The Warlord's Daughter (16 page)

Kaz was wrong. He couldn’t just launch ahead without laying the groundwork. After all, one didn’t take off without a flight plan and checking the route. There was work to be done first. Oh, he’d planned her rescue from every angle and in every conceivable detail—except for Vantos and the treasure—but he hadn’t thought any further along than a vague understanding that they’d settle down far from the central galaxy, perhaps in the wild fringes near the Uncharted Territories.

Hells. Awrenkka e’Rakkuu was his uncharted territory.

K
EIR’S BLOOD STILL PULSED
with the thrill of the run. He’d never dreamed he’d be back trying to outrun Drakken when only days ago he was trapped in a boring dead-end job supplying sanitation supplies to refugee camps. Yep, he was running again, thanks to a little girl with a big bad temper and guts that surprised him. She also happened to be an uncashed fifty-million-queen check, a check that anyone else in the galaxy would cash in a heartbeat. He’d wait to see what happened with the treasure. Hunting for it—and being paid to do it—appealed to a certain part of him. He’d heard rumors of treasure left behind by fleeing priestesses in the time of the Great Schism. Wren’s claim that she was bequeathed something hidden in the UT wasn’t that farfetched. It was a matter of finding it. As he’d told her and the battlelord, he had the time.

And if there wasn’t any treasure? That’s where he wasn’t sure how the story would end.

Keir tore off another bite of the snack he’d grabbed while looking for fixings for dinner. The protein stalk tasted like a water hose. He swore, tossing it in the trash. Money wasn’t so tight that he couldn’t cook real meals more often. He’d blasted well better for the
Drakken. The warlord’s daughter was aboard. Imagine that. Royalty. Even if it was the wrong kind.

He opened empty locker after locker, hoping he’d get lucky and find something to prepare that didn’t begin with protein and end with stalk. Quiet footsteps interrupted his concentration. He turned around. “I was sent to offer assistance,” Kaz said.

Sent.
She said it as if she’d been told to pitch herself off a cliff. “You in the kitchen?”

“It’s unfamiliar territory, yes.”

“You used my shower. You smell good.”

At the compliment, she went rigid. “Where are your supplies, Vantos?”

“I pulled out what I could find. It’s all there on the counter.”

Silent, she began sorting through the items, setting aside what could be combined to make a meal. Folding his arms over his chest, Vantos simply watched. It was a sight he’d never thought he’d see—a woman in his galley. Whether it was blockade running or carrying toilets across sector lines, it was him, his ship and what bar he’d frequent next—that was it. Though he had to say, the thought of Kaz sitting at his table wasn’t too hard to swallow—her, waiting for him to make dinner, that long elegant body curled up in the chair and, later, around him. A surge of lust ran through him.

Sleeping with a Drakken. Blasted hells.

Kaz tore the seal off a pouch of vegetable soup with all the enthusiasm of preparing a funeral meal. “Take a seat,” he said. “Pour a drink. I can handle this.”

“I have my orders,” she said coldly.

“Your orders? You had to be forced to come down here and help?”

“It was to keep an eye on you, Vantos, if you want to know.”

“Ah. Well. That makes more sense.”

She took the pouch of vegetable soup she’d unsealed and placed it in the heater. Then she sorted through the other items he’d set out, picking and choosing from the limited selection. Keir folded his arms across his chest. In manner, Kaz was unlike any woman he’d ever encountered. Like a gorgeous doll in a glass case, she was remote, untouchable. Off limits.

And it roused his curiosity.

“All right, doll face, what is it about me or maybe men in general that you find so blasted distasteful? Is it that you like girls better and I’m just misreading the signs? If so, tell me now and put me out of my misery.”

“Girls?” For the first time her lush red lips formed what could almost be termed a smile. Almost. It was more a wry indication that she thought him a complete idiot. All right, he’d give her that because around her he felt like one. “No. I like boys.” She glanced up from the soup. “Men, actually. Maybe that’s the problem. I like men, not boys.”

“Ouch.” He spread a hand over his chest. “I’m not man enough for you.”

She made a fist on the countertop. “It may be hard for you to grasp, but I don’t want you. Or anyone right now.” A spark of anger flickered in her dark eyes. She was becoming more animated by the minute. He was definitely thawing her out, but he wasn’t too sure if it was in a good way. Well, he’d take it however he could get it. She was a challenge too good to pass up.

“Broken heart,” he guessed.

Her proud stance faltered almost imperceptibly. But as a runner, he’d learned how to pick up subtle clues. He was about to give her hells for loving and leaving some poor sot, but seeing her sudden awkwardness, he ditched the idea.

“Mawndarr?” he asked, gentler, knowing the battlelord was a fool for the warlord’s little daughter who had him wrapped around her finger.

She recoiled from the idea. “Aral and I? There was never anything like that. I loved his younger brother. Why are we even having this conversation?”

“I don’t know. I kind of like it, though.”

“I don’t. I don’t like any of it.”

“Not part of your
orders?
”

She glared at him.

“Sorry, doll face. Didn’t mean to rub salt in a wound I didn’t know about.”

“It’s a wound that’s not even supposed to be there. It’s old. It should have healed up and scarred over years ago.”

Kaz tucked her short black hair behind a pretty little ear. Unlike other Drakken he’d seen, she wore only one red earring in each lobe. They reminded him of drops of fresh blood. Must have matched her blood red Imperial Navy uniform. “He died,” she said. “In the war.”

“So did my parents. They were soldiers.”

She glanced up, her eyes suddenly wide, allowing him to see the person who lived behind them for the first time. “But you’re helping us.”

“Selfishly.”

“For an unnamed treasure.”

“Don’t mistake it for anything more.”

Gods. He’d dumped about his parents. He hadn’t thought of his mother or father in so long it took a moment to conjure their faces. He’d started it, so he might as well finish it. Pouring two glasses of whiskey, he offered Kaz one. With the tip of a manicured index finger she politely pushed it away. “They crossed paths on a troop carrier ship inbound from one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, both of them young soldiers with no business falling in love. Except they did. I was the result. They married the year after I was born, something they had no business doing, either.” But at Onsara Barracks, they made it work somehow. The glue that held the family together was their love for Keir and each other, and their hatred of the Drakken Horde, both of which they did their best to instill in Keir.

In his datapad was an old picture of him as a small boy, dressed up as a soldier. He opened it up. The glow lit up Kaz’s perfect skin and her eyes as she absorbed the image. “How cute,” she said.

“Yeah. How cute my parents must have thought I was, a little hero-to-be pretending to blast away Imperial soldiers with a toy plasma rifle.” He must have been no more than six cycles. Less than ten cycles later, both his parents were dead and he was out on his own, running as far from their futile heroism as he could. Spending those few months at Issenda Crossroads because he didn’t know where else to run.

“Son, this is my proudest moment, seeing you in uniform.”
His father’s voice rang in his memory. Keir wore his dress blacks with his rook stripe on the sleeve, symbolic of a first-year academy cadet. Even now he
could hear the gruffness in his father’s voice, could feel how tight he gripped him in his embrace.

Happy, bashful, Keir had insisted, “I’m just a cadet.”

“An
officer
cadet.” It was the only time he’d ever seen tears in his father’s eyes.

A few short months later it was a different story.

“I’m out of here,” he’d told the commandant of the prestigious Royal Galactic Military Academy after word came that his parents had been killed in action.

“Your father wouldn’t want you to take off that uniform,” the commandant of the prestigious Royal Galactic Military Academy said when Keir handed in his papers to resign. “Take time to grieve, son. Then come back.”

Keir shook his head at that. “No flargen thanks.” He’d acted disrespectfully to the commandant, but didn’t care.

He told Kaz, “My mother and father were considered heroes—and all it got them was this.” He reached above their heads and gave the small box that contained their wedding rings and various commendations for bravery a shake. “Hear that? A few small rattles.”

Kaz studied her hands, flat on the countertop—slender fingers, neat glossed nails. Here he was, telling a Drakken his sob story. Talk about times changing.

“I was a cadet at the RGMA when they died. They wanted to force me to finish the remainder of my mandatory service. I had to remind them that war orphans were exempt. They even offered to hold my spot until I came around. I’d already come around. I knew I wasn’t going to throw my life away.”

He held strong to that promise. It was the only thing
that kept him from losing it during the farewells with the cadets who’d become his friends. He’d considered them his family away from home but even they didn’t understand his rejection of all things heroic or altruistic. To Keir, there was nothing complicated about it. “What I’m saying, doll face, is that there ain’t a person in this galaxy alive that doesn’t know about loss. Not to minimize what you feel, but why don’t you live a little? At least you get to. Live, that is. Your little friend upstairs. Who knows how long she’s got?”

“You make it sound as if she has a terminal disease.”

“What no one has died from on Coalition worlds for centuries,” Wren interrupted as she walked into the galley with Mawndarr. “But that people on our worlds do so with regularity. Because my father spent money on war and not medicines. He and all the warlords before him did the same. They’re my terminal disease. If I die it will be because of that.” She took a seat at the table, then sniffed the air. “Something smells delicious.”

Vantos shook his head. “On that pleasant note, let’s eat.”

B
LOODIED
,
QUAKING
with shock, Aral climbed to his feet—again. He would not flee his father’s fists. Never run—that was his mantra. Face the man and fight. For all his determination, it only made things worse. But he’d rather be beaten and defiant than cower in fear of his father’s wrath.

Karbon grabbed his shirt collar, lifting him off his feet to throw him into the wall. “Run, boy,” the man growled. “Show me what a coward you are.”

Aral climbed back to his feet, swaying some. Being hit in the head shook up his equilibrium. The key was
not to let Karbon see. The more weakness he showed the longer the beating.

“Fool boy, you need to learn when to stay and when to give up.” Karbon was slapping him with both hands, alternating top, bottom, left and right, so that Aral never knew from where the blow would come. Instinctively, he used his hands to protect his head, face and gut. “Don’t you see the lesson I am trying to teach you? Worthless piece of freep—go. Get out of my sight, I say. Run away!” The back of his father’s hand sent him crashing to the ground. “You won’t beat me.”

Slowly, gingerly, for his body was a million points of agony, Aral picked himself up. Sometimes a week or a month would go by without provoking his father’s rage. More than that when his father was on space duty far from home. Each time Aral hoped he didn’t return. But the man always did. Just as Aral survived the beatings when his father, drunk on sweef, let his temper go too far, Karbon enjoyed victory after victory over Coalition ships. He seemed invincible.

Perhaps his father thought him invincible, too.

“Run! You have to know when, boy. Know when to give up.”

Aral once more stood. His nasal passages were swollen nearly shut. Blood ran down the back of his throat. One eye was so puffed up he couldn’t see out of it. The other turned his father’s face into a blurry purple rose.

“Again, Aral? I’m giving you the chance to get away. To retreat. Back down and this will be over. Why don’t you?”

Because running would give his father power—over
him. Over everything. His father wanted him to flee, but his legs refused to take him. His father wanted to break him, but he was no longer whole. He wanted him to cry, but the tears had dried. He was closed up, safe inside. No one could open the door.

“Aral!”

The scene shifted. He was in an unfamiliar building. Wren stood at the opposite end of a corridor. A bright light shone above her head. Then he saw four more lights, one by each shoulder and each foot.

Her violet eyes were haunted and wide. Afraid.

She needed him. He started to run to her, haltingly at first, then faster. The corridor seemed infinite. The longer he ran, the farther away she seemed to get and the brighter the lights until they all drowned out the small silhouette of her body.

White light engulfed him. Too late, he thought. He shouldn’t have let her go. He’d lost her now. Lost her forever…“No,” he bellowed, falling to his knees. “Wren, don’t leave me.”

“Aral. Please—
wake up!
”

He sucked in a mighty breath and jerked upright. He’d fallen asleep. Wren was leaning over him, her eyes pools of worry. The sight of her washed and lovely and dressed in borrowed night clothing brought him up short. She was so beautiful. “You’re here.” His voice cracked with relief. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“Is everything okay?” Vantos was nearby, looking disheveled, clearly dragged out of bed by Aral’s nightmare. This ship was far smaller than
Nevermore,
and with no real privacy. They’d have heard every blasted thing. Kaz hurried up behind him.

“I’m here,” Wren told them. “I’ll stay,” she repeated to Kaz when his second hesitated to leave.

He nodded at her, and she left him alone with Wren on a mat on the floor in the aft section of Vantos’s ship. A turning point, he thought, going from the hands of a friend to a wife. Wren would be with him through thick and thin. Through war and peace. Through grief and healing. For better or for worse. This, by far, was worse.