Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince (3 page)

“
The ship is
actively blocking communications,” he said and his arm appeared
from under the blanket. Around his wrist was a device similar to
hers. “It was obvious what you would try to do on
waking.”

Her eyes widened, but not
because of the device.

His skin was white but
from his knuckles it slowly turned from white to a rich blue colour
at his fingertips. He had deep blue claws. The tattered black cuff
of whatever clothes he was wearing fell back to reveal tighter
clothing in blue and silver beneath.

His hand disappeared back
under the blanket.

“
Do you know
where the medical area is? I need to get to my brother. They’re
holding him there.”

“
Quiet,” he
said. This time his voice carried a note of warning.

Renie shrank back and
sighed. Evidently, this man wasn’t going to be much help to her.
Still, questions crowded her mind and they demanded
answers.

“
Erm, excuse
me?” she said and in one swift move, he pushed the blanket off
himself and sat up, facing her.

“
I said to be
quiet!” he snapped but she was too busy staring to hear what he had
said.

She had never seen
anything like him. His skin was white but, where it neared his
hairline, it gradually turned dark blue just as his fingers did.
His hair was a matching dark blue at the root but slowly changed to
black. It hung in loose tendrils, framing his face with tousled
strands that made her want to reach out and push them back, out of
his face so she could drink her fill of his otherworldly
beauty.

A pair of the most
fantastic eyes held hers, their pale blue pupil surrounded by black
irises fascinating her.

With an irritated sigh, he
raked his fingers through his hair, revealing the fact his ears
were slightly pointed and the tips of them were also
blue.

He was breathtaking. It
wasn’t the fact that she had never seen a species like him. It was
how handsome he was—beautiful enough that her heart beat a little
quicker at the sight of him and when her eyes met his, she trembled
inside.

Quiet.

She could do quiet when
she was looking at him. Words had no place in this moment, no use.
They were unnecessary. Sight had command here, and she wanted to do
nothing more than stare at him for eternity.

He shivered and his hair
fell down across his face. She had never seen someone suffer such a
violent shudder before.

He pulled the tattered
grey blanket around his shoulders and her gaze fell to his hands
and then his clothes. He was wearing black like the soldiers that
had taken her captive but his appearance was nothing like
theirs.

“
Are you a
prisoner too?” she said, finding her voice at last and unable to
ignore her desire to learn more about him.

He frowned, dark blue
eyebrows meeting tightly above those stunning eyes.

“
I thought the
answer to that was obvious.”

She shrugged and dropped
her gaze away from his. Loose black trousers covered his legs. They
were torn in places. She could see something blue
beneath.

Was he wearing something
similar to a fight suit beneath the clothes?

He huddled up into the
blanket and sighed.

“
Do you know
where they might have taken my brother?”

“
You mentioned
the medical deck,” he said and his eyes met hers again, sending
another warm rush down her spine. She nodded. “Then I suppose he is
there.”

He wasn’t very
forthcoming.

“
What did they
capture you for?” she said and waited for him to tell her to be
quiet again.

“
Attempting to
leave the Black Zone.”

“
Is that bad?”
Since he was answering questions, Renie couldn’t stop her mouth
from asking them. Perhaps if she broke the ice between them, then
he would be more inclined to tell her the location of the medical
area, presuming he knew. Her gaze took in his face again, slower
this time, in intimate detail. A cut dashed across his right cheek
just below his eye. At least she presumed it was a cut. It was a
thin blue line. Did he have blue blood?

“
Not as bad as
being a Lyran in the Black Zone.”

His reply startled her and
she shuffled backwards a few inches.

“
Did they tell
you when they brought me in?” she said, wondering what the guards
might have said to him and why they would tell a prisoner such
information.

“
No,” he said
and pulled the blanket even tighter around him. She got the feeling
that he wasn’t going to say anything more than that. Perhaps he was
a species that could sense things, as Varkans could. She didn’t
have the courage to ask, so instead she focused on the fact that he
was intently wrapping the blanket around him. He banged a fist
against the wall. “Turn the heat up!”

She frowned. He was cold?
She was boiling in just her thin white shirt, tan waistcoat and
brown trousers.

When she moved, a curl of
her long black hair fell out of her bun. She poked it back into
place and wished she had done something nicer with her hair this
morning. She hadn’t expected to end up shut in a cell next to a
handsome prisoner, especially one who, for the first time in a long
time, made her care about her appearance.

“
Are you cold?”
she said, wanting to break the silence between them
again.

He glared at her, as
though it was another ridiculous question.

“
I thought it
was rather warm,” she said with a shrug.

With a muttered comment
she couldn’t make out, he tugged the blanket closer around
him.

“
It is cold.”
His voice held a note of command and authority that made her feel
as though she should believe it, as though if he said it was cold
then it was cold or if he said that deep space was in fact purple,
then it was.

“
What deck is
the medical one?” she said.

“
Fourteen,” he
replied and then paused. His gaze ran over her and then over the
room. “I do not recommend attempting to escape. The crew is all
male except the medical staff and you have neither the clothing or
appearance to pass as a medical assistant. You would be caught in a
matter of seconds and your punishment would only be more
severe.”

“
More severe?”
she said with another frown. “I’m a princess of Lyra in Vegan
space. I don’t think my punishment could get more severe than this.
They’re probably plotting how much to ransom me for right now, or
planning my public execution.”

He laughed. It was mocking
and made her teeth grate.

“
Execute you?
On whose orders?” He huddled down into his blanket and stared at
her, his strange pale blue pupils boring into hers. “Vegans would
not initiate another war with Lyra. They have no need to. The
galaxy is divided and both are trapped, unable to expand their
empires or their technology.”

“
Lyrans are
expanding their technology perfectly well.”

“
Well enough
that you could create your own barrier?”

She resisted a pout.
“Perhaps.”

It wasn’t her place to
talk about politics like this, or even something that she was
interested in doing, but the way he was talking made her furious.
He sounded as though he sympathised with the Vegans and that he was
mocking the Lyrans. It was difficult to stop herself from talking
about things like her cousin’s recent marriage to the emperor of
Varka. Lyra had already expanded the reach of their technology
because of it. She was sure that soon Lyra could build a barrier
like the one Vega had erected, but she wasn’t sure there was a
need.

“
That
barrier... I saw a planet out there... or something that used to be
a planet. My brother said that it had a high carbon content, as
though everyone who had once lived on it had died in a flash.” She
hugged her knees again as she thought about being back on the small
ship with her brother. Where was he? Was he alive? If the Vegans
had realised that she was royalty just by touching her, then
perhaps they would sense the same about her brother. It was to
their advantage to ensure he survived.

“
When the
barrier was turned on, anything in its path was
decimated.”

Decimated. Her brother had
been right. The barrier had destroyed the planet.

“
In time,
things that are blocking the barrier or caught in it are
eliminated. Vega must keep a clean line between the Black Zone and
the rest of the galaxy.”

“
We were hit by
meteorites—”

“
Not
meteorites,” he said, cutting her off. “This ship has a duty. It
was sent here to destroy the planet. It was part of that planet
that struck your vessel.”

No wonder the ship hadn’t
detected anything before the meteorites were already closing in on
them. No wonder there was a ship in the vicinity to hear her
distress call.

“
I see,” she
said and stared at her knees. Her hand hurt. She sucked her
fingers, trying not to think about how dire her situation was. Her
father would pay for her return, but would it be enough? Would the
Vegans give her and her brother up so easily?

Would her father give up
so easily? She was sure that he would fight for her. If he did,
then there was a chance the war with Vega would begin again. She
didn’t want that. She didn’t want to subject the people of Lyra to
war again, or to catch another system in the crossfire and have
them suffer as the Earth system had.

The thought of billions of
people dying as the Terrans had made her sick to her stomach. She
clutched it and closed her eyes.

“
Are you ill?”
the man said.

She shook her
head.

“
Worried
perhaps?”

She nodded this time and
rested her chin on her knees.

“
If you are a
princess, then your brother will be safe.”

Those words weren’t as
reassuring as she had thought they would be. Her thoughts turned to
Rezic and she wondered if she would ever see him again. Would they
ransom him and then her? What if they refused to hand them over at
all? What if her and her brother were about to become pawns in the
downfall of Lyra? She hoped her father wouldn’t come. She hoped her
uncles would be able to talk sense into him.

She had to escape this
cell and find Rezic but she knew it was as impossible as her pale
friend had said it was. The Vegans would catch her in seconds, and
that was if she even managed to escape the cell in the first place.
She couldn’t see a way past the bars.

“
Will you
answer one more question?” she said to the man, losing hope more
and more by the second.

He nodded.

“
What will the
Vegans do to me?”

****

Chapter
3

Tres came out of his
blanket and looked at her. She was trembling and it wasn’t from
cold. Warm blooded as she was, she didn’t have his problem. She was
frightened. He had little experience of frightened females. All of
the women this side of the barrier seemed hardhearted and as fierce
as the males. Even his mother was vicious. The only female he knew
with a modicum of emotion was his sister.

The Lyran female’s dark
eyes pleaded him for an answer and his heart said she craved
reassurance. She was turning to him for help and for hope. He
couldn’t deny one as beautiful as her, as delicate and scared. Her
fear and beauty spoke to him, making her appear as fragile as a
Cyoliane butterfly, and tempting him to reach out and cradle her
gently in his hands. He wondered at this strange desire.

“
I am sure they
will release you. Ransoming you would contravene the Treaty of
Espacia.” He noticed her look didn’t change. “They will not harm
you.”

Silently, he added a
promise to those words. He wouldn’t let anyone harm her or her
brother. He moved to the end of the bench near her, wondering what
strange twist of fate had brought her into this side of the galaxy.
She seemed too frail to survive in such a dark place but at the
same time her black eyes held a trace of determination and there
was a hint of strength in the set of her subtly curved jaw. A
strange mixture. Beauty and grace joined with strength and
resolve.

It was a shame she wasn’t
strong enough.

His heart said that she
could be. He could probably get her to her brother and then to a
ship. He knew this class of Vegan fighter well enough to be able to
take her through the ducts to the medical deck.

Tres looked up at the
ceiling. It shifted from pale grey to a thermal image and then he
could see through the panels to the ducts, pipes and wiring beyond.
Down the side of the image, thermal readings gave him the
temperature of each duct. Below it was an assessment of width,
height and other factors.

It was warmer in the duct
than it was in this room.

“
Is there
something interesting up there?” she said.

His gaze shifted to her
and, in a matter of seconds, his ocular implants had her vital
statistics displayed next to the thermal image of her body. She was
hot. Far hotter than he had expected. She was radiating heat at a
level that made him consider crossing his cell to the bars,
reaching through and taking her hand to warm himself. She was also
shorter than he had expected and lighter. If they stood side by
side, she would be a good head shorter than he was.