Princess of the Void

2.21. Comfort

The Princess of the Black Pike crushes a golden herb under her knife. Its verdant scent wafts above the rich earthiness of the dumpling filling that simmers on the stovetop.

“That smells heavenly,” Grant says from his seat at the kitchen table. He’s offered to help, but Sykora wouldn’t hear of it. Instead he’s been flying a skimmer through the cloudsprint on a countertop sim. He was curious what it would be like to make the attempt himself. He’s died twice so far; he tells himself he'd be more careful in real life.

“Thank you, dove.” Sykora wiggles her butt at him from across the kitchen. “I’d originally planned for a kinky little just-the-apron thing, but I’m frightfully out of practice and can’t brook the distraction.” She cracks the oven and slides a rack of saffron-colored pastry rounds inside. “So on a scale of one to twenty, how evil would you say I was today? This’ll be a handy measuring stick.”

“Well, the family seems like a bunch of dicks, but we did kidnap a woman. And I suppose I have to knock a few points off for how we did it. I don’t know.” Grant pauses the race as his doomed skimmer spirals once more into Ptolek’s hydrogen tomb. “How much are you willing to tell me about the juice Waian put in Azkaii?”

“That was Compound Seventy. Which doesn’t exist. I know very little about how it’s made and we have an incredibly limited supply of it, shipped from the Core under the strictest secrecy.” Sykora stirs the filling and takes a taste.

“Okay. Weird black site mind control drug.” He rubs his chin. “That maybe costs another few points. I’d call it… a five.”

“Five?” Her ears perk.

“Ten, I mean. Halfway.” He levels his hand and waggles it demonstratively. “Kind of evil, not so evil I resent you for it.”

“Ah.” She sighs. “That’s what I expected, more or less. We’ll keep this warm while the wrappers bake.” She clacks a lid onto the heavy-bottom skillet atop the oven. Grant quietly stands from the table as she chatters. “Don’t you worry, dove. It’s going to be delicious. We’ll get that number down to a six at the most. You’ll see.”

She squeaks in surprise as his hands land on her shoulders. “I’m sure,” he says.

“But, uh.” She tilts her head up as his shadow falls across her. A quiver runs through her body as his fingers knead into the fabric of her uniform. “Maybe I owe you a little more than dinner.”

He rubs the back of her neck. “What did you have in mind?”

“I have a little time while we’re baking.” The Princess slips an elastic off her wrist and pins her hair back into a long, slender ponytail. The cute little peaks of her horns poke out from the shifting locks. “For repentance.”

***

“Sykora. Baby. Wait wait. One second.” Grant’s nose wrinkles.

Sykora shakes her head, as well as she’s able to with her ponytail wrapped around Grant’s fist. “Mm-mm.”

“Lonesome.” Grant releases his grip on his wife’s hair. “Do you smell that?”

Sykora heaves a breath as she wipes her mouth. “What—oh, hellfire.”

“Is that how it’s supposed to smell?

“No. Shit.” Sykora shrugs the straps of her dress back on as she scrambles to her feet. “Shit, shit. I forgot to set the timer. I’m such a ditz. This is why I didn’t go just-the-apron.”

“My bad, Majesty.” Grant zips himself back up. “I shouldn’t have distracted you.”

“Not your fault. I just need to cocoon you in bubble wrap next time I cook, so I’m not tempted.” Sykora turns the fume hood on and tugs the tray out of the oven. “Well, that’s the dumplings fucked. I’ll bet Kymai’s horns are tingling.” She straightens up. “How do you feel about eating this with a spoon?”

Sykora digs a loaf of crusty bread out of the pantry to soak up the peppery gravy. They ladle out the filling into bowls and settle across the kitchen table.

“One day.” Sykora pledges it as she saws him a thick slab of bread. “One day I will get you to cum in my mouth. This is my most sacred mission.”

“Well now I definitely can’t, if you’re gonna make it a rivalry thing,” he says.

“Don’t you dare.” She points her spoon at him as she blows a billow of steam off the surface of her bowl. “We can call this a curry, right? This is curry-like.”

“Sure we can.”

They tuck in, and Sykora’s little hum of pleasure as she takes her first taste warms Grant as much as the aromatic fumes rising from his bowl. He ventures a bite and takes a breath through his nose as the bright citrusy broth coats the roof of his mouth, resolving into a rich gamey barbecue flavor.

Sykora swallows her spoonful. “What do we think?”

It’s good.” A ripe berry, savory and saucy as a cherry tomato, pops between his teeth. “Shit. It’s really good.”

Sykora beams. “I had a great many tutors, but cooking I figured out by myself, more or less. Trial and error and the occasional recipe I badgered out of my quartermaster. It’s not thought of as a discipline a lady ought to concern herself with.”

“On my planet, y’know, a lot of this stuff was reversed.” He surreptitiously removes a long dark hair from his bowl. “For a long time, it was women cooking and cleaning and men in the positions of authority. It was still leveling out when you swiped me.”

“How fascinating. A bunch of little lady homemakers? I rather think I could fit right in, if you got me a stepstool and I stopped burning the hell out of things.” She gives him a robotic Stepford Wife smile. “Ooh, husband. Welcome home from the, uh, the guitar factory.”

He snorts. He puts on a deep ‘50s era mid-atlantic voice. “Thanks, sweet cheeks.”

“Let me take your coat and give you your slippers. Do they do that on Maekyon?”

“They used to.”

She does a goofy little curtsey. “Look at me, I’m a submissive little Maekyonite. I’m gonna rub your shoulders and make you dinner and put the babies to bed.” As she says this latter part, the laugh coasting alongside her falls away.

Her smile grows somber. She takes another bite. Suddenly, imagining this absurd life hurts, a little.

Grant reaches his hand across the table. Sykora takes it tightly. Her thumb rubs little circles on his palm.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “We have us.”

She nods.

He tears a piece of bread off and lifts a cube of marinated meat with it. “And we could get a—what do you call them? a kindek? We could become crazy kindek ladies.”

Sykora laughs. “Oh, God. Pass. Vora and Oryn have two and I’ve seen how they act.” She points her spoon at him. “If I’m going to be cleaning poop, it better be from someone who’ll learn how to do it themselves someday. And besides.” She nudges his hand with the top of her head. “You already have a pet.”

She sighs as he scratches around the horns that are slipping into view.

“May I ask you something about that Compound Seventy stuff?”

“You may,” she says. “I can’t promise I’ll answer.”

“You told me you don’t know how you ended up on Maekyon. And you told me it had to be someone within the Imperial family.”

Her nose wrinkles. “My clever Maekyonite.”

“You think it was the Compound, don’t you? Someone drugged you, strapped you into that rocket, commanded you to forget, and sent you on a one-way trip to Maekyon.”

“I do,” she says. “One moment I was at a dull state dinner, the next I was plummeting through the firmament.”

“And you reckon it’s Narika?”

“She’s my foremost suspect. I have many enemies, but none quite so personal.” Sykora nudges further into his scratching hand. “Whoever it was made a dire mistake when they didn’t shoot me into a sun. They should have sent me to my death.”

She takes hold of his wrist and stills his hand. She lowers it to her mouth. She kisses his knuckle.

“Instead,” she says, “they sent me to my hero.”

They’re slow that night, with none of the usual playful submission. Slow and snug and deep, trying to fit as much of their mismatched bodies together as they can, her little frame and her plump curves to his oversized angles. The great glow of Ptolek colors Sykora’s skin a rich lavender. The void stretches infinitely around them. His tiny wife gyrates in his lap, her sweet sabsum scent filling his mind.

Sykora’s flesh is so hot and soft and clinging, it’s like she’s melting in his embrace. He’s melting, too.

“I love you,” she whispers to him, trembling in his arms. “I’ll love you forever.” Quiet and close, as if it were the momentous secret that keeps the firmament intact. Perhaps it is.

He feels her little fangs light on his neck. He imagines how they’ll feel when they puncture his skin and sink into him, how he’ll look with the scar that will mark him as hers for the rest of his life.

They stay connected after, her tired body laid across his, pulsing like one heartbeat. He’s half-asleep when she finally stirs and slides off him to go to the bathroom.

She opens the door for him once she’s done cleaning up, and they brush their teeth together, both looking blearily into the mirror, her head laid back against his stomach. Taiikari toothbrushes are thicker-bristled than he’s used to. He’s learning to use a light touch with them. She wipes her makeup off; he shaves with a softly droning razor (with a guard on it to maintain the stubble his wife likes so much).

“I’m thinking of saying yes to Wenzai,” she says, daubing her eyeshadow away. “That invitation she gave us. It’s a good cover story for a quiet investigation of Trimond West. And I think she’ll make a useful ally. We need more of them on Ptolek, God knows. I’ve leaned on Marquess Paxea too much lately. It threatens her reputation as an independent. What do you think of a weekend on Ptolek?”

“I’m down,” Grant says. “Think she’ll try to put the moves on us?”

Sykora grins. “Her husband talked her out of it, I gather. Apparently, at the race, my husband told him we’re exclusive.”

He spits into the sink. “That’s right,” he says, and kisses her.

They return to bed and bundle into the sheets and pillows. Sykora keeps it cool in the cabin, and the temperature’s programmed to lower further as the night goes on. It bothered Grant when he had his own cot, but now whenever he sleeps, he’s clung to by a little purring pillow with a furnace in her chest. It would almost be too much, the heat that his wife radiates, if she wasn’t so small.

Sykora’s breath goes low and deep, and he wonders if she’s already asleep. Her whisper catches him off-guard.

“Grant.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry.”

He raises his head from his pillow. “What?”

She sounds on the edge of sleep. “You deserve a family, someday. And If we could—“ Her voice breaks. “I’m sorry.”

His stomach drops. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”

Grant’s arm wraps around her. Her waist fits perfectly in the crook of his elbow.

“During our early days, when you were first teaching me to fly, I had the thought,” he says, “and it was the first sign, in retrospect, that I was falling for you—I had the thought that you’d be a really amazing mother. I don’t know if this is a comfort or not, but I hope it is.”

Her eyes find his in the dark. There’s sorrow in them, but it’s joined by a fireplace glow of contentment. “It is.”

She wiggles closer and tugs him by the shoulder partway on top of her, like he’s a weighted blanket. He feels the swell and fall of her chest.

“I think,” she whispers, “that you are going to be the great comfort of my life, Grant Hyde.”