Page 7 of Maid for the Alien Prince

Now I was the one with tears in my eyes. They stung but did not roll down my cheeks. I held them back. The last thing Dad needed was to see how upset I was. I kept running my fingers through his thinning hair, clutching him close so he couldn’t see my face.

Then I asked the one question that might go some way to answering this entire thing:

“Why, Dad? Why did you steal from the palace?”

“It was the only way…”

“Only way for what?”

Dad wasn’t the type to blow it on sporty cars, women, or upgrade his living standards. What else was there for him to spend the money on?

“I couldn’t bear to see you in pain,” he said. “I couldn’t bear not being able to give you what you so desperately needed.”

What I desperately needed?

All I needed was his love, and that was never in short supply. The only other thing that I ever needed was…

I froze, my fingers coming to a stop, curled in his thin white hair. The words tumbled from my lips. “My operation…”

He gave no sign of affirmation but there was no doubt about it. It was the reason he had taken the risk. It was the only thing that would drive him to commit, to his mind, such a terrible sin as to steal from the royal palace.

To pay for my operation. To help me.

“But I thought the insurance paid for it?” I said, feeling stupid even as I asked the question.

“The company refused. They said it wasn’t covered by our policy. I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t let you suffer because of me.”

He’d always blamed himself for the accident, and I always replied the same way, as I did now:

“It wasn’t you,” I said, believing it more than ever. “You were not the driver who was drunk. He slammed into our shuttle and made us fall from the sky. It had nothing to do with you.”

I had been elated when he told me the insurance company would pay for it, that my future would no longer be curtailed by my affliction. It meant there was a chance I could get to live a normal life.

And now that the money had been spent, how was I meant to return it?

“I saw the Prince’s guests coming every weekend, taking what they wanted, stealing from him and the royal family,” Dad said. “They spend it all on drink and drugs and women… and then brag about it when they return the following weekend. They were going to steal everything eventually and I thought, if they were going to take it anyway, why not do something good with it instead? Something that can help someone who deserves it. And I… I did it.”

I stroked his hair as another sob wracked his body. “Don’t worry,” I said, stroking his head. “I’m sure there’s a way out of this.”

“A way? There is no way. I’ve thought of everything—”

I shushed him gently and stroked his hair. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We’ll pay the money back. Somehow.”

And I knew then, making a promise to myself, that I would not allow my father to go on trial, to be persecuted for a crime that although he might be guilty of, he couldn’t go to prison for.

I would speak with the new Prince and convince him to let us work and pay him back.

He would accept the offer.

He had to.

2

RAYAW

It was difficult to believe I was related to any of these stuck-up bastards. In their vacant, pointless, dull expressions, I saw the full effects of inbreeding firsthand.

Endless lines of portraits—costing the Creator knew how much—lined the long hallways and corridors of the vast palace. Ghosts who thought that by hanging their little frames on the walls, they could somehow put a pin in time so they would never be forgotten and would be remembered forever.

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