“Princess, it’s alright; he must just be sleepy. It was quite a long journey,” the maid panted as she struggled to keep pace with Eivaley.
They had just shown Conor to his quarters a few doors away from Eivaleys on the border of the central hortus conclusus, where the majority of the princesses’ and their champions had their rooms so they could see se through the grand skylight during lunar and solar ceremonies, that and be able to lounge in the lush grass and flowers growing just a few meters away from their chambers.
The princess was a bit perturbed right now because of how Conor had reacted during his tour of the grounds and how the Human unenthusiastically asked Eivaley if he could be left alone for the night.
Why would Eivaley not be upset? Conor’s introduction to the palace and Livayie had not gone as she had imagined it would have.
In her royal mind, he should have cared about the grand buttresses, the never-ending rear garden, the rows of marble statues depicting the gods built into the columns holding the roof up, and the spiraling towers extending to the sky like fingers reaching heaven.
But out of it all, he especially should have appreciated the effort Eivaley had made for him. Eivaley had passionately described the history of how the black marble of the statues came from the far south in the Roukul badlands, an area that her ancestors conquered and united the entire planet under her family, the red scales rule.
Her family has ruled for thousands of years, and as such, she had extensive millennia of history she tried to detail to Conor; thankfully, she used the depictions on the walls in frescos, in paintings adorning regions between those works of art to help her along.
Eivaley was no scholar, but by seeing the pictures, she could remember rough details and explain them to Conor. It was a good thing her father and sisters were not there to watch her bumble through their family's history.
She genuinely tried to be engaging and describe the achievements of past Champions and empresses, detailing their achievements and what they did to push the Kurlatra society forward.
She even tried to tell the saga of Nikitals, the first champion. This grand leader slew thousands of warriors as a slave knight of a barbarous lady before the horrible woman’s empire had captured Eivaleys ancestor Eyalta.
Eivaley then detailed the years of war resulting in the red-scaled slaves ultimately taking over the city they now stand in and forging the Kurlatra empire's humble beginnings.
Since her future Champion seemed uninterested in that, she continued detailing wars, assassinations, coup attempts, and the herculean industrial efforts of the royalty to bring about the stability and prosperous life the entire planet had come to enjoy over the last thousand years.
But Conor did not seem to care in the slightest, even though, as Eivaley saw it, the Human and Nikitals had much in common that their life stories might as well rhyme. It was not that he was actively ignoring her. No, he still held her close as he had back in Heavalun and allowed her to wrap her tail around his waist, ensuring his lady was close and safe.
He seemed to be staring off into nothingness; his eyes only shifted from whatever void was calling to him from the shadow when they passed a corner. Conor would squeeze Eivaley tighter and jerk his head in that direction, nearly snarling at some unseen threat.
Conor's behavior was odd for Eivaley; why was he acting like this? She understood why Conor acted somewhat like a Jurintik; he and Brakul lived together for years, and the alien imposing some of his species' actions onto the Human was expected. But why was Conor acting like Eivaley was under threat right now? They were perfectly safe here in the palace. It was not like they were in Heavalun or a warzone.
Her sisters might try to attack her, but they would not do anything he could likely prevent. She did know that Conor had just recently lost Brakul and Stitch, but that should not be affecting him so much. He was a proud warrior and a potential champion and strong beyond the loss of someone breaking them.
Everyone loses people in their life; for the royals of the Kurlatra, that was a fact of near-daily life.
Out of her sixty sisters born over a half dozen clutches, there were only twelve left at this point, a fact Eivaley still hated; she could not even remember most of their faces, most had died so long ago, with the most recent having been a local year ago.
Almost all of her sisters were assassinated by slug throwers, laser fire, poison, and a few by bombing. But all that happened during travel, from planet to planet or city to city—not in the palace, something she emphasized to Conor.
While it was not written in stone, no one could kill someone higher in the ranking while on the royal grounds, it was treated as neutral territory, a place where they could all be together and not worry about the rat race they had to live in.
Eivaley wished that the world was peaceful like that and that all Kurlatra women did not have to tolerate the existence of looking over their shoulders to check for a dagger or gun ready to cut them down.
However, her desire was antithetical to how her species had existed long before the red scales took control of the world. As she understood it, all women had to compete violently for power to ensure the most crafty, intelligent, and capable women remained as the matriarch. At the same time, she would find a male to compliment her abilities and pick up where she lacked, making a more robust unit that would rule their destiny.
Eivaley threw open the door to her room, unable to come up with a concise answer for why Conor acted the way he did. She did not even bother to switch on the lights; the maid did that; instead, she rushed toward her wardrobe and removed the outer sashes covering her shoulders, leaving her in only jeans and a wrap supporting her bust.
Eivaley did not need to remove the garment for any heat reasons, but it was nice not having to worry about looking prim and proper. There would be plenty of the dog and pony show when she introduced Conor to other royals, her mother, or goddess help her with this part—the high priestess.
That finicky woman would undoubtedly disprove of Conor because he was not a Kurlatra and could not give Eivaley heirs. But she would also be cross at Eivaley for what she was wearing. Good thing it was Eivaleys room; she could be naked in here all day and night, and all that clergy member could do was hiss and wag a disappointed finger.
“I doubt that,” Eivaley harumphed, shutting the closet as the maid dropped Eivaleys bag containing the clothes she had from Heavalun. “That man is not the type to get tired.”
Eivaley genuinely believed Conor was not the type to show if he was tired. He could have been awake, running, and fighting for a week without sleep and would simply pump himself full of enough stims to kill a mature rugelik and keep on trucking. If the display of willingness to put it all on the line was his typical willpower, what Conor was genuinely capable of was unfathomable.
“You can just leave that there,” Eivaley instructed as the maid began to unpack the clothes from the bag. “I will handle that once I'm in the mood.”
The maid stopped touching the bag and its contents, instantly retreating from the garments as if they were venomous vipers ready to lash out. She stood tall and looked awkwardly between Eivaley's bags and her nervously shifting feet.
Eivaley sighed and slowly walked over toward the maid. This maid was new to the palace, having arrived since Eivaley had left for Heavalun several months ago. The nervous girl likely did not know much about how each of the surviving royals behaved.
If all the brown-scaled maid knew about how to act around the royal family was from her sisters or any visiting imperators, there is no doubt she expected Eivaley to scream and stamp about in a huff, followed by punishing her for a perceived slight.
That was not in any way what Eivaley would do. She cared about each of her attendants, and just like those on her ship, she intended them all to treat her like a regular person—behind closed doors. While out amidst the other royalty, a particular image has to be maintained.
“There is no need to be so nervous. I just prefer to do most things on my own,” Eivaley assured while patting the maid's shoulder, taking the slightest moment to adore the colorations on her scales.
The young lady primarily had brown undertones, but subtle orange, yellow, and beige flecks were mixed in. The combination and how the colored scales crisscrossed her body implied she likely was from the badlands where such a camouflage was typical.
“I—uhh–yes, princess,” the maid stuttered after recoiling slightly from Eivaley touching her bare shoulder.
“And when we are alone, please call me Eivaley?” Eivaley asked, pulling back her hand, not wanting to make the woman any more uncomfortable than she already was.
The maid looked around rapidly, scanning each section of Eivaleys room for someone watching from the shadows. It was like she was expecting this to be some kind of test given by Eivaley's mother or perhaps the head maid, Teliala. A trial to ensure the new blood was living up to their expectations.
But none of that happened, nor would. The entire palace was well aware of the not-so-secret reality that Eivaley treated the servants like friends behind closed doors. Most of her surviving sisters would even come into her room to watch movies with Eivaley and whoever was her maid for the evening.
Once the young lady started to seem more paranoid, having not been able to uncover the deception Eivaley was supposedly performing, Eivaley attempted to diffuse whatever bomb of thought was ticking in the young lady’s head.
“What is your name? I have never seen you here before.” Eivaley smiled.
The maid looked around more frantically for several moments until her gaze landed firmly on Eivaley's angelic smile, and that was all it took. As if that was the first natural treatment any royals had ever shown her, the woman's guard was crushed under Eivaleys warm, enthralling personality.
“It’s Alanii, prince—” Alanii began, but Eivaley raised a finger and whipped her tail in frustration, reminding her of the request. “Errr- Eivaley.”
“Thank you, Alanii,” Eivaley smirked, finding the way Alanii began to fiddle with her hands adorable. It reminded Eivaley of how she held her tail or how Conor would grope at the handgun under his coat.
“I would love to learn more about you and your family. But would you be willing to leave for the evening? I would like some alone time after my long trip, and well–” Eivaley started but trailed off and looked at the wall toward Conor's room. “I havea lott on my mind.”
Alanii nodded and assured Eivaley that should she need anything at all to call for her. It was a simple process of using the dedicated line programmed into her datapad. That was the typical process, so no matter the time or day, she and others in the palace could receive aid within a minute or two from one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of on-site staff.
Eivaley tended only to use it for emergencies at night, to allow the maids to rest and recuperate from being run ragged by others.
Eivaley wholeheartedly doubted that Alanii would have accepted; no, I won't be calling you; if anything, I would go bang on Conor's door, so after being assured Eivaley would call her for anything Alanii departed for the maid quarters, leaving Eivaley alone to stew in her frantic mind.
Eivaley waved goodbye, closed the door, and glanced around the room she had been away from for months, appreciating what she had been missing while aboard the ship or down on Heavalun’s streets.
A massive wall-to-wall window offered her a view of the gardens, the green trees, and grasses broken up by long lines of blue water flowing through carved open-air aqueducts from the oasis at the garden's center. Planted neatly along the edges of the water were flowers of every color of the rainbow, giving the entire scene a kaleidoscope of brilliance. This appearance flowed from the palace and down into the city itself.
The inside of her room was rather spartan when compared to her other family members.
A tile floor of white and black held the room together, stitching across in diamond patterns. On one of the walls was her extensive wardrobes. Most were open and showed off her simple attire, which was more like what regular people would wear, not a princess.
On the other two walls were pictures of Eivaley and her family, a grim reminder of how many of her sisters were no longer here or that she would never meet. Their laughs and unique personalities have long since been condemned to the annals of time.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Eivaley removed her jeans and tossed them across a chair, sitting in front of a table with all forms of makeup she would use: scale polish, rings for her horns, and even some shed-aid. The chilly air teased her bare rump as it ran past the skimpy underwear Fae had gotten her, causing her to shiver.
Eivaley slinked into the several-meter-wide divot on the floor, which was her traditional Kurlatra bed. Blue silken fur pillows filled the sides of the bowl while dozens of equally plush pillows pooled in the center.
Kurlatra had beds designed like this mainly for warmth, with the intent being that one and whomever they shared a life coil with were forced to sink into the depths of the bowl in a deep comforting embrace; something that had saved many a Kurlatra before the current empires rule, and the GU’s technology.
She had missed her bed beyond everything else in the palace—with the gardens as a close second.
Aboard her ship, the Kurlatra used beds similar to those of other bipedal aliens. Her bed on while traveling was not too dissimilar from the cot Conor had in his home back in Heavalun.
Once down in the ocean of velvet fur, Eivaley allowed it to pull her in tight. As she sunk to the furthest depths her bed could offer, she reflected on everything happening with Conor and her life.
While she could not figure out why he was upset, now that she was alone in her brightly lit room, she could not help but feel it was due to her attempting to trick him into being her Champion.
Lord knows Eivaleys father had given her enough grief about how horrible of an idea that was. If he was willing to lay into her, to the point of nearly yelling, she could see her father having discussed it with him at gunpoint; if so, Conor had not brought the idea—perhaps he felt betrayed by her? If that was the case, how to regain the trust of the Human was a complete unknown.
The worry that Conor was angry at her for some reason occupied Eivaley's mind wholly until slumber dragged her to an equally troubled dreamland. As she slept, Eivaley tossed and turned, imagining Conor being ripped apart by gunfire and her own possible fate if he had not saved her.
Over the last few weeks, Eivaley’s mind had been infected by the incident in Heavalun; she attempted to quantify why a powerful slum lord from the far end of the galaxy was out to get her.
Regrettably, for Eivaley, it did not remain a mystery for long, having only taken her a few days to understand; one of her younger sisters must have paid Voodal to remove her from the running to be empress.
The question Eivaley wanted an answer to is, who and why?
All of her sisters knew very well that Eivaley was not interested in the throne, yet for some reason, one of them thought the idea of her continued existence threatened their claim.
If only Eivaley could manage to find out who it was. Then she could hopefully convince her sister to stop trying to kill her and the rest of their family—but she had no way of doing that. She could not pull strings across the galaxy, hire investigators, or send subterfuge units to relevant planets and cities. She held no weight in the COS, GU, or even the Kurlatra empire, save for the veneration of all royals and the few locals who adored her.
Before Eivaley realized she had fallen asleep, she was jolted awake by her eldest sister's steady hand and gentle voice.
“Wake up, little sister,” Mulaney cooed, rubbing her thumb on Eivaleys horns.
Eivaley rolled over in bed, looking up at her sister, Mulaney, and Champion Burlai.
“What time is it?” Eivaley yawned, glancing out the large window into the night sky. She knew it had been several hours since she went to sleep since the sun had descended fully for the night.
It was evident that it was not the witching hour since the moon was not in full view from her window, something that happened every time it reached the late night. So it had to be sometime before then.
“A bit before midnight,” Mulaney smiled, standing up from her crouched position and patting her dress down, straightening it.
She wore the traditional sash-like garbs most Kurlatra did, but she tended towards having a bit more flare by wearing a bright green color. Her dress also left her incredibly long legs freedom of movement.
Eivaley had always been jealous of Mulaneys legs and tall stature. But Eivaley could do nothing about that; it was a product of their having different fathers. Mulaneys father was her mother's first champion, while her father was her mother's fifth.
That was not uncommon for Kurlatra royalty, having second, third, or even fourth Champions. While commoners found one Champion that stayed for most of their lives, royals could call for rights to wed and ascend to first champion—so long as the male held status.
But Eivaley was also not a fan of that tradition because it resulted in the losing Champions' deat, from a duel for the royal ladies' hand, or willingly committing suicide after being disgraced.
“I’m sorry about waking you, Eivaley, my little hyu— er your sister wanted to see you tonight,” Burlai added as Mulaney sat in the chair near the desk and silently glared at her Champion of ten years.
Eivaley smirked as Mulaney whipped her tail against the ground, having heard that Burlai almost called her his hyulina, a type of flower found in the jungles of the far side of the planet and Burlai’s birthplace.
It was a little nickname everyone in the palace knew about, but Mulaney still got flushed with embarrassment when other people heard what she considered a more intimate thing than Burlai did.
“So, what's this that I hear about you having found a Champion? And one that is not a Kurlatra?” Mulaney smiled while leaning forward, her bangles and other jewelry shimmering in the light.
Burlai rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall, positioning himself to split the difference between the window and the door. While he certainly did love Mulaney, including her love of gossip and asking questions, her tendency to lack tact with her family sometimes bugged him.
Eivaley turned in the bed and draped her arms over the edge, hanging onto it like one would the side of a pool. She could not help but smile brightly, thinking about Conor and letting juriflys flutter freely in her chest, making her heart race and body feel as light as a feather.
The room-brightening smile and Eivaleys tail wagging like she was about to receive the greatest gift of all time told both Mulaney and Burlai that Le-rougea, the god of love, must have visited the younger princess.
Both could tell the passionate god had struck Eivaley hard with his needle and threads of fate, but neither had a true grasp on how Conor and Eivaley’s lives were intertwined tighter than the life coils around their necks.
Eivaley spent nearly the next hour gushing on and explaining the story of how Conor pulled her from the nightclub, fought off a gangster's army, and ultimately almost killed himself to bring her to their father.
This story was not simple, and Eivaley showed the effects of all the training she had undergone as a diplomat over the years. She used precise rhythm, pacing, and pauses to build suspense as she asked rhetorical questions to draw the observers in.
If she was not in her bedroom and was weaving the saga of trial and tribulation, the weeks on Heavalun to a crowd of billions, not a soul would be able to forget a word or name. All of which Eivaley included in details that painted pictures more vivid than the most expensive holo-flick.
Both Mulaney and Burlai could see everything as Eivaley painted them pictures of the nightclub, Stitch, Fae, the gunfights, and even Eivaleys bombastic descriptions of Conor, a Human both had only seen in a single image that had circulated the entire system by now.
Mulaney held onto each word like it was a precious gem, paying keen attention to how Eivaley described Conor and what he does. She was doing this to ensure the little sister she had spent many an evening playing with and caring for was not making a rash or horrible decision.
Overall, she was pleased with what Eivaley described. Her little sister needed someone strong willed but also more of a realist—at least as Mulaney saw it she did. Without someone like that Eivaleys bleeding heart and lack of danger sence would dig her a hole she could not escape from.
As the eldest sister, Mulaney saw Conor and Eivaley’s personalities and approaches as two sides of a coin, two complementing souls, not unlike Nikitals, the first champion, and Eyalta, the first empress.
Burlai asked Eivaley some follow-on questions about her new prospective champion, an action that was very fitting for a man who used to be a part of the royal intelligence corps–in layman's terms, a man who went to dark places and did dark deeds the light of the gods should never be allowed to see.
His inquiries mainly focused on what Conor's cybernetic augments were capable of, why he installed them, and how he dealt with the issue of nervous system speed disconnect and his body rejecting the augments.
Eivaley did not have many answers she could give him regarding Conor's cybernetic augments and what they were capable of. She did not need to dig into that information about the man, nor did she care. Eivaley had been assured the royal doctor had solved any issues caused by cybernetics, so Eivaley was content with knowing he was strong, fast, and intelligent.
At least Burlai accepted that she did not know as an answer and elected to speak to the Human some other time. The former spook likely wanted to gauge if he could take Conor in a fight.
Burlai was built like most Kurlatra males, with heavy steel cable-like muscles, about two meters tall, and easily able to fight any Kurlatra female with little issue. But he had nothing on Conor, and Eivaley knew that. Conor was stronger, faster, and would undoubtedly be able to outshoot this old green-scaled warrior.
Frontline combat and straight violence were not Burlai’s bread and butter. His background had always led him to focus more on intelligence, assassination, and subtle kills. Eivaley was not meant to know that, but in the past Mulaney had let slip that Burlai had dusted a young baron in the Rukelina coast a few years back.
Eivaley had seen the reports of that event on the news months before her sister let that information out. From what she had read, the baron was found dead in his bed, his lady in the bed right next to him, having not even realized he had been killed in their sleep. Needless to say, Eivaley was cautious around the man after that revelation.
“Oh, the scandal, a Human warrior comes and sweeps my little sister off her feat,” Mulaney teased after Eivaley took the time to explain how she and Conor got involved with one another. “It’s like a story pulled straight out of the Pularia saga.”
Eivaley chuckled slightly, recalling how she initially thought of Conor as a knight of old rescuing a damsel in distress. That Mulaney had come to the same conclusion was further proof of how alike the two sisters were.
They were not born in the same clutch and had a difference of almost two decades between their hatchings, and Mulaney was the final sister from her clutch, unlike Eivaley, who still had two sisters from her birth.
“I would imagine the entire planet has seen the picture of the two of you on the tarmac. I must say, I could already see the two of you with life coils already,” Mulaney said, crossing her legs and gesturing an open palm at Eivaley. “So, how is he?”
Eivaley blushed brightly enough that her red scales might as well have glowed. “Oh—well, we still haven't done that,” Eivaley squeaked out.
Mulaney rolled her eyes, knowing exactly why Eivaley had not made that jump with Conor. While the pair of them were similar, that was a thing that they were very different about. Mulaney did not care about the gods or how the church would view her.
She had Burlai, who would solve any issues they could cause without question, be that burying a priest, making a witness disappear, or causing enough slander to their names to discredit them. Eivaley did care about the church and the gods far more—not much, but enough for the clergy’s judgment to possibly sway her choices.
“Either way, are you glad to have him here?” Burlai added, noticing that Eivaley did not look comfortable and that they already knew the answer to if she and Conor had breached that point in their development.
“Yeah, he is nice to have around—” Eivaley replied, having taken a moment to think about his presence just down the hall; but she started to trail off, remembering how Conor had been behaving since extracting her from Heavalun and since he slumped into his bed.
Eivaley sighed as her tail stopped wagging, and the full weight of those thoughts crushed her. The distraction of her sister and Burlai wanting to know about her adventure had faded fully.
“What is wrong vulee?” Mulaney asked, picking up on Eivaley's dower mood and change in expression.
Vulee was a word in the old Kurlatra language, something that few other than the royals still practiced; it was a caring word that could be used to describe one's younger sister. Mulaney tended to call all of her sisters when they seemed upset or needed some reassurance.
Eivaley sighed and laid back in the bowl-like bed opposite of where she had been clinging to the side. “I don’t know. Something is bothering Conor, and he has not been acting like he was in Heavalun. There, he was bold in charge and did not take any of my teasing.”
She gestured wide toward the ceiling, “Now Conor seems to be in a slump. He still holds me tight and acts protective—but he seems oddly distant.”
Burlai exchanged a glance with Mulaney, who nodded and encouraged him to answer. While he would do that on his own, due to the complicated web of relationship dynamics filling this room, it was a decent idea to ensure he was not about to step on his lady's toes.
He walked over to the bedside and crouched, his worn knees creaking like old hinges. After taking a moment to gather his thoughts on how to describe a soldier's mind to someone who had no relative perspective, he explained something to Eivaley to bring Conor's life and what he would likely be going through into perspective for the young lady.
It took him a few minutes, but eventually, Burlai elaborated on how soldiers and mercenaries are generally creatures of habit and that Conor has been completely uprooted and needs time to adjust to his potential new life in the palace.
He also took a moment to explain to Eivaley that Conor had just lost one of his friends, whom he had lived with most of his life. That would take years to move past; hell, he emphasized that Conor might not ever get passed it. Without her and the assistance of others, Conor would spiral in on himself and likely become self-destructive.
The forlorn look on Burlai’s face as he explained the process of a soldier and warrior grieving and how different it was from what the female Kurlatra experienced was telling. He looked off into the distance in the same manner Conor had during the walk through the palace. Eivaley could not confirm that the spy had a similar experience, but she suspected that Conor and him were cut from the same cloth.
“I just want to help him feel better,” Eivaley explained, looking toward Burlai for further guidance.
Eivaley could understand the words and the advice that Burlai was giving her, but she in no way took it to heart. This was not because she did not care about Conor, not in the slightest. Eivaley could not fathom the issues Conor was going through. After having buried a dozen sisters, and twice as many aunts and attended the burials of thousands of soldiers, grieving to a true degree was alien to her.
It was as unnatural to her as breathing water.
She knew Conor was not like her or Kurlatra, but she would have to try to reach the man on his level and support him through this. It is what her mother would do and what Eyalta had done for Nikitals.
“It just takes time, be there for him and maybe introduce him to people to settle in more,” Burlai shrugged, having slayed his own demons long ago.
“That is a wonderful idea, dear,” Mulaney half yelled in joy. “We have a gala coming up in a few weeks. Perhaps that will be a good chance for him to meet people.”
Eivaley could admit that it hopefully would be an opportunity for Conor to acclimatize to the palace. But from what she had observed, she doubted that he would enjoy the crowds of people or the prim and proper nature of such an event; she hardly enjoyed spending time with so many people who have sticks up their asses—but only time would give those answers.