Rocked: Elemental Warriors Page 6

  “This isn’t about you, Robert,” she said.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Then listen to me! I didn’t call you over here to have this same fight again! Actually, I didn’t call you over here at all. You just do whatever you want, and I have to deal with it afterwards, and that’s always how things have been with us. I’m trying to tell you about something friggin’ terrifying that happened to me today, and you’re off over here trying to get me to marry you! Would being your wife have kept me safe today? Do even the people in outer friggin’ space know the name of Robert Henderson? Oh, we can’t attack her, she’s married to that one really rich guy! Oh, quite right, we’d better go find some other hapless woman with worse taste in men!”

  By the time she’d finished, she was breathing hard, and anger was clouding her vision. This was how things always went with them. Either it was all playful teasing over coffee or it was a fight. Why on Earth did he think it’d be any different if they got married? Honestly, it would probably be worse. Sometimes, when she was very frustrated with him, she wanted to go back to a time before they had gotten together. When they were just two friends who met on the weekend for pizza or dim sum and talked about the things in their lives that were unfair. Back then, neither of them had been on the other’s list.

  For a long time after her outburst, they were both quiet. Bobby ate his food in the measured way he always did, and Silvia found she wasn’t very hungry anymore. She already knew if she tried to get him to take the extra food back with him, he’d just get annoyed, so she got to her feet and went about packing everything up, putting it away in the refrigerator for later.

  Finally Bobby sighed and put down his fork. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. This wasn’t supposed to be about me or about us, even. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, leaning against the counter. “I’m alright. It was scary, but that one guy with the hammer was there, so everything worked out alright.”

  “Do you think this is going to be a bigger problem?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “Don’t know. He said we weren’t under attack, but he also didn’t seem to have any idea what those creatures even were, so. I should’ve gotten a picture on my phone before I left, but he was adamant that I shouldn’t tell anyone about it, so he might not have let me.”

  Bobby looked up at her. “You told me.”

  “I tell you everything, Bobby,” Silvia sighed.

  “And that’s the problem,” she said the next day, over coffee with her friend Bridgett. “I tell him everything. There’s no separation. No wonder he thinks we’re going to get married.”

  Bridgett arched an eyebrow at her. “Now, forgive me for asking this because it seems like a dumb question, but I think it needs to be asked anyway. You have actually said no to him, right? When it comes to the marriage thing? He’s just being dense and not listening because he’s a rich white man with an ego issue, right?”

  Silvia sighed. “Well…”

  “Silvia!” Bridgett said, loud enough that several people from other tables turned to look at them. She made a face and then lowered her voice. “What the hell?”

  “It’s just...I do love him, you know. I do. I just don’t want to be his wife.”

  “So, what, he’s just going to be on your back up list forever? You’re going to make him wait the rest of his life thinking that maybe one day you’ll say yes?” She smirked. “Actually, that’s brilliant.”

  “Bridgett, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not doing that. I just. Maybe one day I will want to marry him, you know? When I have my own life and won’t just be swallowed by his.”

  “Uh huh,” Bridgett said, and she didn’t look convinced. It was a good thing that Silvia had made up some other issue that had led to her and Bobby fighting instead of telling her the truth. She could only imagine what her outspoken and perpetually skeptical friend would have made of that.

  She opened her mouth to change the subject when the chimes above the door made their happy sound, and someone with a familiar frame came walking into the cafe. Silvia’s eyes went wide at the sight of the alien who had saved her not two days previous, waltzing into The Hopping Bean like it was a regular occurrence.

  He stood well back from the counter, eyes trained up (though not so far up because honestly how tall even was he?), clearly taking his time reading the menu.

  “I’ll be right back,” Silvia said, getting out of her chair before she could think better of it and walking up to him. She prodded him in the back and put her hands on her hips when he whipped around to look down at her. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she demanded.

  He sighed. “Oh good, you’re here,” he said. “I’m minding my own business, as it happens. Are you being chased by something?”

  Silvia frowned and looked around for good measure. “No,” she said.

  “Then you don’t need me.”

  “I never said I needed you,” Silvia replied, affronted. “I was just making sure you aren’t up to anything nefarious.”

  He arched an eyebrow, but otherwise looked bored. “The only thing I’m trying to do here is figure out what a bear claw is and why it’s considered food on your planet.” He lowered his voice for the last bit, and Silvia couldn’t help laughing.

  “It’s not an actual claw, idiot,” she said. “It’s a pastry.”

  “Oh,” he said, running fingers through dark hair. “It’s sweet?”

  Silvia nodded. “Yeah. Usually with nuts or something on top. Almonds in this case.”

  “Hm. Sounds alright.”

  “It’s good,” Silvia said, and she couldn’t quite believe what she was about to do. “Listen, I guess I do still owe you for saving me from those things the other day, so let me help, alright? I’ll order you something you’ll probably like.”

  “How do you know I’d like it?” he asked. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I worked in a coffee shop for three years in college,” she said. “I’m real good at this. Just trust me.”

  He muttered something under his breath about not knowing why he should trust a human, but gestured for her to go ahead. Silvia rolled her eyes, and did so.

  He’d seemed pleased with the notion that a bear claw was something sweet, so that boded well for him liking pastries. He wasn’t from this planet, so who even knew what kind of allergies he might have to their nuts and things like that. Something relatively light, then, with not a lot of garnish. An apple fritter maybe, since you couldn’t really go wrong with apples. And for a drink...he was big enough that coffee probably wouldn’t do much to him, but she wasn’t going to take any chances on that. A chai latte seemed like a good middle ground option.

  She ordered for him and then waited around for the order while he stared at her. It was easy to ignore, and she could tell it was annoying him, which was fun, for some reason. Getting on his nerves was a fun game.

  “If this kills me, you’ll have to answer to Prince Comman,” he muttered as he accepted the items from the clearly starstruck barista.

  Silvia rolled her eyes. “You’ll be fine. Just take it over there and eat it,” she said, pointing to a free table. “I’m going back to my friend.”

  She’d nearly forgotten all about Bridgett, and when she looked back over at her, her friend was staring at her with wide eyes. Oh good. This would be fun to explain. Or creatively not explain as the case was.

  The man whose name she still didn’t know followed her gaze and then sighed. “You’re telling people, aren’t you? About what happened.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Calm down. I didn’t tell her anything. Although now she’s going to be overflowing with questions about you, so thanks for that.”

  “I didn’t make you come talk to me, you know,” he pointed out.

  “You basically did by showing up here.”

  He gave her a flat loo
k, which she returned. Finally he sighed and went to his table, and Silvia smiled and went back to hers. She spent the next half hour cheerfully deflecting Bridgett’s many, many questions.

  Thankfully, she was alone when she ran into him again.

  It was at the Greek place near where she’d almost been savaged, and it made sense, she supposed to see him there. He had a tray loaded down with four gyros, three beef and lamb and one chicken, and a plate of fries that seemed to perplex him.

  She was sitting at a table near the window in the back with her laptop, staring at the empty document on the screen as she brainstormed for her next piece. Usually the ideas came to her fairly easily, but for some reason, she was having a hard time coming up with anything that day.

  They saw each other at the same time, and Silvia was fully prepared to ignore him and continue on not being productive in the slightest, when he surprised her by coming over and sitting down across from her.

  He stared for a long moment, and she just blinked back, unsure of what he wanted.

  “What?” he said finally. “No accusations today?”

  “No,” Silvia said slowly. “I figure you’re just hungry.” She nodded to his tray.

  “I am,” he said. “Diplomacy is exhausting.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Neither would I before now,” he said. “But it’s all Prince Comman wants to talk about. I didn’t even want to come here, and now he wants my opinion on trade and negotiations and if I think he needs to marry the Princess of some other planet to solidify and alliance, and I just don’t know. I’m a warrior, not a diplomat. I don’t know anything about this.”

  Silvia was taken aback. Here he was sharing all this with someone he didn’t even know. But it seemed like it was eating at him, and she could understand that. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Your name. If we’re going to have some kind of heart to heart here, it seems like I should at least stop calling you ‘that weird alien guy’ in my head.”

  He gave her a look and then sighed. He seemed to do that a lot. “I’m Kain,” he said finally.

  “Huh. That’s more normal than I was expecting.”

  “What were you expecting?” he wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. Blizzorp or Kreepkrop or something like that.”

  The look only deepened. “What are you called, then?”

  “Silvia.”

  Kain pursed his lips. “Hm.”

  “What?”

  “That’s actually...quite lovely.”

  “Oh.” Was she blushing? It felt like she was blushing. “Anyway,” she said. “We were talking about diplomacy. Why is this Prince of yours coming to you with all of this if you don’t know anything about it?”

  Kain took a bite of his gyro, chewed, and then swallowed. “He doesn’t have anyone else. I’m the closest thing he has to a friend.”

  “Well, that’s...sad. Doesn’t he have advisors or something?”

  “No. Just his guard. Most of whom don’t even respect him.”

  “How can you guard someone you don’t respect?” Silvia wanted to know.

  “The eternal question.” He took another bite, and this one was more savage than the first. “He’s here trying to change things for our people. Things aren’t bad, and no one would probably agree with him that they need changing, but that doesn’t matter to Comman. He just wants to do something great, something good for us.”

  “Alliances are usually good,” Silvia pointed out. “If you can trust those you’re allied with, that is.”

  “Yes,” Kain said, and then finished off the first gyro.

  He fell silent as he ate the chicken gyro, examining the meat thoughtfully before he put it in his mouth. Silvia was amused at the display, and she began typing idly while he ate, in half sentences in bullet points. What would it be like to be new to the city they lived in? Experiencing everything for the first time? What would it be like to be from another planet, even?

  "Do you have allies?" Kain asked, suddenly, and she looked up, feeling guilty for writing about him, however indirectly. She hurriedly backspaced most of it away.

  "Me?" Silvia asked. "Like, my own personal ones or the ones my country has?"

  "Either," Kain said.

  "Then, both, I guess? I mean, the United States has its allies, so I guess that makes them mine. That's the country you're in now," she added at his confused look. "And I have friends. I don't have anything to do with politics, so I can't say I have allies that way, but I have friends who I know will come through for me when I need them to, and who have helped me out plenty of times. I don't know if that's the same thing."

  "I think that's what Comman wants it to be like," Kain said. "Intergalactic friends who come through for each other and trade and all that. I wonder if that's what will happen."

  "Depends on the parties, I'd guess." She bit her lip, thinking of Bobby. "Sometimes one party wants more than the other party wants to give. Sometimes that affects the way they trade or interact. One party wants one specific thing, and the other party doesn't want to give it, but they're worried that if they don't the other party won't want to be allies anymore. Or they've been allies for so long that they've forgotten how to say no to each other." Kain was watching her intently, and so she shook herself and shrugged. "Like I said, I don't know a lot about it."

  "That doesn't seem strictly true," Kain pointed out.

  "Anyway," Silvia said, eager to change the subject. "How's Earth treating you? You're enjoying the food, at least."

  Kain nodded, looking eager all of a sudden. "I am. Your kind uses so much more flavor than we have on Jontira. We have a few herbs and things, but nothing like this." He gestured to his plate.

  “Can everyone on your planet do what you do?”

  He looked a bit wary at the question, but then he smiled at her and launched into a description of how the powers on his planet worked. It was more than she had been expecting to learn about him, and she was honestly surprised by how open he was being about it, at least compared to how closed mouthed he’d wanted her to be the first time they’d met.

  Maybe he just wanted someone to talk to. Or maybe he was homesick for his planet, lost here in a world he’d never been to before.

  Either way, learning about his people was fascinating. The only thing she’d ever thought about aliens was that they would be like the ones she’d seen in the movies. Either murderous, trying to take over the Earth and kill the people who lived there, or they were hyper intelligent and curious about the planet.

  But Kain didn’t seem like either. Certainly he wasn’t murderous, and he didn’t seem to care about Earth at all, really. The planet was a convenience to his Prince, and he was just there to keep the Prince safe. He obviously just wanted to go home.

  Silvia couldn’t help but be impressed and a little envious. Imagine having such a clear idea of what you were supposed to be doing with your life. Imagine just...knowing. Knowing every day when you woke up what you were meant for.

  She couldn’t picture it for herself, and she found that perplexing.

  Chapter Five: Closer

  The next time Kain ran into Silvia, he was in a foul mood.

  On some level, he understood that the rest of the guard didn’t want to be here. A couple of them had been forced to leave their families behind to come on this trip to a foreign planet, and that couldn’t be easy for them.

  But they didn’t have to act like such children about it.

  All day they were just whining about how they didn’t want to be here and how the Prince didn’t even know what he was doing and how it wasn’t fair that they were expected to have to go to these meetings with him.

  Every morning it was the same thing, and Comman always politely pretended like he couldn’t hear them and like it wasn’t tearing him up inside to know what they thought of him. Such blatant disrespect was intolerable in Kain’s opinion, but Comman never did or said anything to punis
h them. He just let them get on with it.

  “What will I gain from calling them out, Kain?” Comman had asked when Kain brought it up as they’d walked to the building where the meetings were being held. “They already don’t like me. Calling them out or punishing them will only make it worse.”

  “You’re the Prince,” Kain said, feeling incredulous that he had to remind the Prince of this fact. “You’re the only reason most of them even have a job. At the very least they should respect you as royalty. Even if they don’t believe in what you’re doing here. Even if they want to go home, they should keep their mouths shut and do as you command.”

  “I don’t command,” Comman pointed out.

  Kain shot him an exasperated look. “Perhaps that is the problem.”

  “You want me to start giving orders?”

  “I want you to start acting like a Prince.” Kain winced at his harsh tone and then affected a bow. “Your Highness.”

  Comman laughed at that, waving the formality away. “I always have a need for your counsel, Kain. You don’t have to hold your tongue around me.”

  It still felt wrong to talk back to the Prince, no matter how invited it was, and so Kain had been silent for the rest of the walk.

  On the day he ran into Silvia, he had broken up a pair of guards who were apparently trying to draw lots between them to decide which of them had the misfortune of going with Comman to the meetings that day. The Prince had insisted that they take it in shifts so that no one had to endure too much of the politics that he knew they weren’t really interested in. He’d also personally told Kain that he wasn’t allowed to come with him to every meeting to make things easier.

  In the end, Kain had made both of the guards go with the Prince and had then stomped out of the building and headed down the street. He hadn’t really had any idea where he was going or where he wanted to end up, he’d just started walking.