HE’S COMING FOR YOU. KILL HIM BEFORE HE KILLS YOU.
Konan ripped through the outer hull of the ship. This was a problem. If the ship depressurized in space, they’d all get sucked out, be dried out like raisins and finally suffocate. Konan seemed immune from that fate, but she knew she wouldn’t be. Her biology didn’t allow her to claw her way into a spaceship against all odds and laws of nature.
She grabbed the crown and ran to the smallest, most defensible part of the ship, which in accordance with all laws of the universe, was the bathroom. If he got into the bathroom, it was all over.
“I’m not giving you this crown! I’m not!” she shouted through the bathroom door moments before it shattered under his might. He saw the terror on her face, written in her eyes. She thought he was going to hurt her. That realization sent a shock of pain right through to the core of him.
She screamed as he snatched the crown from her weak fingers and felt its power flowing through him again.
The crown was his portal to power unlike any other. It had whispered plans for complete conquest of all the other kings. Dominax, Archon, the lot of them would all bend to his will. His kingdom would span endless galaxies.
YOU HAVE COME FOR ME, KONAN. YOU HAVE PROVED YOUR WORTH. YOU WILL BE A RULER UNLIKE ANY RULER.
He lifted the crown toward his head. He was going to embody all the most powerful elements of a royal. He was going to be feared, loathed, and worshipped by all creation.
BUT FIRST THE INTERLOPER HAS TO DIE. SHE MAKES YOU WEAK. SHE IS A DISTRACTION.
“I can break her to my will.”
SHE HAS ALREADY BROKEN YOU TO HERS. KILL HER. KILL. HER.
Elizabeth was cowering in the corner, her glasses half off her face, her hands covering her eyes. It would be easy to kill her. He could snuff the life from her and return to his rampage.
Or…
Konan walked the crown back through the shattered ship, past the broken portals the tendrils were already trying to repair, and threw the crown out the hole in the hull. He watched, pleased, as solar gravity sucked it into the heart of the nearest sun.
There it went, the key to power, the ultimate artifact of Masih royalty. Relinquishing it had been super easy. Barely an inconvenience.
He knew why it was easy. It was easy because he loved his human more than anything. Between Elizabeth and power, there was no contest. She was his everything. He had not been following the crown. He had been following her.
“Stay away from me!”
“It’s okay,” he reassured her. “I’m not going to hurt you. The crown is gone. I threw it into the sun.”
She pulled her hands away from her eyes and stared at him. “You threw the crown into the sun?”
“It was a dick.” He used her words. The ones she had used to describe him from time to time.
“It was a dick,” she agreed. “But I thought you liked being a dick with it.”
He couldn’t blame her for her skepticism or her cynicism.
“I know you must hate me. I have been a monster in the most literal of senses. But I love you. I have loved you from the first moment I…” He tried to rack his mind for a more delicate and romantic way to say the first time he fucked her, but he couldn’t. “The first time I had you, I knew you were mine.”
“But you… you have a problem with killing people.”
“I do. It’s expected of a king, that’s the problem. It’s acceptable to execute people. It’s encouraged. But I don’t want to be that kind of king. I want to be the kind of king that people cheer for. I want to be the kind of king who doesn’t have to chase his queen through airless space. I want to be the kind of king you love.”
“Destroying the crown was a good start,” she said with a small smile. “But you scared me, and the way you talked to me…”
“It was wrong of me to call you my fuck hole. Accurate. But undiplomatic.”
She really couldn’t tell where Konan ended and where the crown had begun. She doubted that the crown had ever caused him to do or be anything that he wasn’t already secretly inside. But he had sacrificed more for her than anybody else ever had. Or at least, he was saying he had.
“Did you really get rid of that crown?”
“Yes. Threw it right into the sun.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
Konan chuckled. “You’ve learned to be suspicious. You used to be so trusting. I’ve broken parts of you, haven’t I. But perhaps we can spend the rest of our lives putting each other back together.”