Page 66 of Veiled Vixen

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how many times she’s been pregnant before.”

“Never,” I say.

Veila laughs. And this laugh sends a chill up my spine. “You know that’s not true. There is only one reason they let the silvers leave the Cygnian System. They use them up, Valor. They keep them pregnant continuously from the age of maturity onward.” She looks back at me. “You saw what happened to me. I guarantee that has happened to Nyleena dozens of times.”

“But… what if she gets to Earth? Like you said? And brings the babies to term?”

“No one but Corla knows the answer to that. But I would assume she would pop out a little Delphi and Tycho.”

“And they would be these… weapons?”

Veila nods. “It’s horrible. We all know it’s horrible. But we still want those babies.” She looks me in the eyes. Hers are bright pink now. “It’s been bred into us. Every princess down there on the lower levels wants the same thing I do. It makes them crazy.” She pauses to look at me. “This desire… it drives us crazy. And the silvers are the worst. Being pink is not pretty either, but that desire isn’t as consuming.”

“You’re not really silver though.”

“No, I’m not.” She inhales deeply as she plays with the edge of her blanket. “That’s why I’m OK now. The pregnancy has been… terminated and I’m pink again. But if I were out there?” She nods her head to the window. “They would come get me and start the whole thing over again. And then I’d be silver for nine weeks and I would do their bidding. Happily. Because the silver inside me takes over and I can’t control it. And then this would happen.” She pans her hand down her body. “The pregnancy would terminate and then they’d do it again. And again. And again. Until I died.”

I let all that sink in. Try to imagine what her life has been like. This day on repeat. Only right now she knows it’s not going to happen again. At least not today.

“I didn’t ask about my father because I don’t want to know.”

“That’s very evolved of you, Valor. But we’re in the middle of a truth-telling, right? So you’re not going to get off that easy, I’m afraid.”

“It was him, wasn’t it? He’s the one doing this to you?”

She shakes her head, then nods, contradicting herself. “He’s the one who always captured me after the termination. Then he took me back to Wayward Station and when I leave, I am silver again. But he didn’t do the actual implantation procedure. That was Tray’s father.”

“Tray,” I whisper. “Fuck. Did he know?”

“I doubt it.”

“And Crux’s father?”

“He’s the head of the whole project. Jimmy’s father? He’s the one who came up with the idea. Luck’s father ran the cages. Serpint is your brother.”

“I suspected.”

“Draden is Crux’s brother.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“By the time they got done with Tray they stopped trying to raise you boys as sons. At that point it was clear their breeding plan worked so they just bred them like animals after that. Serpint and Draden were allowed into your little group because they didn’t have the new cage program fully implemented when they were born. Lucky them. Because everyone who came after was just left in the breeding cages.”

Everyone who came after.

I let that sink in for a moment.

But eventually I have to ask the obvious questions. “How many are there?”

She turns her face to mine and frowns. “The Cygnian princess breeding program might be a failure, but…” She shakes her head. “The Akeelian one was a huge success.”