“We can do it up,” she says, her eyes downcast in a show of shame. “It’s not what you’re used to, but…”
“It is perfect,” I smile, meaning the words. It is perfect because she has offered me all she has. This little scum hut is the manifestation of all her energy and her care.
“It’s not perfect. It’s a hole. You’ll hate it. But they won’t look for you here. So…”
“So it’s perfect,” I repeat, meaning it.
“Sit down on the bed," she says. “I have some stain from the liquor store. It’s red berry juice. It should make you red. Or maybe pink.”
“Let us aim for red,” I decree.
Before she can start daubing me with her concoction, she produces a large pair of shears.
“Haircut,” she says. “It won’t be good, but we can use what we cut off to trade. Scum women would kill for a blonde korabi wig. We might be able to swap it for enough food to get us through the month without having to knock over an elite.”
It is clear that my life is going to be hard and probably quite brutal, but I am cheerful nonetheless as I submit to Jax and her scissors.
“Rath is going to hate being king,” I muse to myself as Jax prepares to hack at the locks of which I was once so proud.
Perhaps he won’t. Perhaps I hated being king more than I could ever admit. Being born to it never left me much of a choice. I resented the prospect of the role my entire life, and once I had it, I did not much enjoy it. The only spark of fun in it was hunting Rath down, and that is all over for the moment.
There was always a big, bright world beyond Megaris. I have not merely been freed from captivity. I have been freed from the obligations of the throne. With my little human by my side, I may choose to be whatever I desire to be.
SNIP!
Jax walks around and smiles at me, a large hunk of my hair in her hand. She looks so very proud of herself. I feel lighter. I am no longer weighed down, neither by my hair, nor by the burdens of the crown.
“There’s just one more thing I have to tell you,” she says as the hue of the reflected lights of Megaris filtering in through the open doorway make her look just as golden as I once was.
“What is that?”
“I love you too.”
I feel a sense of complete ease and contentment flood through me as my little human returns to the task of absolutely annihilating more than two decades’ worth of hair growth. Korabi never cut their hair. It is our crowning glory.
“I think we should shave your head. No. We’ve got to color what's left, don't we. Dark, I think. You'd look very striking with black hair.”
She seems happy buzzing about me, treating me like one of her little inventions, turning me from one thing into another thing. I find myself entirely happy to be one of her things. I get the sense this human might be able to make me something halfway useful at some point.
“Also, there’s something else,” Jax says casually.
“What?” I wait to hear her next notion for perhaps trimming my nails, or maybe plucking my brows.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
Time stops.
She walks around to face me, and all I can do is stare at her until a very sensible objection forces itself into my stone-filled head. “That’s not possible. Korabi cannot inseminate humans. Our sperm are too magnificent and massive.”
“Well, I usually bleed somewhat regularly, and I haven’t. So. Being a virgin and all, probably pregnant. Given the sex.”
“Oh. How long do humans gestate?”
“Ten months, no, nine months, I think. But they count it from two weeks before you even had sex, so more like eight and a half months. I guess I would be, what, maybe seven months to go? Something like that?”
“You are going to give birth to the rightful heir to the korabi throne…”
"Assuming it has a penis. Might not.”
“Korabi kings can only have sons. It is nature’s way of preventing incest. For a time, the royal house only bred within its own lines, until the issue were so deformed they could not breathe at birth. The royal genealogists inserted a snippet into our DNA. Royal korabi sperm is entirely male.”
“That’s dark," she remarks.
“Isn’t it.”
Then the conversation takes an even darker tone.
"We cannot have a royal baby in a shack, Jax. We can live here. These are the consequences of our actions, but…"
"I could go to one of the scum enclaves and have it…" She makes a gesture with her thumb over her shoulder.
“Have it what?”
“Yeeted.”
It takes me far too long to realize what she is saying.
“No! Of course not! That’s awful. That is beyond barbaric…”