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“You promised you’d show me where my family is, what you did with my tribe.”
“And I will, but this is a council of kings, and if I don’t show up they have a tendency to try to invade various parts of my territories.”
“How difficult for you. Do they abduct your entire family as well? Or do they just take some land you don’t even know you rule over?”
“Come and get in the shuttle,” Archon growled. “I don’t have time to argue with you.”
“I don’t know where the shuttle is. I’m in a bedroom. Is the ship in the bathroom? Or are you hiding it in another dimension? Or…”
He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, carrying the human up to the roof where the ship was waiting to conduct them into the most outer of spaces. She felt good over his shoulder. Squirmy and warm and complaining, but good. He no longer felt as though his heart was out wandering around somewhere without him. It was right where it was supposed to be, cursing him over his shoulder.
Once they were in the shuttle, he placed her down on her feet and attempted to explain himself.
“In my culture, we take what we want. We do not ask if it wants to be wanted. We do not consider the feelings of others of lesser stature.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“By way of explanation,” he said. “Because I have been brutal in my treatment of you, and because you hate me for it.”
She looked at him, and gave a little shrug. “I’m not going to forgive you. That wasn’t even an apology. That was just some kind of explanation for why you’re so terrible. But I don’t care why. It’s too late to make anything up to me. Especially when you haven’t taken me to my family.”
“Soon,” he said. “The council comes first.”
He was not looking forward to dealing with the council. Bureaucracy and socialization both failed to appeal to him in equal measure. But it had to be done. Strength had to be displayed. Alliances, such as they were, had to be maintained.
The journey to the council did not take a very long time. A matter of hours, during which Archon slipped into his dress attire. It was mostly black leather, edged with gold in a few places. The mark of Energon was emblazoned across the back and on the left lapel in the form of a dragon’s claw.
Once dressed, he returned to the lounging area where Iris was waiting for him. He noticed the way her eyes widened when she saw him and wondered if it was the uniform she was reacting to, or if she perhaps missed him in the short time he was getting dressed. Wishful thinking. He was not prone to wishful thinking. He didn’t like the way it felt inside his head.
“You look good in those clothes,” she told him. “I was starting to think you didn’t know how to wear a shirt.”
“I don’t like the way clothing feels against my scales,” Archon admitted. “I hardly need a shirt, but the council has rules, and worse than rules, customs.”
“Poor baby,” Iris smirked. “For once in your life you have to do something you don’t want to do. Must be a huge shock to your system.”
“I will shock your system, brat,” Archon growled the threat in return.
“You stay here,” he told her once they had docked at the royal station, a piece of neutral territory at the apex of the quarter dozen kingdoms. “This is the safest place for you.”
“Where are we?”
“The place we are doesn’t formally exist if you are not a royal, so it is best I do not tell you.”
He left Iris behind reluctantly in the shuttle. It was better nobody else saw her. Kings had a habit of trying to take what other kings had.
No sooner had he disembarked than he was greeted by a grizzled old bastard of a king.
“You’re late. Trouble in the colonies?”
He did not like the way King Varin spoke. There was a certain knowingness to his tone. Varin was a smug bastard who had inherited his relatively small kingdom from his addled father, and his addled father before him. Soon, he would go mad, and then his son would inherit the kingdom. It was a facet of their species which was quite tragic. At the age of a hundred and fifty years, every single one of them disengaged from reality and pursued their own variation of existence, which rarely came tangental to common consensus. Varin was a hundred and forty seven years old, which meant he only had three years left before he decided he was a shoe, or something similar.
Archon would never have wasted his time feeling sorry for Varin before he met Iris, but she’d changed him in some intangible way he didn’t care for. Feeling pity for Varin was not useful to him.
