My Alien King (Paranormal Romance Aliens) (9 page)

‘Bumpy’ had been a bit of an understatement, and actually not the right word at all to describe what the first bit was. They’d risen straight up, which had been thrilling to watch from the windows, but then they’d tilted at an angle, which Mia understood because the nose of the thing was probably pointed for a reason.

She’d been on enough planes that she’d assumed it would be something similar, but she hadn’t been prepared at all. Planes started off slow, rolling down the runway to gather speed before they lifted off.

This didn’t do that. It hovered above the tree line for a moment, and Asher assured her that no one would be able to see them because of the cloaking mechanism, and then it shot forward, picking up speed all at once.

It made sense, she supposed, since this craft had a lot farther to go than an airplane, but she still screamed as it rattled along through the air, thanking Asher for reminding her to buckle in because she would have surely been on the floor if she hadn’t done so.

"I don’t remember this part much," Asher called, voice loud over the sudden roar of the engines. "I was crying and being held when we took off because I was too small to be buckled into the seats properly. It’s fun, though, isn’t it?"

He looked at her, and Mia could see that his eyes were alight with excitement. She couldn’t be grumpy about the ride after that. Not when Asher was so thrilled to be going home. Instead she smiled back at him, and nodded, even though she had a white knuckled grip on the armrests of her seat.

Aside from the eventful nature of their takeoff, the rest of the journey was almost dull. They cruised through space, going at a fast clip, but she barely noticed how fast it was. The ship was level and she was able to walk around and make food in the cooking machines once Asher showed her how they worked. She slept on her cot when she was tired, since there was no real difference between night and day where they were now.

Asher spent most of his time looking out the window with a longing expression on his face, and she knew that he was waiting for the first glimpse of his home. She couldn’t even imagine having been away from it for as long as he had, and he didn’t even know what he was going to be coming back to. Not really.

He told her stories in the quiet. About his uncle and how he was king, about his nanny and how she’d had to chase him all over the place sometimes. About how his people had taken things that weren’t pretty by nature and morphed them into works of art.

There was pride in his voice as he talked, and even though he’d been no more than a little boy when he’d last been there, it was easy to hear how much love and respect he had for his people. It made Mia’s heart ache to be a part of it.

She told him stories in return. Not about her parents, because there wasn’t much to tell there, but about her life since she’d moved out of their house. About the things she’d wanted, the dreams she’d had. About how she was something of an artist herself.

The idea of living and learning amongst a group of naturally talented people, which was how Asher made his people sound, was thrilling, and the more he told her about it, the more excited she got. Maybe she would fit in better than she thought she would, better than she had ever fit in with her family, who had been disappointed in her life choices.

The days passed easily, and then, three days after they’d set out, a sound chimed from the console of the ship, and Asher looked up from the soup he had heated up and his eyes went wide. "I think… I think we’re there. Almost."

He got up and went to check, and then it wasn’t even necessary because right there, looming in front of them was the planet.

Or at least Mia assumed it was the planet since she’d never seen it before. It looked similar enough to the pictures of Earth she’d seen, though the ground was much darker in places and there was less water spread out. She had no idea where she was supposed to be looking for Asher’s home, but then they were preparing for descent, and she was more interested in throwing herself into the nearest seat and strapping herself in firmly while Asher put away the thing that would go flying once the nose of the transporter was pointing down.

Breaking through the atmosphere here was just as rough and terrifying as breaking out of Earth’s had been, but she held on and soon enough they were leveling out again and flying straight.

Amelia had seen plenty of nice sights in her life. She was the daughter of a senator, after all, and they’d done a fair bit of traveling when she was younger. She’d been all over the country and to a few others besides, but she was fairly certain that nothing she had ever seen before had prepared her for the wonder of space.

She was filled with questions. Like how come they were moving so fast, and how come it wasn’t going to take light years for them to get there among other things. Mostly she was still reeling over the whole ‘Abon wants you to be my queen’ thing that had been dropped on her earlier.

Her? A queen? It was almost laughable, and she would have laughed at it if she weren’t so surprised at herself.

She’d decided that she was going to come anyway, even knowing the whole truth. She wasn’t happy with the way her life had turned out on the whole, and a new start, even somewhere she would be so out of place, sounded frankly amazing.

The image she’d had in her head and the image unfolding in front of her couldn’t have been more different. For one thing, most of the land that she could see out of the tiny window was barren looking. She couldn’t even call it a desert because it was just hard, packed earth in a deep brown that looked like it hadn’t seen water for years.

None of the trees were flourishing, and they looked more like rocks jutting up out of the land than anything that could be considered vegetation.

All around was rubble. Houses and buildings crumbling in disrepair. It was clear that there had once been structure here, the markings of boundaries and maybe roads, though she didn’t see anything that looked like they might be the alien version of cars or vehicles. It was laid out like a small city or a subdivision might have been on Earth, but there was very little left of it now. There were no animals to be seen, and that made sense, considering the fact that there was nothing around to sustain them. As far as her eye could see there was nothing but hard, packed Earth and the remnants of what this place once was.

It looked like a wasteland or a warzone, and Mia had to wonder if she’d been misled. It occurred to her that she’d known Asher for a matter of a few days, and that she hadn’t seen Abon in years and hadn’t really known him before his disappearance. She’d been blindly trusting them not to be con artists or killers or anything to that effect, but really, how did she know?

Maybe they had conspired to bring her here and leave her. Maybe they were always in league with the Shaddoc and their plans.

"I know it isn’t much to look at," Asher said from behind her, and she turned her head to see him looking out of the other window. "I… didn’t know it was this bad. They made me leave before I could see what was happening."

The sorrow in his voice sounded real enough to Mia and she swallowed hard. "Can you… can you rebuild it? I mean. Where are all the others?"

Asher shook his head. "I don’t know. I don’t… Abon always said that they were waiting for us to come back, but. I don’t know how they could survive here like this. I don’t understand it."

It seemed like there were a lot of things that Asher didn’t understand about his homecoming, and the only thing that was going to clear things up was them finding Abon. When Mia pointed this out, Asher nodded.

"You’re right. And he should be here. I’m sure he’s tracking us, and if he’d been somewhere along the way, then he would have flagged us down or something. He’s definitely here somewhere, probably just waiting for us to find him.

For the first time since she’d known him, there was true irritation in his voice when he spoke of his uncle, and Mia didn’t blame him.

Apparently he’d just up and left, leaving his nephew to fend for himself and leaving behind cryptic clues and notes and journals in the hopes that they would be able to piece it all together. Mia didn’t know how he could feel good about taking those kinds of chances, really. If one thing hadn’t gone to his plan, just one thing, then they would have been clueless.

But maybe he’d planned it out that well, Mia didn’t know.

What she did know was that they weren’t accomplishing anything by sitting on the transporter, hovering above the land.

She moved away from her window and rested her hand on Asher’s shoulder, giving him a smile when those bright eyes looked at her. "We won’t find anything out here," she said gently. "On this ship thing, I mean. If Abon’s down there somewhere, then we’ll just have to find him, won’t we?"

He hesitated for a moment and then gave her a warm smile. "You’re right. Of course. He’s going to have to explain himself sooner or later, and I would rather it be sooner." Asher seemed to debate something for a moment and then he was pulling her close once more, pressing his lips to hers with an almost desperate ferocity that she hadn’t encountered before. "Thank you," Asher breathed against her lips, and allowed it when Mia pulled him back in.

It was several minutes later when they finally came up for air, and Mia was highly amused to see twin spots of color on Asher’s cheeks. Clearly he wasn’t used to having someone he could kiss whenever he wanted to, but it didn’t seem like he had any complaints either way.

"We should uh…" he trailed off and cleared his throat. "We should get moving. Yes."

Mia grinned at him, amused. "Yes," she echoed. "Let’s go." It occurred to her then that she’d forgotten something very important, and her eyes flew open wide. Just because Asher and his kind lived here on Quantari, didn’t mean that she would be able to. She might not even be able to
breathe
out there, let alone live. When she asked Asher, he didn’t seem worried though. In fact, he smiled.

"You’ll be fine," he promised. "You’re not the first human to come to Quantari, and you probably won’t be the last. The reason Earth was the place we fled to was because it was the closest planet to us that was similar to our own. From what I can tell, Nalyi and humans aren’t so different.

"Oh," Mia said, relieved. "Well, that’s good then. Okay."

When the door to the transporter opened, Asher motioned her to stand back, eyes wary on the horizon. The sun (which was much paler and a strange shade of lavender) looked like it was hot nonetheless, but the air that fanned in on her face was cool and almost refreshing. This place was so confusing, and Mia had to wonder what caused the land to look so cooked and desolate if it wasn’t the heat from the sun.

Before she could get an answer to that, something was happening. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the trees. She opened her mouth to say something to Asher, but found that he was staring at the ground with his mouth open.

"What is it?" she asked, heart pounding. Maybe something dangerous had found them?

"Look," Asher breathed, pointing to the ground.

Mia had to lean around him to see what he was talking about, which was easier said than done since he was still halfway in the transporter, one foot on the ground in front of him. What she saw made her eyes widen.

At the point where Asher was standing, greenery had burst through the earth. It was small, but grass seemed to be growing around his foot, and when he moved to stand completely on the ground, more came.

"What’s happening?" he asked, wonder in his voice.

"You’re asking me?" He seemed to understand how silly that was because he smiled at her, and then took a deep breath and stepped forward again.

Everywhere he walked there was more grass. Movement caught her attention, and she looked to the trees to see that buds were springing forth from the branches, tiny and the palest shades of green, but there nonetheless. Color winked at the corners of her vision, and she looked to see flowers lining the edges of the destroyed buildings. Those, at least, stayed destroyed.

It was as if the land was responding to Asher’s arrival, and the scene was breathtaking. She half expected to see people poking their heads out, but they remained alone where they stood.

With the greenery returning, it was easy to see how lush this place once was. The boundaries of roads and property became clearer, some of the earth staying hard while grass and flowers bloomed and came to life on the edges. Vines climbed up the sides of the broken buildings, making the crumbling stone and brick seem alive with color.

In the distance, Mia could see the sunlight glinting off of something, and she shaded her eyes, trying to see what it was that she was looking at. It was tall and pointy like a spire, and when she squinted, she could see turrets below it.

"Look," she said, pointing in that direction, and Asher obeyed, looking up and over and gasping softly.

"The palace."

"Which palace?"

"
My
palace," he said. "Where I grew up. That’s probably where Abon is waiting. That’s where I would wait if I were him."

"Then I guess we know where we need to go," Mia said, gesturing ahead of them. Asher seemed to hesitate, but then he nodded and led the way.

He seemed to be lost in thought as they walked towards the palace, and Mia was content to let him think, looking around her at the surroundings and watching as things grew and changed right in front of her eyes. It was amazing, and she could see how this land could have been somewhere lush and wonderful to live before the destruction had set in.