Once Upon a Time (Calluvia's Royalty 3)

Jamil gave him a distrustful look. “Even if what you’re saying is true, your people are still renegades. Your stance against the Bonding Law makes all of you criminals.”

Rohan chuckled. “We didn’t do anything wrong. Every sentient being should have the right to refuse the bond the Council has enforced on Calluvians for thousands of years. Refusing to bind our children’s telepathy shouldn’t make us outlaws. But we’ll always be outlaws while we’re being accused of crimes we didn’t commit.”

The prince frowned. “Are you actually implying that someone is intentionally trying to make the rebels look bad?”

Rohan gave a clipped nod. “I know it seems unbelievable, but it’s true.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

Rohan hesitated.

“Years ago, our people saved an important person who was about to be murdered,” he said at last, choosing his words carefully. “The assassins were hired by a very powerful political figure on Calluvia. Years later, they are still trying to finish the job. We thwarted their every attempt so far, though the one last month was uncomfortably close.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” the prince said, but his voice was significantly less hostile. It sounded almost curious.

Rohan sighed. “To be honest, we don’t know for sure. We only know that we have a very powerful enemy we’ve managed to royally piss off for years. Maybe that person thinks if they discredit us enough, we’ll give up the person we are protecting. It’s also likely that they’re afraid that the person in our protection might come forward and tell everyone the truth. If it happens, the rebels would be their only witnesses, so discrediting us makes sense. But this is all a bit of a stretch. Killing your husband just to discredit us is definitely too much of a stretch. That’s why I’m here: to find out if the murder of your husband is completely unrelated. Even if it’s unrelated, I still need to find proof that Tai’Lehrians didn’t do it.”

The prince stared at him incredulously. “Do you expect me to believe you just like that?” He frowned. “Wait. Tai’Lehrians? What does the entire colony have to do with the rebels? The colony is governed by Lord Tai’Lehr, who is a lord-vassal of my House. Are you saying the rebels seized control of the colony?”

Rohan grimaced, annoyed with himself for the slip. In his defense, he wasn’t used to speaking of their people as “rebels” or “renegades”— the terms Calluvians used for them. It also didn’t help that he was still incredibly distracted by the mental pull he felt toward the prince. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before their pseudo-merge, but it still distracted him more than it should.

“We didn’t seize control of anything,” Rohan said. “We aren’t violent. There was no uprising.”

“Then how?”

Sighing, Rohan sat down next to the prince. “It happened gradually, over the centuries,” he said. “The first ‘renegades’ that left their clans thousands of years ago were really hiding in the Kavalchi Mountains, as the rumors say. But it wasn’t safe there, so they decided to relocate to another planet. They chose an uninhabited planet relatively far from Calluvia and established a settlement there. They couldn’t know that in a few decades the Third Grand Clan of Calluvia would discover enormous deposits of korviu there and send Lord Tai’Lehr to establish a colony.”

“Are you saying the rebels were on the planet first? That our colonists didn’t notice their settlement? How is that even possible?”

Rohan watched the prince’s hand move closer to his. He didn’t think it was intentional—Prince Jamil didn’t seem aware of what he was doing—and he wondered if he should pull away before their hands touched. He ought to. He knew that.

He didn’t move.

“The unique magnetic field around Tai’Lehr prevents scanners and satellites from working well, just like it interferes with teleporters and long-range communicators,” Rohan heard himself say, watching the prince’s milky-white, smooth hand settle next to his brown, calloused one. Their knuckles brushed and Rohan almost hissed from the sensation, losing his train of thought for a moment.

The prince snatched his hand away and clenched it into a fist, avoiding Rohan’s eyes. The tips of his ears were red, as red as Jamil’s pursed lips.

It took an incredible effort to remember what they were talking about. Rohan cleared his throat and continued, as if nothing had happened. “The first contact between the two settlements happened only after most of the Calluvian military ships departed. It wasn’t violent. Lord Tai’Lehr thankfully wasn’t an idiot. He realized that his people were far outnumbered and very disadvantaged by the fact that the rebels’ telepathic abilities were much stronger. So he agreed to keep the rebels’ settlement secret under the condition that they would do no harm to the colony, either. For decades, the two settlements existed separately, but little by little, they started mixing. Eventually, the Calluvian colonists stopped bonding their children, since they saw how much stronger the unbonded rebels’ telepathy was. They didn’t want to be at a disadvantage. You can probably guess the rest.”