AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Finally, dressed in normal clothing for the first time in months, he went looking for Zarifa.
The Empire’s Hope was designed with its cargo hold and passenger deck forming a single fat egg shape that hung suspended under the long cylinder housing the super-C engines. The exotic fields the engines generated didn’t get along well with the ship’s artificial gravity, so the two had to be kept separate.
Rance kicked through the circular hatch into the engine room to see Zarifa floating midway up the vast central pylon in the dimness. Her long red hair waved around her head like a halo as she watched the violent blue crackle of super-C fields inside the neutronium glass tube. The light painted the delicate contours of her face in an otherworldly glow.
With a captain’s automatic caution, Rance studied the tube as he kicked off from the hatch and sailed up the length of the core. The energy patterns looked normal—no flashes of scarlet that might indicate a field rupture. “The engines okay?”
“Fine.” She didn’t look around. “I just like watching them. All that destructive power, all that energy…”
Rance caught one of th
e handholds jutting from the tube and brought his weightless body to a halt. “I know what you mean.” Clinging to the handhold, he watched the hot blue and green light dance inside the tube. “It is beautiful—even if it could wipe us out quicker than the fist of God.”
Silence fell between them, filled by the low, bone-deep thrum of the generators. Rance turned to watch her watch the fields. Even with him right next to her, there seemed something profoundly alone about her.
No surprise, he thought. She’s been betrayed by everyone she was supposed to be able to trust.
Even him. He’d made love to her—and promptly turned on her the moment he found out who she was. The thought sent a stinging prickle of guilt through him.
“I keep thinking about my uncle.” Her thumb twisted the diamond band around and around on her index finger.
“The one we’re supposed to meet?”
“No, not my father’s cousin—my father’s twin.”
A dim memory from some history class reared its head. “Sevan of the Hundred Days.”
Zarifa nodded. “He was just five minutes older than Lodur. Raised all his life to be emperor, only to end up murdered by terrorists one hundred days after taking the throne.”
Which resulted in her father’s becoming emperor instead. Lodur had been dogged by rumors he’d killed his brother all sixteen years of his reign, just as many now whispered that his daughter had been involved in his murder.
Rance was contemplating the irony of that when Zarifa said, “Before he became emperor, Sevan fell in love with a commoner.”
He looked over at her in surprise, digesting the implications. “I can imagine how well that would have gone over with the aristos.”
She snorted, a delicately inelegant sound. “Grandfather would have disinherited him on the spot if he’d known. To tell you the truth, I think that’s exactly what Sevan had in mind. He never wanted to be emperor.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Rance said dryly. “Who wouldn’t want to live with a target painted on your back?”
“Exactly. But then Granddad died, and there he was. Emperor. He could have both the crown and the woman he loved. And a hundred days later, he was dead. Killed by a sniper on his way home to her.”
Rance studied her pensive expression in the dancing light. “You think your father had something to do with it?”
“No, he wouldn’t stoop quite that low.”
Which begged the question. “So how low would he stoop?”
Zarifa turned in midair to give him a tight smile. “That, my shifter friend, is a bit of knowledge that would get you killed.”
“Besides, you don’t trust me.”
“Oh, I trust you,” she said lightly. “I gave you the chance to rip out my throat today, and you didn’t take it.”
Rance was surprised by how much that stung. “Is that as good as it gets for you? You give somebody the chance to kill you, and they don’t?”
Zarifa turned toward the core again. “Depends on the day.”
Pure instinct had him catching her by one shoulder and tugging her into his arms. She looked up at him in surprise.
