They are the top of the Cygnian food chain, so to speak.
I mean there are literally hundreds of thousands of princesses. Hell, every pure-bred female in Cygnian System is technically a princess. Those are the golden ones. The nobodies. The kind who get kicked out for being rebellious and angsty.
The other colors are higher up in the spectrum. True royalty. And I’ve heard, though this is nothing but rumor—because pretty much everything you read or hear about the Cygnians is just that, rumor. They are super isolationists—but I’ve heard that the pinks and the silvers are all in line for an actual throne.
They don’t rule outlying territories, or random moon bases, or floating stations like the golds. They rule planets. And one of them rules the system with the king.
“Who is she?” I finally ask. Probably a question I should’ve posed to him a decade ago. Definitely one I should’ve had the answer to before I decided to fucking steal her.
Crux shakes his head with defeated sadness.
“Please,” I say. “Do not tell me this one is the actual fucking queen.”
Crux sighs. “I wish I could, brother. But it’d be a lie.”
“I stole the fucking queen?” I blink my eyes three times quickly.
“You did, Serp.”
And despite the fact that I lost two partners in this… I cannot help but be just a little bit proud of myself.
I stole the motherfucking Cygnian queen.
And I’m still alive.
How?
Booty, I realize. And Draden. And Ceres.
There is a long stretch of silence after that revelation. Long stretch.
Then Crux straightens up and turns to me. “We can’t thaw her out, Serp. The moment we do they can track her. And I don’t care what ALCOR says, if the Royal Cygnian Navy comes after us, there’s no way we can win.”
“I didn’t say we’d win,” ALCOR interrupts. “I said we’d give them a helluva fight.”
“We’d lose everything,” Crux says.
“So wait a minute,” I say, holding up a hand. “I did all this for a fucking woman we can’t even wake up?”
Crux looks me straight in the eyes, which are a lighter violet than mine, something almost neon swirling around inside his irises, and he nods. “That’s the fucking situation.”
He walks out of the cryogenic bay, leaving me alone to stew in that final thought.
ALCOR says, “Did you need something, Serpint?”
Which makes me remember why I’m here. “Yeah… Booty is still in the vacuum. She needs to be moved into a bay. Like now.”
“I’m rearranging the schedule as we speak. Sending orders to move her to Bay 201 now. Anything else?”
“Um…” Because there was something else I wanted to talk to Crux about. “Oh, yeah. You ever heard of a fake Cygnian princess, ALCOR? Because this one you gave me, she’s claiming she’s not a princess. That she cooked up some magic potion that allows her to glow.”
“No,” ALCOR says. “I can’t say there’s anything in any of the galactic databases on that one.”
“Hmmm. Well, what do ya make of it?”
“Lies,” he says simply. “Just lies. We did the DNA test and it wasn’t faked. We can tell. And even though her glow is dim, it’s real. So she’s nobody special, that’s for certain, but she’s legitimate.”
“You’re sure?” I ask. Because something is definitely off about this girl.
“One hundred percent.”
“Hmmm.”
“You could feed her some passion limes. See if that brings her luminous flux up a few levels. That would provide the peace of mind you’re looking for.”
“Do we have any of those?” I ask, kinda wondering if he’s become telepathic since I was last home. How does he know I’m having doubts?
“I’ll send some up to your chambers.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“You’re welcome, Serpint. Do you want me to come with you? Keep an eye on her?”
“You mean you’re not already?” I say, kinda smiling. But not really.
“You told me to stay away. So I’ve stayed away.”
“Since when do you listen to me?”
“Since you came back without Draden,” he deadpans, his voice suddenly very mechanical. Like he needed to turn off his emergent feelings to speak that sentence.
“Right,” I say, then exit the cryo bay and make my way back to the elevator.
I want to go drink myself stupid. I want to lose myself in drugs. Or fuck some random woman who is not obligated to serve me because she’s here illegally. I want to forget what happened. And that it’s all my fault.
But I don’t do any of that.
I go to Bay 201 and wait for Booty to be brought in out of the cold darkness of vacuum so I can be there when they spin her back online.
Be there to say, Welcome back.
Or, You’re gonna be fine.
Or, I’m sorry.
CHAPTER EIGHT – LYRA
So apparently my job today was to clean Serpint’s quarters. Like I’m the fucking bot in this place. He had fifteen tasks and each one came with a countdown. If I didn’t start the task within ten seconds I got a shock. If I completed the task in the allotted time frame, I got a gold star.