Page 55 of Veiled Vixen

CHAPTER TEN - VALOR

I stay in the park. Mostly because I don’t have anywhere else to go. Veila didn’t invite me to go with her, didn’t assign me a room. No one came and gave me orders, or put me in restraints, or told me to go home.

They just left me.

So I just lie here on the grass, hands behind my head, and stare up at the ceiling. It’s some kind of hologram. It was dusk when I first looked up but now it’s night and there’s a perfect star map of the sky as seen from Harem Station.

Whenever Luck and I entered a new system and had a chance to look at the stars we’d always marvel at how the very same dots of light could look so different from a new perspective.

Every now and then I’d hook up with a girl who was into the stars and she’d point out a few constellations with names and stories I’ve never heard of. Of course, the zodiac constellations are called the same thing everywhere in the galaxy. It’s been standardized for gate mapping. So have all the known suns. But the actual constellations—the pictures people draw in the sky—those evolve through culture.

And here’s something interesting—no matter where you go, be it planet, or station, or fucking asteroid in the middle of nowhere, every local constellation is based on a myth. Heroes of times gone by. The women they fought wars for. The beasts that thwarted them. The gods, and the goddesses, and the demigod half-breed children. It’s always different and yet always the same.

Here in the ALCOR Sector, we don’t really have that. It’s a mashup of many different cultures. ALCOR has a hologram like this in one part of the station, one where the day and night cycle of a spinning planet goes through seasons. And there are stars up there, connected by faint lines to draw out different characters. But the characters change all the time. Artists come from all over to take turns designing a new set of holographic constellations. This happens about twice a year, maybe. So there’s been a couple dozen different versions of the night sky so far.

But there’s always a bear-like ursus. Always an equus. Sometimes they have horns, like the karkadanns. Sometimes they have the body of a horse and the torso of a human. There’s always a maiden, and a hero, and a dragon. And then sometimes there’s weird things like a specific cup used for rituals. Or a musical instrument. Or a spirit that lives in the dark.

One guy came and turned the fucking night sky on Harem into a demonic hell filled with demons and instruments of torture. People kinda got pissed off about that and it was only up for a few weeks before ALCOR decided to let some other artist come in and change it.

Luck used to joke that if he ever got a shot at designing the constellations he’d make it a forest. There’d be nothing but trees up there in the sky.

I kinda like that idea. Kinda wish he’d gotten his chance.

And from there my mind wanders to us. Him and I. How it used to be. All the fun we had. All the danger we put ourselves in. All the ways we cheated death and made it home.

But that makes me think about Crux and what he said about death and dying. How maybe we can’t die.

But I don’t have room in my brain for that right now so I think about all the nights Luck and I spent together. After the crisis was over and the wounds were healed. When we could take a breath and smile because once again, we’d made it out alive.

And how we’d lie together in bed. Talking, and drinking, and always laughing.

Always laughing. We laughed a lot in our old life. We had a lot of fun. It was good and I miss it.

Sometimes there’d be a girl with us, but most times not. Just he, and I, and Lady, and Beauty. Alone. Floating around in the thick soup of deep, dark mysterious space contained inside the swirl of stars we call Galaxy Prime.

I really thought we’d be like that forever. I never imagined a different life for us. I certainly never saw us mixed up with Cygnian princesses.

I never saw Nyleena coming. Never even suspected that some girl would so thoroughly come between us.

I have a sudden urge to talk to him. Say all the things I didn’t when I saw him earlier. Things like… I miss you. I can live with Nyleena. I could maybe even learn to love her. Maybe we could find a way to make this work?

But there was a reason I didn’t say that. It can’t work. It would never work. Just like being with Tray would never work.

Sun-fucked soulmates.

Why does my princess have to end up being the definition of evil?

I must’ve fallen asleep because the next thing I know a series of beeps and chirps has me opening my eyes and sitting up.

A bot is hovering in front of me with a flat package in its grippy hands. It drops the package in the grass and then zooms off, disappearing into the trees.

I reach for the package and flip it over. It’s really more of a thick, faded, tan envelope. The front side is covered in washed-out stickers. They’re peeling and some of the images are almost completely rubbed off. But I don’t need to see them to know what’s inside.

Akeelian Adventures.

I slip the comics out. Four in total. They smell like old books, and musty forests, and there’s a hint of something sweet. Like tushberries, maybe.

The cover of the first one is Bot Boy. Actual title: Bot Boy and the Lost Lunar Colony. He’s a handsome young man. Maybe somewhere between fifteen and eighteen Akeelian years old. He’s wearing a skin-tight orange suit with a black weapons belt across his chest and another strung low on his hips. His hair is dark, his eyes are violet, and he has horns.