I scowled. I hadn’t seen a Rutharian yet, but the way they’d been talked about in Lieja’s court led me to believe that if she turned me over to them, I probably wouldn’t make it out intact, or even alive.
“That is what I thought. Poor little thing. Now that you are in a cage where you belong, you are all venom, no bite.” She stuck her finger through the cage, wiggling it at me, and I was tempted to snap it between my teeth just to prove her wrong. “If you were better behaved, I would let you out, you know. We miss you ever so much in the ballroom. No one dances quite like you, Atlanta. Such a shame that you have chosen this fate for yourself. But perhaps…are you ready to make nice yet?”
“You should not toy with her like that, Lieja.” A deep, cool voice rumbled from the darkness behind her. “She’ll remember it when you let your guard down again.”
From the shadows, a man emerged. Or, something like a man. An alien man, I guessed. He must have slipped in while Lieja had me distracted. He was tall and had orange skin that clashed terribly with Lieja’s. It made her look even more garish next to his subdued coloring. She was lemon yellow; he was the color of a desert, of rust. He raked his fingers through the inky black waves of hair, smoothing them back so the white streak at his temple looked especially striking. His eyes were black too. The darkest things I’d ever seen. They combed over my body like he was memorizing my every curve, and for a moment, his lips parted softly. Almost in awe.
He was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and for a moment, my jaw dropped in the same way.
Then, he closed his mouth again and set it into a thin, sharp line as Lieja laughed.
“Do not be ridiculous, Apex. She will not have the chance.” Lieja twined her arms around the man—Apex’s—torso and stared up at him with glimmering eyes. “And you would protect me from the little snake even if she did, would you not?”
“If you were lucky.” Lieja stroked Apex’s chin lovingly, puckering her lips up toward him, but he seemed unmoved.
It was strange, but I felt…almost sorry for him. Lieja had a harem of dozens of alien men, aliens of all races and shapes and sizes, but none of them looked like him. She brought them down sometimes to play audience while she jeered at me. Always, they laughed like whatever she was saying was the cleverest thing they’d ever heard—but this one didn’t. He didn’t fawn over her like the others did either.
He must have been new, I decided. Maybe he was even here as unwillingly as I was. But I could see why Lieja kept him around anyway—that much was pretty obvious. He was ten times handsomer than any of the other men in Lieja’s harem, and he had a look about him that was almost…dangerous. Even beneath his black linen-type shirt, I could make out the way his muscles rippled as he moved. I had no doubt that if he wanted to, he could snap me in half like it was nothing.
If I’d had someone like him at my beck and call, I certainly wouldn’t have been keeping twenty-odd other boyfriends strung along too. That was for sure.
“Is she not so small and scrawny, Apex? She was beautiful when she danced, of course, but here in her little cage…does she not look positively pathetic?” Lieja batted her eyelashes at Apex, then shot me a smug grin.
“She is small, yes,” Apex admitted.
I braced myself. Here came the latest round of abuse. Lieja liked to bait her paramours to ridicule me almost as much as she liked insulting me herself. Tiny, ugly, too skinny—I’d heard them all.
It didn’t change the fact that I’d caught almost every member of Lieja’s harem checking me out when they didn’t think she was looking, though.
“And scrawny. And pathetic.” Lieja looked pleased as she egged Apex on.
“No,” Apex said.
This time, it was Lieja’s jaw that dropped.
“What do you mean, no?” she snapped at him.
“Perhaps I do not understand the joke.” Apex’s voice was measured and diplomatic. “You put her in a cage, then call her pathetic? Makes little sense to me.”
“Of course she is pathetic because she is in a cage!” Lieja’s voice shot up an indignant octave. “That is the point!”
“I still do not understand.” Apex shrugged. “Are you not in a cage as well, Lieja? Or is your tenure here on Nightmoor voluntary now?”
I blinked, then smirked a little. I’d been told that Nightmoor was a prison planet, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that it meant Lieja was probably here unwillingly. At least my cage was a real one. Lieja’s might have been gilded and full of courtiers to keep her happy, but it was kind of funny to realize that she was a prisoner too.
“That is cruel, Apex.” Lieja’s face puckered, turning sour and bitter as lemons. “I am hurt that you would say such an awful thing about me. And here, I thought you wanted to come down and see the human so we might have some fun.”
“Forgive me, my queen. You know that we specters do not have the best senses of humor.”
Normally, if any of Lieja’s other harem members had burned her so badly, she would have backhanded them by now. But this one…he must have been something special, because she only released him from her embrace and backed away, pouting.
“Never mind, then. But in the future, we will have to work on that if you intend to stay here on Nightmoor to keep me company.” Lieja gave me a final, nasty look, then turned away to leave the dungeons.
I expected Apex to follow her, but instead…
He lingered.
His black eyes met my green ones for a long moment, like he was trying to communicate something to me telepathically. Whatever it
