Marked Prince - Michelle M. Pillow

1

Fiora didn’t want to eat, and not because she hated the taste of the unappealing green nutrient paste that they fed her for every meal (which she did). She stared at the injector tube set before her. At this point in her life, food was not about enjoyment, and she could choke it down if forced.

Instead, her stomach churned because she knew they were going to march her into a roomful of strangers wholly exposed. No, not naked—worse. Dignitaries from across the universes were coming to exploit her psychic abilities. Their questions would violate her mind. There were events she’d foreseen that she could not get out of her head—graphic images of unspeakable horrors.

Only she had to speak about it.

What kind of heartless creator gave a person psychic powers, and then made it impossible to lie about them? No matter where she went, she always ended up like some kind of oddity forced to perform tricks. She couldn’t remember the last time someone wanted to just talk to her, get to know her without an ulterior motive.

If they asked, Can you tell the future?

She would have to answer, Yes, I see other people’s paths clearly but not my own. I call them timelines.

If they asked, Where do you get your gifts?

She’d answer, I don’t know. And they’re not a gift. They’re a curse.

Are there others like you?

I had two sisters. Salena was the luckiest. No one could lie to her, but she could mislead them. She was a humanoid lie detector and could make you tell all your secrets to her, whether she wanted to hear them or not. People don’t like it when you can force confessions. Piera was sweet, almost too delicate for the world. She saw people’s intentions in the present, like bursts of color and light. Piera would know with one look who she could trust.

Where are they?

I don’t know. I can’t find them in any timeline. I have to assume they are captured or dead. Many nights I imagine they are dead. Death is a kindness. The universes are not compassionate to people like us.

Ironically, the only future she couldn’t see was her own. How was that for intergalactic bad luck? If she could’ve seen her future, she could’ve avoided capture. Instead, she’d walked right into a trap, yapping the entire time about her potential use as a psychic because they kept asking.

Fiora didn’t want to talk about her sisters, but that didn’t matter. General Sten, the black hole of a base leader—yeah, she’d told him what she thought about him when he’d asked. He thought it was hilarious. General Sten pried endlessly into her childhood, into what she remembered from the night her parents were murdered by Noire townsfolk, who took her and her sisters.

What did they look like? What was the ship like? Where did you go? What did you see? What did they do to you? Describe how you felt as the blood of your mother dripped through the floor slats onto your sister’s head.

Sten liked making her relive in great detail the story of three terrified sixteen-year-old girls listening to their parents’ murders before trying to escape to the clay pits as the intruders set their house on fire. The sick bastard got off on it. Literally. He grew a bulge every single blasted time.

Fiora picked up the injector filled with green paste and put it to her lips. She’d tried starving herself once. Being force fed by a Federation medical team had not been an enjoyable experience she cared to repeat. After much experimenting, they had found the nutrient paste helped her focus and made the premonitions stronger.

Fiora didn’t want them to be stronger. She wanted to shut them off forever.

She’d found one way to mute the psychic images, but chandoo was dangerous. The drug flipped a switch inside her, speeding up her thoughts so nothing could get in. It sounded like a great solution—energy and no premonitions—but eventually, it would rot her brain and leave her a worthless mass of nothing.

Nothingness sounded good right about now. Then they could do whatever they wanted to her. She tilted her head back and tried pushing the injector past her tongue so she didn’t have to taste it.

Fiora hated performing for crowds. There were so many timelines and even more questions. Everyone wanted answers from her, and they came with their endless queries and worries from every known corner of the universes. And if they asked, she couldn’t lie when she answered. At