Page 49 of Her Alien Prince
My vision was blurred, my body numb, but with heavy eyes I saw the same vacant stare reflected back at me as Queen Kai pulled away. She collapsed in a heap of sobs before me, tears streaming down her cheeks, and a stiff smile on her lips. Her ki never entered past my chest guard scales.
"My son, you are our final hope. Convince our queen of what needs to be done. There isn't time. She's found the heart of Lenkal. Save her. Save Krelis when the trill come for us."
"What are you saying?"
"So much warmth," she said holding her head in her hands, "She'll destroy us all, just like her mother." Turning her own ki on herself, she plunged the stinger deep under her ribs, and up to her hearts. I scrambled across the floor to reach her, cradling her head in my arms.
"What have you done?" I rocked her, only now realizing I didn't have the strength to kill my own mother. I came here to escape my own fate, knowing one of us would die. Had I been so foolish that I would rather die than see Mabel with another male? My mind was slowly clearing from the haze Queen Kai's influence had on me. She smiled up at me with a dribble of blood leaking from the edge of her lips.
"Naive spawn, what do you think will happen when the trill discover we've found a cure to the molt fever without first fortifying our warfleets? Queen Mab, must take on many mates. You can not keep her to yourself. I wished to hide her, to have her compliant and safe like I did her mother. We needed more time. They are coming, you know this. King Sylve knows this. They will come, and they will think just as the shols did. We are a threat. As long as there was only one queen, one successor, and our numbers were bound by molt, we were controllable. But she's found the heart and is reaching out to the hive. I have no choice but to return to the dust of Lenkal to save us all. We can't take the chance they do the same to us as they did to the shol."
I blinked in confusion, my second eyelids relubricating.
"The shol were strong, an equal match to our strengths. We didn't defeat them by force alone."
"The trill," I said finally seeing the pieces clicking together.
"We did the same thing to the shol that they did to us... a poison they couldn't cure, even with their healing," she choked on her own blood, filling her lungs.
"They don't have to defeat us in battle, they can just let us die off." I didn't agree with how my mother was going about things, but I could understand the pressure she was under. I looked at the black veins running through my forearms, and black veins now spreading through her own, creeping up her neck and across her jawline.
My mother was a survivor, our genes fought off the molt fever, and she kept another generation going with the help of Queen Leahme, but she didn't trust that burden on any other's shoulders. She took the whole of the hive on herself, and that was her error, I realized. I was making the same one.
I tried to face this all by myself, willing to die or kill to unburden myself from everything. Wash my hands of the hive's troubles. Now, Mabel was doing the same. Facing the hive by herself, somewhere within the caves of Kai Mountain. If Queen Kai wasn't lying... Mabel found the heart of the mountain, that not even she could access. We had more trials to face to protect the hive, and Estreldez, from what was coming.
I wouldn't let her do it alone.
“Leave me,” my mom gave me permission to let her die alone, giving me the only smile that ever truly reached her eyes. Perhaps the only act as something more than my queen, but the one to give me life. She had a chance to kill me… and she didn’t. Now, she was letting me go.
I had to follow my bond with Mabel, and pull her from the waters of Lenkal, or she'd be lost forever. Resting my mother's head on the floor of her chambers, I closed her milky eyes with my palm.
The party I'd snuck through on the way here, was completely still. Every krelin I passed was in a kind of stasis, with vacant expressions glossed over as they stared up at the skies. The ones in flight still had their wings buzzing to keep them afloat, but their minds were lost to the birth of a new queen.
Why was I spared?
Pushing faster, I flew through the heart of the hive, and made my way to Kai Mountain. Eerie silence urged me on. The last known queen to enter the waters stayed there for many cycles, by the time she re-emerged from the mountain she was feral, and there was nothing left of her mind. Queen Kanweh, the one said to have given life to our kan... the source of the hive's bond and a queen's ability to control it.
When I reached the entrance to Kai Mountain's glowing caves, the guards were just as the rest of the hive, moaning and enjoying the high of the most powerful connection to a queen we'd had in centuries of cycles.
Yet, I was immune... Through the mist a figure emerged. Mabel stood before me, wings spread like the goddess herself, and black hair floating in the wind of her floating form, like she was still submerged in water. Her emerald eyes glowed like she was part of the mountain.
She turned, with a smile on her ethereal lips. Her toes barely tapped the ground as she darted into the mountain, wings spread and fluttering, luring me to follow. I knew that's what I should do, because as soon as she disappeared into the fog, every instinct in me intensified. My hearts throbbed and tugged me forward.
"Mine," I thought, and I gave chase.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mabel
GEL FILLED MYlungs just like the medical pods I'd heard about in far-traveling galaxy ships, allowing me to breath despite being submerged. The confusion I felt from earlier disappeared and my body shivered with clarity, no longer drawn towards the light that had lured me into the caves to begin with. I could still see the wisp of that connection as I closed my eyes, but it wasn't the one that wrapped around my heart. I knew that now. Grabbing hold of the bond, it nearly broke within my fingers. When I clucked my tongue, the vibrations seemed to solidify the light under the waters, and I tried once more. Pulling myself to the surface. Coughing up the gel, it glittered on the smooth green rock of the cave as I panted, clinging to the edge.
My mind buzzed with noises, like a low chatter of too many people talking at once. I winced, and reached up to hold my head, only to feel my kan had grown once more, and curled back along my scalp like a twisted crown.
The pressure around my heart throbbed, and one voice in particular became more clear than the others, "Focus on me, Kansa, just me. I'm coming."
He was alive, I nearly sobbed with relief.
"Queen Kai..." I thought, still unbelieving of what was happening. This was all a horrible hallucination.
