“No,” I say. I sound weak. It’s like a croak from a dying frog.
“No,” he repeats. He takes a step backward. “Okay,” he adds, with a shrug and a smug smile.
Then he yells something in Kerz.
Chaos. Glasses fall, swords glimmer in the air, a woman screams, and I hear a sickening thud as a body hits the floor. The general steps to the side, extending an arm, and I look past him to the scene on the raised floor where my mother and sister were last still standing.
Blood is everywhere, and for a moment that is all I see. The first person I see is my mother, and I go into a state of shock, because blood is soaking into her skinsuit, a huge stain, spreading out, and I think she’s been sliced in half. But the blood is on the floor.
There is abodyon the floor—who? Petlola? A woman, I gather. She appears dead.
The Kerz is still smiling at me.
“What did you do?” I scream. I start running toward her. The Kerz grabs my skig, but I keep running, insanely, in the direction of Petlola. She’s obviously dead, so I don’t know what I think I’m going to do there.
Fiona is screaming at the top of her lungs.
The skig is attached to my head by this device you have to release at the back of your neck. I throw my hand back and release it, and this sends me flying forward. I fall, slipping on blood, and begin slipping and crawling toward Petlola.
I’m relieved, a little, when two black boots step slowly, deliberately in front of me, blocking my path to the body. I sit back on my heels and look up at their owner.
It’s him again. QuietlyDangerous. He stares down at me, features unmoved. I think I see his head move side to side, the tiniest shake, meant only for me.
The general walks calmly to my side, his footsteps heavy and deliberate. He crouches, resting his arms on his knees. He’s bouncing a little, giddily. I turn to look at him. He is smiling, but it fades slowly as he jerks a thumb in the direction of the body. “Petlola Aniuruska. She owes me a favor. So you see, this is really something that would have happened anyway.” He looks at the body, smiles again. He points, and in his hand is a dagger. He points, curving the knife as he does, as though he’s the one who has committed the atrocity. “Knife to femoral, knife to carotid,kschetz kschetz.” He looks back at me, grinning maniacally.
I shake as his left hand, its claws gleaming and razor sharp, moves toward my neck. He drags his fingers over my throat, down to my chest, over my dress, rending the fabric but not tearing it completely. When he hovers over the fabric between my legs, a queasy, sickening, and also absurdly arousing sensation swells deep in my abdomen.
For real? I think. I’m holding my hands out, palms up, and they are red with Petlola’s blood. There’s a madman alien with a knife in one hand and claws hovering over my pussy, and I’m… slightly turned on?
I shake my head.
“I understand if you don’t want to marry me,” he says. “I am, I must tell you…” he looks over at Petlola, “unaccustomed to rejection.”
Behind me, I hear my father’s voice, a hoarse whisper. “Anya, please…”
I shoot him a dirty look, my mouth hanging open.
“We can settle accounts many ways,” the general says, dragging the claw back up my stomach, to my jaw. He traces a leisurely path across my jawline, my cheek, and over my earlobe. I hear a shearing sound, and close my eyes.
I’m dead, I think. I don’t feel any pain, but I suppose I’m just in shock.
My hair falls from the net that retained it beneath Fiona’s stupid skig.That’s what he sliced, I think, with relief that is immediately taken over by renewed panic.
He grasps some of my hair in his fingers, but unexpectedly, he plays with it gently.
I exhale, realizing only then that I haven’t been breathing. I gulp in fresh air to ease the suddenly fiery pain in my lungs.
“So. Anya Mann,” he says, bouncing up to standing. I look up at him, still shocked. “Princess in a palace? Or shall we settle your father’s accounts the…” He looks up at the ceiling, and then mutters something in Kerz.
“Old-fashioned,” says Quietly Bossy.
“Ah, yes. The old-fashioned manner?”
I don’t have the time or the inclination to correct this guy’s idiomatic English.
My lips tremble. I look around. Everything is horrifying. My eyes settle on Fiona, who is now looking quite happy to have been rejected in favor of me, which is the last thing I’d have ever expected in this lifetime.
“Why not… why me?” I mumble. “Fiona…”
