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“Excuse me, Myra, but didn’t you tell us that the Kindred bodyslave who stole one of your ships and ran away had horns?” Mistress Bitterbite, one of the Sacred Seven, enquired, raising her eyebrows delicately and nodding at the screen.
“Oh yes—and golden eyes and red skin, too!” her niece, who was standing right beside her remarked. “And Ketha’s baby has golden eyes and red skinandhorns!” she added, stating the obvious. “Oh my Goddess—she must have had sex with her bodyslave! She let amalepenetrate her!”
The murmuring of the crowd grew to a roar and all eyes were on the screen, which was still showing the baby as a young man.
“Stop it! Shut it off! It’s lies! All lies!” Mistress Morebutt raged at the tech.
“Our baby-viewing wand is accurate!” the technician snapped back. “I can’t help it if your daughter was whoring around with your bodyslave and got pregnant with a son—that’s notmyfault!”
“Howdareyou?” Mistress Morebutt slapped the technician hard, right across the face.
But the baby-view tech was clearly not someone who was willing to take abuse. She slapped Mistress Morebutt back and then reached up and yanked at her towering up-do, pulling out a handful of bright pink hair.
“Ow! Youbitch!”Mistress Morebutt gasped. She wasn’t used to “the help” fighting back. She wrenched the baby-viewing wand from the other woman’s hand and threw it across the room.
Unfortunately, the wand hit Tomissina Toesucker—the leader of the Sacred Seven—right in the forehead. She cried out dramatically and fell down, grabbing onto the skirt of Ulalla Taddabbler on the way down and tearing it nearly off.
Ulalla screeched and backed away, knocking over Mistresses Betrina Bellyboiler and Farna Gabblesworth, who were both standing right behind her, in the process.
Ketha watched the whole thing, dumbfounded. It was like a chain-reaction—before she knew it, the whole room was filled with rich, entitled women shouting and hitting and grabbing and hissing like angry felines. And her mother and the technician were right in the middle of it all, pulling each other’s hair and screaming.
“You tell everyone here that your wand is telling lies!” Mistress Morebutt shouted at the tech.
“No! I stand by our accuracy!” the tech spat back. “Your daughter let herself be penetrated by a male. She’s aman-fucker!”
“You take that back—take it back!”Mistress Morebutt shrieked.
But it was too late to take anything back, Ketha thought dismally. The entire room was in chaos and she was the cause of it all.
Quietly, she slipped off the padded table and snuck away from the fighting and shouting and name-calling.
This was probably the end of her life as she knew it but she just felt numb. There was nothing she could do to change anything now. Nothing she could do but hide her face in shame and hope that this would somehow all blow over.
17
KETHA
But it didn’t blow over.
“My social life is over! Do you hear me?Over!”Mistress Morebutt paced back and forth in Ketha’s bedroom, where she had been confined for the past several days.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she said in a low voice. She was sitting on the side of her bed, watching as her mother paced and feeling miserable.
“Forget ever becoming a member of the Sacred Seven now—I’ll be lucky if everyone in Opulex doesn’t shun me!” Mistress Morebutt went on. “I’ve already been disinvited tofiveparties and a cotillion! And nobody I’ve been doing business with will take my calls. I’ll be ruined—and all because you couldn’t keep your hands off that blasted bodyslave!”
“It was the fertility drugs you slipped me!” Ketha protested, trying to defend herself. “They made mecrazywith lust! I wasn’t thinking straight—my mind was all clouded with desire.”
“You little whore!” Mistress Morebutt rounded on her. “Don’t you try to make excuses for your inexcusable behavior! You’ve broken the most sacred taboo of our people—you allowed yourself to be penetrated by amale!”She pointed a finger at Ketha’s baby bump. “That monstrosity growing inside you is an abomination! And the first thing we’re going to do is get rid of it!”
“Get rid of it?” Ketha cupped her hands over her small baby bump protectively. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about!” Mistress Morebutt snarled. “We’re going to the doctor to have that thingremoved.And we’re going to tell everyone that horrible bodyslaveforcedhimself on you. That way at least it won’t look like youlethim penetrate you.”
“Styx never forced me!” Ketha protested. “And I’mnotgiving up his baby.”
She might have agreed to such a thing if she hadn’t seen the projections from the baby-wand. But now that she had seen her son grown to adulthood, she couldn’t imagine getting rid of him.
“Youwillgive up that filthy male creature inside you or I’ll disinherit you and kick you out of the house!” her mother warned. “Think about that, Ketha! Do you want to have it removed…or be homeless and penniless, stripped of your name, rank, and title? The choice is yours!”
