womb for your child. How can you punish them for thinking exactly as you do?”
“I think neither your body nor your appearance is disgusting.”
“Great. You like fucking me, and even better, I’ve got a womb to house your royal heir. You’re right. So romantic.”
I immediately suspect this to be the sarcasm, I’ve forbidden her more than once to use. But I ignore that infraction to point out, “You cannot blame me for clearly seeing the failings of your race. You are impractical, oft violent for reasons that have nothing to do with gains for your civilization, independent to a fault. Even now you would reject the chance to become your ruler’s bedmate, for reasons I fail to grasp.”
“Because I am human! If you’re looking for a reason, that’s why!” she answers. “And let me tell you something about my people who you are willing to dismiss so easily. We are survivors. We have managed to withstand the harsh seasons on New Terrhan and make hostilely unfarmable land yield to us. We are a community that rallies together in the rough times—and it’s pretty much been all rough times since we got here. But we’re still here. We dance and we sing, and we laugh, and we love, still, no matter what happens to us. Not because we’re stupid, but because we have hearts and emotions and feelings.”
She lets out an angry huff of air. “It’s very easy for you to judge us as irrational creatures. You have all this technology at the tip of your fingers while we work our limbs to the bone from sundown to sun up just to survive. But you wouldn’t even last a day on my planet. You have no idea what it’s like to be us, to have actual feelings. I thought maybe I could teach you, but that was my mistake. And you know what, you’re worse than anyone else on this planet, because you honestly think you can do no wrong. But I’m here to tell you, you have done wrong. I loved you and you threw that away over some damn title. You broke me…humiliated me…stripped me of my dignity, just so I’d call you my Kel…”
Her voice fades and the angry light once again dims from her eyes. “So yes, I want to go home and be with my people. Where no one will look down on me and see me as inferior. And at least those people are worthy of my love.”
Her words hit me in an unexpected place.
What she has said contradicts many of the items in N’Ure report and confusion takes over. I could tell her that, but my mind is aflame with all the other things she has said to me.
I want to go home.
I loved you.
You broke me.
I watch her lie back down, her eyes no longer issuing water. In fact, her expression is a complete blank as she turns over and gives me her back.
A chill runs up my ridges. For this is exactly how a pleasure station whore would present the taking. Back carefully turned until she was commanded to her hands and knees.
Suddenly a host of memories from the last week’s flood over me.
Ki’Ra’s happy smile upon seeing me enter a room, her animated gasps when I pushed into her, as if every thrust was a pleasurable surprise to her. The way she moaned and screamed, only to peacefully sigh when she came down from her orgasm.
“Oh moons, that was amazing.”
How often she had complimented me afterwards, filling me with a pride no amount of royal deference could inspire.
I loved you, and you threw that all away for a damn title.
And the talking. The Xalthurian females would simply leave, but the few times Ki’Ra did not immediately fall asleep, she would curl her hand over mine, palm to palm, and we would speak of many things.
The fact that her old planet only had one moon, which left the people without enough light to see at night. Stories from the entertainments she had watched.
Sometimes she would even sing, even though she claimed her voice wasn’t very good. “You should hear my best friend, Zinnia. She sings like an angel.” An explanation of what an “angel” was followed.
“We were only talking!” L’Than had claimed before his beating. “Just talking. I liked talking to her. She is not like my mother. She has opinions and makes many humorful observations. I found her fascinating, but we only talked.”
At the time, L’Than’s words had only served to