Deceived Read online

  “Someone lives here.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Being snarky wasn’t going to help my situation. This was the time for me to be compliant and to try to avoid his wrath. Judging from the size of the body behind me, this guy was big. He could probably snap me in half like a twig.

  My throat hurt. He was pressing me against the wall, and my hands were pinned above me. My cheek was against the wall, but the stone was rough and cold. I was going to have scratches the next day. I knew it. Wouldn’t that just be wonderful? My mother would have yet another thing to bitch about when it came to my appearance.

  “Who are you?” Yep, it was definitely a man. He spoke gruffly. “What do you want?”

  “I want to sleep,” I said.

  That was true, at least. It was all I wanted. I hated swimming, and yet I had. I didn’t like traveling, and yet I had. Hell, I didn’t even like flying, for obvious reasons, and once again, I had. I’d done about a million things I didn’t want to do, and why?

  Because Jax had been a dick, and I’d run away to clear my head. I hadn’t wanted to hear anything else he had to say to me, so I’d simply left. Apparently, I was the type of person who believed my problems could be solved by simply fleeing the planet where I’d been born.

  “Are you here to murder me? Because I have to warn you, that won’t be easy. I’m classically trained in seven different fighting styles.”

  “What?”

  “Are you here to murder me?” He spoke the words quickly, clipping each syllable. He made it sound like I was an idiot who couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Look, I don’t know if you’re dumb or something, but I literally just told you. I’m looking for a place to sleep. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “Nobody from Gideon comes here to sleep,” he said.

  I stilled.

  I hadn’t told him where I was from. I never told anyone where I was from. When I traveled, which wasn’t often, I was always very quiet and very careful. I dressed discreetly because I didn’t like drawing attention to myself.

  “I never said I was from Gideon,” I said.

  “I can smell it on you.”

  “Get away from me,” I snapped.

  To his credit, the man released me, and I spun around to stare at him. Thanks to the light on my wrist, I could see him. The brightness seemed to irritate him, though, and he squinted down at me. I slapped the button on my wristlet to turn off the light, casting us into darkness.

  There was still a thin sliver of light coming in from the cave’s entrance. The stars had decided to make an appearance, apparently. The light was just enough that I could see the outline of the man’s body, but not much more.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  Suddenly, I realized something.

  “Wait, I can understand you,” I said carefully.

  “Of course, you can. We’re speaking the same language.” His words were slow again, as though he was speaking to a child. I tried not to be annoyed at the way this man kept talking to me.

  “I thought that the people of Malum spoke something else,” I said.

  “Why would you think that?” Suddenly, the man sounded tired.

  “Because...”

  “Because that’s what you were taught? I’m sure. Sit down, female. I’ll feed you and send you on your way.”

  I wasn’t really sure what to do next. I was in a cave with an alien guy who didn’t seem like he was actually going to murder me, and he seemed almost hospitable, so I sat. That was what he’d told me to do, after all. It was still dark and difficult to see. Lowering myself to the ground, though, wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should have been. I wasn’t as sore as I would have expected myself to be after all of the swimming and climbing. I sat down and crossed my legs.

  “What brought you to Malum?” Again, his voice was gruff. I was starting to like the way it sounded, though. He was pure masculinity radiating from a grumpy body.

  “My ship crashed.”

  It seemed as though honesty was going to be the best choice in a situation like this. If I lied, he’d probably know, and besides, I didn’t really feel like lying.

  “How did your ship crash?”

  How?

  That was the question of the day, wasn’t it?

  My ship was regularly maintained. As a Princess of Gideon, it had to be. I had access to the best mechanics and the best workers on the planet. If anyone’s ship was going to crash, it shouldn’t have been mine.

  Then again, I hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to think about it.

  “It must have malfunctioned,” I said. “To be honest, it’s kind of a blur.”

  “Strange,” he said in a way that made me think he didn’t believe this to be strange.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it sounds like you pissed off the wrong person, and they sabotaged your ship.”

  He snapped his fingers, and a deep purple light flicked on in the center of the cave. It was much softer than the light on my wristlet, and it didn’t seem to bother him as much. That was good. I felt bad for using a light that hurt his eyes.

  “Come,” he took my hand and led me to the back of the cave. “You need to warm up.”

  He pressed his hand against the wall, and it slid open silently. This must have been the reason I didn’t see him when I first came into the cave. He’d been in a different room, and he’d silently come out.

  We walked through the opening and once more, he turned on a deep purple light. I could see now that this wasn’t just an empty cove. There was a sort of little picnic area with a tiny table and a rug and a couple of chairs. There was another door at the back of the cave that led somewhere else: probably to bedrooms or something like that.

  I looked over at the man, and I stared at him.

  He really was tall, and giant. He filled the space. He was bigger than I could have imagined, and he was purple. It wasn’t just the light. I could tell that his skin was actually a deep shade of violet.

  His skin didn’t even sort of begin to match mine. I glanced down at the pale pink flesh that covered my body, and then back at his.

  “You’ve never seen one of my kind before,” he said. His words were to the point, but he wasn’t being rude.

  He was correct.

  I hadn’t.

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not? Don’t they teach you anything on Gideon?”

  “They teach us that Malum is an unsafe place to be,” I said quietly, and he laughed.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said in a way that sounded once again like he didn’t believe me.

  “You’re so tall,” I said. “How tall are you?”

  “27 peratis.”

  “Um...”

  “Eight feet tall,” he clarified. “If you’re going with humanoid calculations.”

  “I am, I guess,” I muttered. At slightly over five feet tall, he towered over me, and I suddenly felt like a child. I was of ordinary height for a person of my age and stature, but this guy was something else entirely.

  He smiled and handed me a small clay cup. It was small enough that the entire thing fit in the palm of my hand.

  “Drink this,” he said.

  “What is it?” I stared at the mysterious liquid inside. The purple light made it difficult to distinguish what colors were in there. Was it a soup? Was it something else? I couldn’t tell.

  “Drink it,” he said, so I did.

  The reality was that if this man wanted to kill me, he could. He was bigger than me, and he probably had bigger weapons. The cave was his home, so he was familiar with the terrain and the space. He knew so many things that I didn’t. The contents of the cup being poisoned was the least of my concerns.

  So, I drank.

  The liquid was thick and gooey and delici
ous. It was far better than anything I could have imagined, and it was warm. I drank the entire thing, and I was surprised to find that I felt very full when I was done.

  “It’s my mother’s favorite meal,” the man said.

  “Um, cool. Thank you.”

  Awkwardly, I handed the cup back. He took it and held it. His eyes didn’t leave mine.

  “You came into my home,” he said.

  “Yeah, uh, sorry about that. Like I said,” I gestured vaguely. “I crashed, so...”

  “So, you’re looking for shelter.”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded and pointed at the door at the back of the cave.

  “You can stay here tonight,” he said. “But tomorrow, you must leave. Citizens of Gideon are not welcome here.”

  “What?” I asked, shaking my head. That was strange. We all knew that the people of Planet Malum were monsters. At least, that was what we’d been taught. Why would they mind if the Gideon citizens came to their planet? “Why?”

  The man looked at me as though I was crazy.

  “Because the King of Gideon murdered our people,” he said as though it was the simplest, most obvious answer in the world.

  He said this as though I should have known.

  Chapter 2

  Paige

  “Excuse me?” I asked, not quite believing what I’d just heard.

  “Murder,” he said simply.

  He spoke as those this was the most obvious thing in the world, and I was beginning to despise this guy’s attitude. Whoever this man was, he didn’t know the first thing about Gideon.

  Why would he think they’d been attacked by the King?

  “Gideon didn’t attack Malum,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s the other way around. Malum has been trying to slaughter the people of Gideon for half a century. If we go to war, it will be because of the crimes of Malum.”

  The man laughed.

  He actually had the balls to laugh at what I’d said, and that rankled me.

  “Hey!” I snapped, irritated. I actually stomped my foot like a damn princess, which I was. “This is not a funny situation.”

  “No,” he said carefully. “It’s not, is it? Intergalactic troubles never are. Now let’s find you a place to sleep, and then you can leave.”

  The problem was that I was suddenly wide awake. While I’d been sore and tired after crash-landing, I now found my ability to focus quite uncanny.

  I wanted answers.

  I wanted to find out exactly what this man knew, and I wanted to find out exactly what he wasn’t telling me. He turned to walk toward the door at the back of the room, but I grabbed his arm.

  “Please,” I said. He turned and looked down at my hand. Then he looked at me.

  “You grabbed me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You did not have my permission.”

  “Was I...was I supposed to ask your permission? You touched me earlier.”

  “You were invading my house,” he said. “Now we have established that you are not here to kill me. Still, it is impolite not to ask before placing your hands on another.”

  I pulled my hand back.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m desperate.”

  “Why are you desperate? You have a safe place to stay.”

  “I need to know what you’re talking about.”

  He seemed confused, as though I was suddenly speaking a completely foreign language, and he shook his head slightly. The purple light was still glowing, and I took in the man’s appearance as I waited for him to speak.

  His deep purple skin was lined with scars, as though he’d been to hell and back again. His hair was short: cropped close to his head. He was very different from the people of Gideon. We were mostly humans with a few random aliens thrown into the mix. I’d never seen anyone who looked like him.

  Nobody on Gideon had skin like this.

  Even the aliens looked mostly human with the occasional horns on their heads. Every so often, I’d see someone with a tail or a spiky spine.

  “This is a safe place,” he said. “I will not kill you. You may stay here.”

  “I mean about Malum. About Gideon.”

  “You’re not making sense,” he said. “And you’re speaking too quickly.”

  “I thought you understood my language.”

  “I do,” he said. “But your accent is different than mine, and it is difficult to know what you are talking about.”

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself to slow down. That was what I needed to do. I needed to slow things down, like, a lot. If I could do that, then everything would be fine.

  Deep breaths.

  I wanted to panic. I wanted to freak out. I was stuck in a stranger’s cave. Being trapped in a weird alien’s little dwelling wasn’t how I’d planned to spend my day, yet here I was, and I needed to make the best of it.

  Just breathe.

  I was a princess.

  I could do this.

  “Look,” I said. “I appreciate you offering me a place to stay. Again, I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  “You climbed the cliffs,” he said. His voice held a hint of accusation.

  “Yes, I climbed the cliffs. I was looking for a shelter. I thought that this place was somewhere I could sleep. Then tomorrow, I was going to go find a way home.”

  “I told you,” he said. “Someone sabotaged your ship.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said. “I have the best ship on the planet. No expense was spared.”

  There was nothing wrong with my ship.

  My father would never allow me to fly something that wasn’t in perfect condition. My ship was checked regularly, and all of my piloting certifications were up-to-date.

  They were perfect.

  “And I’m telling you,” he said. “No one just crash lands on Malum. Not someone from Gideon.”

  I sighed. This wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Why do you think that the King of Gideon had people here slaughtered?” I asked, changing the subject slightly. Maybe if I could get him talking about that, I could figure out what the real problem was.

  “Because they did. It’s a known fact.”

  “On Gideon, we’re taught that the people of Malum tried to attack us unprovoked, and that this led to a lengthy conflict,” I told him. It was something we’d been taught in school for decades. Everyone knew this. Literally everyone.

  “Is it true there has been conflict,” he said. “But it was not unprovoked. Our planet has...resources...that the Gideon citizens wanted. When they started taking our citizens and enslaving them, we knew that our relationship was over.”

  Enslaved?

  I’d never heard anything about that.

  “You seem surprised,” the man told me.

  “I am.”

  “You seem ignorant, as well.”

  “Harsh, much?” I bristled. “You’re trying to give me a completely contrary explanation of how my planet works, and you aren’t even the one who lives there.”

  “I think you need to sleep,” he said. Obviously, the man didn’t want to talk any further about the history of our homes or the division between our planets.

  That was fine, and he was right.

  I was tired.

  I was tired from swimming and tired from climbing and tired from everything. I realized, all of a sudden, that I was feeling drowsy, too. Was the food that I ate drugged?

  I looked up at him, and before I could even ask, he nodded.

  “There was a sleep aid in the meal,” he explained. “No harm will come to you, but tomorrow we have a journey ahead of us, and you’ll need to rest now.”

  Then he picked me up as though I weighed absolutely nothing, and he carried me through the little door. I closed my eyes as I let the alien man carry me. I was too tired to care that he was a stranger. I was too tired to care that this was inappropriate. I was too tired to explain that I was a Princess of Gideon, and that my father, the King, had never killed
anyone.

  He just hadn’t.

  My dad was a good man. He was a brave man. He’d defended our planet for years as he ruled over it. He’d never enslaved anyone.

  “You’ll be safe,” he said. He set me down carefully on a little bed, and then he left. As soon as he was gone, I could feel the absence of his presence.

  That was weird and strange.

  I could feel the fact that I was alone.

  More than the loneliness that washed over me, I felt confusion. The alien had been kind and sweet. He’d been welcoming. He’d let me, a total stranger, stay in his spare room. He didn’t even know me! He hadn’t demanded anything from me. He hadn’t hurt me.

  I forced my eyes open.

  Why had my family taught me that the people of Malum were to be feared?

  For years, I’d heard that this planet was filled with monsters, but the man who saved me didn’t seem like a monster. He didn’t seem like a bad person. He didn’t seem cruel or uncaring.

  Deep breaths.

  I reached once more for my wristlet. It still didn’t seem to be working. I tapped on it a few times, but nothing happened. The light worked, but that was about it. I couldn’t see messages from my people. I couldn’t send out a voice alert to let my parents know that I was okay, that I was safe.

  Shifting slightly on the bed, I felt something beside me and remembered my bag was there. I hadn’t gone through it yet. Maybe there was something that could help me. Perhaps there would be something that could explain what had happened.

  I glanced quickly through the items I’d brought with me. My knife was still on my hip, but there wasn’t much in my bag: a bottle of water, a small assortment of food, and a homing beacon.

  Oh.

  That was different.

  I grabbed the little beacon, flipped open the top, and pressed the button. I couldn’t use it to communicate with my home planet the way I could use my wristlet, but it would let someone at the castle know that I was still alive, and where I could be found. The signal would reach Gideon almost instantly, and that meant someone would come to find me.

  Someone would come rescue me.

  A homing beacon like this was only supposed to be used during the darkest of times. It was something we could only use if we absolutely needed someone to come save us, and only the royal heirs of Gideon were allowed to carry them.