AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One of his arms was still slung around my waist, with the hand of the other, he pushed some stray strands out of my face. "Cinna, if I remember correctly you weregivento me as a gift. You are already mine."
"But you areofferingto marry me out of the goodness of your heart, because my plight tugs at your heartstrings?"
"Exactly." He nodded, and his irises darkened.
"Hmm." I arched my back from him to cross my arms over my chest, tilted my head, and worked my lips back and forward as if I were in deep thought. "Let me think about your generousoffer."
His hand caressed my back, causing my heart to do some weird little dances.
"How do human males offer marriage?" he asked in a deep voice.
How did human males do what? My mind was having a hard time concentrating when his hand was drawing circles across my back and his lips were close enough to kiss. Not to mention his deep voice. Damn this man, hegot under my skin and the infuriating thing was he knew it damn well too.
Oh right, proposing, my mind finally put his words into a question that made sense to me.
My longest relationship had lasted a week and a half, so I had never been in danger of being asked to marry someone, but I had envisioned it of course, had seen hundreds of movies and clips on social media. So it was easy for me to describe. "They find a romantic—very romantic—spot, with lots of lit candles, or under the stars, or both, sometimes it's done in public, in front of hundreds of people, or sometimes just family, and sometimes it's just the two of them," I rambled. "Anyway, the man falls on one knee, and tells the woman how much he loves her, how she changed his life and would make his life so much better if she were in it. Then he holds out a ring and if the woman accepts the ring, it means she accepts hisofferof marriage."
"Sounds intriguing," he rasped and pulled me in for a deep kiss that scrambled my already scrambled mind even more and turned my knees into softened butter.
"I will give you time to think about my offer, cinna." He grinned, before his expression turned more serious. "But I want you to know that no matter your answer, you will always have a safe place in the empire. I will make sure of it. You will want for nothing."
I opened my mouth toreply, but he placed a finger on my lips to seal them, shaking his head. "Don't answer until you have seen both worlds I'm offering. So much has been taken from you. Your life has changed drastically. When you answer my question, I want you to be sure."
At that moment I was already sure what my answer would be, but I appreciated his insight and sensitivity. I also wasn't so completely out of my mind that I didn't wonder myself if I was about to say yes, just because I craved a safe space, a future where some aliens wouldn't just take and alter me. We had known each other only for a few days and we were talking marriage.
My heart skipped a beat.
Marriage.
Strangely though the thought didn't scare me at all, because I could see myself at his side, could see us working together.
My head swam when we returned to our quarters, making it hard to concentrate on the speech I was preparing to give to the emperor.
I sat on one of the couches by the window, while Garth took his seat behind his desk. From time to time I sneaked a surreptitious glance toward him. Damn him,but he knew how to occupy my mind.
After a while I gave up on my speech and browsed his tablet for images of his protectorate. I had done this before, and like before, I found myself caught in the rugged beauty of his main planet, Astrionis. The alien landscape fascinated me and I couldn't wait to see it with my own eyes.
The buildings dotting the landscape were so adapted to the natural environment, they were hard to spot.
Mostly I was fascinated by the land surrounding his palace. A neon-yellow sun lit up flat land for miles, dotted with what looked like giant tree roots, but in reality were rocks as Garth had explained to me. They were knotted and arched over the dirt as tall as ten-story buildings in places. Like tree roots, these rock formations grew until they reached maturity, which was when they were hollowed out and converted into houses.
Among them grew yellow, fern-like grass and plants that looked like green and red flowers. Brownish animals, which he called darts, lived in between the vegetation.
Large, bat-like birds flew through the always-visible, star-filled sky. It was surreal to say the least, like a painting of what an artist might have imagined an alien planet to look like, which—and here I suppressed a snicker—I supposed it was.
The more I stared at the three-dimensional images, the more I looked forward to visiting it, with Garth.
He told me the journey would take five space days, and we were on our fourth. Tomorrow, we would reach Pandrax and I would have to face Garth's emperor, again.
During our firstmeeting, when I interrupted their holovid comm, I had been too tense to truly appreciate who I was talking to. That had changed since I had time to reflect and learn.
What I had learned was that as of right now the empire had five lord protectors, who each ruled over between eight and twelve planets, overseen by Emperor Daryus, whose immediate galaxy spanned four planets as well, including Pandrax.
When I first met Daryus, I didn't have the slightest idea how powerful of a man he was and I was reminded of the old saying that ignorance is bliss. Well, I wasn't ignorant any longer and I worried I would become utterly tongue-tied when I spoke to the emperor next to plead the humans' causeto him.
"Cinna," Garth called tome from the window the next morning.
With a sigh I closed the tablet—at this point I was just going to either drive myself mad or completely mess up my prepared speech to Emperor Daryus—and turned expectantly to Garth.
