Page 69 of Maid for the Alien Prince

I shrugged my shoulders and turned to leave. That’s when I heard another soft sound—this time, not the kiss of glass or crystal but a soft padding noise, like a heavy footstep.

My instincts leapt into action, and I immediately snapped my head around to peer into the dark shadowy recesses.

I peered closer, expecting something to lurch out at me… but nothing did.

The silence smothered me once again and I felt the sinister flipside of what it meant for the palace to be this empty at this time. It meant no one would come to my rescue.

The shadows seemed even darker than they had earlier, pitch black as if carved from the depths of space. And yet, they also seemed to have some kind of magnetic pull, as if a miniature black hole was tugging me toward it.

Goosebumps writhed across the surface of my skin, and I checked over my shoulders to ensure no one was there.

No one was.

And the darkness did not move.

“Hello? Is someone there?” I said.

There was no response, of course, because no one was there!

I chuckled to myself and couldn’t help but notice the fringe of nervousness around it. I was no longer afraid, I told myself, and edged towards that darkness.

Nothing could scare me any longer—especially not some imagined noise.

I stepped toward it gingerly, measuring my steps carefully, and stood on the edge of the shadows, which pressed against the pink digits of my toes.

I peered into it once more and this time made out more of the details; a twin set of shelves with handsomely-bound leather books perched like birds and an office globe in the corner depicting geography very different from that of Earth.

And there, a clock, silently ticking away the seconds. And there, a hat, perched on the shelf.

Nothing abnormal at all. It was a normal scene in a regular house.

Then I noticed something strange about the hat. I cocked my head to one side and gazed closely at it. The angle was slightly off and cocked to one side. There was no way it could have been sheltered on the shelf and instead must have been placed on another structure, something lower down—a hook perhaps?

As I gazed closer, something moved. Not me, but below the brim of the hat I was peering at.

A pair of eyes gazed out from beneath the cap like mysterious floating orbs around a planet. They were slitted, golden and shining, bright despite the lack of moonlight to illuminate them.

My eyes bulged and I formed a scream on my lips. But it was never born as thick scaly hands wrapped about my mouth and yanked me into the infinite darkness.

* * *

Fear pumped through my body, my heart rate doubling, then tripling, as the shadowy figure wrapped one powerful arm about my waist, pinning my arms to my sides while the other clasped my mouth.

I was frozen, limp, and sensed immediately that there was no escape. I was as much at his whim as I was to Rayaw whenever he came to me.

But where the latter was exciting, being at an unknown creature’s mercy was terrifying.

“Be quiet and there will be no need for you or anyone else to come to any harm.”

I recognized the scratchy voice right away. It was Ges. At his feet, there was a large bundle of what could only be stolen items.

That had been the source of the soft tinking noise I had heard earlier, I surmised. He had been busy depositing antique items into a sack that he would take off with.

It was still the middle of the night, and the majority of the guardsmen would not be on duty for several hours. That fact played heavy on my thoughts as I imagined what Ges could do with me until then.

“What is it with you and getting up in my business?” he spat. “Don’t you know when you’re not wanted?”

And what is it with you stealing Rayaw’s stuff? I wanted to snap back at him, but it came out as a low muffle behind his thick scaly hand.

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