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As a child he’d once played a game with the young princes where he would tangle an array of puzzle pieces together consisting of various shapes to make a complicated structure, and the others would have to figure out how to untangle it within a given timeframe.
This was the life-size version.
“And why has the debris no’ been cleared?” he demanded of the two guards close on his heels.
Garrison raised a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. Was that a little blush in his cheeks? “She has managed to sharpen a piece of metal like a blade and sticks us with it through the cracks when we try.”
Orik blinked in astonishment. He could hear soft breathing beyond the barricade, indicating the human was on the other side, listening to their conversation. At a safe distance, he leaned down to peek through a small opening in the clutter where a bit of light shone through. He froze. A single hazel eye peered back at him.
He heard a feminine gasp, and then the owner of said eye was gone from his line of sight.
“Hello?” he called.
No reply.
“I’m Orik Theroux, head of the guard. What is your name?”
Again, no reply.
“We’ve no intention of harming you.”
Something like a snort filtered through the debris. “Yeah, right,” came a clipped female voice. “You’ve abducted me with the intention of giving me hot chocolate and massages, I’m sure.”
“We have no’ abducted you.”
“It’s funny then, how I’m here instead of back on Earth…where I was abducted from. Would you prefer the wordkidnapped? Snatched?Ortaken?”
“How aboutintercepted?”he offered.
She went silent for a beat. “Call it what you want. I’m here now. What do you want with me?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull.”
“Pardon?”
“Bullshit,” she said louder. “You don’t go through all this trouble for no reason. Are you planning to attack Earth? Am I here to be a lab rat? Am I a prisoner of war? If so, you are dumber than you sound.”
He pursed his lips in displeasure. “We hold no aggression against you or your people. If you’ll agree to come out, we can explain.”
“You can just as easily explain from where you’re standing. No need to put my life,or yours, at risk.”
He cocked his head, prickly irritation skittering up his neck. “Is that a threat?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Orik blinked at her crass words. This woman was nothing like their human queen—although, could June still be considered human? He made his voice harder. “The fact is, you’re in an enemy ship, and I canna be sure you are who you say you are, or if this is a trick by our enemies.”
“Ditto.”
“Huh?” The word made no sense to him. Although Portia, a powerful Serakian witch, had spelled all humans to understand his language, several words still failed to translate.
“You’re more likely to be the one tricking me. Hello?Abducted here. You expect me to come out without giving me a reason to trust you?”
“Trust goes both ways, does it no’?”
“Not when one of us was stolen from her home by the other.”
