Page 123 of Stripped By the Alien

"But my crew," I say, and this is the part that's kept me at this window far longer than my own fate ever could. "They followed my orders. They fought when I told them to fight, and stayed silent when I told them to. They came with me back to the Gzet station. If I'm found guilty of disobedience, tradition says they fall with me. I won't have that. Whatever the Queen decides for me, I intend to ask that it ends with me."

Nora studies my face for a moment. "That's not going to be an easy thing to ask for, I think."

"Asking a Queen for anything is dangerous and difficult. But everything I do fits that description."

“Except me, of course.”

I can't hold back a bark of laughter. “My love, you are the most dangerous and difficult of all.”

“Hmf,” Nora sniffs. “You only say that because I always beat you when we practice fighting.”

I squeeze her hand again, happy that she came to break off my dark pondering. “See how difficult you are? Now you're pretending to forget who always wins.”

The Queen's chamber smells exactly as it always has. Decay beneath ceremony, ancient beneath fresh. And this time there is no crowd to soften the weight of walking toward the platform. Only Morr'ak, the Inquisitor Brax'tok, and a scattering of senior Harrowers whose faces I don't try to read.

I kneel. Nora, beside me, kneels as well, without needing to be told this time.

The Queen's great head turns toward us with the same unhurried slowness I remember from every audience before this one, and when she finally speaks, there is no warmth in it at all.

"Chief Harrower Krix'vorr." The word Chief comes out with an edge I haven't heard from her before, as though she's deciding, even as she says it, whether it still applies. "You were sent to find the Gzet homeworld. Having found it, you failed to return here to report its location. Instead you turned around right outside our Nest, returned to hostile space without authorization, engaged a fortified station, and freed captives that were not yours to free. Alien captives. You did all of this without a single word to the Inquisitor charged with observing you, or to this Nest."

"I did, Your Majesty." I'm surprised at how accurate her information is. Normally, any accusation will be embellished and enlarged by courtiers and rivals before they reach her. I sense the Inquisitor's hand in this.

"Do you have an explanation that isn't simply the alien female standing beside you?"

"No, Your Majesty," I say, because it would be a worse insult to lie to her now than to admit the truth plainly. "That is exactly what it was."

A ripple of something moves through the gathered Harrowers. Both amusement and alarm, I think. The Queen's clouded eye fixes on me for a long, silent moment, and I feel every longcycle of her age and patience bearing down on that single look.

"Before Your Majesty decides anything further," I say, before I can lose the nerve for it, "I ask one thing. Whatever judgment falls on me, I ask that it end with me. My crew followed my orders as they were bound to. They did not choose this course. Their loyalty pulled them with me. They should not share the cost."

Morr'ak's antennae twitch in open surprise. Even Brax'tok, standing very still near the platform's edge, allows himself the smallest flicker of an expression.

"You ask me to break tradition," the Queen says slowly, "on behalf of others, before you have even learned what tradition intends for you."

"I do, Your Majesty."

The silence that follows stretches long enough that I hear my own hearts beating, both of them, out of rhythm with each other for the first time I can remember.

Then, unexpectedly, the Queen makes the same wet, rhythmic sound I remember from the very first time Nora stood before her. It's the sound, I now know well enough to recognize, of the Queen laughing.

"A Chief Harrower who disobeys me outright, and then asks a favor for his crew in the same breath," she creaks. "I have ruled this Brood for longer than anyone living remembers, Krix'vorr, and I don't believe anyone has ever managed both in one audience."

She shifts her vast bulk, servants scrambling to reposition cushions beneath her, and something in the chamber's tension loosens, though not entirely.

"Very well," she says. "Your crew's fate rests with you alone, as you've asked. That much, I grant freely — it costs me nothing but precedent, and I find I care less for precedent than I once did." Her good eye narrows, sharp despite its age. "Your own fate, however, is a separate matter. And a more interesting one."

I throw a quick glance at Nora. She's calm, her face neutral.

"Four planets, Krix'vorr." The Queen's tone changes, and something contemplative creeps into the creak of her voice. "The richest target found in longcycles beyond counting. I could execute you for the manner in which you found it, and still my successor would remember me as the Queen who claimed the greatest Harvest in the history of the Brood. That is not a small thing to weigh against your disobedience."

"I understand, Your Majesty."

"Do you?" She tilts her great head, studying me with an attention that makes my carapace prickle. "I wonder if you understand something else as well. Inquisitor Brax'tok tells me you intend to marry this alien."

"I do, Your Majesty."

"A formal union. With an alien. Not merely a plaything kept quietly in your own chamber, as any Chief Harrower might keep without comment." Her clouded eye doesn't leave my face. "You understand what that means for you. A Royal Mate cannot be bound to another female. The position requires a male unencumbered, free to serve however the new Queen requires him, for as long as she requires him. You have known this since the day I announced my successor, and you did it anyway."