8
TYRUS KNEW our ship couldn’t go alone to Pasus’s space, so he’d mobilized all the Domitrian ships but one to accompany us. The Grandiloquy followed him, as they always did. Tyrus knew not to outright insult them by ordering them away from him for the trip. Instead, he’d stocked and staffed all the other starships, except the Tigris, so Grandiloquy vying to accompany him hedged their bets and sought places on all but the Tigris, hoping to end up with the Emperor. Then Tyrus moved me to the Tigris. Because of its skeleton crew, none had gambled on our presence. That was how he’d secured us an interlude alone in hyperspace. We were alone but for Devineé, who was not going to disturb us. As I recovered from the spinal fracture, Tyrus did something quite rare—he slept most of the first day away to recover after the first weeks in charge of a galaxy.
Then it was just the two of us.
Free of the eyes at the Chrysanthemum, there was no need for formality. Tyrus had given me the finest guest quarters on the Tigris and taken a chamber just down the hall from mine. It spared me the curious mixture of terror and anticipation I felt when I considered the prospect of sleeping in the same bed together.
The next time I awoke, Servitors soundlessly came forward, holding an array of clothes for the day. I picked quite at random, then found Tyrus, already in the room overlooking the salt baths, service bots prepping the six-egg omelet he always ate for breakfast.
In his hand, a glowing phial of a narcotic.
“You’re starting early,” I noted. Perhaps he was more stressed than I realized.
Tyrus’s brows jumped, and it seemed to take him a moment to understand what I referred to. “What, this? Oh, no. This isn’t for pleasure.”
“Of course.”
He smiled. “I’m serious.” He accessed the ship’s database, and a projection bloomed to life in the center of the table. It was a schedule. Narcotics of varying sorts. Planned for the next three months like an exercise routine, complete with dosages. Today’s was obviously a psychedelic.
“It’s called mithridatism,” he explained. “Ancient Emperors on Earth used to expose themselves to small amounts of poison daily to gain an immunity to them. Essentially, I try to do this to gain some resistance to intoxication—what you come by naturally.”
“Recreational intoxicants are not poisons.”
“That could be debated,” he noted wryly. “At the very least, an assassin’s blade could never threaten me so much as a foggy head might around my grandmother. Since I am not blessed with a Diabolic’s metabolism, this is how I prepare my chemical receptors. When I use a narcotic socially, I’ve already practiced in private at a much higher dose, so I can keep a clear head, and merely pretend to feel what I don’t.”
I glanced down at his schedule for today. “Are you hallucinating as we speak?”
“Not much . . . apart from your antlers,” he noted. “I am certain those aren’t usually there.”
“They aren’t,” I agreed gravely, reaching up to feel my scalp.
“And banana fingers,” he noted, staring at my hands in an abstracted way.
On a strange whim, I wiggled them in his face. Tyrus leaned forward and playfully nipped at them. Yet not so hard that he broke skin. He was quite in control.
“Do I look strange?” I wondered, for I could never experience what he was feeling.
“Draw a bit closer. I’ll tell you.”
So I did, and his arms swept about me. There was a sweet liquid ripple inside me as I settled against the warmth of his body. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, down to the tender skin of my neck, his soft breath skimming the shell of my ear.
“You look as you always do. Beautiful.”
Without thought, my fingers slid to the underside of his chin, and I pressed my lips to his. It was tentative, soft, testing the ground where I hadn’t ventured since the coronation. His arms slid about me, gently, almost reverently, and then he drew me closer and deepened the kiss, until what had seemed almost frightening felt so natural, felt so right.
“Two weeks,” I murmured against his mouth. “Just us.”
His lips curved. “Just us.”
I kissed him again.
• • •
From without, the Tigris took the shape of an arched claw, yet within, the labyrinth of decks yielded an endless series of surprises.
Our favorite level held an artificial forest teeming with plant and animal life. Toward the end of our journey, Tyrus suggested a jaunt ancient Earth humans might have taken. No machines. We swam in a river as the birds engineered with the sweetest voices sang overhead. Afterward, we dried off by a real fire.
At least, that was the intention. Tyrus had read of lighting a fire with the use of sticks alone. He began quite gamely, and then after several frustrating minutes and a great number of splinters, I began to feel true amusement.
“You are bad at this,” I marveled.
His lips crooked. “Thank you.”
“Truly bad.”
“You are so supportive of me.”
“I am merely surprised. You are bad at something.”
He slumped back, befuddled. “The most primitive human beings could master this art. I live in space, surrounded by unimaginably advanced technology—and I cannot light a fire. Or can I?” Then he disappeared. Minutes later, he returned with a lighter—and flicked it on. He cast me a forbidding look as he cheated, as though daring me to say anything.
A rare impulse came over me, and I heard myself laugh. Flames sparked against the pale gaze fixed on me with wonder and amazement. “You laughed,” he marveled.
“I did not.” My cheeks flushed, but I found myself smiling nevertheless like some silly, foolish young girl.
“I heard it. I know what I heard.” His grin was crafty. “I will make it happen again.”
“Try to start another fire and I’m sure it will.”
Tyrus pulled me to him, his lips hot and intent, parting mine. His hand cupped the back of my neck. The stroke of his thumb at my nape sent delightful chills skittering down my spine.
His hand slid downward, and his eyes met mine before his touch traced up the expanse of my leg. He searched my face, and I realized he was gauging my response. Wanting to force him out of his head, I shoved him onto his back. Tyrus gave a startled sound, but his lips blazed into a grin as I tasted the skin of his throat. . . . And then his legs were tangled with mine, rolling us over again, his face flickering in the warm glow of the firelight.
“I love you,” he told me simply.
I pressed my hand over the hot skin beneath his tunic, and he closed his eyes as I stroked the indentations of his abdomen. His larger hand captured mine, and our lips met, his kiss insistent, searing me to the core. . . .
The vessel began to jostle about us, harder and harder.
Tyrus pulled back, dread on his face. He looked to be cursing inwardly, as I was.
Then the stars began to reappear through the sky dome overhead, and I knew we had just dropped out of hyperspace. Regret sank through me. Our eyes met. I ran my fingers through his coppery hair as the heaviness of our task settled back over us.
We both moved to the window without agreeing to do so. Then out we gazed at that bright point against the dark of space that grew larger as we neared it—the patch of malignant space just outside Lumina’s star system.
The brilliant white-and-purple death zone was like a gash through the void, eerily beautiful. I wondered how many had perished on the vessel that had ruptured entering hyperspace, leaving this tombstone behind.
“It’s grown since we last saw it,” I remarked, puzzled by that. It grew faster than I would have expected. “What feeds the growth?”
“It doesn’t need fuel to expand, it just does it.” He gave a vague wave of his hand, staring transfixed at the brightness. He leaned against the window, his face suddenly remote. “The first time I ever saw malignant space, I was living on a planet.”
“I didn’t know you’d lived on a planet.”
“Almost ten months,” he said distantly. “I wasn’t suited for it. The gravity was so heavy. The humidity seemed to strangle me. I was allergic to everything, and constantly sunburned. Bloodsucking insects loved me far too much, and . . . and it was probably the happiest year of my life.” He admitted that softly as though it were something shameful. “All it took was one accident at the edge of the star system to wipe it all away.”
“A ship ruptured. And then . . .” I nodded toward the sight in front of us, figuring it out.
“It’s frightening and beautiful to see from here—but it’s indescribable from a planet. The atmosphere shifts what light filters through or amplifies it. At the beginning it was a small slash, and then in mere weeks, it grew so large. You could see it in the day, but at night, it filled the sky. These clouds of orange and scarlet and gold . . . I wasn’t on the planet by the time it was gone. Some evacuated early, but so many were debating or wrangling over what to do. They thought they’d find a way to fix it. They delayed. And I am very sure many were in denial until it was too late to escape, and that malignancy had filled their skies. Can you imagine the horror of that?”
I gazed at the whip of light, knowing we did so at a safe distance, knowing we could leave. I tried to imagine seeing it from under a planet’s sky, but my mind couldn’t wrap around the idea.
“Was it dreadful?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Of course it was a dreadful thing, dwelling somewhere, and then knowing it had been wiped away.
“It was important,” Tyrus said. “Up to that point, I would have ripped off my very skin if I could have disowned my family. My mother was dead, and I could never escape who I was. But that planet showed me what it really meant to be a Domitrian: I wasn’t ever going to be a victim of circumstance. I was going to shape the circumstances, if I just survived long enough to do so. One day, I’d have it in my power to do what that entire planet of Excess could not, and I would fix that sky.”
He drew and released a breath, the light of malignant space harsh on his features. In that moment, I felt as though I saw the nineteen-year-old boy slip away, and in his place, the Emperor turned from the window and said, “Now here we are. Let’s get started.”