Sykora’s wrist cramps and tingles as she undoes the vent’s second screw. She’s so cold that her legs are shivering as she lines up her heel with the edge of the vent. One kick. Two. And then the joint bursts and she drops from the frigid dark, right on top of Grantyde’s lap.

“Grantyde,” she gasps.

“Whuthafuk!” He thrashes backward with such hasty shock he nearly spills onto the facility floor.

She lies against him, buries her face in his chest, shivering and panting. Gods of the Firmament, he’s warm. He’s warm and he smells like vanilla.

“Batty.” His big chest rumbles as he speaks. “Whuthafuk?”

“Shhh.” She brings a finger up to his lip. Just to quiet him down, but now that her touch is there, she can’t resist feeling the fascinating scruff that grows across her new alien’s face. “Just sit here with me a second,” she says. “Just warm me up. Please.”

His skin. Cycles of darkness and cold and pain, and now his skin. His warmth. Her world has been concrete and metal. She forgot softness like this existed in the firmament. Her throat tightens.

He’s stirring under her hips. She feels it even through the layers of his Maekyonite uniform. A golden glow seats itself in her belly. She shifts, further into his lap, seating him between her thighs.

She fiddles with the strange little knot on his Maekyonite cravat. Skinnier than she’s used to. But he looks good in it. He always looks so good.

Her heart flutters. How many hectocycles has she deprived herself of this kind of touch? How many laps has she imagined sitting in? What is this feeling rising in her, tingling her and tightening her and sending her horns creeping up? It’s not desire. She’s felt desire. Felt it and mastered it. But she’s never felt so…

Safe.

She feels safe for the first time since she arrived on Maekyon. Since the black cars came and gunned down the farmers who found her and took her away. Safe in the arms of this enemy.

“I’m going to have to break you, Grantyde,” she murmurs. “Break you and rebuild you. That’s the only way you’ll survive. But once I do, we are going to be so splendid.”  Her foot gives his arm a prod. “Hand.”

He stares at her with flighty fear on his face. Does he not want her? He must. She feels it. Perhaps it’s shock. Perhaps he needs a nudge. She flashes him. Just a weak little mind-poke. “Grantyde hand Batty.”

She sighs with relief as his palm lands on her back, hot and firm. His touch trails tingly warmth across her skin.

He’s exploring her. She feels his touch shake. “Go on,” she whispers. “Touch me. Go on.”

A shiver up her spine as his thumb brushes it. She stares at him. She tries to summon up some haughtiness, some venom. But the care in his eyes, the empathy. The warmth of his hands.

“Um sahri.” He lets go of her. “Sahri. Aicant. Canya—” He shifts. She shakes the feeling out of herself as she hops from his lap. Their distance breaks the weak, wispy compulsion she placed on him. Just as well. She can’t let herself want him like this. Not until she’s free.

She points to his writing materials. “Hand.”

As she draws, her tail snakes onto the desk behind them. It wraps around his communicator. “What I’m going to do is take this communicator you’ve got here, take it apart, and turn it into a beacon to summon my ship. I’ll hide in the vent tomorrow when they come for me to run their torturous little tests. If they intend to dispose of you, they’ll bring you down here first, to ensure you’re not alerted and there’s no way to escape. You’ll act as a distraction. Probably terrify you half to death, but don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”

He’ll hate her soon. She knows that. The face that now looks at her with such care and concern will look again, dark with rage. She has to coach herself.

“Theventsr tuusmol. Yucan onliget from thair tu heer.”

“Tuusmol,” she repeats. Tuu is a prefix or modifier of some kind. Meaning very

. Or overly. Tuu smol.

“Y’neada geddout that way, doncha?” He points down the hall. “Up the ellivatir. But y’nead—” He holds his laminated ID up. “Y’nead this.”

She nods. “Home. Up. Taiikari. You’re coming, too. These are your last days on Maekyon.”

He tries to repeat her and butchers it. She squashes a giggle. “Grantyde. No.”

He switches back to Maekyonite, pointing to the vent in the ceiling. He imitates writing, a look of exaggerated focus on his face. “Godda plan,” he says.

She nods her assent. She’s in no rush. He keeps talking, the concern clear on his face. Perhaps he’s telling her whatever he thinks the scheme is. Good Maekyonite. Good boy. Don’t let that stress put lines in that beautiful forehead. Your Princess is going to take care of everything from now on. She’ll protect you.

“Much as I’d love to remain here and listen to your charming gibberish, I need to get back.” She points at the ceiling. “Must hop to it on the communicator I just took from you.”

“Yiwan mida help yabak up in thair?”

Help.

“Help.” She internalizes the word. “Up.”

He obediently stands and laces his hands to give her a way up. She steps onto his palms.

The hunger on his face when he looks at her. His fingers flex below the sole of her foot. Her Nura’s Belt tightens by a notch in her belly.

She tips her head down and lays her forehead against his. The things she is going to do to him when he’s hers. It is an act of focus to keep her tail from wagging and showing off the phone she swiped. She lets the urgency of her plot animate her. She leaps upward and into the vent.

Below, her Maekyonite lets out a heavy breath. Disoriented by a combination of desire and compulsion, perhaps. Sykora pokes her head through the vent.

“No sayeeng. That big brute you work with. He’s going to die first tomorrow.” Sykora focuses her will into the pulse of her eyes, lets it beam outwards into her target. “No sayeeng Draik.”

He readjusts his cravat and says something in Maekyonite. Something affirmative. Still no shock or resistance out of these compulsions.

“Help,” she says. The Maekyonite words are clumsy on her tongue; the plosives feel like she’s trying to dislodge a loogie. “Help Batty home Taiikari.”

“Aiwil. I swearda God.” His face grows determined. His jaw sets. “Aiwillifit kills me.”

Her faithful Maekyonite. The steely dedication on his face. She’s heard that in unknowing species, there’s a phenomenon where they convince themselves the compulsions are their idea. If you do it subtly enough, it’s a valuable tool. But she’s hardly been able to employ subtlety. Surely that means at least a piece of him wants this, wants to free her.

She slaps away the stab of guilt that brings forth. She will have plenty of time to think these thoughts when he’s hers.

She could look at that jaw for hours. But the chill is already setting into her bones, and he’s surely moments away from realizing she took his communicator.

She slips back into the vent. Surrounded again by cold metal and not warm, sheltering Maekyonite.

That night, she begins tearing the communicator apart and acquainting herself with its guts. To her relief, it’s simple and familiar beneath its bright shell and its garish electronics. Over and over, as she works, she rehearses the message she’ll send.

“To any Taiikari vessel,” she whispers. “I am Princess Sykora of the Black Pike. I’ve escaped captivity on the planet of Maekyon. I beg of you—save me. Bring me home.”

Bring us both home.

Tomorrow she executes. Tomorrow she sees the Pike again. Tomorrow Grantyde is hers.

***

The command group of the Black Pike concludes its explanation with a transmitted gallery of the bodies the Myak colony left behind. Kanori’s grin turns into a grimace as the gory images filter across the connection between the Black Pike and the Cloud Gate. She glances back at Sykora and shuts her mouth, adopting the studiously blank expression that so well-serves Void Princesses. Sykora remembers their previous dance at the Convocation. She handled Kanori well enough then; can she do it now?

“It was a massacre,” Hyax says. “Every colonist accounted for, no survivors.”

“How am I to trust this?” Kanori asks. “By your chief engineer’s own admission, the defense grid daemon’s rampancy is unexplainable.”

“It’s unexplainable because we lack the full story.” Sykora steeples her fingers. “Whatever you can tell me about Peala, or her colony, or the Argosy true—anything at all. I welcome it. I’m asking for it.”

“This is not a Black Pike concern, Sykora. These deaths are on my conscience.” Kanori taps her medal-encrusted chest. “And my responsibility. In fact, I would appreciate knowing why, exactly, you were poking around my planets.”

“I had a matter to discuss with the Governess.” Sykora tries to make it sound breezy and trivial.

“Without my knowledge?”

“It was a private matter. Concerning an out-of-the-way colony.” Sykora waves a hand at the images of death. “That you clearly weren’t concerning yourself with.”

Kanori scowls. “Don’t bite down on me, Black Pike. Peala was a friend. None of us can be everywhere at once. Let’s not pretend there’s no quantity of blood spilled across your charter. It hasn’t even been a decacycle, has it, since the Paxea affair killed threescore of your workers. Would you call yourself unconcerned with them?”

Damn Kanori’s eyes; that hits home. Sykora bites back her retort and, to calm her angrily thumping heart, looks to Grantyde. He gives her an encouraging nod from off-camera, and mouths stay frosty.

Kanori’s watching. Trying to goad her further, perhaps, into a mistake or an overextension. But that was the old Sykora, Cloud Gate. You’re talking to the new one. To a mother in the making, with a lover who has taught her patience and prudence.

“You’re right,” Sykora says. “And you have my condolences. I would have liked to have known Peala. I came to her world looking for her help with a favor which I owe to Marquess Palatine Inadama. It’s not my place to describe it further. You’ll have to ask her.”

“She’ll be my next call, after you and I have a discussion with the clerk I’ve sent for.”

Sykora bites the inside of her cheek to keep the reproach from showing on her face. Kanori has insisted on a mediator, an Imperial Core clerk who’s due in a few minutes. All it’s going to do is waste time and muddy the waters; Sykora presumes it’s part of some longer-term strategy of Kanori’s to snipe a system or two from her.

“In the meantime,” Kanori says, “I insist you not touch anything that was in that place. Return all that you took off the surface of the planet.”

“We took only the defective J daemon, which I’ll willingly return. The rest of the colony remains. The defense grid’s been destroyed and the corpses have been bagged. If you insist on dealing with this on your own, we’ll leave you to it. I’ll even pay for the defense droids I broke.”

Kanori brushes her heavy bangs from her brow. She raises her voice to her own command deck. “Everyone out.”

Her majordomo takes a cautious step forward. “Majesty—“

“Out, Nim.” Kanori doesn’t even look over her frilled shoulder. “I must speak with my counterpart alone.”

Kanori’s command group shuffles off the deck in the indistinct background. So odd, to see how similarly their ZKZs are constructed. The Princess of the Cloud Gate looks back briefly, fitfully, to ensure she’s by herself, then turns back to the camera.

“It would be best if you did the same,” she says.

Sykora folds her arms. “I trust my team.”

“You rely overmuch on them,” Kanori says. “Everyone knows it. We must speak of private things.”

“I depend on their counsel. I wouldn’t surround myself with people I had to hide from. If they truly can’t be here, explain yourself in brief to my satisfaction, and the Prince and I will take this call in our cabin.”

Kanori scoffs. “Come now, Black Pike. I’ll speak around it if you wish, but we might as well be out with it. We both know what I’m talking about.”

“No,” Sykora says. “I surely don’t.”

“The other daemon, Sykora.” Kanori steps closer to the camera. Its fisheye expands her glare. “If you take it, it will go poorly for you.”

“You know about this.” Sykora’s brow furrows. “You know what it is. How do you know? What is it?”

“It—” Kanori purses her lips. “Inadama hasn’t told you what it is you’re looking for.” Her shoulders hunch in realization. “You don’t even realize.”

“Kanori. What is going on?”

“You are being used, Sykora.” Kanori’s turned a corner from chilly distance to close urgency. “Whatever Inadama’s offering, it’s not worth it. Return the Gravitas daemon.”

“I don’t have the Gravitas daemon, Kanori. It’s gone. It was gone when I got there. What is it?”

Kanori licks her lips. The expression on her face has slipped from icy to positively frozen. She looks terrified. “It’s gone?” 

“Whatever is happening here, I need you to let me in, Kanori.” Sykora drills into the opening Kanori’s fear is giving her. “This has left your zone of control. If you want my help, ask for it and tell me what’s going on.”

Kanori refocuses. “No, Princess. You’re inserting yourself into Cloud Gate internal matters; you’re launching barrages on my worlds.” She screws the haughtiness back onto her teetering frame. Have to give her credit—she recovers quick. “I think the clerk will be extremely interested in your explanations. I suggest you take the scant time before they arrive to come up with a convincing story.”

Sykora ripostes desperately. “Shall I clue them in, then? To what’s happening?”

“Clue them in on what? You have no idea what’s happening. Or what you’d even say. You want to risk it? You risk it.” Kanori barks an unkind laugh. “Be my guest. You blew craters into my world. You have erred, Sykora. Be humble, be apologetic, and begone. And provided you give up this blind chase, I’ll let you slink away.”

Another hex on the command deck wall pulses as it spins into place. Kanori looks to one side; the same thing must be happening on the Cloud Gate. “That’s the clerk’s office,” she says.

“Kanori.” Sykora’s fists tighten. “Before we let them in. What is happening?”

“Quit this,” Kanori hisses. “Tell Inadama you’re out. Go back to being a Void Princess, if you have to. You don’t even know the game you’re playing. It’s not worth it.”

“Kanori, wait,” Sykora says, but the call is already connecting.

“Clerk.” Kanori changes out her snarl for an obsequious smile. “Greetings. I—“

There’s no one on camera. Just a darkened office, a dim window behind an empty chair.

Kanori’s mouth hangs open.

A woman’s voice from off-camera, a hurried whisper: “Faith bridge nineteen balance.”

A meaty pop. Kanori jerks and goes rigid.

She tips forward, eyes wide and bulging, and slams facefirst onto the desk in front of her.

There’s a spreading bruise on the back of her neck where her cranial detonator blew.