ChapterOne
Thick leather straps bit into Verity Drummer’s upper arms. Red-hot metal bars pinned her ankles to the torture table. She attempted to roll, to pull her legs out of contact, but the bars tightened against her flesh.
“Ah, ah, ah, no-no.” The man who held the controls waved a finger at Verity. Florien Rosales de Pilar, a tall, angular man, looked over his hawk-like nose at Verity, a smile laced with disdain plastered across his bearded face. He tightened the straps further.
Verity’s skin sizzled and a wave of pain and nausea washed over her. She willed herself to pass out—begged fate to knock her unconscious. But the platform on which she lay was frozen and sent spikes of ice-cold pain all along her body; keeping her painfully, acutely, awake.
“It would have been so easy for you to stay in space. Your little murder would have gone completely unpunished. Was it guilt, dear Verity? Guilt that made you come home and face justice?”
“Call her Your Highness!” Thomas Moncreith was chained against the stone wall of the dark subterranean chamber. He beat his chains against the rock, the sound echoing off of the rounded room.
“Indeed? Her Highness by the will of the people? Isn’t that how it works in the Dominion these days?”
Verity pinched her eyes shut. How things worked in The Dominion of Pacifica—the country she was the Queen of by birthright—was an issue she should have looked into before returning to Earth to establish herself on the throne.
“Not that what you would like to be called in your ‘Dominion’ makes a difference here. This is the Kingdom of the Australias, and when you murder the Crown Prince of our kingdom, we call you ‘dead’”
A drop of water landed on Verity’s forehead. It hit with a massive thud and smelled like a latrine. Five painful seconds later another hit. From the satisfied look smeared across the face of Rosales de Pilar, this was a new torture.
Less than a year ago Verity had assumed she’d never return to her home planet. The looming threat of arranged marriage was a strong deterrent. Twenty some years ago it had looked, to her royal Mother and to her betrothed’s esteemed parents, to be a solid political match. But twenty years, the faked death of her mother who had gone insane, and now the murder of her intended, the Crown Prince Paolo Reyes, had changed everyone’s opinions. None more so than the secret police of The Kingdom of the Australias, who had arrested Verity for the murder, and detained her traveling companions as accomplices.
Sally Fitzanna, the illegitimate daughter of the ill-fated queen Anna Maria, and thus Verity’s older, half sister, was chained against the wall across from Thomas. “Dear Rosales, dear, dear Rosales, you don’t want to do this. Think of the negative publicity.’
Rosales de Pilar snorted. With the press of a button Sally’s arms were yanked over her head, the chains wrenched short so that her toes just brushed the floor.
“Earthbound humans love justice. And they hate upstart spacelings who try to impose their ill-fitting morals on our homey little world.”
Sally crossed her fingers above her head and spit, the ancient curse of the Dominion.
“Now, now, if you can behave you may get away with forced labor or deportation. Where is it you come from, Sally? Do you have a home to return to?”
“We demand to see the High Council of Dominion!” Thomas’ voice was controlled and authoritative—a new sound, in Verity’s experience. As the ice inched its way through her flesh like needles threading though her body, she doubted it would make any difference. She would die on this table tonight.
