“But they’ll want…” Val’s eyes darted to Ari.
“They will wait,” Gwen replied, her tone scorching. Val ran off in the direction of Error and the other small ships they’d seen when they landed on Lionel.
Ari looked down as she and Gwen crossed the bridge, eyeing the moat filled with swirling mercury—Lionel’s chief natural resource. Once they were inside, they wound a quick path through the castle, and if Ari didn’t feel so faintish and thirsty in her armor, she would have asked where they were going. Finally, they entered a large boudoir. Gwen kicked off her shoes and immediately began to unwind the strict braid from her brow.
Ari stood stiff and uncertain. Was she in the queen’s bedroom? She totally was.
“Where’re my friends?” Ari asked.
Gwen headed for a table bearing a large carafe. “They’re fine. The crowd will take a while to disperse. In the meantime, I need to figure out how long I can stall Mercer before I have to hand you over.”
“You wouldn’t,” Ari said, her voice scratchy with doubt. Gwen filled a goblet and handed it to Ari. Ari took a sip and spit it out. “No more wine or mead. I need water.”
“No. My planet needs water.” Gwen took the goblet back. She put it down with a sharp clap on the floor and beckoned for Ari to turn around. “I’ll get you out of that.”
Gwen began to undress her. There were thousands of buckles at every joint, holding together dozens of pieces of armor. Gwen collected a small mountain of leather, chain mail, and metal beside them while she spoke. “The Mercer fleet that flashed its superiority all over my tournament was only half your doing. The black ship is here for you. The white one is meant to mock Lionel. Every single month, Mercer nearly dehydrates the population before delivering our supplies. They want us to sell junk Mercer products, and allow Trojan building permits, and give them a higher percentage of our mercury reserves, but I will not be bullied.”
Gwen lifted off the breastplate, and Ari felt a thousand pounds lighter. “I need to go to Troy and file a claim for mistreatment. The problem is, I don’t have any bargaining chips.”
Ari felt as if a piece of ice slid down her spine. “I’m your chip, am I?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “I don’t trade in people.” Gwen knelt to get the plates off of Ari’s shins, throwing them aside before sitting on her heels. Ari felt all sorts of awkward with the queen at her feet, staring up with those hard, brown eyes. “I honestly dream of the days when all my people wanted was to marry me off. Constant tournaments to find a consort. I’m lucky Jordan is the best knight in the galaxy, otherwise I would have been married the day after my coronation to some oaf.”
“That’s bullshit,” Ari found herself saying.
“It’s era appropriate.”
“It’s a damn charade, Gwen.”
“Yes, well, it’s also my life. The life I chose. The one you couldn’t even pretend to want for me when we were fourteen-year-olds.” Gwen turned her back to Ari, motioning to the strings holding her dress closed. “Do you mind?”
“Um, sure.” Ari pulled at the top one. It was really tight. She worked the entire cross-stitch free a few inches all the way down her back, before going through it all over again. The dress sprang open and Ari won a five-year-old bet. One tournament day, when Lam and Kay were strutting around in the desert-like heat, Val had insisted that the royals wore fancy underwear beneath those stiff gowns, and Ari bet there was no way. They’d be too hot.
Gwen’s bare backside curved in a strikingly gorgeous way.
Ari’s mouth turned into a real desert, her hands aching to move from strings to skin. Her infamous impulses were singing, a siren song that always accompanied run-ins with Gweneviere. “You could always marry me.”
Gwen glanced over her shoulder. “Granted, martyrdom is also era appropriate, but why would we put ourselves through something that painful?”
“Because you don’t want to be married off to some oafish knight who happens to catch Jordan on an off day. Because I am a bargaining chip, but if I’m your wife, I’m your bargaining chip. And Mercer won’t be able to arrest me if I’m married to the queen of Lionel. I’d have—”
“Diplomatic immunity.” Gwen turned, taking the intoxicating proximity of her skin away and leaving Ari’s hands empty.
Gwen pulled the last piece of Ari’s chain mail over Ari’s head, taking most of the undershirt with it. Gwen didn’t pull it all the way off, leaving Ari mostly topless, arms tightly tangled in her own sleeves. Gwen held Ari there, and smiled. “Are you fucking with me?”
“Excuse me?” Ari managed.
“You’d marry me. To outsmart Mercer. You?”
Ari examined her choices, her conscience. It didn’t hurt that her nearly bared skin thought this was a great idea with such potential. “Yes, I would.”
Gwen let go. Ari looped the shirt back on, and Gwen reached back, pulling the strings taut on her dress in an impressively swift move.
“You’re not getting changed?” Ari asked. “Then why did you have me untie you?”
Gwen sighed like Ari was missing all the important points, and Ari reddened from her toes to the tips of her ears. “I wanted to see if you’re still afraid of me. You are. But don’t worry, we’ll keep this to politics.”
Gwen sat on the edge of the bed. Ari couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed. “Seventy solar years ago, Lionel’s founders negotiated a favorable arrangement with the Trojan government. It was no small feat. An era-inspired planet might sound attractive and lucrative, but it took a lot of convincing for Troy to relinquish the territory. Now they’ve changed their mind, and they’re letting Mercer withhold hydration shipments. They hope we’ll pack up and hand the planet back. Not on my watch. This is my home.”
Ari nodded. Gwen had always been sincerely in love with Lionel.
“Tell me how you are the only Ketchan off-world I’ve ever heard of, Ari.”
“I was found floating in a junked ship on the wrong side of the barrier, abandoned as space trash when I was seven. Kay’s family took me in.”
Pain flashed over Gwen’s face, so raw that it didn’t feel like polite sadness over a bit of Ari’s backstory. But Gwen tucked away those feelings, putting her queenly expression back in place. “But why does Mercer want you so badly?”
“Maybe they think I bypassed their barrier, or they’re still pissed at how outspoken Ketchans were about Mercer’s galactic monopoly.”
“Oh, it’ll be more than that. The Administrator is infamous for his underground motivations, and for whatever reason, you’re special. He’s made a big stink about wanting you turned over. The whole galaxy is talking about it.”
“This is why Kay wants us to go into hiding. And to take our friends with us, out of harm’s way.”
Gwen shook her head. “They’ll find you easily. We have to face them.”
Ari lined the pieces up, enjoying the daring, impulsive bits of this new plan. “We go to Troy, married, so that they can’t arrest me on the spot. And you’ll bargain for better treatment for Lionel.”
“And you can demand amnesty for you and your friends, and find out why he wants you so badly.”
“This could work,” Ari dared, skipping over the whole getting hitched part.
“What about afterward, Ari?” Gwen pulled her knees under her chin. She had a way of looking young even while she looked old. Like her heart had been born at full maturity, and she was waiting for her body to catch up.
“What about it?”
“Will you run off again or will you stay with me? As my wife. Here.”
Ari couldn’t lie. Lionel was a weird, fun place. Her friends loved it, and she loved her earlier memories from camp, but to live here permanently when her true home was far away and just… waiting? “I’d have to think about it.”