Deceived Read online

  “I gave you a place to stay.”

  “I know. Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “You’re ignorant,” he said.

  “Maybe,” I tried to nod, but I couldn’t move very much. His grip tightened a little, and I wondered for just a moment if this was it.

  Was this the way I was going to die?

  Princess Paige, heir to the Gideon throne, was going to be slaughtered by a man of Malum without anyone around to see.

  “Your people came here, and they destroyed many of our cities,” he said.

  He released me, and turned, and kept walking.

  “When?” I asked, rubbing my neck. “When was this great injustice?”

  “Twenty years ago,” he said.

  “Twenty years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought we’d been enemies long before that.”

  “We were never friends,” he said. “But we traded, just as we do with all of the other planets.”

  “So, what happened?”

  If it was true, I wanted to know. I didn’t think it was. Surely, there must have been some sort of misunderstanding. I was 25, and I was old enough to know that we’d been enemies for many years before I was born. At least, that was what we’d all been taught.

  He looked at me sideways.

  “Your king got greedy.”

  It wasn’t my father’s personality. He was the least-greedy person I knew. In fact, it was because of his lack of greed that so many people didn’t like him. People thought my father should be more cutthroat. At the very least, my mother thought he should be.

  “Greedy how?” I asked. I felt like I was running even though we were just walking at a quick pace. He was bigger than me, and it was easier for him to have these long strides. I couldn’t walk that quickly. It bothered me a little bit, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “The King wanted more than we were willing to give.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, the people of Gideon are dying out,” he said.

  “Dying out?”

  “There’s a problem. They can’t reproduce as fast as other planets.”

  “What?”

  Why hadn’t I heard of this before? Why hadn’t anyone warned me?

  “Humans aren’t from Gideon. Humans are from Earth. When Earth was destroyed and humans filled the galaxy looking for a new place, quite a few settled on Gideon, which was fine. At least, it was for the first few centuries.”

  We’d all heard those stories: tales of how the first explorers from Earth had valiantly wandered out into the stars. Plenty of people had died. Plenty had survived. Everyone heard stories of those early explorers and felt happy that they’d been so brave.

  Now it seemed as though things were a little bit different. Still, I’d never heard that the people of Gideon had struggled to reproduce. Why hadn’t anyone warned me about that? Our population was dwindling? Nobody had talked about this.

  “So, people from Gideon wanted to...breed...with you?”

  He looked over at me and raised an eyebrow, then he smirked.

  “Is it so terrible to believe?” He asked.

  “What?”

  “That someone might want to breed with a man like me.”

  I gulped...

  No, it wasn’t terrible to believe. It wasn’t horrible or bad or wrong. I definitely would want to breed with a guy like him. He was strong, and the way he’d gripped my throat had been both powerful and dominating. He’d made me feel weak and small and aroused.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I said nothing. Instead, I looked away and kept walking. I knew better than to engage in such talk. A guy like Ryssi was dangerous.

  Guys like him had...desires...that people like me couldn’t fulfill. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want him or any man at all. That wasn’t exactly why I was exploring Malum.

  I just needed a ship.

  That was it.

  “Why do you think humans are dying out?” I asked. I kept thinking about those words. Was that why my father had been pushing for more people to immigrate to our planet? Had it all been a cover because our numbers were declining? Why weren’t people reproducing anymore?

  I thought, wondering when the last time I’d seen a human-human coupling. It had been a long time. Had I ever seen one? My parents were both humans, but even my sister had chosen to marry someone from Mars. All of my friends had chosen mates from other planets, too.

  Why was there something that everyone seemed to know but me?

  “Why can’t humans reproduce?” I asked before he could answer me.

  “Anxious?”

  “A little,” I was being honest even though I shouldn’t be. I kept walking, trying to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, but really, I was trying to get more information.

  “Nobody knows,” he said.

  “What do you mean, nobody knows?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m not privy to that information.”

  No?

  So, he wouldn’t tell me. I’d have to figure that out for myself. Then again, maybe the people on Gideon didn’t know. Wasn’t that a possibility? Was it possible that the people of my planet didn’t actually understand what the true problem was?

  Maybe that was why our numbers were dwindling.

  If my parents knew there was an issue, but they didn’t know the specifics, then they wouldn’t be able to fix it.

  “Fine.”

  “Your father wanted to institute a breeding program.”

  My stomach turned. Gross. Was he serious right now? A breeding program?

  “I thought the problems between our planets came from poor trade agreements.”

  “They wanted our resources, yes, but they also wanted our women.”

  “To grow humans?”

  “To grow humans.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “I agree.”

  I kept walking, and so did he. We walked for hours in silence because I had nothing else to say to him.

  A breeding program?

  Really?

  That was so fucking weird. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that my dad might have wanted to take Malum females to breed humans with, but maybe that was the problem.

  Maybe I didn’t know my dad nearly as well as I thought I did.

  After a little while, we stopped and drank some more of his weird liquid food stuff. It sounded gross, and I felt like I should be repulsed, but it was actually pretty good, and it made me feel both refreshed and full. Those were two things I hadn’t expected to feel.

  When we got up to keep walking again, I found that I was tired. My body still hurt from the crash the day prior, and my legs were sore. I was a Princess of Gideon. I wasn’t exactly used to walking long distances. There was no way I was going to admit that to Ryssi.

  He didn’t seem to notice or care, and he was unbothered by the silence between us. An hour or two after dinner, we came to a little village. The buildings were all the exact same square shape. It looked like a little town of dark purple boxes.

  “Don’t say anything,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll know you’re from Gideon, and your kind is not welcome here.”

  “I’m human,” I said. “They’ll be able to tell just by looking at me.”

  “Keep your head down,” Ryssi advised me. He was suddenly very serious, and I knew not to screw around. He paused, adjusting my jacket so that it hid as much of my face as possible. “This is not the place to be brave,” he murmured. “Follow my lead.”

  We walked into the town. It really was just a small road with buildings on either side. From outside of the village, I had counted at least twenty buildings, but once we started walking, I could see that there were even more. This was definitely a proper town, but all of the buildings looked exactly the same.

  Why?

  Even on Gideon, our buildings had different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some buildings were big, and some were small. That wasn’t the case here.

  What was this place? It was nothing like I imagined Malum to be. From what I had learned, Malum was obsolete. It was desolate. There was nothing. In some ways, I kind of felt like that was true. After all, we’d basically walked through a forest and across an empty plain to find this town.

  I looked over at Ryssi to ask him where we were, but he shook his head, letting me know not to speak.

  Fine.

  He led me quietly through the town. There were very few people and only a few vehicles. The buildings were each two stories tall with no windows. Each only had a door.

  “Absolute silence,” Ryssi whispered as we stopped in front of a building.

  I nodded, but was quiet.

  Ryssi was unlike anyone I’d ever met. He was strange and strong, but he also seemed protective. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that this wasn’t some cruel sort of joke, but he hadn’t done anything to keep me from trusting him.

  I stared at the building he’d stopped in front of.

  What made this one different from all of the others?

  It looked exactly the same.

  “You’re doing a good job,” Ryssi whispered.

  I wasn’t exactly the type of girl to swoon when someone was kind to me, but his words went straight to my heart. Oh, I loved it. I really, really loved it.

  And I kind of despised myself for being a girl who swooned because a guy paid me a compliment.

  Obviously, everything I thought I’d known about Malum had been wrong. My parents had lied to me. Hell, all of Gideon had lied to me. Maybe the people here weren’t the monsters my parents said they were.

  Then again, maybe they were worse.

  I was about to find out.

&n
bsp; Ryssi pushed on the door. It slid to the side. He didn’t knock, or press a button, or do anything to indicate that he was allowed to be here. He simply touched the door, and it slid over. Then Ryssi took my hand, holding it tightly, and he led me inside.

  I wanted to ask where we were going, but I choked the words down. I wasn’t going to be the reason my new companion got shot or killed.

  Or worse.

  From what I’d heard growing up, people on this planet we unpredictable monsters. I didn’t know how good that information actually was. It was just what I knew from my parents. It was what the entire world told us.

  The space inside of the building was so dark that I couldn’t see. I reached for my bracelet. There was a light on it, and I wanted to shine it into the darkness. Ryssi seemed to sense what I was about to do, though. He grabbed my hands – both of them – and held them tightly for a moment. He didn’t speak. He was completely silent. I couldn’t see his face because it was so dark, but his message was clear.

  He wanted me to keep my hands to myself.

  He wanted me to stay silent.

  I nodded. Maybe he could see in the dark, after all. Even if I couldn’t see, the people of Malum were different. They were made differently, and they were bred differently. For some reason, he wanted me completely silent as we walked in this building. Fine.

  He released one of my hands and turned away, but he kept holding my other hand. I tried not to feel too pleased about that. I didn’t have a boyfriend, and I didn’t particularly want one, but holding hands was always a nice experience. There was literally no one in the world who would complain about getting to hold hands with someone they cared about. It wasn’t like you’d say, “Nah, thanks, I’m good.”

  And Ryssi was very handsome indeed.

  We started walking forward, and then we stopped moving our feet, but the floor kept moving. I realized we were moving in a downward direction, and I found myself holding his hand even more tightly. Luckily, he was a huge person. He wasn’t going to be hurt by me squeezing his hand too hard. That was good, at least.

  We stood still as the moving platform lowered us deep into the heart of Malum. The platform moved for at least a full ten minutes. As it moved downward, the darkness disappeared. It was replaced instead with lights, and that was when I was able to see Ryssi’s face. He was watching me carefully.

  I looked away, not wanting to see the concern in his face. I didn’t like knowing that he was worried about me, of all people. I was just some girl, and I just wanted to get home.

  I didn’t need him to pity me.

  I was a fucking princess.

  The lights on the sides of the walls suddenly disappeared, and then I could see why he had wanted me to be silent. There were other elevators, too. Dozens. Hundreds. I could see each and every one of them moving down. Some of them were empty and some of them held people or visitors, like me. The strange thing was that the platforms that carried passengers also carried their voices, and I could suddenly hear everything they were all saying.

  “My mom doesn’t like that,” one person said on their platform. “But I don’t care what she thinks.”

  Another person was carefully reciting the recipe they were going to use for dinner.

  “Of course, I don’t like going to class. Nobody likes going to class. Besides, Professor Alioaie is such a Martian!”

  Ryssi leaned close, brushing his lips against my ears.

  “Can you see why I asked you to stay silent?”

  “Yes.”

  “These are staepo lifts,” he told me. “They’re beautiful, and they move quickly to the depths of the planet, but they also carry voices like you wouldn’t believe.”

  He said this with a sigh.

  “Do you have personal experience with these?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “When I was a teenager, my girlfriend and I were planning which places we’d go to be...intimate,” he admitted. “Her father was on a staepo lift a few hundred paces away. He overheard. He was displeased with that.”

  I chuckled. Okay, so at least it seemed like the teenagers on Malum.

  “Thanks for sharing that,” I whispered back.

  Ryssi nodded but didn’t speak again. It was obvious that he didn’t feel like sharing anything else right now.

  That was fine.

  I closed my eyes and just held his hand, happy and content in this moment. I still didn’t know how I was going to get home, and I still didn’t really understand why Jax would want me killed, and I honestly didn’t know if I could truly trust Ryssi, but when I closed my eyes, I could just focus on being.

  Eventually, the platform stopped moving and it was time to get off.

  “This way,” he murmured.

  Everyone was exiting their platforms at the same time, and the lights were on, so I could see clearly. We were in a huge, open space filled with people. They were all coming and going and moving this way and that. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry.

  Ryssi led me toward one of the walls and we stood there for a second.

  “We need to find the right passageway to Tria.”

  “Tria?”

  “The capital city,” he said.

  I didn’t want to ask him why we needed to find the passageway. I didn’t want to ask him why we should go to the capital city. None of that really mattered, did it? All that mattered was that we get to a place with ships: a place where I could get home.

  I understood, then, where we were. We were in a transportation place. Ryssi pointed to a map on the wall, and I realized we had different choices for traveling from this place. There were boats, and there were hovertrains, and there were even chutes.

  He seemed to find what he was looking for, and he started leading me toward one of the adjoining hallways that would lead to a ship, but I saw something that made me stop in my tracks.

  Jax.

  Jax was here.

  His bright, spiky yellow hair was unmistakable in the crowd of purple people. Unlike me, he hadn’t bothered to disguise himself here. A few people turned and looked at him. I melted against Ryssi, facing him. Then I leaned up and whispered in his ear.

  “Jax is here.”

  Ryssi was instantly at attention. Right away, he seemed to take this seriously.

  “Where?”

  “Yellow hair,” I whispered.

  “How is he tracking you?” Ryssi wanted to know. “Do you have anything on you that lets you communicate with your planet?”

  That’s when it hit me.

  “My bracelet,” I whispered.

  That’s how he had found me.

  Chapter 7

  Ryssi

  I reached for her wrist and pressed the latch. Instantly, the bracelet came off of her wrist, and I stared at the hideous thing. I had known it was a light of some sort, but a communication device?

  Fuck.

  They could have tracked us the entire way.

  They’d already tracked us too far.

  A woman walked by, getting dangerously close to us, and I dropped the bracelet in her open bag. Then I stood where I was, holding Paige against my chest.

  To anyone walking by, we were just two lovers embracing in a busy traveling station. Nobody would think twice about seeing a man hugging his partner.

  We weren’t partners, though.

  We weren’t in love.

  We were hiding.

  The woman kept walking, and a few minutes later, Jax marched on by. I wasn’t going to kill him. Not here. Not in the middle of the station.

  Everyone would see, and the last thing I needed was to be arrested for killing the soon-to-be-prince of Gideon.

  Nope.

  What we needed was to get out of the station.

  Now.

  I took Paige’s hand and led her down a hallway. I’d been planning on taking a hovertrain because they were so fast and easy to hop on, but now a boat sounded like a better choice. I only thought that because nobody would expect Paige to take the slowest travel option.

  I paid the fare and soon we were nestled on board The Malum 73029, which I thought was a terrible name for a boat.

  “Have you traveled like this before?” Paige whispered once we were seated.

  “Yes.”

  Many times.

  Too many.

  The boat wasn’t a ship. It was literally just a small vessel with seats on it. It held twenty-five passengers, which wasn’t many. We sat in rows of five as the android operator instructed us to sit still and avoid moving during the trip.