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Chapter One
Excerpt from Prince Rakkur’s electronic journal
Omak has decided to celebrate an Earthan holiday named Christmas again.
Christmas is a weird holiday on Earth when people decorate their houses with lights and ribbons and stuff and then cut down some perfectly good tree to drag it inside and put even more lights all over it. Then everybody eats a lot and sits around and opens gifts from each other. Those parts wouldn’t be so bad, except the food is never anything good, and the gifts are never good ones either, like knives or disruptors or any kind of weapons.
I keep telling my omak to let me pick out my own gifts, but he said that would defeat the purpose. So I said, what’s the purpose? To make all of us miserable? He told me to shut up.
The holiday has something to do with religion, too, but it’s not my religion, so I don’t know why I have to do it. I don’t know much about it either. I know there’s a baby and a star and an Earthan animal called a donkey involved. Something called a camel too, but my omak described it to me and I think he was just making one of his little jokes. My omak told us the story behind the holiday a million times, but sometimes I kind of tune him out.
There’s also a fat man with a white beard who wears a red suit for no apparent reason, and he brings you more gifts, but only if you’ve been good. He only comes on one night during the holiday, after breaking into your house when everyone goes to bed. How creepy is that?
But if you stay up to catch him so you can beat him up, then it’s you who gets in trouble. Omak even leaves him a snack to eat while he’s there prowling around in the dark. I told him this guy is a liar if he says he goes around the whole universe in one night with only a few animals to pull his ship. Like who could do that anyway? What kind of animals could breathe in space? Why don’t they all freeze to death? Humans make no sense at all. But it’s all about “magic,” according to my omak. And then he tells me to shut up again and stop being so “literal minded.” I don’t even know what that is.
Personally, I don’t think he should tell me and my brothers to shut up as much as he does. My friends’ omaks don’t do that stuff. I told him that too, and he just laughed and said it again. That time he pinched my cheek, like he does sometimes, though I’ve asked him to stop, because that shit hurts.
Oh, and people hang their socks up by the fire—their socks—can you believe that? And omak—I know it’s him though he denies it—fills the socks with candy and fruit. Like I’d want to eat that once it’s been inside my socks.
My omak does this every year, with varying degrees of success, and tries to get the rest of us involved. He gets really excited and stressed too, and then he and my father get into a big fight about it.
It’s a time we all dread every year, but we try to get through it as a family. This time, just when I thought he might have forgotten about it, the whole thing started up again while we were eating dinner.
Or as Omak puts it, “having family time.”
Like I said—weird.
****
Ryan, Royal Consort to Prince Mikos
"What’s wrong with Blake?" Ryan asked, glancing over at his father-in-law as the family gathered for the nightly family dinner. Mikos shrugged, while continuing to chow down on his orlew stew, a spicy meat dish that Ryan heartily disliked. For one thing, it smelled like someone had boiled up an old shoe, and for another, the meat, though it came from a domestic animal and was the Tygerian version of beef, was greasy and an odd, grayish color.
Ryan was eating a salad, the iceberg lettuce and a few of the other greens grown in Blake’s personal hot house, where he grew some of his favorite Earth vegetables. Not so much he, personally, but the gardeners Davos had hired. Doing it himself would have entailed Blake putting his hands in dirt and risking the chance that a bug or God forbid, a worm or two, might be lurking around, ready to crawl on him, and Blake didn’t do bugs and worms.
The small, heated building, made entirely from some glass-like substance, had been a gift from King Davos a few years earlier, and Blake and Ryan supplemented most of their meals from the garden’s bounty. Davos had arranged for the seeds for the vegetables to be brought in by Nilanium traders either directly from Earth or from the old Earth colonies in the solar system, all of which were now Tygerian territories.
“You’ll have indigestion later, you know,” Ryan said, glancing over at Mikos and addressing his remarks to him, as he filled his bowl with stew again. “You’ll be up half the night, complaining about your stomach.”
Mikos gave him a sideways glance. “I may indeed be up half the night, but not because of any stomach issues.” He leaned over and murmured in Ryan’s ear. “Have I mentioned how good you look in that robe, nobyo? Though the fabric is a little too thin, don’t you think?”
Mikos eyed the perfectly inoffensive silk of Ryan’s robe critically, reaching over to finger it and managing to grope Ryan pretty effectively while he was at it. “Yes, this is way too flimsy—it’s practically see-through. We’ll have to get you out of that as soon as possible. Let’s go to our bedroom and talk about it.”
Ryan slapped his hand under the table. “It’s fur-lined, as you well know, and definitely not see-through. And Blake would have a fit if we left now. Behave yourself before someone sees you fooling around.”
“Let them,” he replied with a smile, leaning back in his chair. “Besides, no one’s looking at us,” Mikos glanced down the table. “My omak is moping around about something, and I’d be willing to bet that Rakkur and Tilar are busy making plans to sneak out later tonight after omak goes to bed. Look at them. They’re plotting trouble right now, as bold as brass.”
Ryan smiled at the old Earthan expression coming from this fierce alien prince. Blake’s fault, of course, who never discouraged his children speaking the same way he did, even down to his old-fashioned Earthan slang. He always said they didn’t look anything like him, but he’d try to make sure they at least sounded like him. Their conversation was full of not only old Earthan expressions, but some old southern ones too, as Blake had been born in the southern part of what was formerly called America. Occasionally, Ryan had even noticed a slight southern accent creeping into his husband’s voice.
Rakkur, Mikos’s youngest brother, was seated beside Tilar, his nephew and the son of his brother Vannos. Tilar was only a few years older than Rakkur, so during his extended visit, they’d become close friends. Tilar had come to visit Blake “for the summer” back in what Ryan called “summer” though there were no real seasons on Tygeria. He’d never left and was now Rakkur’s partner in crime. Vannos, who was married to King Stefan of Moravia, was allowing his son to hide out from his husband, the king of Moravia, who had been trying to arrange a marriage for him. Tilar apparently didn’t much care for the intended groom and was making that clear to his father, with Blake’s able assistance. Between the two of them, they kept coming up with one excuse after another for Tilar to extend his stay on Tygeria.
Smaller and more human looking than any of his brothers, the blond, blue-eyed Rakkur greatly resembled his father Blake, which was to say he was extraordinarily beautiful for a male. He was also wilder and more spoiled than any of the other brothers had been, even Nicarr, though Davos and Mikos tried valiantly to keep a tight rein on him. Blake had been far too indulgent with his youngest son, in Mikos’s estimation, though Ryan thought Mikos might also be a bit jealous of their close relationship.
Tilar, who looked like his father, Vannos, except for his mahogany-colored hair, was usually as easy-going and sensitive as his Tygerian father too, which made his rebellion against whoever it was that had been chosen for him all the more strange. Tilar’s latest gambit had been to ask if he could stay for the “Christmas holidays.” Vannos, who knew how important the Earth holidays were to Blake, had sent gifts for the family to help Blake keep up the pretense that Christmas was a real thing on Tygeria. Blake’s family, all of whom adored him, tried to help him pretend, each one in their own way, and he’d been trying to promote the holiday for twenty plus years.
With very little luck so far.
Most of his sons tried to help him and came to see him when he told them the “holidays” were near. Not Larz, in particular, who didn’t spend much time at home any more. Or Anarr, who was a Lycan voyager, or trader, along with his husband, Renard, and who came only when he was in the same galaxy—which wasn’t often. This year, he’d sent his regrets. The remaining two sons, Derrick and Nicarr had arrived back home in response to Blake’s invitation, however, and they were at the moment both off somewhere with their husbands. Nicarr had said he’d be visiting old friends, and Derrick, accompanied by Rhaegar, his pirate husband, were probably drinking and partying at some Tygerian pub or other. Ryan doubted they’d see any of them before morning.
