Page 80 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
“Did you know his mother tried to kill him? When he was a child?”
31
- Umbra-
My eyes fly open in horror. “She did? Empress Juriniel?”
Darient looks around as if worried someone will hear. “It’s not the kind of thing we talk about at court, but everyone knows it.”
I lean in. “What happened?”
“Juriniel’s husband died, and she married the Emperor,” Darient says softly. “Everyone was puzzled, because while she was attractive enough, she was never a beauty, the kind of woman you might expect an emperor to choose. But the people were relieved, because she had two sons. Mareliux would be the next emperor, and he seemed to be a bright boy. But to the Court, it gradually became obvious that the Empress would much prefer her younger son take the throne. Because Mareliux was bright, but too unruly and too independent. He didn’t like living in the palace, and he was always wondering out loud about who had poisoned his father.”
I try to imagine Mareliux keeping quiet about something that important. But the image won’t form in my mind, being too absurd. He would speak his mind. “That must have been embarrassing for the Empress.”
Darient nods. “Very much so. At a reception one night Mareliux simply collapsed, foaming at the mouth and bleeding from his nose. He was barely thirteen years old. The court physicians said it was a rare fever. Nobody who saw him believed it, though. It was plain to them that it was not an illness at all. Two military doctors demanded to see the boy, but were not allowed into the inner palace. So they mobilized a whole legion of soldiers who fought their way in, through the Calanians, and brought Mareliux out, taking him to their nearby base. The doctors found traces of a highly concentrated nerve agent in his system. He had been poisoned and would not have survived another hour without the antidote they gave him.”
I’m stunned. “That’s terrible! But how do they know it was Juriniel?”
Darient looks around again. “Of course nobody can know for sure. If there were witnesses who saw someone put poison in the prince’s food, they never said it before they died. Every member of the palace kitchen staff died four days later in a freak fire that burned the Emperor’s kitchens, and only the Emperor’s kitchens. All the doors had been mysteriously locked from the outside. It adds to the mystery that the nerve agent could have been derived from an alien plant that grows in only a single place on this planet.”
“The Empress’s apartments?” I venture a guess.
Darient raises her eyebrows. “Her royal gardens, in fact. Where only she and the chief gardener had access. You’ve heard about this before?”
I smile. “No, just guessing. You gave me enough clues. But that solves the case, doesn’t it? It had to be her. Or someone close to her.”
Darient frowns. “There was nocase, Umbra. There was noinvestigation. Who would want to accuse the Empress of murder? But everyone knows.”
I take a deep breath. “Including Mareliux.”
“Including him. Well, the legions wouldn’t let him go back to the palace. They took him under their wing and raised him in a succession of military bases for two years, when they deemed him old enough to survive on Khav. He returned and was formally welcomed back by his mother. He was all smiles, but we could all see that he had changed. But that wasn’t the end of it.”
“Poor kid,” I say softly. “His own mother. What happened?”
“He fell in love,” Darient says bluntly. “I hope you won’t be offended that I say this. He was a healthy and still romantic young man.” She gives me a sideways look.
I nod. “Of course I’m not offended, Darient. He had a life before he met me. I would be worried if he didn’t. Who was the girl?”
“She was the daughter of a colonel in the army. Terieli was her name. Just an ordinary girl, you understand. Pretty and lively, they way most girls tend to be as teens. But Terieli was extra lively. She had a special… I don’t know. A speciallightto her. Happy and carefree ways, active and bubbly. I’m sure you know the type.”
“I may have met one or two,” I tell her. ‘So she was Mareliux’s complete opposite?”
Darient laughs. “Exactly! In fairness, he wasn’t as serious then as he is now. But yes, they were exactly the right kind of similar and different to be totally absorbed in each other. They must have been… oh, seventeen? Eighteen? Around that age. It’s a good time to fall in love.”
“Sounds about right,” I agree. I have had crushes, but the atmosphere on Earth wasn’t conducive to flings when I was a teen. And when Ashlynn went away, I grew up fast.
“They became inseparable,” Darient goes on, “which was interesting because they were not of the same class. Terieli’s father was a colonel who had worked himself up through the ranks from sheer ability, just like Mareliux’s father, but Mareliux was now the heir to the Empire. They didn’t belong to the same layer of society anymore. Anyway, I think most people assumed that Mareliux was just having a fling and that it would burn out when he’d had his fun and some other pretty young thing caught his eye. He had many girls from noble families thrown at him, more and more as this ‘fling’ didn’t stop, but just seemed to get deeper.”
“That sounds just like Mareliux,” I comment. “He doesn’t do things halfway.”
“And this was how most people discoveredthatabout him. Terieli was the only thing that could distract Mareliux from his studies of war and tactics. He was still a good student, of course. But she brought some light into his life. A lot of light, in fact. A whole sun. And he became less dark himself. He started to smile, to laugh. It was a wonderful thing to see. Again, I won’t go on about that. He is your husband now.”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “I’m fine with this. He had a terrible upbringing after his father died, and I’m glad that he had good things happen to him, too. Please go on.”
Darient nods. “You’re handling this well, I must say. Anyway. At that time, there was a lot of talk about an enemy of the Khavgren Empire, called the Sikalisit Hegemony. It was a sort of an empire, too. They weren’t real rivals to the Empire, of course. They were far too small and insignificant. But they kept attacking our shipping lanes and being a nuisance. To get them to stop, the Emperor offered to marry his son to their Hive Queen. It would be a formality only, because the Sikalisit are very different from both you and me. There could be no chance of any offspring or even of being in the same room together. The Sikalisit breathe only methane and tend to collapse in on themselves in a gravity field any stronger than half that of Khav. But it flattered the Sikalisit Queen, and she jumped on it, agreeing to marry Mareliux. Because the Emperor hadn’t specified which one of his stepsons he was willing to wed to the Queen. He had always meant Nerox, not Mareliux. In his mind, and in the minds of most Khavgrens, marrying the heir apparent away to an alien queen was unthinkable. It hadn’t crossed his mind.”
I lean back again and close my eyes to enjoy the sun. “Sounds like a weird thing for the queen to want, if she was so different. But I’m one to talk.”
