, froze me, and brought me here. And that’s the whole story, I promise. You know the rest.”
Please buy it. Please, please, please buy my lie.
“What were you taking? To stop your glow? And why, for that matter?”
“Because, as you said, pink princesses don’t turn up much. We’re under guard all the time. But I was in the military—”
“Fuck you.” He laughs.
“I was,” I say. And this part is totally true. “So I had access to ships.” I shrug. “And I took one.”
“Just like that?”
“No,” I say, thinking up another lie. “It was a rather dicey situation after I was found guilty, but we have a whole network of people on the inside who helped. The military is crawling with liberators. So I got another ship and I cooked up an antagonist for the glow so people wouldn’t know I was pink.”
“Because…” he prods. “Just say the rest of it, Lyra. I already know you have to be someone important. Tell me who you are.”
“I’m…” I sigh. I should lie about this but I’ve told so many already, I might as well give him one nugget of truth. “I’m the king’s seventh daughter.”
“The king. As in the head dude of the whole miserable place?”
“The very one.”
“The seventh?” He shrugs. “So what? There are six more important princesses than you. So why’d he care so much?”
“Because the seventh daughter of the king has to marry the king on her twenty-third birthday.”
“Your father?” he says, a look of disgust on his face.
“It’s not as incestuous as it sounds.”
“Well, that makes it better.”
“I’m just saying, we’re all genetically engineered, so my DNA is actually seven generations removed from his. But you’re right. That doesn’t make it any better.”
“Well, fuck.”
“Now do you understand?”
He sighs. Long and loud. Then shrugs. “OK.”
“OK?” I ask. There’s no way he’s gonna just let all this go.
Is there?
“Go take a shower and I’ll cook us some dinner.”
“That’s it?”
“What should I do, Lyra? Tell me. Because I have no fucking clue.”
I shrug too. Because there’s nothing left to say. Nothing left to do but stay here with him and see if I can figure another way out of this whole fucking mess. “I guess I’ll take a shower then.”
I get up and start walking down the hallway, but Serpint calls out, “Uh… hey, Lyra?”
“Yeah?” I ask looking over my shoulder.
“So… the queen. Like the one and only queen? She’s your…”
“No,” I say. “She’s not my mother. She’s the last seventh daughter of the king.”
But I turn away and walk into the bedroom after that.
Because he can’t know anything about how this whole thing works.
Not. One. Thing.
That is my deepest, darkest secret and I will take it to my grave.
CHAPTER ELEVEN – SERPINT
“ALCOR!” I hiss in the air after I hear Lyra start the shower.
“Yes, Serpint.”
“Did you hear all that?”
“Yes, Serpint.”
“What the fuck, man? Like… what the actual fuck is going on?”
“I think…” But he hesitates. For several seconds. And that is not a good sign. Not good at all. AIs can do millions of calculations in the span of microseconds. They can run scenarios, and make projections, and extrapolate outcomes out for hundreds of years in the span of one full second. So taking three or four seconds to respond means he just ran all that shit and more before he decided to answer me. “I think the sun is about to fuck us in the ass, that’s how screwed we are.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. Because this is just ridiculous. We’re smack in the middle of something huge here. And we have the goddamned one and only Cygnian queen up in the harem cryo center because I stumbled into an opportunity and stole her, cryo-capsule and all, right out from under… well, someone else. Obviously.
There are only two reasons you find people in a cryo-capsule when they’re not traveling across millions of light years inside a generation-class cruise ship.
One. They’re sick. The cryo-capsule can also heal. But again, that’s for people in deep space, not on a crowded space station in the sun-forsaken Cetus System. That place had SEAR cannons so it’s definitely got some state-of-the-art medical equipment.
Or two. They were stolen by someone like me. Which is the correct answer here. No matter what Lyra says, her story doesn’t add up. But I don’t care at the moment. I don’t have room in my head to pick it all apart tonight.
And she’s not gonna tell me anyway. She doesn’t trust me. Why should she? I’ve kinda been a dick since the moment we met.