Page 49 of Dark Space

All of whom seemed to be unfairly handsome.

‘Will he take us back to his home planet?’

Vesper stretched. ‘You? Certainly, if you don’t decide otherwise. Me? No idea. I don’t know if he’s keeping me out of vengeance, or as some kind of bargaining chip. If it’s the latter, then he’s smarter than I thought; he could hand me over to the Intergalactic Council in exchange for some kind of favour.’ He grinned. ‘I am very well-known and important, you see.’

‘You mean you arenotorious.’

‘That too,’ he said, unfazed.

I adjusted my collar. ‘What would you do if you were free?’

His eyes blazed again. ‘That depends. What would you want to do?’

I frowned at him. ‘Me?’

‘Would you want to see the ice planets in Sector Eleven? The electric pink moon of Gyoden? Visit the sugar mountain on Ciatkla? The thousand-year storm of Pholos? The pleasure houses of Intrika?’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Meet my twin and see their lover’s tentacles?’

‘I … You’d go wherever I wanted?’

He gave a half shrug. ‘I should think that much is obvious, Anna.’

My lips parted in shock. ‘Vesper, I –’

‘Dinner,’ my black-haired Roth said roughly, and cleared the cell glass.

I spun and glared at him. ‘You have awful timing, you know that?’

His expression didn’t change. ‘Come.’

‘Have fun!’ Vesper called after me, his voice bright. Before my Roth opaqued the glass again, I saw Vesper draw his knees up and bury his face in his arms.

My heart hurt.

There was a small window in the tiny corridor between the cell and the Prince’s room; I stared outside, fascinated. Vesper said that we’d landed on a mid-sized moon, but it was nothing like Earth’s; it looked more like I imagined Mars to be, with rocky, scarlet terrain and no discernible plant life. Nothing stirred in my sight, though my Roth frowned as he glanced outside.

‘There’s a storm coming,’ he commented.

‘A storm?’

‘We can see it on the radar. Our engineer thinks we’ll be safer on terra than if we tried to make it back to dark space, but he needs to fix our primary shields before it hits.’

‘Our engineer?’ I repeated. ‘As in, singular?’ I was pretty sure that most sci-fi films I’d seen featuredteamsof engineers.

‘There are a lot less Roth on board than there were before.’

‘Oh,’ I said uncertainly. ‘Were they lost in the battle?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘But you and the Prince are …’ I trailed off.Safe? Unharmed?

‘Alcide is King now,’ he said matter-of-factly.

I blinked. ‘I’m sorry. About his parents, I mean.’

The Roth shot me a startled look. ‘Why? His father was a monster. Scytha has a chance for the future now.’

‘Oh.’ I bit my lip. ‘I don’t understand anything about your planet.’