Delivered by the Defender (Kindred Tales)

“Well, I’m not looking to acquire it,” Selena said firmly. Pushing the infested nut further away from her, she picked up another coin and tried again.

But her third attempt was no better than her first two. This box held a small bowl of some lumpy, dark brown, rancid-smelling pudding that looked a lot like something a dog would leave on the sidewalk. Valen assured her it was another delicacy—some kind of fermented delight—though he admitted that this particular batch seemed to have been fermented much longer than was usual.

“Would you like some of my linga wings?” he asked, offering her some of the small, meaty bones in the savory brown sauce. “They’re a bit messy to eat but very delicious.”

“No thank you,” Selena said stubbornly. “I’m going to try again. There must be something edible in my mini vending machine!”

But there wasn’t. Her fourth coin got her a box filled with gray, slimy things that moved when she poked them with the long, silver eating-sticks they had come with. They were jumm slugs, according to Valen—yet another delicacy and meant to be eaten while they were still alive. Selena set the box aside with a shudder.

The fifth box held a dead animal that looked a lot like a bright pink rat.

“Hmm…” Valen frowned. “A chewla-booly. They do serve them raw in the Ma’shorkan mountains, but usually they skin them first.”

“Ugh!” Selena pushed the box away—by now she was feeling desperate! Wasn’t she going to get one single thing that was edible at all?

Less than hopefully, she pushed her last golden coin into the slot and pressed the yellow button. The brightly wrapped box she got rustled like potato chips, making Selena hopeful that it was some kind of thin, crispy, savory snack.

But when she opened it up, it was filled with—

“Ahh!” Selena shrieked and dropped the box, shoving away from the table at the same time. Her shoulder hit Empress the Third’s in her attempt to get away, but she barely noticed—she was too focused on escaping from her dinner—which was also trying to escape from her.

The contents of the box—several large, hairy spider-looking things with bright blue bodies and long green legs—went skittering down the table in all directions. Several diners stabbed them with the three-tined golden forks, like mini tridents, which were set at each place, and one or two of them even took a bite of the wriggling creatures.

“Ugh!” Selena shivered uncontrollably. She did not like spiders. In fact, she had kind of a phobia of them to be honest. “What were those?” she demanded of Valen.

But before the big Kindred could answer, Empress the Third started wailing loudly.

“She hit me! She hit my royal person! I am wounded! This wrong must be redressed!”

“What is it now, Empress the Third?” the Emperor demanded, sounding exasperated. He had gotten what appeared to be a huge meat pie out of his vending machine and he was munching on it—brown gravy was dripping down his chin.

“This little bimbap struck me on the shoulder and now she must be punished!” Empress the Third wailed, pointing at Selena. “She has wounded my royal person!”

“I’m really sorry,” Selena said to the Emperor hastily. “I didn’t mean to do it—I just brushed her shoulder when I jumped away from what came out of my box. It was some kind of spider or insect and I wasn’t expecting it.”

“There, you see, Empress the Third? The incident was unintentional,” the Emperor told his third wife. “Lovely Selena here was simply frightened of the skitter bugs—they probably don’t have anything like our delicacies on her backwards little planet.”

Selena wanted to protest that Earth was not “backwards,” but now was not the time to fight because that was exactly what Empress the Third wanted. Selena was pretty sure that the awful things in her dinner vending machine were the result of the other woman whispering to one of the servants earlier. Probably she had told the servant to put the worst, most disgusting things imaginable in Selena’s boxes, hoping to cause some kind of reaction that she could blow up into a huge incident.

So she simply sat there looking as humble and innocent as possible and thankfully, the Emperor seemed to be too absorbed in his meat pie to listen to his third wife’s crazy ranting.

“Do settle down, Empress the Third,” he grumbled around his latest bite. “You’ll put us off our food if you go on like that!”

Seeing that she wasn’t going to get her way, Empress the Third settled back down on her cushion in a huff. But it seemed she couldn’t bear not to be the center of attention for long, because a moment later, she leaned against the Emperor’s side and began kissing his cheek and rubbing her breasts against his arm suggestively.

“Empress the Third, really,” he protested, though Selena noticed he made no move to stop her. “You are simply insatiable!”