Page 3 of Maid for the Alien Prince

Here I was, expecting a warm welcome, and instead I got a dour one.

“Your bedroom is made up,” Dad said.

As the twenty-year veteran of the Head of the Palace Household, I expected nothing less. Everything ran on time. He might have served in the military. My room, I knew, would be just as I had left it.

I paused at the foot of the stairs, peering over at the door that led into the front room. My mind was a whirlwind of possibilities, curiosity getting the better of me.

Just when I was about to take the first step, Dad eased up under my right shoulder, a movement that, prior to my operation, was the only way for me to get up the stairs.

I beamed at him and said, “No need, Dad. I can do it all by myself now!”

He blinked in surprise. Habits died hard, especially for someone like my father.

I took two steps up the stairs by myself to show him. “See? I won’t be a hindrance to you anymore.”

His eyes shimmered with tears. I wrapped my arms around him, his frame seeming so small and frail now. He cried with equal parts joy and sadness.

Surely he couldn’t be sad that I had finally gotten the treatment I needed? The surgery that had put me back into contention of being in tip-top shape again?

Dad clapped me on the back. “You were never a hindrance. I fear I might be the hindrance now though…”

Something was seriously wrong. And it had something to do with whoever was in the front room right at that moment. I burned with curiosity to see who it was…

“Dad? What is it?”

He shook his head and motioned for me to go up the stairs. “I’ll tell you later. First, you have to go to your room. I can’t keep him waiting any longer.”

Him.

Waiting.

Any longer.

So it was someone he looked up to, someone he respected. That hardly narrowed it down, I thought, as he respected a great number of people in town.

With curiosity burning a hole in my heart, but my respect for my father trumping it, I nodded and kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll be in my room when you need me,” I said.

I headed up the stairs with my suitcase, peering back at my father. He seemed to shrink with each step, then disappeared entirely as I rounded the corner and returned to my bedroom.

* * *

I unpacked my things and slid my suitcase under my bed which, before my trip, had been its resting place, undisturbed, for a full ten years. An honest man’s wage was a meager thing on Uhisa, and my father was as honest as they came.

I fell onto my bed and peered around at my room. It’d always seemed so welcoming, so comforting, but now it felt small, cramped, and confining.

What a difference an operation could make…

I hadn’t received a single operation but a series of small ones over a period of a month. My surgeon was a perfectionist and it took longer than expected before he was satisfied.

With cryo-sleep required for me to reach Glelle—the top medical station in the quadrant—and another two weeks in recovery during cryo-sleep on the way back, it left me with a full month to entertain myself in the hospital.

With the regular surgeries happening every few days, I spent my time shuffling through the long hospital hallways, making conversation with the other patients, entertaining myself in the gardens by reading books and getting a feel for the opportunities that were now open to me in the galaxy.

Opportunities that had always been open so long as you were willing and able. Well, now that I’d had my operation, I was certainly able.

And after speaking with the other patients, I had become even more willing.

The most interesting patients I spoke to were the older ones. They talked about adventures and excitement and yes, more than a little disappointment with life. But each was at the hospital to get the treatment they needed so they could live a fuller and more prosperous life.

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