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Prince Lotor of the Drule Empire stood among the berry bushes on Planet Arus, waiting impatiently. The warm summer wind brushed through his hair, ruffling his dark clothes.
“Where are you, my sweet?” he murmured to himself, his rough voice pulling with something akin to anticipation. The bushes had become a place of neutral ground between himself and the fiery Princess Allura, after he’d caught her once dancing and singing among them. The encounter had resulted in no marriage proposals—but it had created something delightful between them.
They shared a secret now.
A pure and innocent secret, that she liked to dance and that he liked to pick berries with her. These were soft things, perfectly aligned with Arusian concepts of romance and love. These were the things, he believed, that would reveal he was the perfect suitor for her.
That he, the most powerful and decorated warrior prince in the universe, could speak to her desires for a soft lover.
But that day, she never arrived.
The prince waited in the silence of the forest, the great Arusian sun yawning over him as its rays slipped from great heights to beneath the tree canopy, blanketing him in darkness.
He initially thought himself a proud sufferer—that perhaps Allura was testing him somehow, seeing how long he would wait for her. It had been the perfect day for berry picking, still at the height of the season for it. And given that he himself was not attacking Arus, he knew Princess Allura to be unoccupied.
But as the sun set, something fell in Lotor’s heart.
He looked down at his combat boots, his handsome face twisting. He felt a pain in his collar bones that he did not know to name as dejection. “Am I a fool?” he whispered, voice roughening.
Perhaps he had scared her away with his last visit. Perhaps the berry bushes were not a special place, and they shared no delightful secret. Perhaps he would have done well to simply remain on his own dying planet, drinking hard wines and taking solace in his once-great harem, which he had turned away months ago.
As the daylight dimmed, his yellow, reptilian eyes began to take on their characteristic glow in darkness, his slit pupils dilating to enhance his vision. He stared down at his large hand, curiously analyzing the nicks and scars from bloody battles.
Perhaps Princess Allura still found him too violent and alien. Perhaps she did not desire a man who stood a head taller than all of her people—who could slice through five men with a single stroke of his sword, bearing a legendary grace and power that left enemies in awe—but could not speak her language.
He gnashed a sharp, white fang into his bottom lip, a flush overcoming him, heating up his periwinkle cheeks.
Surely, he had not imagined the spark between them—!
As he pondered, the planet of Arus seemed to take peculiar amusement in him. Its deep magic seeded through the dirt and air around him, pulling at a lock of his hair with a sharp wind, as if to catch his attention and to cool the red of his cheek.
Foolish child, it acknowledged him.
He quickly stepped back, as if burned by the power that tingled in the recesses of his mind. His Arusian blood rose in joy while his Drule blood hissed at the intrusion. “What is this?” he hissed, his reptilian eyes narrowing. He looked up at the sky, which held nothing but increasingly bright stars, then down at the ground, where a few flowers bent back in the wind, wiggling their leaves at him. “Who was that?”
The voice sounded neither male nor female—nor quite alive in any natural way.
It was a resonance, like a deep vibration of a string.
The echo of pebbles and babbling brooks.
Foolish child, the resonance hummed again. The wind twisted up, lightly pulling at his hair again in the direction of the Castle of Lions. Lotor grimaced, his handsome face twisting in disconcertion. He carded his hand through his hair, as if to break the connection between himself and the mysterious resonance.
“Stop that.” He sniffed, attempting to appear regal, even as the ground beneath him pulsed with an energy he had never before felt.
The wind died away with a sigh.
And then Lotor found himself standing once more in great silence in the empty forest. He immediately regretted his words, his reptilian eyes focusing upon the dirt with a deep haunt. “Wait.” He kneeled down to the fresh soil, planting his bare hand upon the face of the planet. “Do not leave, for I do not know what you are.”
The deep magic of the planet had guided him to Allura once. That meant Arus could not entirely hate the prince—even if it did insult him by calling him a child.
He swallowed hard, his eyes narrowing. Magic was far more the witch’s expertise—he did not know the proper way to do things, or how the planet seemed to have a consciousness at all.
The energy bumped back into his hands, like a light touch, as if to confirm the planet was still listening.
I know what you are, it told him.
“And what is that?” he demanded, but the mysterious power of Arus never responded directly. Instead, the wind picked up again, sweeping him back toward the Castle of Lions.
Needed.
Prince Lotor stared up at the great Castle of Lions, which most certainly housed Princess Allura.
The moonlight of the planet slipped like raindrops off his skin as he sunk his fingertips into a crack between two stones, lifting himself up. The wind pushed him along as his muscles flexed with the effort of free-climbing the castle.
His handsome face had tightened in worry that perhaps something was terribly wrong.
Needed, the planet had said.
It had told the son of its own worst enemy that he was needed in the heart of its ruling castle.
But he had a sinking suspicion that the planet could see into him—that it knew the conflicting composite of his blood, just as it knew his conflict between conquest and love.
“What has happened to her?” he demanded under his breath. “Is she injured? Dying?” He grunted as he pulled himself up, the fringe on his royal clothes slipping across his shoulder. Hard muscle bulged. He lithely settled onto the railing of a balcony for rest, his reptilian eyes narrowing as he leaned against the stone, paranoid that he could be caught.
The Castle of Lions was tall and sleek, with many windows.
He grimaced as he looked down.
Needed, the wind resonated to him, like an insistent mantra.
The prince inhaled sharply and then grabbed onto a growing vine, testing that it could hold his weight. He had a sudden vision of being a boy, climbing the highest mountain on his planet and rasping for air. He had been so proud of his accomplishment until his father had cuffed him for insolence.
Lotor’s lips pressed together tightly, his strong arms grabbing into a support beam. He flipped onto the balcony that he knew to be Princess Allura’s, his movements like a panther—silent. The large glass doors were open to the night air.
Needed, the resonance insisted again.
His alien eyes narrowed as he tentatively moved toward the room, seeking out the princess’s form. His hand came to grip at his sword, in some thought that perhaps there was another intruder. That she was in danger.
But instead, he stopped short at another, more harrowing sight. And the grip upon his sword hilt hesitated, his long fingers falling away.
The beautiful and fiery Princess Allura lay in bed, her strawberry blond hair plastered to her sweaty face, her eyes dark with circles. She was curled up in a ball on her side, her white blankets in a toss about her, a silk nightgown tangled listlessly about her knees. Every line in her body was tense with pain.
On her bedside table was her pink berry-picking basket, tilted over as if forgotten.
Lotor kneeled beside her, his reptilian eyes wide. “Princess Allura,” he breathed, his rough voice softening in fear of distressing her. Never before had he seen her so undone and weak. Was she dying?
Needed, insisted the resonance again.
Her blue, glassy eyes blearily opened to focus on him, her cheek still sunken into the pillow. Her thin brows knitted together. “Prince…” she whispered, her voice tight with pain. “…Lotor?” She blinked several times and squinted, as if she could not quite grip onto reality.
For a few seconds, she simply stared at him the way one would at a particularly strange cloud.
And then she blearily raised a cold, sweaty hand to his face, planting it against his cheek and nose to confirm that he was in fact real. “Oh,” she whispered, her eyes widening a bit.
He sputtered at bit, pulling away. Her fingers caught on his hair, pulling it as the wind had done earlier. Her sloppy, uncalculated actions left him with a furrowed, concerned brow. “What is wrong with you, my sweet?” he murmured. In doing so, he leaned forward to inhale her scent, and his sensitive Drule nose twitched with the scent of her pain interrupting her usually sweet smell, and with something else.
A sickly sweet, metallic scent.
Blood.
Allura whined, her sweet voice catching hard, “Please leave.” And then she pulled her hand back toward her abdomen, the moonlight flickering from the beads of sweat at her temple. Her pale face was unnaturally white and sickly, but a small blush managed to bring some color to her. She tucked her legs closer to her chest.
Lotor’s eyes roved over the tight horror in her face, even as every neuron in his body began to hard-wire to his Drule instinct to protect mate in pain. “You were not at the bushes today to pick berries,” his rough voice softening. “I became…worried.”
The princess inhaled shakily. “Did you truly come back here, just for that?”
“Of course, princess.” His head tilted. “I very much enjoyed it last time. And your dancing as well.”
She closed her eyes. She seemed unnaturally weak. “I’m sick,” she whispered. “You should go now, before someone finds you.”
His elfin ears flicked back in surprise, and he narrowed his reptilian eyes. “This is not sickness,” he disagreed. “You are simply in pain from a monthly blood.”
Allura stilled upon the bed, every line in her body stiffening. Her bloodshot eyes honed in on him with shock. “Having a—? Do you mean to say you know that I am—?”
“—Of course. I can smell it.”
“What?” she breathed suddenly, her voice sharpening in surprise and horror. A deep flush surged over her pretty cheeks. “You can?”
“Yes,” he declared proudly. “Drule senses are the best in the universe. That is only one reason why I am the best suitor for you.”
Her breath had hitched, her voice raising in a strangled noise of horror. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “Oh no. No. No.” Her face flamed a beet red as she blearily tried to pull up on her bedsheets—and then cover herself entirely in a flop of her thin arm. “Ngh.”
Only a tangled mop of blond hair stuck out from the top. She continued to whine, with tears rising in her eyes.
Lotor stared at her in bewilderment. “What is wrong? There is no dishonor in your condition. I wish to help you, princess.”
“…But there is dishonor,” she whispered, voice muffled by the sheet hiding her from him. “It is very wrong that you are here with me like this. Please leave now.”
The prince scoffed in concern. “No one knows I am here but you, my sweet.”
Her voice was a pitiful whine from beneath the sheet. “You do not understand. This is a time of shame,” she whispered fearfully. “I am not to interact with men if I can help it.”
Lotor’s handsome face twisted. “What.”
“This is divine punishment,” she confessed, muffled voice watery. “For it to hurt me so, I have done something terrible and unladylike. I must suffer through it to atone.”
“What.”
“Perhaps it was the dancing, or foolishly treating you as the ally you are not—”
His long fingers hooked into the hem of the bedsheet, gently pulling it down to reveal the tear-stained, flushed face of the princess. She looked up at him fearfully.
“Do not touch me,” she begged. “This is a time of shame. Do you not understand that?”
His reptilian eyes held her in bewilderment. “Allura.” His voice strained. “What do you mean by divine punishment?”
Innocent, pained eyes stared up at him, her blond locks in a twist about her sweaty temple. “I have angered the gods,” she whispered, as if in disbelief he could not understand. Truly, Lotor was daft. “I must suffer for my actions.”
His rough voice raised up in a strangle of disbelief as well. “Actions?”
Her small fingers curled in on the material of her nightgown, and her face flushed more. She suddenly could not look him in the eye. “I have not been very ladylike lately,” she whispered. “So my time of shame is even more painful than the usual punishment for being born a woman.”
At that, the prince loosened his hold upon the bedsheet, his hand falling to the side in a strange awe.
It was then Lotor realized she wore no crown, which looked odd to him. She appeared so very, very odd in that moment—less physically desirable and yet somehow even more in need of someone to shower her with love and affection. He wanted to reach out and pull her to him and run his fingers down her hair, even if it were dirty and matted with sweat.
“Who,” he demanded, “has told you these lies about punishments and shame?”
The innocent woman blinked up at him. “They are not lies,” she said fervently, even as she inhaled sharply in another wave of agony. Her fingers dug tighter into the silk of her nightgown. “These are the ways of Arus—sacred knowledge passed down for generations. We are an enlightened people, unlike your kind if you do not understand it.”
Lotor huffed in disgust. “Your people are not enlightened.” His eyes flashed in increasingly righteous anger on her behalf, his warrior’s heart cracking. “They have manipulated you, Princess Allura. To control you.” He swallowed hard. “These pains are not sent by the gods.”
“Do not speak blasphemy to me,” she begged.
He continued in his righteous worry. “They are merely muscular contractions, my sweet. Like headaches or other pains one might endure. It is not divine punishment, as you say.” His lips pressed together tightly. He dared to reach forward to touch his fingers to hers, testing how fearful she was.
She looked at him, breath hitched, but she did not move away.
He gently curled his fingers around hers. “It is simple science. My people have known such things for centuries. There is no shame in what you are, and I feel no shame being with you, on any day.”
Allura’s eyes brightened with tears as she looked down at his great hand, the sharp and elegant angles of his long fingers as they curled around hers. “…Oh.” And she blinked several times because in her entire life, no one had ever said such things to her. Her face flamed up, even as her heart soared.
The warrior prince tilted his head. “Are your…traditions why you lie here in agony without your servants or caretakers?”
She did not answer.
Needed, echoed the strange resonance of the planet into his being.
He bared a fang in displeasure. “That is unacceptable treatment. You are not a criminal or prisoner of war here.” He leaned forward, his eyes searching hers. His long, soft locks brushed against the bare skin of her arm. “Allow me to help you, princess. I will prove that I am the best husband for you by obtaining a cure for your pain.”
The princess inhaled shakily. “There is no cure for it,” she whispered. “Nothing can take away the pain I have. Only time can atone.”
Lotor’s lips pressed flatly together. “Princess Allura. There are many ways to relieve your pain.” His hand uncoupled from hers to trail to her lower abdomen. “It is simply that the muscles of your body are—"
She quickly grabbed his wrist, her small fingers barely managing to wrap around his strong bones. Her teary eyes widened. “—I do not want you to touch me.”
“I do not intend to hurt you,” he said, elegant brows furrowing.
Allura’s voice was a quick, fearful whip. “I do not want you to touch me like this.”
The prince’s eyes searched hers, and he slowly nodded before gently withdrawing from her entirely. His fingers slid against hers with a gentle intimacy that raised a flush upon her face once more—and then his warmth was gone from her. “As you wish.”
And then he stood, his lithe form catching the light as he turned away from the bed. “There is a medicine made by my people, which would ease your pain. I shall retrieve it from my ship on your behalf.” His head tilted as he stared out at the Arusian sky, pondering the strange ways of the planet, which had brought him to the bedside of the princess.
It was then that Allura dared to sit up on her elbow, still feeling flushed. “A medicine?”
His white hair flashed in the moonlight as he turned to face her, his lithe form illuminated in the darkness. “Do not fear, my sweet. If not affection, then I will shower you with comfort.”
Soon enough, the prince arrived backed at his ship, pulling off the vines he’d settled over it to hide it from any possible flights of team Voltron. “I do not understand,” he grunted as he shoved them aside. “You are a planet that can speak, and yet you do not heal your own princess.”
The planet of Arus continued to hum beneath his feet, the vines falling off his ship with a little more ease.
“What manner of being are you?” Lotor demanded, the hair raising on the back of his neck at the display of living vines, which slowly curled upon the ground. “Do you not recognize the face of your enemy, or the cries of pain from Princess Allura? Do you not see the cruelty of her caretakers, who have deceived her?” He scuffed his boot into the dirt, his white brows knitted together in righteous anger. “Or did they learn such lies from you?”
The dirt slid along the black of his boot without consequence, but the air about him whipped in a sigh. It seemed almost sad.
His lip curled in a snarl. “Do not give excuses to me. I have no patience for such—especially not when the princess is in pain.” He turned toward the hatch of his ship, his long fingers hooking into the locks.
The metal vibrated from something out of the ground. You love her.
He recoiled his hand, swallowing hard for a time as he stepped back. “What do you think?” he snapped, baring a fang. “Are you daft as well as lazy? I have shouted as much to your skies a dozen times. Now made a decision on whether you want me to help her, and get out of my way.”
There was a hesitation in the heartbeat of the forest.
Not my enemy, it resonated into his bones in a soft way. Son of Lora.
His voice hardened as his heart skipped a beat. “How do you know my mother’s name?”
But there was no answer, and the buzzing power around him was gone. He stood there for a time, waiting for the wind to push him one way or another. But he knew he was alone once again, or that the consciousness that dared to speak in his mind had retreated back fully into the dirt.
Lotor dared to bare a fang. “Know this, you dumb planet,” he grumbled at it. “I am not your ally. If I find Princess Allura so mistreated again on your soil, I will make you pay for it. Along with the rest of team Voltron.”
And then he lithely unlocked the hatch, muttering beneath his breath about crazy magic and planets stupid enough to rely on enemies. He leaned over to search through a storage compartment, rummaging through his emergency kit for the medicine that would help Allura. “Sifa balm,” he murmured. “Sifa balm. Where are you. Tell me Cossak did not steal the last of it from me.”
His bare fingers struck against the small container, and he grunted out a noise of triumph—just as suddenly he heard the whirlwind of great machines in the sky.
Voltron lions.
Lotor’s face faulted in irritation. “Great,” he complained. “You ask me to help the princess, but you fail to call away your security. You are a dumb planet. I should crush you beneath my heel for your oversight.” And then he groaned. “This makes everything so complicated.”
And as he grabbed onto another device, four robot lions slammed to the ground around him, disrupting the quiet forest, weapons charged.
“Hold your ground, everyone,” Keith called to the other paladins, his eyes narrowed on the ship. Its sleek, black metal gleamed in the moonlight. “I don’t think Prince Lotor’s here for a fight.”
Lance piped up jokingly, “Yeah, he’s probably just here to read sonnets to Princess Allura. It’s a full moon, you know.”
“Do Drule even have poetry?” Pidge asked over their frequency. “They’re awfully violent for that kind of thing.”
Hunk’s gruff voice echoed. “Maybe they sing instead.”
That made Lance hiss in fear. “Oh man. Don’t even joke about that—I do not wanna hear this guy sing. Like, for any reason.”
“Well, I don’t wanna hear him read poetry. How about that, huh?”
Across the distance, Lotor stepped down from his ship, raising to his full height as the moonlight glinted off his skull belt and the sword at his side. His reptilian, yellow eyes focused upon each one of the robot lions for a time. And then he snarled out, his white brows angling hard, “Ah, team Voltron. But one is missing.”
Lance was still muttering over the frequency. “Can you even imagine this guy singing? With that voice, he’d kill people. And not in a good way—”
“—Princess Allura,” Keith cut in, broadcasting to Lotor, “is not here.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Lotor’s voice was dry and unimpressed. He raised his nose in an aristocratic way, the wind catching tendrils of his loose, white hair. His eyes narrowed in accusation. “I wonder why.”
Keith inhaled. And then he exhaled slowly in an enduring way. “She’s back at the castle, where you can’t get to her. Now tell us your business here before we blast your cruiser.”
Lotor’s thin lips began to stretch, revealing sharp fangs. The moonlight seemed to bend away into shadow around him, his white hair raising in the wind like flickers of a flame. “If you must know, I am here to save the Princess Allura from you lot.”
“Told you he was here for her,” Lance snapped his fingers. “Pay up, you guys.”
“…We didn’t have a bet going,” Hunk deadpanned. “We can’t pay up for something we didn’t bet on.”
“Uh, I’m pretty sure we made a bet, like, months ago. It totally still stands.”
Keith sighed and called out to Lotor, “Look, do we have to do this? We all know you got this obsession with Princess Allura, and I just—” He pressed his lips together. “Well, here we are, wasting all this energy and losing sleep because you just can’t take no for an answer.”
The blunt response made the prince blink. His gold eyes focused upon the black lion in particular. And then his handsome eyes narrowed to slits. “You dare to insult me? Princess Allura, I have noticed, rebuffs your advances as well.” He sniffed. “At least I have entire worlds to offer her, and a most respectable title as Queen of the Universe. Whereas you have nothing. And you are nothing as well.”
Lance’s mouth dropped open. “Oooh,” he called out. “Lotor’s throwing some shade over here. Damn, Keith—do you need a band-aid for that burn?”
In the cockpit of the black lion, the man sat with his arms tense on the controls. Prince Lotor stood before him, unarmed. It would only take a button press on the controls to blast him into a piece of—
Keith inhaled sharply, his dark eyes narrowing on the alien who stood before him with arms proudly crossed. He slipped his hand away from the weapon controls and managed to retort, “As the leader of Voltron, I am ordering you to return to your ship and fly off-planet. Princess Allura does not want you here. And no one else does either.”
The prince pouted, but raised a brow. “Your comrade in the red lion seems to like my presence here well enough. And I know Princess Allura will like what I have to offer her.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Oh, crap.” Lance squeaked, suddenly fumbling about for a switch. His face flushed in horror. “Is my communicator set to broadcast? Oh, it is. Whoops. Sorry, guys.”
Lotor’s thin lips stretched, revealing his dreadfully sharp, white fangs. His reptilian eyes glimmered. “Tell me, what is a band-aid? And in what way have I burned you? I assume he speaks in metaphor.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Keith deadpanned, turning his head to visually glare at the red lion nearby. “The point is, you’re not going to see the princess.” The black lion stamped its foot upon the ground, reverberating a minor earthquake in the field. “If you don’t leave now, we will make you leave.”
The Drule prince stood strong in the midst of it, not the least bit haunted by the four deadly machines trained upon him. His hair flickered about his shoulders with the rumble and the winds. He tilted his head, his ear flicking. “I stand before you as one man. You bring four lions to challenge me.” His thin lips stretched farther into a smirk. “Is that the power you feel you need to defeat me in honorable combat?”
Pidge piped up then. “Keith, he’s baiting you. Don’t take the bait.”
“Oh, he’s taking the bait,” Lance called, eyes wide.
The black lion’s mouth snarled open, its armor reconfiguring around its shoulder-mounted cannon, which trained upon the prince and began to glow a threatening, hot orange.
Something dark leeched into Lotor’s eyes. “Go on and take the shot,” he called, his voice roughening with the riling instinct of danger. “What an honorable man you will be, to shoot down an unarmed opponent.”
It was then that Hunk hesitated. “Keith, are you really gonna shoot him?”
The cannon upon the black lion continued to whine up, but the pilot remained frozen at the controls, glaring at the prince.
Pidge dared to add, “Yeah, this doesn’t seem right. He’s not really armed.”
Keith’s mouth had pressed into a hard line. Then he called to Lotor, “It’s a pretty bold move to come here, unarmed and without backup. You must want to talk to the princess real bad, huh?”
Lotor’s face remained twisted in tension. “Of course.”
“About what?”
He bared a fang. “None of your concern, since you have so obviously slighted her to be here instead.”
For all of his attempts to shut down the broadcasting component of his communicator, Lance just couldn’t seem to get it shut down correctly. His concerned voice echoed through the field, “Please tell me he didn’t come here to sing to her.”
Lotor’s focused eyes dared to slide back to the red lion. “Sing?” he repeated incredulously. “Why would I sing to Princess Allura?”
“Oh, no,” groaned Hunk. “You actually gave him the idea.”
Lance’s voice strangled as the Red Lion sat down on its haunches. “Uh, no reason. None at all. It’s uh—metaphor again. Please don’t sing.”
The prince’s aristocratic nose wrinkled in distaste before turning back to Keith. “I am here to offer Princess Allura something other than a song. I am—” his face twisted even farther as he tried to hide that he had already been in her room— “attempting diplomacy on this eve. And you are making it far more difficult than it has to be.”
“Diplomacy,” Keith deadpanned.
“I am here to offer Princess Allura a gift. The gift is for her alone.”
“What, let me guess,” Lance said dryly. “Your gift is a deal—her hand in marriage in exchange for Arus’s ongoing existence? You’ve already tried that seven times.”
“Nine times, actually,” Pidge said, turning on his communicator to broadcast along with Lance and make Lance’s mistake seem purposeful.
“Don’t tell me the Drule have a saying about the tenth time being a charm.” Hunk smacked his hand on the console of his lion in merriment, and the animal’s armor seemed to shiver with him in amusement.
Prince Lotor backstepped, his handsome face faltering for the slightest second. His cheeks seemed to heat with a flush, making him appear much less the battle-hardened warrior. He hid his falter with a roll of his eyes. “I have not come here to ask for her hand in marriage,” he declared. “Though if she were to offer such to me, I would gladly accept.”
“I’m sure you would, buddy,” Lance said, leaning his head against his cheek and sighing. “But that’s not the problem, is it.”
The canon on the black lion remained at full-charge. Keith said, “Princess Allura will not see you, no matter what gift you have. Return to your ship and fly off-planet, or we’ll—we’ll destroy your ship. And you’ll become our prisoner of war.”
The flushed prince raised a brow. “Ah, at last. Some military intelligence,” he commented snidely. But then, of all things, the prince simply began to walk toward the Castle of Lions in the distance, sniffing haughtily. “If you attempt to destroy my ship, then my army will rain a great fire upon you, and upon this planet.”
“You don’t have that kind of long-range missile capability,” Keith scoffed.
Lotor raised a brow. In his great hands, he carried the balm for Allura—and a second device. “Then fire upon my ship and discover that I do. But the princess will not appreciate a military strike against Arus, which could be so easily avoided.” He flicked his hair over his shoulder at that and continued walking, his steps sure as he passed by the tense lions.
“Do you think,” Hunk asked privately over their line, “he’s bluffing?”
Pidge hummed, his thin brows scrunching. “Uh—” the color drained from his face. “I’m scanning now. And we’re under an encrypted target lock from an unidentified source, within range of Planet Doom.” He began to murmur in panic under his breath, “How did I miss that—? How did he—?”
A dark mischief stretched Lotor’s lips as he walked beyond the powerful Voltron lions. “As long as you allow me to complete my business here, you and this planet will remain unharmed!”
As they watched him steadily progress to the castle,
“Is it just me,” Lance murmured hesitantly, “or does he really want to talk to Princess Allura?”
Keith huffed protectively. “I’m not sure he just wants to talk.”
And then he moved his lion forward. Its sharp claws dug into the ground before the Drule prince, cutting him off from the path to the castle. “Princess Allura can’t talk because she’s sick,” Keith said again. “Remove the target lock and leave this planet.”
Lotor’s yellow eyes narrowed up at the lion. “Who are you to speak on behalf of the princess?”
Keith stepped forward then. “I don’t think Princess Allura would want—”
“—You are her comrades,” the prince snapped, eyes slitting at Keith. He pointed his finger. “You claim to love her, and yet you allow her to lie in agony without comfort. Without her servants catering to her every whim.”
The black lion’s pilot began to flush. “Wait, how do you know—?”
The prince snarled again, baring a sharp fang. “I trust you to keep her safe and healthy, and you cannot even do that.” His hand twitched to the sword at his side, but then he stopped himself. “You are a dishonorable suitor for her. Were I on my planet, I would slay you for your failings. You desire her in health but leave her when she is in pain.”
Keith narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t even worthy to talk to her!”
Lance cut in. “Wait, wait—guys. How does he know Allura’s sick?”
Lotor huffed at him, then turned away, allowing the insult to brush off of him in favor of Allura’s comfort. His eyes flashed in irritation. “You dumb planet,” he muttered beneath his breath to the earth. “If you desire to not feel my strike, then call off your protectors. Allura is in pain while we waste time.”
And then of all things, there was a great rush through the ground beneath the lions.
And all four of the Voltron lions powered down, with resounding cries of frustration and confusion from their pilots.
Lotor smirked as he suddenly slipped into the trees, running toward the castle with a favorable wind at his back. “At last,” he murmured. “Some intelligence from you as well.”
With his cover blown by Voltron, the prince loudly burst through the main entrance to the Castle of Lions, sword brandished and eyes lit with his usual hot-headed candor. The castle servants cried out in shock and panic.
“Out of my way!” he called to a servant with a cart of dishes. “I am here for Princess Allura and for her alone!”
The servant was a young Arusian woman, whose big brown eyes flickered from Lotor to the Voltron pilots, who were quickly running up the steps to follow Lotor. She gasped out fearful breaths at the sight of the dreadful alien prince and desperately tried to move her cart, only for a wheel to get stuck in the grout between the stones of the floor. “I am sorry, my lord,” she cried, unable to hold his reptilian gaze. She shook. “Please do not hurt me!”
Lance had begun to sprint through the door, eyes wide. “Whoa, whoa!” he cried out, raising his arms. His shoes scuffed the floor as he slid between the woman and Lotor. “Dude. This is not diplomacy. I thought that’s what you were going for here?” He protectively backed closer to the servant girl, giving the prince a warning look.
Lotor bared a fang. “There is no time for diplomacy when Princess Allura is in pain.”
The pilot swallowed hard. “Man, how do you even know she’s in pain, huh?”
“I do not need to explain myself to you, pilot,” he sneered, then lightly shoved Lance out of the way. He stepped forward, his eyes turning back to the servant.
The Arusian girl gasped as she sunk against her cart of dishes. “Please, my lord.” Her hands shook hard. “I c-cannot right its p-path. And the p-princess is ill.”
Lotor growled, using his free hand to wrench the cart away, casting a few dishes to the floor. They shattered in pieces, and the girl shrieked just as Lance grabbed onto her to pull her out of the way.
“There is nothing that would keep me from her,” he declared.
The servant girl’s breath hitched against Lance’s shoulder as she cried out, hoping to save the princess, “But it is a time of shame for her—you c-cannot see her! It is forbidden!”
The prince’s strong body stiffened. He turned around, his eyes hot in a turmoil of emotion. And then he stared at the girl, and an unsettling disconcertion overcame him. “You believe that, don’t you.”
Lance said, voice raising nervously, “Hey, guys, can’t we all talk about this without breaking the dishes or scaring people?”
Meanwhile, Keith had run up the steps, holding a communicator in his hand. “Princess?” he was calling desperately. “Princess, we’ve got a breach here with our lions out of commission for some reason. You’re about to get a visitor. But don’t worry, we’ll be right there to protect you.”
“—Keith?” came in a weak crackle. It was Allura.
Lotor’s elfin ears flicked at the increased pain in her voice.
“Keith, what’s going on? Are you all alright?”
“We’re fine.” His dark eyes landed on Lotor and narrowed. “But—”
And then suddenly, Lotor lunged for the communicator. His large hand wrenched away the device and then crunched in, breaking the delicate circuitry. A ring of blue electricity surged around his fingers as he stared down at it, then glared at Keith. “The target lock is for you,” he hissed. “Not for Princess Allura. I will not have you unsettle her and turn her against me now.”
His hand twitched as the electricity wore away, and he dropped the communicator onto the floor, leaving it smoking. He turned around, calculating the location of Allura’s room as being down the corridor and four levels up.
Lance took the opportunity to move before the prince with his hands still raised. “Look,” he said nervously. “I get that you think you’re in love with Princess Allura—but she really doesn’t feel good. And you barging in there like this will make her angry. And then she won’t want to talk to you.”
Behind them, Hunk and Keith were helping up the poor servant girl Lotor had targeted. Keith hissed, “Are you seriously trying to help him?”
“I’m trying to avoid getting us all blown up,” Lance retorted lightly. “Plus, I’m starting to feel sorry for the guy.” He waved his raised hands. “He just really doesn’t get it, you know?”
“I do not need your pity,” Lotor declared, baring a fang in irritation. “And Allura will listen to me. Because I come bearing a gift for her pain, which you all so blatantly ignore.”
“Dude, how do you even know she’s in pain?” Lance pleaded. “I thought she was just sick or something.”
Lotor sniffed haughtily and raised his chin, eyes still light with accusatory fire. “This is the time of her monthly blood, and you have all abandoned her, which is unacceptable.”
Lance’s face began to tinge pink again as he stuttered, “…Monthly—? Oh. Um.” His voice strangled. “How, uh, how do you know that’s wrong?”
The prince turned around. “My senses are far more sensitive than your own, human. Perhaps if you were like me, you would hear the sounds of her labored breathing, or the whine of pain in her throat.” His free fist clenched, and his eyes flashed to the girl once more with a strange question upon his face. “But maybe you all would ignore her still.”
The red pilot had the grace to look embarrassed and confused. “But—her nanny just said she was sick? She didn’t saying anything about the princess hurting.”
Lotor began to move down the hall, which was now abandoned. “Then perhaps this Nanny and I shall have a chat about that. Later. Once I have healed the princess.”
Lance began to trail after him, a bundle of questions, his brown eyebrows furrowing. “So wait, how bad is she? Is she okay? Can you really sense her pain from, like, your planet? What do you mean by heal her? Is that why you’re here?”
“No, you idiot,” Lotor deadpanned roughly, voice twisting in irritation. “I am merely here to sing her a song.”
And then he sped up the winding stairs.
Lance paused as the other pilots caught up, his face twisting in shock.
“We need to go after him!” Pidge cried. “Who knows what he’ll do!”
But then Lance grabbed onto Pidge’s arm. “Guys. Wait a minute. This guy’s got major tactical advantages right now, but he’s not fighting us. He thinks Princess Allura is hurt and needs help. And he just made a joke, I think.”
Keith gave him a dark look as he started up the stairs. “We can’t just let him into Princess Allura’s bedchambers,” he snapped. “He’ll kidnap her or worse.”
“But here’s the thing." Lance paused. A strange, impish mischief came over his handsome features as his mind raced. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think he’s already seen her tonight. You remember how we found his ship? If he just got here, then why were all the vines in neat little rows? The first thing he would’ve done would be to cover his ship. But now that I think about it, it looked more like he’d just taken his cover off.” He shook his head in wonder. "Guys, I think Lotor's actually trying to help Princess Allura."
The bursting open of double doors did little to Allura besides inspire an exhausted flinch in her. By that point, she had worsened, the pain leaving her nauseated, body sunken fully against her pillows as her core ached. She barely felt the brush of air as one Prince Lotor of the Drule Empire kneeled down beside her bed once more, the doors closed—and locked—behind him.
“Princess Allura,” he murmured to her, searching her face. “I have returned to you, my sweet. I have in my hands the cure for your pain.”
She opened bleary, blue eyes.
He raised up in his large palm a small, black container. “As you might know,” he declared softly, “my people are a warrior race, superior in skill and intellect. We have perfected the art of healing to enhance our battlefield performance.” He gently set it down by her hands, which were tightly clenched into her blankets. “Take this as my gift to you.”
Allura’s pale cheeks glittered with tears in the moonlight. She stared up at him with big, innocent eyes, blinking slowly. “…How,” she whispered, “does it work?”
Lotor realized then that she was becoming desperate, to so easily accept a gift from him. “It is a paste,” he murmured. “You apply it to your skin, where you feel pain.”
“And…and it will not hurt me more?” Her voice broke.
“No, my sweet. It will help your pain. I promise it.” He moved to unscrew the uncap, still eyeing her in worry. She had hardly moved, her breathing labored as if in great agony. He swept two fingers into the white paste and ran them along his wrist to show her. “Do you see? It is quite safe.”
Allura swallowed hard. “But I am not Drule.”
His unnaturally alien eyes focused upon her, and his voice roughened. “This has been used by those with Arusian blood, which is why I know this is safe for you. I would not have suggested it otherwise.”
The princess stared at his smooth features, searching his face and his alien eyes. “You really care,” she whispered. “Don’t you.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
She blinked several times. “Everything about you usually is.” Her voice was soft. She tentatively moved to reach for the small container, but then her face twisted. “Oh.” Her body tensed upon the bed as she squeezed her eyes shut, nausea from the pain making the whole world tilt.
Lotor felt helpless. “Are you often in this much pain?”
“N-no,” she whispered. But then she swallowed hard, sinking back onto the bed. She’d hurt enough that she had not wanted to eat that evening. Now, her blood sugars were dropping, leaving her weak and shaky on top of her blood loss.
His eyes narrowed in concern, and he reached out to her. “It is well I appeared to you, then, Princess Allura.”
His long fingers gently wrapped around her arm and slid behind her back. She instinctively grabbed onto him for stability as he helped her to sit up in bed. Her small fingers tightened upon the strong muscle and bone of his arm. The straps of her nightgown fell down her shoulder with the movement, her sweaty hair sticking to her neck and shoulders.
She dared to allow herself to lean against him for support, closing her eyes. “I do not feel well,” she confessed in a whisper, breath hitching.
Lotor leaned her back against her many pillows, brushing hair out of her eyes. He then placed his large hand against her forehead, face in a puzzle. “I will call your servants for you,” he murmured. “They will help you to apply the medicine and perhaps offer you food and water. You appear a little dehydrated, my sweet.”
And then his long fingers slipped away, caressing her sweaty skin in doing so. And then he ruined the moment, raising a brow. “I would offer to help you myself, but I know you will only slap me.”
His words inspired a tired giggle from Allura. An odd appreciation gleamed from her eyes as she stared at him. For the first time, she realized she felt oddly safe with him. “Yes.” Her voice was a soft whisper—a glimmer of humor in the midst of her pain. “I would.”
His voice strained. “I hope one day, you might trust me enough to help you fully. But…even if you do not accept me as a suitor, I am proud to assist you in any way I can.”
A silence fell between them. She looked down, the small case still cradled in her cold-sweat hands. She knew she was ugly and undone in that moment. It felt strange to have the great and terrible Lotor of the Drule Empire, waiting on her hand and foot at her most vulnerable. And he expressed no shame in doing so.
Her breath hitched as she looked up at him. “Your people, the Drule,” she whispered. She swallowed hard. “I thought…perhaps your world was cruel to women, because of how possessive you were to me. But you have offered me something no one else has, and you are not disgusted by me like this. I do not understand you.”
Lotor’s reptilian eyes focused on hers. “You simply do not know my world,” he declared. “I thought you merely a pretty face when I first saw you, an otherwise inferior being from an inferior planet, but things are different now. I see things differently now, as do my father’s soldiers who war against you.”
She swallowed hard. “Then…you see me as a political advantage.”
“I see you as many things, Princess Allura.” He tilted his head. “Of which political advantages are only one angle. Never doubt the sincerity of my affection for you, or the depths of what I would do to prove my love to you.”
Allura looked shy in that moment, trying to think through her pain. “And—and if I did not love you back?”
His eyes turned away. “Then that means I failed. And that would be my mistake, not yours.” He sniffed haughtily, his lips stretching. “But I do not believe I will fail.”
That did it. A bell-like huff of a giggle erupted from her as she clung to the case of the medicine. “You are truly the strangest scoundrel of a man I know.”
“I am the only man you know,” he announced, raising a brow as he opened the door to her room, and suddenly all four pilots of Voltron tumbled into the room in a pile of limbs, squawking at the loss of the stabilizing door they had leaned again. He waved to them. “As you can see by this evidence before you."
He gently nudged his boot into the shoulder of Keith, staring down with a peculiarly triumphant gaze. “The princess is in need of assistance. Go fetch a female servant for her.”
The pilot was still struggling to untangle himself from the others. He looked up with a glare in his eye. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
Lotor sniffed, turning away. “Then continue being useless to everyone, as you so often are.”
Lance couldn’t help himself. His face stretched in a smile as he snickered.
Then Keith jabbed him in his side, and he made a noise of pain and began to pout.
Lotor turned back to the still-suffering Allura on the bed. “I will leave you now to be tended. But I may send an encrypted transmission to you, to check on your health in a day.”
The woman on the bed swallowed hard and then dared to say, “…Well. Thank you, Prince Lotor, for being…kind. And offering me a helpful gift.”
The man’s visage seemed to bloom in delight, the sincerity of her tone like a great stroking of his ego. His somewhat large mouth stretched wide with glimmering fangs. “For you, my sweet. Only for you.”
And then the alien prince stepped over the awed pilots of Voltron, still carrying the device controlling his missile strike at Arus and waving it at them merrily. “In the meantime, do not bother to attack me as I leave. I suspicion your precious lions will not work until I am well out of range.”
In the darkness of the night, under the canopy of trees, the son of Zarkon slipped through the forests, his movements light. He could feel a joy in him, the wind threading through his hair with a proud mother’s touch. He could feel the heartbeat of Arus beneath him.
Only a slight worry remained to knit his brow. “But will they allow her to use it?” he called softly to the earth. “Or will they take it from her? I do not understand the ways of your people and worry they might allow her to suffer.”
A resonance echoed in his mind. Worried child. Look down into the water.
Lotor’s face twisted as he gazed about his surroundings, seeing a babbling brook nearby. He snarled a bit at being told what to do, but he kneeled down by the water, narrowing his yellow eyes. “What does this have to do with Princess Allura?”
Look down into the water. Place your hands on the ground.
And suddenly, his own visage disappeared, the water reforming into a moving picture. It was an image of Allura sitting up in bed, wrapped in a big robe. She appeared as if a great weight had been lifted from her, her eyes bright as she munched on berries provided by a servant girl.
“I feel as though I could dance,” she confessed, her voice a soft whisper in the back of Lotor’s mind. “Is that not strange? That something from Planet Doom, of all places, could make me dance?”
Beside her, one Lance was curiously sniffing at the case and dared to scoop his finger into the paste and then rub it on the back of his neck. “Oh, wow.” He hummed. “It’s like…ice? And then it settles into you all warm and fuzzy. Like, this crick in my neck is gone. Wow.”
Lotor watched, his eyes narrowed in curiosity as Lance’s awe made Allura giggle.
It was at that time the woman named Nanny appeared, her face red with a bolstering tantrum of fear and shock. “I have heard what has happened,” she cried. “I heard that horrible, horrible man barged in here. I take one night off to visit family in the village, and this is what happens. Do you see what terrible things happen when—”
“—Oh, come off it, Nanny,” the princess said, raising her eyes merrily to her caretaker. “It wasn’t anything terrible.”
Nanny was not listening. “And you,” she cried, grabbing onto Lance’s ear. The boy gave a strangled noise. “You should not be here either! This is a time of shame for her—”
“—But I’m not in pain anymore.” Allura’s voice hardened. “And—and I do not understand why he must leave at all. Lance is a friend.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know she was hurting from girl stuff. You just said she was sick! Totally would have brought her ice cream or something.”
Nanny looked at them both and gasped. “It is forbidden for men to know of what you call ‘girl stuff!’ How do you know what is wrong with her? Out, out, out with your crazy Earth ideas!”
Allura grabbed onto the little case, biting her lip, a flush upon her face. “Maybe they’re not just Earth ideas, Nanny.” And she stroked the case and hid it in her pocket, pulling off her blankets to stand. Then she raised her chin, looking far less shamed than she had when Lotor had first discovered her. “Maybe they're not bad ideas at all.”
You and your people can be more than evil, the planet suddenly whispered to Lotor.
You can be good.
You already are.
And then the image disappeared into the water, leaving the son of Zarkon staring at his own reflection, his fingers curled into the dirt in awe.