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  “I should love to dance,” she said, trying to smile up at him.

  The Sovereign’s thin red mouth twitched upward in something like an answering grin—only it looked to Brynn more like a grimace. Goddess above what was wrong with his face? It was so oddly proportioned and his features seemed to move independently of each other. His right eyeball twitched and rolled while his left stared straight ahead into hers, though she had the oddest feeling it couldn’t see her from either one.

  “Come then. Let us participate in the ritual,” he hissed, taking her hand in his.

  Brynn had an almost insurmountable urge to rip her hand out of his grip and scrub her palm against her skirts to cleanse it. Touching him was repellant—holding his hand made her feel the same way she would if someone had compelled her to hold a dead animal or a many-legged insect in her palm.

  Grimly, she fought the urge to get away and allowed the Sovereign to lead her onto the dance floor. Lords and Ladies of the Court were performing a stately two step which didn’t look hard to learn, even to the convent-trained Brynn.

  Not too hard—just a step to the left, a step to the right, the gentleman places his hands on the lady’s waist and they both hop once in place, then repeat the whole process—all in time to the music. We should be able to manage fairly well, she thought.

  However, Sovereign X’izith soon proved that dancing was not his talent.

  He took Brynn in his oddly stiff arms and lifted his knees comically high with each step he made. When he hopped, he bounded straight up in the air—three feet at least. And since his hot, filthy hands were clamped around Brynn’s waist in an iron grip, he took her with him, up toward the arched ceiling like a ship shooting for the moon.

  Brynn shrieked breathlessly—she couldn’t help it! The sudden lift-off startled her and she grabbed for X’izith’s upper arms, expecting to feel his biceps under her hands. Instead, her seeking fingers found what felt like hard, dry sticks inside the sleeves of his elegant shirt. No muscle—no skin or flesh of any kind that she could feel. Just those strange sticks.

  “What…who…” she began breathlessly when they landed. But then Varin was there, elbowing his way through the dancers to glare at her new suitor.

  “How dare you frighten the Princess?” he growled, glowering at the other male. “She’s a lady—you can’t go jerking her around like a stuffed doll!” He looked at Brynn. “Are you hurt, Mistress?”

  “No, thank you, Varin. I am well,” Brynn replied rather breathlessly. She could see her Lady-mother the Queen gesturing angrily from the dais. If Varin didn’t leave quickly he was going to be in trouble.

  “My apologies,” buzzed X’izith. “I was simply attempting to participate in this mating ritual. However, there is no need for rude behavior.”

  “Be more careful with the Princess,” Varin warned him, his voice a deep, menacing growl. “I am her personal guard—if you hurt her—if you so much as put a single scratch on her delicate skin—you answer to me.”

  X’izith bristled. “Perhaps my answers are not ones you would care to hear.”

  “I’ll be happy to have a question and answer session with you any time, Sovereign.” The big Kindred seemed to grow even larger and more menacing as he glared at her suitor.

  “Varin!” Brynn hissed and cut her eyes towards the royal dais where both her parents were staring angrily. “You’d better go now,” she told the big Kindred.

  “Very well.” He gave her a curt bow and looked at X’izith again. “I’ll be watching you.”

  Then he wove his way through the dancers—most of which had stopped dancing to watch the juicy drama unfolding between the Princess, her rich new suitor, and her personal slave who happened to be the most famous Arena warrior on Galen.

  But then the King waved at the musicians and another dance started—this one much slower—a stately pavane where the Lords took their Ladies in their arms and held them close for the long, sweeping movements.

  X’izith did better at copying the dance this time, though his motions were still very jerky. When he pressed Brynn close to him, she had to force herself to lay her head against his chest, as all the other ladies were doing with their partners.

  Though the idea of the dance was the rather romantic notion that the lady would listen to her partner’s heartbeat and move in time with it, Brynn could hear no internal pumping in X’izith’s strangely brittle-feeling chest. Again she felt no flesh at all—it was like leaning her cheek against a wooden chest—a hollow one.

  He had a strange smell too—a sweet, meaty odor that reminded her of something, though she couldn’t remember what. The cloying stench was deeply unpleasant and Brynn found she had to stop breathing through her nose in order to keep from gagging. His hot hands on her bare back made her skin crawl as he jerked her around the dance floor with each twitching step. Goddess above, would this dance never end?

  “Ah, this is most pleasant. Most enjoyable,” X’izith proclaimed, as the pavane finally drew to a close with the Lords and Ladies clapping politely. “And now, Princess, let us take a walk in the luminescence of your planet’s natural rocky satellite and become better acquainted—shall we?”

  “You mean you want to take a walk in the moonlight?” Brynn looked up at him and saw that it was the left eye staring at her this time, while the right eye twitched and stared off into space.

  “Yes, if it suits you.”

  Brynn had an idea he was trying to get her alone outside on the palace grounds, which absolutely wouldn’t do. But there was a broad balcony off of the main ballroom which was bathed in moonlight—maybe that would appease him.

  “This way,” she said and led him—without taking his hand because she just couldn’t make herself touch him again—through the crowd and out onto the broad stone balcony.

  “Delightful…delightful,” X’izith declared, both purple eyes rolling independently of each other now. Did he have some kind of condition, Brynn wondered. Some sickness that caused his eyes to act in such a strange way or was it simply part of his physiology?

  “Yes, the moonlight is lovely,” she said, trying to keep a little distance from him without appearing rude.

  “It is so much easier to see out of the blinding interior glare.” Her suitor brushed his lank greenish-brown hair away from the sides of his head and tilted it this way and that. “At last I can get a proper look at you, Princesss.”

  His voice hissed on her title and he took a jerky step towards her, reaching out his hands as though to touch her. Even in the moonlight, Brynn could see the dirt crusted under each separate nail.

  “And I can look at you,” she said, forcing a smile as she took a step back. “Tell me, what are your people like, Sovereign X’izith?” She meant it as a pleasantry but his answer was very odd.

  “They are very many and always hungry.” His thin lips twisted in a rictus of a smile and a dribble of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth. He took another step towards her, his hands out-raised.

  Brynn remembered her Lady-mother’s orders that she should let her new suitor take liberties and couldn’t stop a disgusted shiver from running over her nearly bare skin. Nor could she stop herself from taking another step back towards the relative safety of the ballroom.

  But X’izith stepped towards her again.

  “Forgive me, Princesss, but there are some things I wish to verify before I make you mine. Has your cloaca been previously pierced by a male’s barb?”

  “Excuse me, what?” Brynn started at him, uncomprehending.

  “Your female entrance…” X’izith seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “Your vaginal canal—has it been penetrated by male organs of reproduction?”

  “Are…are you asking if I’m a virgin?” Brynn could hardly believe this conversation. It was deeply inappropriate and horribly improper. No gentleman would ever ask a lady such a thing!

  Of course she had discussed such matters with Varin but that was different—he was her friend, her p