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A woman of a long royal lineage knows very well that she will likely be kidnapped in her lifetime. I am twenty-five years of age, and though I initially took fright when my bedroom chamber wall was turned to splinters by the rough intrusion of an atomic ram, and I was made to endure the forceful intrusion of an oversized alien who now has me in his massive arms, I am now more or less resigned to the entire situation. A common girl might panic and become hysterical, but that is hardly becoming, is it? My father has always said you can tell how well-bred someone is by how much they beg for their lives. A commoner will go on and on, whereas a princess like myself knows full well that her life is more or less an inconvenience she is likely to be relieved of with very little in the way of notice.
He has put a black cloth over my eyes, treating me the way they treat frightened horses. He has made a mistake. I am no timid filly. I am Astaria Grace, crown princess of the Pleiades and I am afraid of very little. So little, in fact, that other people become afraid of how much I am not afraid.
My abductor smells like other worlds and rare minerals. I expected him to smell like a filthy animal, but the thick hair which I can feel as it whips around the uncovered parts of my face is perfumed with musk and ornate smoked wood. He has long hair, and a lot of it. I use that to my advantage, grabbing at his locks and pulling as hard as I can. Just to make things convincing, of course.
He cannot easily return the favor. I have short silvery hair cut close to my head so that when I wear the jeweled wigs of royal office that extend over a foot all around and gleam with all the colors of creation, my natural hair does not interfere with the spun threads. My hair is cut every two weeks while I am suitably restrained. They don’t trust me around scissors, even when someone else has them.
No matter how unpopular a royal I may be, appearances have to be kept up. Since birth I have been presented as an ethereal incarnation of pure royalty. Tens of thousands of girls have wanted to be like me, poor things.
My tugging seems to have little effect on the alien. I can feel him heft me over the edge of something or other and then I am dumped onto a soft surface. There is a sense of motion as the ship I presume I have been taken on accelerates away from my tower like an impish page boy running from a bag of steaming dog dirt.
“Easy,” the voice says, speaking fluent Intergalactic with a sexy accent. There are only two types of beings who speak Intergalactic. Royals and those in power, because they must be able to negotiate, and warmongers, because they need to be able to accept surrender from the former.
I feel myself shifted into the lap of the beast. He is large and his thighs are broad and hard. I wonder who has taken me. Many have tried over the years. All of them have regretted it, and most have perished. Actually, all of them have perished, now I think about it. That thought makes me let out a little giggle that turns to a laugh no matter how much I try to stop it.
“And what is so funny, princess?” The voice is deep and gruff with authority. From the moment he laid hands on me I felt the dominance running through him. He, like so many before him, has come to me with the masculine impulse to claim and own. It will be his undoing and his downfall, but there is no telling him that.
I do not answer. I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to, and I do not want to.
Moments later the fabric over my face is removed. I see my captor’s face for the first time. I draw my breath in with a shocked gasp. This is no mere brute! This is a famous alien! This is my father’s greatest enemy. His image hangs on the wall of every soldier’s barracks and is pinned on every wanted board in our territories.
I clap my hands together with involuntary excitement.
“I know you! You’re Blackmane!”
Blackmane is a xenovork known for his great plume of dark hair. One would think he’d be known for being the first of his kind to kill ten thousand human soldiers in battle, but it is his hair that we know him by. It is the envy of every noblewoman I know. It is glossy and lustrous and when he stands over his fallen enemies it blows in the wind like a glorious banner.
I have actively fantasized about this creature, this great alien beast who makes every human colonist and king shudder at the mere sight of his picture. I imagined that if I were in his presence, I might somehow make sense. He hated humanity, and so did I.
He has no idea that I stole one of the wanted posters and secreted it about my person, looking at it in the evenings when they all left me alone and I was able to enjoy myself in solitude. I used to imagine having conversations with him over a nice spot of carnage and then engaging in acts too filthy to put words to. I literally don’t know how to explain some of the things I have imagined him doing to me.
He is even more incredible in person than I imagined him to be based on the pictures. He is a rough green hue, with a fearsome face of absolute masculinity. Every feature that could mark him as male, does. A heavy brow, narrowed eyes, strong jaw containing teeth designed for tearing and chewing. An omnivore like our own species but much more powerful. The bite strength of a fabled creature known as pit bull is attributed to his kind.
“Your kind know me as Blackmane,” he agrees. “You will call me lord and master.”
“I can call you lord or master, but not both. It is impractical and unseemly.”
He shifts me slightly on his lap, moves my skirts up a little and slaps my thigh. The strike still shocks me. Everybody who knows me even in passing knows that hitting me is a very bad idea.
“I have no interest in tolerating your human sass. You will speak when you are spoken to, and you will speak with respect.”
I say nothing, but I remain very, very angry. He knows nothing of propriety, or the conventions of honorifics. He is a filthy alien brute with no education whatsoever and he is beneath me in every way possible. All my giddy thoughts evaporate with that slap, my imaginings swept away and replaced with the flat of his big palm.
“Arrogant wretch,” he growls, though I have not spoken a single word of my thoughts to him. I have already resolved not to bother to grace him with a word again. I will be liberated, of that I am certain, and this brute who just took the liberty of striking me, he will suffer greatly for it.
Blackmane
This is a triumph unlike any other — and I have experienced a great many in my time. I have crushed worlds and made entire populations bow before me. I am feared because I deserve to be. This princess is perhaps the rarest jewel in all the Pleiades. Few have ever seen her in person. Her existence has been questioned as perhaps being nothing more than a rumor, a lie told by her father Arthas of the Pleiades. But images have been widely spread, portraits and videos in which she appears to be the prettiest, most ethereal creature ever to have sprung into creation. One image of this young woman can change the course of fashion across many hundreds of planets.
It did not take long for her to require some punishment. That fact does not surprise me. She is likely spoiled. Princesses always are. Being declared special at birth destroys any attempt at proper character development.
What does surprise me is the fact that she is not horrified or frightened. Instead, she has a very strange little smile on her face, a smile that does not match her eyes. Her reaction to being abducted is not what I expected. Where is the begging? The crying? She does seem unbalanced, but not in the way most captives are. They usually either withdraw into themselves and pretend with all their might that they are not being kidnapped, or they melt down completely with begging and pleading. I find both fairly tedious and at this point, boring.
This princess looks me dead in the eye and smiles, as if a thought has just occurred to her that really amuses her very much. She says nothing, obeying my order. I should be pleased that I have already made an impression on her. Instead, I have the feeling I am missing something.
“You will obey me,” I tell her. “Any disobedience, verbal or physical, will be met with harsh punishment. You may have been a princess where you came from. In my realm, you are no more and no less than any other prisoner.”
“That’s clearly untrue,” she says, pert again. “How many prisoners do you cradle in your lap?”
