KLAREN
Year Twenty-Five
“LET ME GO,” the queen whispered. “Cyprian...please.”
In the darkness of her private chambers, lit only by the moonlight, all she could see was the general’s ghostly outline as he stood before her, pressing her up against the wall. His ruffled shirt was half undone. His blue eyes looked like flames trying desperately not to flicker out.
His hands, curled into fists, were tangled in her hair.
Wrapped around her throat, as he pressed her harder against the wall.
“I will kill you,” he growled. “You have...done something...to me...”
His grip grew tighter. She could hardly breathe. Her vision grew dim. For a moment, panic called her name.
“Let me go.” She choked out the words, fighting for air.
Even in her hatred, she made herself reach out and touch him. With trembling hands, she ran her fingers down his back. Felt the shudder race up and down his spine. She dug her fingertips in, pressing so hard she drew blood.
“Let me go.”
“Damn it, Klaren!” His entire body shook as he finally released her. “Damn you!”
He stumbled backward.
She slipped down the wall, gasping for air. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Cyprian was strong. Stronger than she’d ever anticipated. She hated this fight. Hated the lack of control. The queen looked up, meeting his gaze as he stood across from her, hunched over.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked, his hands outspread before him, as if he were afraid of them. Afraid of himself. “Every night, I find myself here. You plague my dreams. You come to me in visions. Your name forces itself to my lips when I wake.” He ran a hand across his creased face. “When I am with my wife...I think of you.”
Two years she’d waited for this. A queen away from her planet, a prisoner deep in the belly of the Cortas lair.
Two years she’d endured questions from his men, allowed herself to be removed from her quarters and forced to sit in front of a camera. To record videos that were sent across the galaxy to her husband.
“Tell him to surrender, Klaren,” Cyprian had said. “Tell him to surrender, and you can go free.”
“Do not surrender,” she’d responded into the camera, using her eyes and her voice as she’d been taught. Knowing her husband would obey her demands. “Do not give in. You can still win this war, my love.”
The Unified Systems continued to blast Xen Ptera with bombs, spreading more death.
And so the war had carried on.
“Tell me!” Cyprian screamed now, in her room. He ran his hands through his thinning hair. The war had changed him, turned him into something fractured. “Tell me what you’ve done to me!”
The obsession had spread. She could sense it in him, like a disease that festered.
Even now, as he sank to his knees before her, tears welling in his eyes...
He couldn’t look away.
She may have been his prisoner, but he was her toy. A wad of putty to mold and shape to her own liking.
It was time.
Time to make her next move.
All her life, she’d waited for this moment. And so it was with a smile that Klaren looked up, stared into his eyes, and whispered, “It is because you love me.”
He froze.
He glared at her, still three steps away, as he got to his feet. “What did you just say to me?”
The queen swallowed and gathered strength from deep within. She was born to do this. Born to sacrifice herself. Her heart, to the king of Xen Ptera. Her daughter, unplanned, had been sacrificed, too.
Now, she would willingly give up her body to the cause.
“You love me, Cyprian,” the queen said, stronger now, as something powerful surged through her. She rose to her feet, using the wall for support, and stepped closer to him. “All these years, you have watched me. You have longed to touch me. To taste me. To make me yours.”
Her words were poison.
She, the tipped arrow, aimed for the kill.
“You will take me as your lover,” the queen whispered. “And you will come to me, night after night. Until you can no longer look upon your wife without wishing to replace her.”
Her captor glared at her, trembling with a rage that he had been so desperately trying to hide these past two years.
Tonight, she would win.
“I...love...you?” he said, through gritted teeth.
A question, still.
She must try harder.
“You love me, Cyprian Cortas,” she whispered, putting everything she had into her words. Stepping forward until her breath was on his lips. Until her chest pressed against his, and she grasped his hands, guiding them around to the lowest part of her back. “You love me, and you will make me yours tonight.”
“I...love you,” he whispered.
“Again,” she said. “Say it again.”
His eyes met hers. “I love you, Klaren.”
She took his hands, lifted them to the front ties of her thin gown.
“Then show me.”
A growl rumbled from his lips as pressed himself against her.
“I love you,” he said again.
This time, she knew it had worked.
He meant it.
They spent the rest of the night together, tangled in the sheets.
Tangled in her lies.