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“We can’t change history mother. We can only make a new future. And that’s what we’re all trying to do now. Vahn too.”

“Your Vraxian has certainly impressed me with his eye for detail and his willingness to listen.” She paused for a heartbeat. “I think your father would have liked him.”

Kara didn’t know what to say.To hell with it.She took her mother’s hand and squeezed it tight.

“Well then. Let’s get me married to an alien.”

Forty Nine

Kara stood at the entrance to the Grand State Room, her dress fanned out behind her and her bridesmaids on either side. Her heart was hammering so fast she thought it might leap clean out of her chest.

Her mother hesitated, then gave her a hasty peck on the cheek. It was the first kiss she’d given Kara since she became an adult. Then she went in to take her seat among the officials and noble families who had been deemed important enough to watch the ceremony first hand.

Everyone else would watch it courtesy of the holographic vis-screens which had been erected in cities across Vraxos in honor of the occasion.

“Don’t throw up, don’t throw up,” Kara muttered to herself. Vysh leaned over.

“If you do, it’ll certainly be a wedding to remember.”

“Not helping.”

“You’ll be fine,” whispered Hespia. “And if you screw it up, no-one will blame you. They’ll just think it’s because you’re anedekhuman.”

“Still not helping.”

Chords struck the opening notes of the otherworldly, lilting Vraxian music she’d come to find oddly enticing. It was her signal to step through the door and into a sea of faces.

She gulped down her fear and kept her eyes trained on the distant dais where her future husband waited. And when she saw him, her heart lifted.

He, too, was dressed in silver. A billowing robe flowed round him like mercury and at each hip he carried a ceremonial dagger to symbolize his warrior status.

The camouflage gene in his DNA had activated, giving his scales an argent sheen. That, plus his long white hair, made him resemble a silvered god.

Kara couldn’t take her eyes off him.

When she reached the front of the room, her bridesmaids dropped back and she was left alone with Vahn. She twisted her hands nervously, unsure what to do with them. There wasn’t even a bridal bouquet to hold. Evidently they weren’t a thing on Vraxos.

But then Vahn entwined his fingers through hers and smiled down at her as if she was the only person in the world, and suddenly everything was okay.

More than okay.

She honestly didn’t remember much of the ceremony. She must have spoken at the right times, bowed her head in the right places. There were moments of ritual which they both had to enact; he presented a sword to her, she presented a cup of water to him. Much of it was a blur. But in the months to come, whenever she looked back on that day, the thing that stood out most for her was Vahn’s calm reassurance whenever she fumbled or stuttered.

The officiator, a rather portly Vraxian with head ridges that put Kara in mind of a polled bullock, wrapped a shining silver strand round their wrists to represent their unity.

And just like that, they were married.

The audience rose to its feet in thundering applause, something Kara imagined was being replicated across the planet. She looked up at her new husband.

“Aren’t you going to kiss the bride?”

“Is that the custom on Earth?”

“Isn’t it a custom here?”

He grinned.

“Let’s make it one.”