Page 64 of Alien Prince’s Fake Bride (The Tentacle Throne #1)

- Umbra -

“No kidding,” I snarl and aim the awkwardly shaped gun-slash-knife at Nerox, blade and muzzle first. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m getting you out of the danger,” he says, hands still held up.

I take a moment to collect myself. He’s not holding a weapon, and there’s nobody else here. But he does have a sword in his belt, and the other rooms in the fake apartment could be full of goons.

“How did you get in here?” I demand, my voice flat from the deep sleep I was just ripped out of.

He shrugs, not looking too concerned by having my gun pointed at him. “I know the palace better than anyone. This is not the building I would have picked to keep you in, but Mareliux was in a hurry. Don’t judge him too harshly. He means well.”

“Uh-huh. That’s not really an answer. Where are the Calanians?”

One of his tendrils points behind him, towards the living room. “They’re outside, where they’re supposed to be. And I highly recommend you don’t alert them. The Calanian Guards are no longer your friends. Or mine. Or Mareliux’s. And that is extremely bad news.”

“For all I know, this could all be a lie,” I tell him. “If anything happens to me, only you stand to gain anything from it.”

“Then why aren’t you dead already?” he asks.

“You were fast asleep when I entered this room. Even your AI noticing me wouldn’t have stopped me from tossing a grenade on you or cutting your head off.

Or I could have filled the room with deadly gas.

Notice that I did none of those things. Umbra, this is urgent enough as it is.

I understand your reluctance, but I am really trying to save your life. ”

I try to wake my sluggish mind up properly. “What is the danger? Who’s behind it?”

“The danger is that you’re locked up in a place where you’re guarded by your worst enemies. All they need is an order, and they’ll kill you. It could happen at any time.”

“Why do you care?”

He drops his hands. “Because I’m in the same situation. And I have been for many years. This whole palace is not what it seems. Change into the darkest attire you have. Bring that larger gun that I know you have, with its holster. Make sure your AI shuts up.”

My mind is racing. The grogginess is completely gone.

He seems sincere. And it is true that he could have killed me before now.

But he may just want to take me to a place where he can keep me prisoner and blackmail Mareliux.

Everyone has told me how devious this guy is.

With Mareliux gone, he’ll be the next emperor.

And that Tentacle Throne is clearly worth killing for.

I point the gun to the side of him instead of at his chest. “Where is it that you want to take me?”

He points to the ceiling. “Off Khav completely. Back to your home planet. Nothing here is safe for you.”

It’s tempting, and it is what I wanted. But I wanted it on my own terms.

“No,” I tell him. “I need more than that.”

He sighs. “All right. How about this: ‘Ashlynn’.”

I freeze. His pronunciation of my sister’s name is flawed, but clear enough.

It’s the secret word I picked for Sigise to use if she had to activate the extraction plan.

No Khavgren would know it or think of it.

Having Nerox use it either means that the whole plan has been compromised and ruined, or that Sigise stands ready to get me off Khav.

My eyes go narrow. “Who told you that word?”

“Colonel Grast told me that if you were the way we think, you might need to hear that before you’d come. She and her people are coming for us. I will return to the living room while you change. Be quick.” He spins around, does that flourish thing with his cape, and closes the door behind him.

My gun hand drops to my side. “Vera, is this a trap?”

“ I have no idea. But the use of the password indicates that it might not be. This setup corresponds to one of the scenarios that Colonel Grast prepared. Prince Nerox was never a part of that, of course. But a stranger giving you the code word was mentioned as a possibility.”

I open the closet and find the black jumpsuit that I asked for, specifically for night extraction. “Have you told anyone about my sister’s name?”

I swear the AI snorts. “ Of course not!”

I quicky discard my dress and put the jumpsuit on. “Could they have hacked into you and found it there?”

“ Umbra, my sensitive data are encrypted so well that even I can’t access them without taking close to a full second to open them. That’s an eternity.”

“So as far as you know, nobody has.”

“ Nobody can,” she tells me firmly. “ Space Force takes security very seriously indeed. I’m as close to hack-proof as anything on Earth. They’d have better luck trying to hack into an orange with a highway offramp.”

“That’s a weird image.” I get my military gun from the back of the closet and put it in the holster that hangs down my back. If I need it, I’ll have to reach over my shoulder. It’s the only way I can bring the baseball bat-sized thing with me.

“Perhaps. But perfectly apt.”

I tie a black bandanna around my hair, and then I’m done.

I draw my gun and slowly open the door to the living room of the apartment.

Nerox is standing in the middle of the dark room, only lit up by fake sunlight from the screens that are showing early dawn on a tropical island.

He looks me up and down. “That should work. Have you ever shot with that gun?”

“Not yet,” I tell him tersely as I replace it in its holster. “But I really want to.” I give him a side eye.

He gives me a little smile. “‘So don’t try anything’, is what you’re saying. We will leave the same way I came in.”

He goes to one of the fake windows and pushes at it. It smoothly swings away from the frame, revealing a dark space behind it. “This took hours to do.” He climbs through the hole and turns to me.

All right, I guess we’re doing this. I’m still worried about it being a trap, but I never sensed much malice from this prince. He’s more irreverent than evil, I think. So I’m taking a chance on him not having been tricked by anyone into doing this.

I go over to the fake window. The screen is being held up by a squat utility robot that looks most of all like a forklift without the driver’s cabin. “Was that always there?”

“The screen was securely fastened to the wall,” Nerox says softly. “I had the robot help detach it and hold it up. Now it will screw it back in place while we escape.”

I step over the low threshold. It’s a big storage room with a high ceiling, dark and empty. It’s a weird feeling, because the fake apartment doesn’t feel the least bit fake from the inside. But from the outside it’s all raw, unpainted walls and metal supports to keep the walls up, like a movie set.

Nerox walks ahead to the corner, where there’s a dusty stairway going up. “They tried to block access to this whole floor, but I know a way.” He quickly climbs the stairs, and I follow at a safe distance.

The steps are tall and there are many of them, mildly spiraling as we climb.

“Most of the buildings of the palace aren’t just one structure,” Nerox says, no longer whispering now that we’re out of earshot of the Calanians.

“They’ve been added to and expanded over the centuries, and I don’t think anyone’s kept track of how they’ve grown.

We’ll soon be in a different building from where you were kept.

And then another and another.” His voice echoes from the stone walls.

I’m starting to get winded from climbing the tall steps. “How did you find it?”

“This place? I roamed around the whole palace a lot as a boy. Mareliux did too, before he had to escape to the care of the army. I was left alone with adults who… well, I couldn’t trust them.

And the other children at court always wanted something from me.

So in order to get away from it all, I explored the palace.

Especially the old and unused parts, like this one.

There are places where no adult will think of going, but which will look like an exciting hiding place for a small boy. ”

Despite myself, I’m starting to like this younger prince. He hasn’t had an easy life, sounds like.

The stairs end in a ledge and a blank wall. “Is this where you came”? I ask.

“Yes.” With one foot, he pushes on the bottom of the wall.

With a metallic creak, it pivots around the middle at about neck height for me and upper stomach-height for Nerox.

“This must be ancient. The first time I came here, many years ago, it was from the other side. It’s the only place I know where they put this kind of door.

They obviously meant to turn it into something else, but they changed their minds and just left it.

It’s well done, though. From the other side, it looks just like a blank wall.

The craftsmen didn’t know it was an entrance, so they didn’t bother blocking those stairs when they built your apartment. ”

We go through the pivoting door, and then we follow a labyrinthine route that I know I couldn’t reconstruct if I tried.

We go along hallways, through storerooms, down stairs, up again on other stairs, passing probably fifty empty rooms and doors of various sizes and materials and smells.

We never see anyone anywhere. It’s not that weird — it’s only about dawn.

“Most of the palace is empty,” Nerox tells me as we walk up another staircase.

“Old buildings become uncomfortable and unfashionable, and instead of renovating them, new structures are built. This is an old part of the palace, and so some of it is unused. As a boy, I would always find places that were deserted and figure out how to string them together on a walk so I would never be seen. I know hundreds of places like this. But now we’re here. ”

He pushes open a window. The dawn air still has the coldness of night in it as it washes over me. The prince climbs out onto a terrace outside.