“And so we would cancel it,” Mozok said. Traces of regret tinged his voice. Voso couldn’t believe his ears, for Mozok never sounded or acted conflicted by anything he chose to do.
“You fucking pieces of shit,” Mina spat.
“Mina, wait,” Voso said as she stormed from the gardens. Mozok put a hand up to his chest, and though the Draquun was no match for him physically, Voso stopped. More because he had no idea how to fix what was broken, and because what he had feared had happened, and he was, for the first time in his life, afraid to face it.
“Let her go,” Mozok said. He shook his head. “She will choose what she chooses. This may have been the way to get what we wanted all along.”
“And if what I want is different now?” Voso said quietly.
Mozok did not answer right away.
“This was, and is, and shall be, the game,” Mozok said. “Pull yourself together.”
“You’re lying to her still,” Voso said. “It is dishonorable.”
Voso saw that this cut deeply into Mozok, whose body teetered somewhat, almost as though he had been delivered a physical blow. And then without a word he turned slowly and began to walk in the direction that Mina had gone. He was running in no time, calling her name.
Voso followed.
When Mozok made decisions, as he seemed to have done, there was no turning back.
CHAPTER14
It happened without her realizing what she was doing, until it was too late, and it was done. Mina could scarcely remember how it had happened. What were the words that Voso or Mozok had said that compelled her to lean toward Voso and place her lips on his?
They had followed her as she stalked away furiously. She had given up. Or rather, she had never had a chance of winning. They were all the same, males. Everywhere, all over the universe.
But she could salvage a little bit of her dignity, she supposed.
Tears were threatening to spill from her eyes, and she felt, deep in her heart, that same awful feeling that she had felt when her first true love had betrayed her. It was as familiar and as fresh as if the wound had never, ever healed, and it felt like a bottomless pit had opened up in the center of her chest. Again! Again betrayed, again falling for men—and these aliens, and when she was supposed to be here for business!
But they didn’t know her. They didn’t know that she was… she was…
An internal, terrible sob broke out inside of her, and she couldn’t even think.
“Mina!”
She heard his voice, but it was distant and below the rushing blood in her ears, the cry in her chest that drowned out everything inside of her. She was going to be swallowed again, swallowed up in sorrow. She clutched her chest with a balled fist and her knees gave out. She wouldn’t. She would be strong…
“Mina, Mina, Mina,” the voices kept calling.
Voso’s voice. Mozok’s voice.
She shook her head. It was just her dream, her imagination, her broken heart wishing so deeply for something that she was creating an illusion.
But then, they were there. They really had come after her, they really were calling her name.
Not like her now-brother-in-law, not like that terrible day that she discovered the terrible truth, that he had been in love with her sister for so long. He hadn’t followed her. He hadn’t tried to make her stay.
“Mina, there is more,” Mozok was saying. “There is more and you only need to let us explain, please.”
She shook her head. She tried to resist.
But Voso did not speak. He did not try to tell her a lie or try to change her mind. He spoke through his eyes, he spoke when he looked at her and pulled her toward him. There was something behind his eyes that trapped her, that wrapped around her and held her still. It poured into her; it drew her to him.
It closed the gaping emptiness that she felt. Sure, she knew somewhere inside that it could be a lie, just as their words had been, just as Trothplight had been.
But she let him do it anyway, if only to feel the pain subside for a moment. She leaned toward him and kissed him.
