This Book Sucks Blood

Chapter 10: Breakfast of Champions

Song Selection: Let the Band Play(E)—Badflower

Lucianna nodded to the emperor, and he grinned back at her. She placed a small slice of cheese on a cracker, his hand creeping toward hers on the table. She looked down at the plate, trying to search for words to speak to him. She never thought she'd be this close to him again. Not after last time.

"Are you excited for the chance to win my hand?" he asked. It was a cocky question, but he didn't look the part. He was drinking from his teacup, looking her up and down, the words so easy and slow from his stupid mouth. But he knew the response. He knew what the response had to be. No one in their right mind would say 'no.'

"I've thought about it every night after I set eyes on you." Lucianna replaced winning his hand with killing him in her head.

His fingers traced her chin, warm and soft. He looked into her eyes. Was he going to kiss her? Right now? In front of the camera-bots that droned through the garden? She shuddered at the thought. But no such thing happened. He watched her for another moment, inquisitive, and then he picked up his teacup and brushed it to his lips.

His skin was so buttery. The man himself looked soft to her. The doe eyes, framed with thick lashes. The way he batted his lids at her. The way, in bed, that year ago, he wrapped her arms around his waist. It was impossible to see who he was in his face. The things he'd done to this planet, to her family, and to her.

"Really?" He laughed. "I suppose you must've been excited when the last queen died."

That's how he always talked about the old queens. Trash. Thrown away to be replaced by his new obsession. He picked up a porcelain cup and poured more hot tea into it. He placed it into her hands without asking. Her breath trembled as she looked down at her reflection in the tea.

"I wouldn't say that. I just hoped you noticed me."

"You looked beautiful in that servant's outfit. I remember the first time you were given permission to clean my chambers. The way that starched collar gripped your neck." He grinned. "I remember walking past and having to stop, just seeing you with that vacuum. You move with such grace. I didn't think a servant was capable of it. For the first time, it made me sad, what had to be done to your family."

All of this would have to be cut out in editing. She knew this. If the editors left anything in that made him look like this, the ugly way he was presenting himself to her right now, they would disappear. So he could say anything to her. Anything at all. His hand could creep to the back of her chair, his warm breath could come close to her neck.

"Well, I know it was necessary," she murmured.

"And what lovely servants you've all made. Much better than killing you all."

"Yes, sir," she said. Grandmother had lived to 274, her mother had told her. She was supposed to live longer, as long as the emperor, but she stepped out of line. The hard life of terraforming a biome had shocked the fight out of her, and she was frail and fragile when she had her child. Lucianna's mother. A woman who had never seen the outsides of the palace walls.

But the emperor, the immortal emperor, had been there through it all. Had caused it all.

She felt her breath quake in her chest. Felt heat rattle her cheeks. But she could only reach for her boot and squeeze for the form of the knife longingly. What else was there to do but sit here until he pulled her in just close enough, until his eyes fluttered away and she could finally do it. Finally plunge that knife into his chest.

"I'm sorry for bringing that up," he said, fluttering those lashes, so doe-like, so sweet. She'd seen pictures of deer, some kept in the zoo that her mother could never take her to. And he was everything like one of those graceful creatures, everything about him, so sweet. She thought she'd throw up. "I'm not trying to make you feel bad, I just don't want you to hate me."