Page 70 of Alien Prince’s Fake Bride (The Tentacle Throne #1)

- Umbra -

Empress Juriniel stops ten feet away from me, flexing her glove-clad fingers. I swear they’ve got small, black blades attached to their tips, which is why she could cut that leaf so easily.

She folds her arms over her hollow abdomen, putting each hand into the opposite sleeve, mandarin-style. “Umbra, I wanted to see you here, instead of down on the planet. Now you’re safely away from Khav and the palace, we can talk freely.”

Vera doesn’t translate, but my Khavgrese has gotten really good, and I understand what the Empress says. I can’t form all the sounds of the language, but the words and the grammar aren’t that hard. Especially if I just don’t care that much about speaking perfectly.

I keep hold of my knife. “Talk freely in a Vyrpy ship? I not understand.”

Juriniel looks me up and down. “This is not a Vyrpy ship. It’s mine.

The Vyrpy are simply my helpers and servants.

But before we talk, do you like my garden?

It’s not as fine as the one down on the planet, but it has many of the same specimens.

I like seeing things grow, don’t you? Plants can be useful.

And enjoyable. Look, here is one of the tastiest things you’ll ever try.

” She comes closer and reaches her hand out to me.

Between two gloved fingers is the small, silver leaf she just pinched off a plant.

“I was going to make an infusion for myself, but now I want you to take it and taste it! You’ll be astonished how much delicious flavor one small leaf can contain. ”

But I’ll be damned if I’m going to eat something this crazy empress is offering me. “Maybe next time. Let talk about the Vyrpy.”

“Oh, don’t be tedious,” she sighs. “You’re a princess now. You need some social graces, and the Syntrix knows you’re sorely lacking in all of them. Your first lesson is accepting gifts with some degree of courtesy. Here, take it!” She comes closer, waving the little leaf.

I take a step back, clutching the knife gun in its sheath. “I work on my social graces later. You are friend with the Vyrpy, the enemy of the Khavgren Empire. You’re keeping lot of people prisoner at this ship, including some Khavgren legionnaires. How long you have been a traitor?”

She finally drops her arm and sighs. “No graces at all. Well, perhaps it’s just as well.

It’s not that you will need them much longer.

Yes, I do keep some prisoners. I have certain plans for them, but the time hasn’t been right.

And I must say it has amused me to keep a ship in orbit around Khav, filled with captives that the Vyrpy caught in various battles.

In orbit around the very heart of the Empire!

I have had many happy moments thinking about it. ”

I’m so full of questions I struggle to gather my thoughts. “Are you the reason the Emperor not can use the Syntrix right?”

Juriniel shrugs her thin shoulders. “It was a challenge in the beginning. I had to weaken him both in body and in mind. He was a strong man, that Craxallo. Now, keeping him weak is almost effortless. Of course I have the help of my friends here.” She reaches out and caresses a small, red flower with one hand.

“Or rather, of the interesting poisons they can produce. They keep him in constant sickness. And so, whenever I offer to take his place, and sit on the Throne to send strengthening Syntrix to Khavgren armies, he gratefully accepts.”

“And you make sure that the Tentacle Throne only sends negative Syntrix their way, not strengthen them but weakening them,” I accuse her. “This place all full of dirty Syntrix here. Poison to the mind.”

“I am their enemy,” she admits. “What else would you expect? It’s worked wonderfully well.”

She has evil plans for me, that’s obvious. I’m not sure what to do. I was never trained for psychological terror like this. Stalling for time with questions is the only thing that comes to mind. “Did you try to kill Mareliux?”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, obviously. Oh, are you trying to record my confessions with your AI?”

I hadn’t actually thought about it. “I’m sure my AI recording all this.”

Juriniel raises her fine eyebrows. “Yes? Does it still work for you?”

I glance down on Vera. “Vera?”

There’s no reply. Even pressing the single button on the side of her black plastic case doesn’t wake Vera up.

The Empress smiles. “No? I’m sure you wonder why. I imagine you were too happy to see me to notice that it stopped responding.”

“Vera!” I slap the black little screen and try the button again, but she does appear to be dead. And even if she’s strictly speaking just a machine, she’s become a friend to me.

I glare at the Empress. “If you broke her, I will murder you.”

“No,” she says with complete sincerity. “You won’t.

And I didn’t destroy it. But I did try to kill you .

But I think you noticed the missile and the lackey with the knife?

Your Syntrix is different from the usual Khavgren one, that’s why you succeeded in thwarting my attempts.

I couldn’t stop you. I’m curious about the gas bomb, though.

That wasn’t me. Who else might have been trying?

How could you make so many deadly enemies in such a short time? ”

“Being an alien seems be enough to make as many enemies as I’d ever need in Khav palace,” I snap, angry about Vera and determined to stay mad and not get sad, at least not yet.

“But you were received so well!” the Empress says mockingly. “As an Imperial Princess! And still it wasn’t good enough for you?”

I look around the big room, looking for escape. Surely those big windows in the ceiling are just huge lamps that make the room seem like it’s in the sun. “You made sure I not feeling welcome at all. And that tame quaestor of yours.”

She laughs, a joyless, trilling sound. “Oh, you don’t like Preniat?

I don’t think anyone does. But he’s the right mix of ambitious and not-too-bright to be a perfect helper.

” She looks around the greenhouse and sighs deeply.

“I had everything so well in hand, you know. The Emperor was too weak to do much, and I used the Tentacle Throne to weaken his forces whenever they most needed to be strengthened. The Empire was shrinking by the day. All I had to do was wait. Prince Nerox is too lazy and enjoys the young ladies too much to be any kind of threat. The future will be even better. I will be able to rule through him, offering to handle his tedious duty of sitting on the Tentacle Throne. I will let Nerox do his partying and womanizing while I control the Empire and turn it all into a smoking ruin in just a year or two. He will be a complete pushover. And if not… well, what works with Craxallo will work with him, too.” Again she caresses the flower.

“The Syntrix will be quiet, then. Harmonious. And ours. ”

I slowly walk a wide arc around the Empress, into the greenery, not turning my back to her. There could be an exit on the other side. Vera would know, but she does look dead.

“Why you want to ruin the Empire?” I ask.

“The Tentacle Throne is powerful,” she says quietly, as if to herself.

“It should not be in the hands of those who would only use it to build and add to the harmony of peace and order and happiness . The galaxy was so good the way it was! The Syntrix was vibrating with discord and disharmony, with misery and death and attacks and defeats. That’s natural .

That’s energy in its highest form. That’s life .

It makes the Syntrix come alive . The Empire changed all that.

The Tentacle Throne made the Syntrix all wrong.

It was all harmony , all bright . All aligned, aimed the same way, dull, fluid, smooth.

And we had to live with it. It went through us at all times, impossible to turn off or turn away from. ”

I can’t say I know what she means. But the Syntrix that she herself exudes is chaotic and dark, so I suppose that anything else will feel as bad to her as her crackling Syntrix feels to me.

I shift my grip on the knife. Juriniel seems to have lost her mind, and I may have to use it.

“Oh, how we fretted and fought each other because of it!” Juriniel goes on.

Nobody knew how to fix it, to make the Syntrix natural again.

Except me. I knew. And I sought out the weak point.

An Emperor without a wife! Simply asking to be exploited.

I found a good wife for him, don’t you think? Everything went so well!”

“Who are you really?” I ask the obvious question.

“But then the Emperor got his bright idea to force Mareliux to get married,” Juriniel seethes, ignoring my question.

“That didn’t come from me. He did it all in secret!

Well, I wasn’t worried in the beginning.

It was a good way to place a big hurdle between Mareliux and the Throne.

Perhaps he would refuse it, distrusting women too much to want to marry at all!

Perhaps he would step aside and let Nerox be the heir apparent, preferring to fight on the fringes of the Empire instead of coming to Khav and claiming the Tentacle Throne!

I knew how skeptical Mareliux is of courtiers, and especially of women who aren’t soldiers. I helped make him that way. And then…”

I put more distance between us. I can hear the Empress grinding her teeth.

“Then he returns with you ,” she goes on, fury rising in her voice.

“And the Emperor really likes you, so he completely ignores all the reports about your wedding being an obvious sham. And you have Syntrix like nothing anyone has ever seen before. Yes, I got the reports of your fake wedding on Grefve, with Syntrix rings that shone like the sun and swords sent flying. And Mareliux loves you! He loves you! Mareliux! The coldest, most aloof, least trusting man in the Empire. He loves an alien! A small, round, and grotesque little alien! I could not believe it.”

“Bad luck,” I reply, trying to figure out how to get away. This greenhouse-like room is big, but there’s only one exit, and Juriniel is between it and me.

“And now,” she says, voice shrill and trembling, “there’s nothing between Mareliux and the Tentacle Throne, a throne that he can now completely dominate with the help of your Syntrix!”

“Uh-huh.” I keep my hand on the handle of the knife gun. “It may not be as easy as that.”

It’s as if Juriniel doesn’t hear me. Her body shivers in rage. “He can turn the tide, don’t you understand? He can destroy everything I worked for, ruin the plan! He can return the Empire to strength! Again the Syntrix will be shrill with Khavgren resonance. It will be ruined! Because of you! ”

The last word comes as a piercing scream. The Empress rushes towards me, fury on her pale face.

I pull the knife out of its sheath, stretching it out in front of me as a warning. “Stay away!”

She towers over me, a thin, ghostly figure that reminds me of the Grim Reaper, trembling with rage and barely keeping it together.

“Everyone knows that ridiculous marriage of yours is fake! But the Emperor approves, and that’s the end of it.

We all have to pretend to think it’s real!

I can’t believe it! The first time Mareliux tries to play a court game, and it’s such a transparent, obvious sham that the whole court is shaking their heads in disbelief. And then it works!”

I keep the knife stretched out. The Empress seems completely out of control. “I don’t know what you mean. The marriage is real.” It could just be that this is a trap to get me to admit to the fake marriage. Although I have much bigger problems now.

“Oh, you think you can stab me?” Juriniel laughs and grabs my upper arm in a move as quick as a reptile.

The little blades on her fingertips cut through the fabric and into my skin, making me groan in pain.

She snatches the knife out of my grip and tosses it into a bush. “You won’t be needing this.”

Her hand shoots to my throat, sharp blades digging in.

“This could already have been over. If only you’d stay in one place!

If only you’d let my tame Calanian Guards blow you up in that ridiculous apartment!

Mareliux thought he was being so clever hiding you.

It shows how little he knows about the palace after he’s been gone for so long.

The Calanians are mine! After decades of work with the Tentacle Throne, I claimed them as my own. They have no will now except mine.”

I don’t know what to do. Her little blades digging into my arm hurt more, but her grip around my throat is more dangerous.

She can kill me just by moving her hand.

She’s obviously lost her mind. But her eyes are as cold as always.

Cold and alien, so different from Mareliux’s and Nerox’s that it’s impossible to believe that they’re her sons. Or that they are related in any way.

“Now,” she says, staring down at me in a way that sends coldness all the way through me.

“The least you can do is give me some entertainment before you go.” She takes her hand off my throat and grabs hold of my hand.

She turns it palm up and curls up her own fingers except the index finger.

The blade at its tip is short, but it looks razor sharp.

“No!” I desperately try to pull my hand out of her grip, but she’s stronger than any empress as skinny as that should be, and she easily keeps hold of me.