It only took Keliana the walk back to Jareth’s suite to decide what to do. Once in the sumptuous rooms, she walked straight through to the dressing room and the section he’d allocated her at the back. Row upon row of scarlet clothing filled the racks, the only deviation in color the shelves of expensive lingerie in all colors of the rainbow.

Ignoring them all, she pulled a small bag from the back of the closet and opened it. Hand shaking, she scoured Jareth’s clothing, finally coming up with an old pair of cargo pants, a faded shirt, and an old padded jacket. They’d all be too big for her, but she didn’t care. They were clean, well made and most importantly, not the red of the harem.

Shoving them into the pack, she added a couple of pairs of winter boots from her closet, and some of the older, plainer underwear. Her hand lingered over the beaded slippers she adored, but she steeled herself. Where she was going, she couldn’t wear them. And for her own sanity, she didn’t want any reminders of her life in the palace.

The ragged hole in the center of her chest ached, pulsing in time with her heart. She was surprised it still beat. It would have been better if it didn’t, or if she’d heeded her predecessor’s warnings about falling in love with her master.

Jareth. A newly made prince who couldn’t…wouldn’t marry a courtesan. She snorted bitterly and yanked open the drawer than contained her jewels. What man would marry a whore? Why bother buying the cake when you’d already tasted it?

Tears welled in the corners of her eyes, but she fought them back, swallowing the misery that tightened the back of her throat and opened the jewelry boxes. Ignoring the jewels Jareth had given her, she selected the ones from her time in the harem. Big, flashy jewels, the sort that Sethan’s father had preferred and worth a fair amount of coin. Enough to buy out what was left of her contract, if she could get the contracts-manager to agree that her price was less now that she was no longer a prince’s harem-mistress, but just an ordinary whore.

Stuffing the jewels in her pack, she hurried through the suite to Jareth’s office. She needed to be gone before he finished with Prince Sethan and stopped her. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t stay around and watch him marry another woman like a good little courtesan should. Not without wanting to poison the woman in her sleep, or stab the pair of them on their wedding night. And he would marry—as a prince it was expected of him.

Pushing the door open, she edged into the office. It had surprised her when she’d first seen it. Wall-to-ceiling shelves of books on history, warfare and, tucked away behind the door, fairy tales from the collected worlds of the princedom. The latter were well used, their spines showing damaged and the pages dog-eared. The discovery had melted her heart. The big, mean soldier who was still enough of a child somewhere inside to read fairy tales.

She hardened her heart as she swept into the room and rounded the desk. She needed to find her papers of ownership. Without them she couldn’t bribe the contracts manager to free her.

“Crap.”

The surface of the desk was littered with paperwork and files, all of it bearing the insignia of Sector Seven. Classified stuff, it would be worth a fortune to the right people and would mean she wouldn’t have to work. Ever again. She barely glanced at it as she rifled through, looking for the folder that bore her name. It had to be here somewhere.

“Jareth, you’re a messy pup,” she muttered under her breath, automatically straightening the paperwork as she searched. “Lady knows how you find anything in this lot. Ahh…there it is.”

The edge of a purple file peeked out from under a wad of star maps with little ship symbols drawn on them. She’d seen enough handed between the harem staff to recognize it instantly. Her papers and medical records.

Her fingers closed around the edge and teased it from the pile. It was a history of everything since her purchase for the royal harem, and her sale from it, including all the medical procedures and the two pregnancies they’d terminated before she’d had the implant. Her heart ached for those two lost babies, even after all these years. Holding her breath she opened the thick cardboard outer to look at the contents. A thin sheet of data-plex looked back, the transparent surface digitally encoded with her details.

Sensing the heat and pressure of her fingers, it flickered to life and presented her with a scrolling gallery full of images of herself. From her arrival until six months ago, there was an image for every year of her service in the harem. She flicked through them, watching as the pictures charted a young girl full of hope through to the closed expression of the harem-mistress and onto the spark of hope in the last image.

Jareth had started leaving roses six months ago, just before the picture was taken. Her lips compressed as she moved on, scanning the wording of the document. It was a standard, boilerplate certificate of ownership. Jareth owned her and any offspring she might bear, whether from his seed or another’s, until perpetuity or until the bond-price was paid in full.

A bitter smile curved her lips as she found the clause she was looking for. The bond-price could be paid uncontested, provided it was for the purposes of freeing her. He’d only altered the contract to ensure she couldn’t be brought by someone else without going through him.

She scanned down further, her eyes widening at the price listed at the bottom. A prince’s damn ransom. Her heart fell as she tried to calculate the worth of the jewels she carried. Would they be enough to free her? Snapping the file closed, she stowed it in her pack and then hurried from the room. Only one way to find that out.

* * *

Prince. He was a prince.

Jareth sat back as Sethan discussed his new position with one of the court officials, letting the talk of assumption of assets and duties wash over him. The day, in fact the whole of the last week, was reading like something out of the fairy tales he’d loved as a child. The kid from the streets, son of a whore, was discovered to be a long-lost prince. If anyone had asked him a few weeks ago he’d have told them to piss off, that stuff like that only happened in stories, and vid-streamed films.

Now he was living the dream, or something close to it. He had a beautiful woman to go home to, and the guy who’d donated sperm for his conception turned out to be a royal prince. More importantly, a dead royal prince.

Jareth was no stranger to court politics, he knew that the Seventh house had been failing for a while. A secession of playboy princes had decimated the family coffers and then died, leaving the line with no male heirs. Within a generation the line would die out, which of course meant there was a popularity contest raging to see who Seth would award the title to.

Warmth filled him as he turned over the object in his hand. Sethan had given it to him just after dropping the bombshell that he was the newly discovered heir to the Seventh house. A heavy cuff, it was ornate and studded with tiny star-amethysts and had the house seal on the side. How a near bankrupt house had kept hold of an heirloom like this he didn’t know. But then, it was a betrothal bracelet and thanks to the many superstitions surrounding them, they were always the last things to be pawned or sold in a family from paupers to royalty alike.

He stroked his finger over the back and allowed himself a small smile. It would bury Keliana’s wrist. He’d have to get her an everyday one and save this for dress occasions or she’d bruise her wrist wearing it. The thought of her wearing his bracelet, of claiming her as his wife filled him with pleasure and a deep sense of satisfaction. He’d free her, marry her, and finally be able to get her out of those damn red dresses.

His courtesan. His wife. His princess.

His mind wandered as the clerks went over the paperwork. Battle meetings he could handle, as well as strategy and intelligence meetings, even long-range operations scheduling, but the sort of paperwork admin staff seemed to revel in made him want to drop his head to the conference table in front of them and take a nap until they were done.

“Nearly there,” Seth commented with a gleam in his eye, obviously amused that Jareth was getting a look into what his life was like as Imperial Prince, top dog among all the houses. Jareth shuddered, glad that he wasn’t in the center seat and had to deal with all this crap on a daily basis.

“Right, you need to sign here, and here.”

Seth shoved a piece of paper over the table, holding out a pen. Jareth took it, his eyebrow arched. The amount of signing he’d had to do, he was surprised they hadn’t asked for it in blood or for his firstborn in payment at least.

Just the thought brought the image of Keliana to mind, her belly swollen with child, his child, and longing speared his heart. He wanted that, wanted to sire kids on her, be a father. Be the father he never had, with a woman he was married to rather than one who had to sleep around to make ends meet.

He scrawled his name with a bold flourish and handed the pen back. “Are we done? Because I have places I need to be.” Like finding a certain lady in red and asking her to marry me.

Seth nodded, his attention distracted as Jaida entered the room and gave her prince a pointed look. Jareth smirked, recognizing the expression on her face. It was the one that said Seth had forgotten something. Again.

“We’re done. You laugh now…you just wait,” Seth warned, spotting the smirk. “Once they’ve got your bracelet on their wrists, they’re a nightmare. Hen pecked, that’s what I am. Hen pecked!” He aimed at his wife as he walked across the room to join her, but his tone was amused and affectionate and the possessive hand he laid across the back of her waist told Jareth all he needed to know about where the power balance lay in that relationship.

“I should trade you in for an easier model. I can, you know. Prince’s prerogative…”

Seth’s voice trailed off as the couple walked into the other room, leaving Jareth alone with the admin staff scuttling around the table clearing the paperwork up. Realizing he was alone in a room full of what amounted to the piranha of the office world, he picked up the Seventh house bracelet and hightailed it out of the door to find his courtesan.

* * *

“Where is she?”

Jareth slammed his fists down on the contract manager’s desk and tried to ignore the urge to pull the little shit over it and bounce him around a few of the hard surfaces in the room. His big frame virtually vibrated with anger as he glared the officious little man down.

As round as he was high, the man’s pasty skin was oily with cold sweat, the haunted look in his eyes enough to tell Jareth he knew something. He’d better fucking know something and it had better be something interesting or Jareth was following up on his first thought and introducing guy’s pudgy face to his own desk. Several times.

“Ah, C-C-Colonel Nikolai. If you’ll just calm down, I’ll get the records. The transaction was perfectly legitimate, as you’ll see.”

To his credit, the man didn’t try to wriggle out of it or claim he hadn’t seen the beautiful courtesan—correction, former courtesan—but then that would have been difficult given Jareth had received an automatic notification of the sale of an asset from his estate.

Asset. His heart, a seething mass of anger and pain, rejected the word. Keliana wasn’t an asset, she was so much more. She was a person with thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Dreams he wanted to share and now someone had bought her out from under him.

“As you look,” he ground out, arms folded and tapping his foot in impatience as the little man rifled through the long drawers behind his desk. “You can tell me how someone managed to purchase what was mine, without me being consulted. And its Prince Nikolai by the way, you should be receiving notification from Prince Sethan’s offices about the investiture shortly.”

The small man paused midturn back to the desk to place a heavy folder on the surface and a look of terror crossed his face for a second before he blanked it off. Pissing off a prince, no matter how newly invested, was far more serious than pissing off a mere colonel, even if that colonel was from one of the most feared elite fighting units in the princedom. Royal blood trumped everything, but it was Jareth’s common blood, honed and sharpened on the battlefield that he’d use to bounce the slimy court official if he didn’t get the answers he wanted.

The official flipped the folder open and extracted a flex-sheet. At the swipe of his thumb the sheet activated, text and numbers scrolling over its suddenly opaque surface.

“Actually, no notification was required,” he said as he handed the sheet over. Jareth caught the slight shake of his hand as he held it out, but ignored it in favor of grabbing the sheet to study the information on it.

“As you can see, the lady herself made the purchase and under article seven, clause three b of the intergalactic slavery laws, if the purchase is made for the purposes of releasing the asset, in this case the person of one courtesan, from indentured service, then no notification is required.”

The smug little bastard gave him an oily smile.

“The lady provided the bond-price in full in return for release papers. It was all above board and legal, your highness.”

The lady… Keliana had bought out her contract? He didn’t think it was possible to be angrier than he was when he’d walked in the room, but in the next few seconds Jareth realized how wrong he’d been. At the news Keliana had paid her contract out rather than talk to him just as he was going to give the damn thing to her and ask her to marry him the anger simmering within exploded outward with the force of a dual-core hull-mine, ripping through his body in a wave of white-hot fury.

“Like fuck it was.” His voice was little more than a snarl as he read through the transaction. It was all there, in black and white. She’d paid off her contract price in a combination of jewelry and cut stones. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the list the contract manager had compiled and realized she’d just made him wealthier than he already was. It made no difference, the seventh house might be teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, but he certainly wasn’t. After nearly twenty years’ service, he’d accumulated enough danger money and military benefits that he was almost as rich as Sethan himself. He didn’t want the money; it was nothing more than a drop in the ocean. He wanted Keliana.

Looking up, he speared the official on the other side of the desk with an icy glare so complete it made the smaller man visibly quail, obviously wishing he was someplace else right now.

“The sale is invalid.”

“I-I beg your pardon, C…your highness?”

“Are you deaf as well as stupid, man?”

Jareth threw the flex-sheet down on the table, over a picture of Keliana looking into the camera, her sultry expression mocking him.

“The sale is invalid. The jewels she used were not hers to give and besides that, this one here, a star sapphire neckplate of pallatrianium? It’s a fake.”

“There must be some mistake. I checked the piece myself.”

Jareth folded his arms over his chest. “Then check again. I know this piece and it belongs to the Imperial Princess, so this one must be paste and not worth the amount you’ve listed.”

He leaned forward to grab the inventory again, pursing his lips as he made rapid mental calculations. “Which means that you’re short ten thousand three hundred parells on the asking price and I won’t accept a darinell less.”

Cheeks flaming with red, the official unlocked and yanked open a drawer on the desk itself. Delving inside, he pulled free a small velvet bag and opened the drawstring. Jewels tumbled free, all ones Jareth recognized from Keliana’s jewelry cases.

Sorting through them, he pulled the neckplate in question free and studied it critically through a jeweler’s loop he pulled from his pocket on a chain. Within a minute, his face fell. Dropping the eyeglass back into his pocket he slid the necklace over the table.

“Apologies, your highness. You are in fact correct. This is a very good fake.”

Now he’d been caught in the wrong, all trace of smugness had disappeared from the official’s face and manner. Making a note on the flex-sheet, he looked up.

“Obviously the sale is null and void and the certificate of release will be terminated. I don’t know where the woman in question was planning to go, but I can have the certificate identification circulated for you? That way as soon as she presents it, she’ll be picked up. Would you like me to add fraud charges as well?”

Fraud charges. Just for a moment Jareth allowed himself to think about her sitting in a police holding cell all night, alone and frightened before they returned her to him. Perhaps he’d leave her there to stew for a couple of days…after all he would be busy with his new duties, perhaps too busy to go and pick up one wayward woman who didn’t realize how good she had it.

Shaking his head, he dismissed the idea. Leaving her in a cell was just asking for all sorts of trouble and even the thought of other prisoners—male prisoners—around her threatened to send his fury raging out of control again.

“No charges. Have the certificate ID circulated and inform me when you get a ping on it. I’ll deal with her myself. In the meantime, have all the jewels bagged and returned to my aide. She’ll know what to do with them.”

She wouldn’t, but Sergeant Daycor was nothing if not adaptable, as she’d proven this morning when informed he was being not only promoted but crowned. Not a situation the average military aide had to deal with, but she’d taken the news without batting an eyelid and seamlessly started to deal with the situation.

“Of course, highness. As you command,” the little man murmured, his ostentatious bow so low his nose almost brushed the desk in front of him. Jareth fought and won out against the temptation to put a smack down on the back of his head and spread his pudgy nose all over his face.

“Good. Inform me as soon as you know anything. And I do mean anything. Dismissed,” he said, slipping back into officer mode as he nodded and left the room.