Lyees and the Queen laughed, and a few of the others at the table joined in. Rema was smiling at me as well, his eyes twinkling in the red lighting.
When they’d recovered from their laughter, Lyees grinned at me. “I wanted to be the one to help guide you. It mitigates risk this way. As for the rest, well…” She shrugged, her smile widening. The lecherous look on her face fit oddly with her innocent pixie vibe.
The Queen leaned down over the table until her face was within spitting distance of mine and wagged her eyebrows at me,her amber eyes shining with mirth. “I am dual natured, Patricia Dells. We manageverywell together. And have the children to prove it.”
I couldn’t help it. My eyes dropped automatically to where her lap was under the table, and then back to her face where she grinned widely at me.
“Some ladies have all the luck,” I said, returning her smile.
She sat back in her chair with another loud laugh, her four wings shaking with it. Her laughter echoed in the same eerie dual tone as when she spoke and it had a very halloweeny effect on the atmosphere of the vampire room, like someone was playing a spooky track in a corner on an old record player. Creepy. As. Fuck.
The Queen had a dick. Probably a fucking huge one.Anda pussy. Well, that wasn’t fair at all. Why’d she get both? The money I could have made with both?! Good lord, now Iwasjealous.
I leaned forward to look at Lyees with wide eyes. “How big is it?”
Rema groaned next to me, and from the corner of my eye I could see him cover his face with one of his hands, his ear tips darkening to pink.
The lecherous look bled back into both Lyees and the Queen’s faces. “It is proportionate.”
The Queen was twelve fucking feet tall. Jesus H Christ, RIP Lyees’s pussy.
“Niiiiice. Good for you, Lyees. Good for you.” If getting split in half was your thing, that is.
She tipped her head at me. “Thank you. You may call me Dhenea now, I think. We’ve advanced to that point in our acquaintance.”
One tends to do that when questions are asked about a partner's dick size.
“As for your other question, regarding my differences to the rest of the Neldre. My line, the Royal line, has always been thus. I believe, if I remember my history well enough, that one of my ancestors took a mate outside the Neldres and that ancestor conquered the planet and their children were different as a result of that union. Thus the Royal line stands out asmore. I have long since preached that to close ourselves off is to lose out on genetic diversity, but alas, that is a long drawn out topic for another night.”
The Queen signaled someone at the far end of the table and the massive double doors opened, letting in a long progression of loincloth wearing males carrying in trays of food. They bustled around the table, setting down each dish with care before scurrying out the door again. Soon the middle of the table was loaded down with enough food to make me worry about collapse. The smell was rich luxury, butter and spices combined with well roasted meat, all of it rising in a steamy warm haze. In the very center of the overburdened table was the oddest creature I’d ever seen, roasted to a golden brown and stuffed with purple vegetables.
Spider
It looked like a spider, with six spindly legs curled underneath it in death. A servant appeared out of thin air and started loading my plate. I watched as others did the same for everyone else before they too left the room, except for Rema, whose plate was only vegetables and a few other fancy dishes that looked to be meatless.
“Eat,” the Queen commanded. The sounds of silverware clinking against glass plates mingled with the resumed conversation as the guests did as she said.
The servant had placed three slices of the spider meat on my plate, with some kind of purple mashed veggie, and various other alien dishes that I couldn’t identify.
I stared at the hollowed out spider on its dish and then back at my plate for a long moment before shrugging. I’d eaten raw lizard-camel before. This couldn’t be worse. Picking up the glass knife and two pronged fork and cutting a piece off, I brought it to my mouth in one motion. The taste was buttery, with a kind of pepper aftertaste that I liked. There was an odd gritty texture to the meat that I was stalwartly ignoring.
“Now, Patricia Dells. Tell me of your friend, the Rijitera,” the Queen said after tearing off a slim piece of meat from the chunk she held in one of her clawed hands.
I speared a chunk of pinkish vegetable that looked vaguely like a baby carrot and popped it in my mouth, making sure my teeth ran along the tines of the fork to make an irritating noise. “Jack is… predictable in that she will always kill first and ask questions later. Violent, bloodthirsty, and eternally hungry, but loyal to an atomic level to those she cares about. An example would be, if some nation— not naming names or anything— decided that this war against tyranny wasn’t worth their time and that inaction resulted in the death of someone she loved…?” I speared another veggie and took an aggressive bite, meeting the Queen's eyes with a fierce smile while I chewed. “At war's end she’d hunt them down and kill them all.”
I took a drink from my cup, grimacing at the sour taste of whatever alcohol was in it and sat it back down with a theatrical gravity. “She is also one of millions. Millions of Rijitera that always point in the same direction, united against any threat. If you take one on… you face themall.”
It wasn’t a subtle threat, but then this wasn’t a subtle war. Neither was our need at present. Right at this very moment, our forces, and people I cared about, were fighting the Unity fleet. Protecting a planet that I’d never even seen, much less been to. It was weird being in a war when not three months ago, I’d been starting shit in a bar with Jack. She hadn’t even known why wewere there or why I was targeting the random man sitting in the corner surrounded by beautiful young women. But she’d shown up, ready and willing to kill whoever had managed to piss me off, no questions asked.
Pressure built behind my eyes as tears tried to gather at the memory, but I blinked a few times to clear the feeling away.
Clearing my throat, I continued, “I’ve only been in this galaxy for a few months, but the Unity has already tried to kill me a few times. Vrax stole me from my home to sell me on a slave market, I was infected with the Red Plague and my DNA was changed irreversibly to save my life, and my friend has been kidnapped by fucking space pirates that no doubt got their information about the humans from the Unity.” I braced my elbow on the table, supporting my chin on my palm. “Not to mention the whole trying to infect anyone who opposes them with a deadly virus thing. I mean really, what kind of spineless coward of a nation wouldn’t want to help beat the Unity into a bloody pulp?”
The Queen gave me a lazy smile, her eyes blinking slowly at me. “And what of the war? What benefit would it serve us if we were to help you, Patrica Dells? There are those seated at this table who would say that it is no concern of ours that out planets fall under Unity control. After all,weare already part of the Unity. Would not this conquest then serve us better than turning against our mother nation?”
This bitch. I’d liked her five minutes ago, but I was rapidly changing my mind.
“Yes! What difference does it make to us if some backwater planet occupied by savages loses their autonomy? I say we join the Unity’s cause and give them these traitors for the reward. The new Councilor is paying handsomely for their arrest,” Rema’s aunt sneered from her seat at the other side of the table, about ten chairs from ours. Her daughters were seated after in descending order, probably from age.
