Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“It may be quite a while, Chalondra,” she said, her voice low and confiding, “before you understand what a remarkable thing his lordship is doing, taking us with him. For the moment, perhaps you should concentrate on the pleasant idea that he wants to show you the stars of Vion.”
I blinked again. “But—” I started, but Mistress Franla interrupted me.
“Do as I’ve said, and sit in the seat on the right, there. We don’t have time for more now.”
Her face had gone stern, and a shiver went through me as I thought of how firm a hand she had used, when training me. I turned and went the rest of the way into the little ship, squeezing myself into the cramped space between the seats to reach the one to which my mistress had pointed.
It had a complicated safety harness attached to it that I couldn’t begin to figure out. I almost asked Mistress Franla for help, but as soon as I had sat down, my near nakedness feeling very strange against the cool, smooth surface of the seat, the straps of the harness closed around me.
I let out a little cry of surprise and alarm, remembering how my mistress had bound me to the training chair just a few hours earlier. The seat’s programming, though, restrained me much more gently than Mistress Franla had, holding me in at waist and shoulders.
The memories of my training, my preparation for my master’s bed, my kneeling service—everything that had happened to me on Vion prime—came flooding into my mind. It seemed impossible that I hadn’t even spent a day on the capital planet of the empire, and just as unlikely that it seemed in the end I wouldn’t: my time on Vion prime would finally be measured not in days but in hours.
“Everything looks good,” the baron’s voice said from behind us, and then his big, powerful body had somehow squeezed its way through the gap between the seats and he had sat down next to me. I looked over at him forgetting the rules once again, and when I saw his dark eyes gazing back at me, I lowered mine, my heart skipping a beat—not so much in fear of punishment as in confusion at the new wave of affection that had risen in my chest.
“No, Chalondra,” he said softly. “Do look at me. You may—and…” I thought I could hear the smile in his voice as he continued, “you must. If you don’t look at me right now, I’ll take you over my knee again as soon as we get somewhere a little safer.”
Still looking down at my hands, which I’d folded in my lap after the safety harness had fastened itself around me, I felt my eyes widen. A little safer?! Were we in danger?
I obeyed: I raised my eyes and saw that, yes, my master had a warm smile on his face. To my astonishment, he reached over to take hold of my hand, as if he could see my anxiety, written on my face.
“There we go,” he said. “We’ll—”
“My Lord of Gravamir!” said an unfamiliar masculine voice from outside the ship. I turned to see that though the ramp had begun to fold itself upward to seal the craft’s fuselage, I could still see the dusty attic room outside it. Three men stood there, two of them with pistols pointed at us.
I expected my master to respond first. He did, in one way at least: when I looked over at him, my eyes round and my heart pounding, I saw that he had begun to move his fingers rapidly over the ship’s controls. The walls and floor of the ship started to hum and to vibrate slightly, as if it had begun to ready itself for a catlike spring upward.
Mistress Franla, however, spoke before the baron did. “I was due at His Grace’s an hour ago,” she said, clearly to his lordship, since though I knew one called a duke His Grace, I had no further idea what she could mean.
My master clearly did, though.
“They moved faster than I thought,” he grunted, still manipulating what looked to me only like randomly blinking lights. A larger red one appeared, in the center of the panel, between our two seats.
“My Lord!” the voice said again from outside the shift. “I command you…”
His lordship spoke over the order from whatever official had—it seemed clear to me—come to arrest him.
“Well,” he said, turning to me. “Press the button, my dear, if you’d like to see the stars.”
CHAPTER 27
Chalondra
My lips parted and I almost asked a stupid, time-wasting question like If I press the button, what will happen? In my master’s face, though, I saw the answer, and more: if I pressed the button, another sort of new life would begin, a very different one from the one I had expected when the company had woken me and led me out for auction.