The Dark of the Stars

Chapter Two

As I walked to dinner, I kept balling my hands into fists and releasing them. I was nervous. I didn’t know why I was nervous, but I was. I had been to my fair share of important dinners, and I have never been all that eager to impress my father. I wore one of my best suits, which I hadn’t worn in at least six months. It was a suit worthy of a royal ball, something that hadn’t happened since the third year of the war. It was because of the lack of royal parties that had most people in the palace wishing for the end to this war. 

I found my father waiting outside the door to the dining hall in a similar quality suit. He looked stressed, an emotion that wasn’t often shown on his face. The few times I had ever seen him stressed was in the war room. 

Before he opened the door he looked at me “We’re having dinner with the battle strategist we captured yesterday. I know the rumors about her, but she’s not on our side. That’s why we’re having this dinner. I want to convince her to join us, because she’s incredibly valuable.”

He was about to open the door when he paused and looked at me again “Don’t underestimate her”

“Why would I?” 

He hesitated, like he didn’t want to tell me and involve me in all this. “She’s young, and...human”

“Human? Like from Earth?” I asked in disbelief. I knew very little about the distant planet, but I had heard of it, and it inhabitants.

He nodded “Just let me do the talking.” he said

“Of course” I said, and I followed him through the double doors into the tremendous dining hall. 

The hall was tall and could fit hundreds of people and tables could be added to fit  all of them, but now a long table that could fit maybe thirty was sitting in the middle, with three place settings. Two at one end, and the third at the other end, which was already occupied by a young woman in chains. 

I understood immediately why father assumed I would underestimate her as a strategist. She was my age, possibly younger. Knowing that she was human made me even more doubtful of her capability. 

I looked her up and down as I took my place next to father at the empty end. She was slim, and wearing a revealing dress the color of human blood. If she moved, it sparkled with invisible glitter. I silently wondered why she hadn’t been asked to wear something else tonight, as it wasn’t a Taun custom to show so much skin. It covered only the bare minimum and left the majority of her porcelain-white skin uncovered. Her hair was the color of morning frost, blinding me because it reflected all the light in the room. 

What else I really noticed about her, though, was her expression. She sat slumped at the end of the table, an empty place setting in front of her. Her hands and feet in chains, and she looked absolutely bored. She reminded me of my brother on rainy days, he would stare at walls he got so bored. 

My father cleared his throat as he walked in the room and she hadn’t shown him any acknowledgment of authority. Her electric blue eyes were glazed over, but they lazily found their way to us. She stared at my father with a mixture of emotions, one of the biggest was disgust. 

A guard had announced us, but my father ignored it and proceeded to introduce himself and I. “Good day madame. My name is his royal majesty Beru, King of Tau, and this is my son, Prince Dero” he gestured to me. Then he turned his attention to me “Dero, this is Dixie Jones of Earth” 

As quick glance from Dixie was all the salutation I received. She looked around and back to my father. “So you know my name and where I’m from, is that the reason for this little escapade of dinner? To get to know me?” she said in tone matching the hostility of her narrowed eyes. She must have understood the real reason that we asked her to dinner, and already had her answer.

My father was persistent, and acted as if her icy tone hadn’t been there. “Can we not invite prisoners to dinner? Is that against the rules of warfare?” my father said calmly, motioning the waiters to bring us our food. 

Dixie stared at my father, as if analyzing him. She clicked her tongue. I waited for her to ask why her colleague wasn’t invited. It would have what I would have asked, and maybe it was even the question my father was expecting from her, but she didn’t ask. Instead she turned and analyzed me instead. 

I could feel her eyes on me, scanning my every feature, searching for a weakness. I tried to watch the waiters, but it was as if her eyes were pulling on mine. I gave into temptation and met her gaze. What I saw in her eyes was something smug. She had, or was forming, a plan, and it was going perfectly. 

When the waiters set the food in front of us, my father motioned a guard to unlock Dixie’s chains. “Oh, no, it’s no problem” Dixie said. She held up her hand in their cuffs and suddenly the chains had turned white with frost, they were frozen all the way through. She then brought it down onto the table and the cuffs shattered into thousands of pieces. 

My father looked as though he had also been frozen in place, with his fork half-way to his open mouth. Everyone in the room stood still in shock as Dixie rubbed her wrists for a moment, brushed some shards off her plate and started eating. 

It felt as if the roles had been reversed, and Dixie was no longer captive, but the captor, and we are all hostages. We proceeded in eating in silence, despite watching our guest display incomprehensible power. What else was she capable of? I had no idea that humans were capable of such things, and I guessed father hadn’t anticipated this either. 

After a few moments of eating in silence, Dixie was the one to break it. “I haven’t had food this rich since Augusta. The food I have eaten with the rebel army is just garbage”

My father sat in silence for a moment, I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t thanking her for the comment, but thankfully my father wasn’t as dense as I was. He knew the real meaning behind Dixie’s comment about our food.

“We are royalty” he said carefully, looking at her almost like he was challenging her. Dixie did what I had never seen anyone ever do before, she took my father’s challenge.

“You think that matters?” Dixie said she said calmly, but her words were laced with poison. Her eyes were narrowed again. “Your people steal from rats to keep from starving, and you eat until your stomachs burst. Then you justify it because you wear a crown on your head and call yourself the leader of your people”

Father looked like he wanted to scream. He wasn’t used to being spoken to like this. I paled just because this girl had the nerve to speak to the king the way she was. I was a bit angry, but I was also captivated by what she said, were our people really starving?

My father stood up, and walked down the table to Dixie so that he stood above her when she was speaking. “I don’t want to argue with you” 

Dixie looked at him with a smirk, “No, I know what you want. But you’re not going to get it, not from me. I have too much invested in this war to change sides” 

Father looked indifferent to Dixie’s decline of his offer. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t agree. However, you’re more valuable of an asset that even I’d thought. To ensure that you will be on our side, you’ll marry my son” 

“WHAT?” the shout was in unison between both Dixie and I. Dixie looked at me for a split second, and I couldn’t make out her expression. 

“I’ll never marry your brat of a son!” she spat at my father, now there was no covering up her disgust with a calm face. The king had made her angry, and she wasn’t going to take it the same way my father had taken it from her. 

In a second she was behind me with a dagger to my throat. I hadn’t seen her move, but she was there, overpowering me with her icy grip, I could feel frost spreading across my clothing and skin from her nimble fingers. 

She brought her hands together around the hilt of the dagger, and everything went black.