“You sent me a ransom, Blackmane. You demanded I pay you vast amounts of riches to secure her return, and now you tell me you don’t want to give her back? Has she not unleashed enough carnage on your helpless crew?”
“There is no amount of carnage that would persuade me to give her back. Astaria is mine. Her maidenhead is mine. And your grandchild will issue from my seed.”
Again, the king seems surprised. He obviously hoped that Astaria’s twisted talents would be so terrible in their deployment that I would not be able to handle them. A few dead guards is not ideal, but it is also far from enough loss to make me reconsider keeping her.
“So you have ravaged her, beast. You know the penalty for that must be death.”
“You will not kill me easily.”
The king waves a dismissive hand. “Not for you. For her.”
“You would kill your own daughter?”
“To stop her bearing your seed, yes. You will not lay claim to my throne by merit of lineage. I will destroy any pretenders.”
An evil king fears those who will come after him. Not his enemies. Not other kings. Not the barbarians who are always inevitably at the gates. Instead, he fears his own family, the sons and daughters born to mates he never loved. A king, after all, is most likely to be succeeded by his own sons, and not always when he is prepared for it. I know precisely what to say in order to rile him.
“You are welcome to move against me. The Dawnhammer stands ready to defend Astaria and her growing belly. I believe it’s going to be a boy.”
The screen goes blank. War has been declared.
How very exciting.
I turn in my chair. The bridge has been silent, but everybody has been listening. I do not perform negotiations in secret. I want every soul on this ship, on the bridge or off it, to hear what has happened.
Redpelt has finally remembered that he has a job to do and is actually doing it. “There’s new activity coming out of the human regions. Do you want to accelerate? I believe we can outrun them. They’re very weak outside their borders. They have few allies among the other alien races, as they call them.”
“No. We are turning back. We are going to make him regret those threats.”
Redpelt smiles for the first time since I brought Astaria aboard.
Drums ring out, differently this time. These are not our triumph drums, not yet. These are our war drums. Fighters patrol the ship’s perimeter like a swarm of angry wasps. Any ship coming within seven thousand kilometers of the Dawnhammer will be noted and destroyed. We are on high alert. It is exciting. The ship hums with new energy. My crew are battle-hardened and ready for conflict. It doesn't matter to them that we’re defending a murderess. All that matters is that there is an enemy coming for us.
“Sir. Your princess is here.”
Astaria is certainly here. She is storming across the bridge, furious, apparently. It would seem she heard everything.
“I’M PREGNANT!?” Astaria hurls the nearest thing to hand at me. It happens to be a knife. Where does she keep getting these knives? Fortunately, it misses my head, but only by the grace of her mercy. She has very good aim.
“I told you that the one thing I feared was being ravaged by an alien and filled with his bastard, and it was the first thing you did to me. And you announced it to the entire blasted ship!”
“Easy, princess. It’s unlikely you are pregnant as yet. I told your father you were to annoy him.”
“Oh.” She deflates a little. “Oh.” A small smile appears on her face. “Oh, he really would not have liked that.”
“No,” I agree. “He didn’t like that at all.”
“I could hear you. I couldn’t hear him as well,” she explains. “What did he say?”
“He said he was going to declare war on me.”
“Yes. I bet he is.”
She has started pacing now. She’s twirling something in her fingers. Another blasted knife. How does she already have another knife? It is as though they manifest out of the ether at her will.
“He’s going to want to kill me, of course. He always told me he’d keep me safe unless I got pregnant. He’s been afraid of me having an heir for as long as I can remember.”
“I gathered that.”
“They're going to do everything they can to get you to release me.” She’s talking more to herself than to me, plotting out loud in real time. “I’m going to have to stay on your good side, aren’t I?”
“I’m not going to give you up to be slaughtered no matter what you do. You’re yet to be on my good side, princess.”
Astaria spins on her heel and looks at me with a broad smile that covers confusion and perhaps even a little anger. “Why? Why are you so twisted! I am your enemy. I almost caused your death. And you know what else I have done. Yet you want me. You must be the worst kind of masochist.”