The Tyrant of the Golden Mountain lights the last candelabra and waves her long match out. Its thin tail of smoke curls past her sharply painted eyes as they drink in the bedroom and the bound captive within it.

“My soldiers are on the march.” She opens the glass stopper on a bottle of amrita. “My generals have their orders. My councilors are placated. My messengers are dispatched to your father’s fair court. This is the evening’s final piece of business. And its most anticipated.” She pours the thick, luxurious amrita into a long-stemmed coupe glass. “You’re finally in my clutches, Duke Gylion.”

“I have no information for you. No troop movements. Anything I could give you, they’ve already changed.” Gylion shifts in the cherry-red sheets, glaring through the amber dim at the leather-clad warrior queen. “We’re like water between your fingertips.”

“How disappointed I’d be.” Nylix circles the bed like a pacing predator, swirling her amrita. “If I were here for information.”

Gylion’s tail trembles against its binding. “What are you here for?”

“I am here because I’ve won,” Nylix purrs. “And you’ve lost. I am here to show you what defeat means, when you’re a handsome young man in the clutches of the Tyrant of the Golden Mountain. I am here because it has been a long day, spent in anticipation of a longer night.”

“Go ahead.” He tries to put on a brave face before his leering captor. “Waste your thinning time on me.”

She takes a long drink of her amrita, then sets it on the woodcarved nightstand by the bed. “I see I have much to teach you, little rebel.” Her knee-length leather boots squeak as she straddles him. Her weight settles across his chest. “Here’s lesson one.” Her black-painted nails click against his shirt buttons, undoing them one by one. “Time enjoyed is never time wasted.”

A chirping buzz sounds from atop Nylix’s liquor cabinet. Her ministrations pause.

Gylion glances its way. “Need to check on that?”

Nylix’s face screws up indecisively. “Uhh. No.” She clicks her tongue. “No. We’re fine. They’ll call the cabin if they really need me.” Her voice goes husky and dark again. “Poor innocent fool. Nobody is coming to save you. Not tonight.”

“Not tonight, maybe. But the Dowager King has eyes and hands everywhere. Nothing you do now can keep you from his wrath.”

“Such defiance.” Nylix tsks. “I had intended only to borrow your mind, my good Duke. But perhaps simple compulsion isn’t enough for your correction. Perhaps…perhaps such a spirited colt requires something more permanent.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispers.

“No?” She leans down, eye-to-eye with him. A wanton heat pulses on his stomach; she isn’t wearing anything under her short leather skirt. “You ought to be honored, Gylion. To imagine that your throat should be worthy of my mark.” Her breath is hot on his neck. The pinpoint pressure of a fang pricks against him. “That your whelps should be worthy of my womb.”

He writhes from her touch as best as he can within the web that’s captured him. “You’re mad. This is madness.” But beneath the slow sway of the Tyrant’s hips, his treacherous desire betrays his voice’s defiance. Her midnight lips stretch into a grin as she feels him.

“I wonder what will become of your father the Dowager King’s glorious rebellion,” she purrs. “When he sees his precious dukeling paraded in front of his city walls bearing the tyrant’s scar.” She nuzzles Gylion’s neck. “His grandchildren in the tyrant’s belly. His line stolen away. His heir—” The tip of her tongue runs up his jaw, until her glossy lips are hovering a centimeter from his ear. “Conquered.”

A strident ring interrupts any reply Duke Gylion could make.

“Argh.” Tyrant Nylix swings her leg over her prisoner and hops off the bed. “One second, lovebug. Route to communicator, audio only.”

She plucks her communicator from the discarded uniform folded across a chair.

“Yes, Majesty?”

She pauses.

“I see. And we’re sure?”

Another pause.

“Oh God, really?” Her ears droop. “The nerve of that—of course, Majesty. I’ll send over the—she did? Are you—”

Pause.

“No, no. I understand.” The Tyrant of the Golden Mountain sighs. “Hellfire. I think I’m needed.” She says this to both the communicator and the captive tied to her bed.

He adjusts his arms and unloops a little more slack into them, enough to get him sitting up. “It’s all right.”

“It isn’t.” She looks back at him over one strappy shoulder, her face full of bashful apology. “But you’re an angel for saying so.” She raises the communicator back to her ear. “Hmm? No. Nothing I can’t pick back up. Oryn and I were just relaxing in our cabin.”

“Tell her I say hello,” Gylion calls.

“He says hello.” Nylix’s tail thwips playfully at her prisoner. “Hmm? Good. And being extremely patient with me. Give me five minutes and I’ll pull whatever logs I can find. Off the top of my head, I think this is probably Three-Monsoon. She’s been popping up with the exo coterie lately, but—right. Right, exactly. I’m on it. When will you be back on the bridge?”

She wiggles out of her leather miniskirt. Her prisoner tilts his head up to watch the show. The cute little strip of platinum pubic hair cushioned between her thighs is diamond-bright against her midnight-blue skin. Oryn reflects once again, as Vora unfolds the arms of her glasses, on the fortune that delivered him into the keeping of the most beautiful woman in the Empire.

“Just to warn you, I have some rather severe makeup on. I hope that—” Vora laughs at whatever the Princess just said. “Well, let’s blame Glory Banner for that, not you. Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“Needed on the bridge?” Oryn asks.

Vora steps out of her heels. “Uh huh,” she whispers. “Sykora sends her regards and a vow she’ll make it up to us.”

“Ooh.” He grins. “If you’re in the mood to guilt-trip, drop a hint or two about those chocolates from last time. They were revelatory.”

“Absolutely.” She kisses the tip of his horn. “I am such an ass. You should divorce me.”

“Let me think about it,” he says. “No, I’m good. Our Princess’s sister being her charming self?”

“You guessed it.” She tilts the receiver back to her glossy lips. “Okay. Okay. I’ll get going. See you soon.”

She hangs up and flops onto the bed with a groan.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He rests his foot gently on her shoulder. “No nights off. I know that.”

“No nights off for me. But you took one for this. My poor man.” She kisses the bulge in his pants. “Can I take care of you?”

“How long will you be?”

“About half an hour, I think.”

“Now I haven’t read book three like you have.” Oryn crosses his leg onto his opposite knee and shifts his half-dressed bride with it. “But I presume Tyrant Nylix would want Duke Gylion to lie here and dread her return.”

Vora giggles and sits up. She undoes the elastic holding her fluffy silver hair in its severe topknot. “If you’re sure.” Her hip gives his a flirty bump. “Start coming up with some secrets to spill, Duke. Not that they’ll avail you.”

He waggles his bound wrists. “Do please untie me, though.”

“Oop. Yes.” Vora reaches over his head. “My bad.”

----------------------------------------

Sykora steps back into the prefab office and holsters her communicator. “Lywa Three-Monsoon. Is that name familiar to you, Ondai?”

The addled union representative nods haltingly. “She was my liaison to Narika.”

“And you know she was working for Narika. Not freelancing.”

“That is what I was told.”

“And do you know of anyone else she spoke to?”

“No. She is a private woman.”

“God.” Grant rubs his eyes. “Y’know, when I met you, I thought that—”

“You thought I was being ridiculous when I always suspected Narika for every little thing.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

Sykora smirks and spreads her hands in greeting. “Welcome, Majesty, to rulership over the Black Pike sector.”

“Why would she do this?”

“Because she’s a leprotic cur with a lying tongue and a lazy eye,” Sykora says. “Who goes to sleep with schemes crawling through her misshapen skull and awakens to spew bilious deception across the unsuspecting firmament.”

“A lazy eye?”

Sykora folds her arms. “Maybe not physically, but spiritually.”

“Okay,” he says. “But why would she actually do this?”

“At a guess she wants to keep me distracted from the Cloud Gate sector,” Sykora says. “If I’m defending my man from her shitty little provocations, I’m not taking territory. Little does she realize he has become a splendid Prince while she was busy sucking the scum from various stagnant ponds.”

Grant finally cracks a grin. “I guess I’m gonna need to learn how to insult her like you can.”

“After your first twoscore diatribes, you pick up on the rhythm.” Sykora knits her hands together and scowls at Corska. “Now what do we do about her little toady?”

“Her toady did her damage before we talked to one another,” Grant says. “I think—well, ask her, I guess.”

“Ask her what?”

“Ask her how she feels about working with me.”

Sykora flashes Corska Ondai. “How do you feel about working under my husband, Representative?”

“I was excited,” Corska says.

“Why?”

Her jittering eye finds Grant and focuses on him. “Because I thought he was different from the rest of you.”

The roof of Grant’s mouth goes dry.

“Rather an unhelpful answer,” Sykora says.

“No.” Grant clears his throat and shakes his head. “No, it’s all right. I can work with her.”

“All right.” Sykora sighs. “You’re sure, dove?”

Grant forces himself to meet Corska’s blank, trembling gaze. “Yeah,” he says. “I owe her that much, at least.”

“Well, if we’re keeping her around, let’s ensure we have a panic button.”

Grant frowns but stays quiet as Sykora situates herself back in front of Corska. This was your idea. What leg do you have to stand on to stop it?

“What do you most fear my discovering, Representative?” Sykora demands.

“How attracted I am to your husband,” Corska says.

Sykora releases an annoyed huff. “Let’s go with second-most.”

“The Lokmiri account we hold on Ramex II,” Corska says. “It’s our dark money, unconnected to the main union, under false names.”

“That will do nicely, I think,” Sykora says. “Lakmiri, eh? Lovely little weight to dangle, eh, dove?”

“Sure.” Grant tries to keep his shoulders from hunching up. “Can we let her go now?”

Sykora’s eyes flash. “Forget everything that occurred after my husband said I really want to trust you. Erase all compulsions.”

Corska blinks twice and refocuses on Grant. A thin smile crosses her face.

“I want that as well, Majesty,” she says.

----------------------------------------

The shuttle back to the Pike is silent for the first half of its flight. Just the beeping of machinery and the clacking busywork as Arn coasts them into the dark of the firmament. Sykora sits on Grant’s lap, and breathes with him.

“What I did back there,” he murmurs, eventually.

“What you did back there,” she says, “was what you had to do.”

“I’m trying to believe that.”

“You did what you had to do, Grantyde. Privacy screen please, Arn.”

“Majesty,” the man grunts, and a metal shutter cuts the cockpit off from where the royal couple sit.

“You got essential answers,” Sykora says. “And a new spring of trust between yourself and your ally. This was a good call.

“When she said I thought he was different. That got to me.”

“You are different,” Sykora says. “But you are not weak. Because you did what you did, there will be no more questioning of the unionists. No investigations, no reproach, no strain between Corska’s people and our people. You have taken all that weight on your own shoulders, so that your servants and your subjects can walk freely without it. You did what Princes do, because you are a Prince. And now we can move forward with Corska in trust, and she won’t remember any outrage or offense, and you will feel guilt, but you will watch a better, more harmonious world blossom forth from the sorrowful corpse of the weakness you had to kill today. And I will hold your hand while it grows.”

She turns in his lap so she can put her arms around him.

“Because I am so fucking proud of you, Grant Hyde of Maekyon,” she whispers. “So, so proud.”

He holds her back, and wonders whether that’s enough.