Page 9 of The Falcon and the Flame (The Birds: On Her Majesty’s Sapphic Secret Service #2)

Chapter Six

“ O h god, it’s fucking huge!”

Contradictions and contrasts were everywhere in Ain Zargiers, Lottie realised. They added an exhilarating spice to the game.

Almost immediately she began to clock the differences between the gaudy extravagance of Qasirim Malik’s party house and the understated elegance of the rest of the palace estate.

The group of women selected to attend the Green Futures Alliance cocktail party were ushered down to the royal jetty, and although they weren’t permitted in the actual palace itself, they got close enough to admire its beauty.

Built over four hundred years ago by the nation’s most distinguished architects, there wasn’t a gold-plated cherub in sight.

The contrasts were painfully obvious when their gathering boarded Malik’s superyacht just to make the short trip out to the islands barely a mile off the coast.

The boat was massive.

“Definitely compensating for something,” Bili whispered back.

They still hadn’t met the prince, but he would join them onboard. One of the other hostesses, a gorgeous Black woman Lottie was having trouble taking her eyes off, overheard them. She gave them a tiny grin.

“ Sooo compensating,” she said with a conspiratorial wink.

She turned her shoulder slightly to shield her hand from the rest of the room.

She wiggled her pinkie finger in front of her chest in an unmistakable, universal sign.

“What do you think we’re here for? You didn’t hear that from me, though! ” She laughed. “Hi, I’m Beauty.”

She certainly was. Her skin shone with a warmth that was reflected in her eyes.

She wore a red cocktail dress—short and tight around her thighs, a scattering of crystals drawing attention to a plunging neckline.

Lottie found herself momentarily distracted by a very impressive pair of assets.

She cursed her rotten luck again. Surrounded by incredible women who were all straight and obsessed with a prince. Typical.

Unless…

“You guys are new, right?” Beauty said. She waved over a waiter and ordered them all a champagne.

The women were milling in the main lounge of the superyacht waiting for the prince to arrive.

“Don’t mind me saying, but you still have that wide-eyed-omg look everyone gets when they first see all this shit.

Save that for the Qasirim.” She laughed.

“He likes it when we’re impressed by his money?” Bili asked.

Beauty’s laugh deepened. Lottie decided she liked her there and then. “Malik likes it when we’re impressed by his everything.” She wiggled her finger again and pulled a face. “Didn’t Kayley set you up on the Discord?”

They looked at her blankly.

She pulled out her phone. “ Everything is on the Discord,” she said. “We all look after each other here. We track what the Qasirim likes, his moods, how to manage his handsy bloody mates, what gifts he’s given each of us and where best to cash them in. No secrets amongst us. ”

Bili looked interested. “Cash in the gifts?”

Beauty leaned her hip against the back of an ornate carved lounge. No one wanted to sit down and crease the lines of their dresses. Not before Malik arrived.

“Sure,” she said. “This is my third stint in the party house, so ask me anything. It will probably be my last, though. Malik is getting stingier and so are his billionaire buddies. The closer to absolute power they get, the tighter they cling to the shit they think makes them important. But people like you and me? Use them up, babes. Take what you can get while they’re throwing it around. ”

Bili was scrolling through the Discord on her own phone. “This is incredible,” she murmured.

“I know, right? It was my idea, ages ago,” Beauty said.

She pointed to a tall woman chatting casually with the bar staff.

“That’s Indira. Her family are diamond merchants.

You want to cash in jewellery, talk to Indira.

” She indicated another woman holding up the gold grand piano in the middle of the cabin.

“Genevieve has contacts in the Swiss watch industry. Malik gives you a watch, you give it to Genevieve, her contacts dump a brilliant price in your bank account. We have similar networks for gold and cars.” She shrugged.

“Like I said, we look after each other. All that sensationalist crap about women being catty bitches always in competition with each other was totally made up by men. Fuck ‘em.”

The three of them looked at each other. As one, they wiggled their pinkies.

“Exactly,” said Beauty emphatically. They clinked glasses. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

It was subtle, but everyone felt it when the ship pulled away from the dock. Across the room, Indira, Genevieve and the others gave resigned sighs and drew together in a small group facing the door.

“Here we go,” muttered Beauty.

Lottie wasn’t exactly nervous, but she needed to know. “What do we— um—”

Beauty looked irritated. “Didn’t Kayley run you through etiquette either?

Fuck’s sake.” Lottie had the impression Kayley was going to hear about it tomorrow.

“Call him Qasirim until he asks you to call him Malik, then pretend like you’ve been fuck buddies for ever.

Laugh at his jokes, clutch at his arm, blow up his ego, all the usual shit, but— and this is important— don’t ever say anything about the Q’sar or the Qasira where he can hear you.

He hates them both.” She tugged them over to the group in the middle of the cabin.

“Right then, ladies. Tits out. Let’s do this. ”

Qasirim Malik was every bit the twat Lottie had expected.

Arrogant, oblivious, and convinced he was the most magnetic man in the room, he strode into the group of women with an entitlement that was truly revolting.

The intelligent and otherwise sophisticated Beauty, Genevieve, Indira immediately began giggling like teenagers.

It took a quick pop of her eyes from Beauty for Lottie to remember to do the same.

“Very nice,” Malik crooned, and he slapped Lottie’s arse in a way that made her want to snap his hand off at the wrist, yank his arm behind his back and grind his face into the polished marble.

But she dialed up the wattage on her smile.

The creep wasn’t worth breaking cover over—not yet.

She spent the trip pretending to be awestruck and tossed enough compliments at Malik with just enough syrupy charm to make his ego swell.

She hoped nothing else was swelling too.

Gross. She and Bili won ‘call me Malik’ status early, and Beauty caught Lottie’s eye, an approving wink from behind her champagne flute.

They were introduced to Malik’s companions. A Saudi oil tycoon here, a Russian oligarch there. Malik had a particular fossil fuels magnate picked out for Lottie.

“His name is Antonin Petrov and I have him by the balls for a fifteen-year gas deal to the tune of 180 billion,” Malik murmured in her ear. He said it like he thought Lottie should find it sexy. “Make sure he has a good time.”

She wriggled her shoulders, knowing full well the effect it would have on her boobs. “What makes you think he won’t?” she simpered.

Malik leered. His voice hardened. “I mean it. If he shows any sign of getting chummy with my sister, let me know.”

“Of course.”

So. Hostesses were obliged to report back to Malik. Lottie had to admit that was reasonably clever on the Qasirim’s part. His good time girls were all part of his strategy. She wondered if there was anything on the Discord about that.

The superyacht was a floating shrine to excess—twice as garish as the party house—with gold-plated rails, crystal chandeliers and floors so polished Lottie could see her own eye-roll reflected in them.

She was starting to see the pattern. This might have been luxury, but it certainly wasn’t style.

This was someone trying to buy it and failing spectacularly.

She was on the forward deck admiring the sun setting over the expanse of the Mediterranean when an alluring vision of the future flew almost directly over her head.

It took her by surprise, creeping up on the superyacht completely silently—a sleek, white, four-person drone, though ‘drone’ was a clumsy, ugly name for such an astonishing vehicle.

Graceful sweeping lines and elegant curves cradled a gleaming white passenger pod topped by double wings and a blur of rotor blades.

It was a flying machine that embodied civilisation’s bravest dreams, an electric inspiration in the air.

It put every sci-fi movie to shame—and yet, there it was, streaking past the superyacht and laughing up its sleeve at Malik’s pretension.

Lottie had seconds to glimpse the four passengers inside the glass dome, all reclining on cream leather upholstery.

They were smiling and laughing, relaxed and refined.

Their sophistication was as natural as the soft stir of the breeze their machine left behind, while the superyacht wallowed in the waves, the stench of diesel billowing in its wake.

It took a few moments longer for Lottie to recognise the woman who sat at the controls, her fingers lightly tapping a screen.

It was the Qasira.

The princess could fly a— a whatever that thing was?

She opened her mouth—and once again Beauty caught her eye. She shook her head minutely.

Lottie shrugged the moment off and giggled inanely at the Russian mogul she’d been assigned. She sipped the free champagne, but her mind chased the flying machine—and the woman inside it.

When the superyacht docked at Azure Mahaba—the most exclusive of the resort islands in the archipelago—Lottie stepped into another realm. Around her, the game shifted again.

Alright, Finch. Turn it on, she told herself.

She strutted into the cocktail party, head high, a cocky smile on her lips, fully prepared to own the room. And then she stopped short.

If this was Zynara’s world, it was breathtaking.