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The end came in 1948. It came and the cities fled to their bunkers. Some fled to their rickity shelters in optimistic abandon. Most merely stared at the sky in dread. Their texts had told of this day, their movies had breached the subject tentatively. It was called Judgment Day by the short-sighted, for humanity would not be judged. It would be crushed indiscriminately. It did not burn in a flurry of missiles as had been predicted. Old divisions sang in the early days of invasion, days of uncertainty spent in the shadow cast by spacecraft. Old divisions expecting to self-destruct.
No such thing happened. The world did not divide. Its mitosis was cut short when grey giants descended upon them. The world was wearied by war. The world did not yield quickly, but was torn apart like living flesh. Its sinews snapped one by one. Nobody came happily. Finding energy in exhausted muscles some fought for the glory of independence, or saved themselves the trouble of being killed. Others lay quiet and waited for it to pass, just as the end of the world had passed them by before. It did not pass them by.
It infected them and infiltrated their livelihoods. For decades they were initiated into the Imperial machine. They learned their place and they relinquished their oceans. For the world was a blue planet, and Her Imperious Condescension came for its valuable waters; the humans, once settled, colonised and set to work, were a bonus. She did not stay long, planetside, hungry as her empire was. Governance of Earth was left to an able elite of long-lived violets who bathed in the saline depths granted to them. Once under the impression of democracy, or once a puppet-ruler had been established the world settled down. Humans found their place in the galaxy, and clung to their past with unyielding devotion. Monarchs emulated their rulers, in manners and lifestyle. Hollywood bloomed, and human-troll collaborations were not uncommon.
It was all a part of their machine. Vogue published covers of cerulean beauties, how to get the deepest grey skin, how to look two feet taller, interviews with Legislacerators. Legislacerators had their own cult of celebrity, and humans were all too happy to see trolls suffer at the hands of the empire. In turn they were happy enough to watch dissidents of their own on their screens at home, broadcasts of their screams adorning their homes. In polite company humans and trolls spoke in sign language, to navigate the barriers established by their differing physiologies.
Humans did not suffer it for long, and combined with complacent seadwellers, conspirational lowbloods and a Tyrian princess passed under the radar, the dynasty of the Empress was surpassed. Feferi ascended to the throne.
Her coronation was met with celebration, She was a new hope for a dying species, and a worthy Empress whose hands were stained pink. She graced wide screens in city squares with reforms, and spent languorous nights in equatorial oceans. Elder trolls criticised her, yearned for the power, the reverence and the glory of their homeland. When faced with these highbloods she invited them coldly to return to their home. That, or she pulled them by their horns to meet her mother. In this way, they played their part in keeping the planet at peace.
Meanwhile, an elderly explorer inhabited an uncolonised island. Jake Harley, at the first signs of upheaval, stole away to his secret spot in the Pacific, and there he raised his granddaughter. He raised her in isolation, he raised her to never leave the house without a gun. Eventually cavalreapers stormed the island, and Mr Harley was shot. Jade knew her way around a rifle as well as any troll, and her way around the island even better. She was brought to the mainland in a truce and trained at an Academy. It was in this line of work that she developed nuclear energy, so long put aside in favour of Alternian technologies. But under the Empress history was once again revised and human culture recovered. Atom bombs dropped a century past were reconstructed, developed further. Jade Harley’s educated life was spent in a laborious fervour, playing her role in the human renaissance. It was she who made her way across the world looking for benefactors to fund nuclear energy that she caught the eye of the Empress herself.
Stood at the stage of a lecture theatre occupied by a pair of indigoblooded engineers, she felt the arrival of the Condesce’s fleet. She felt the nigh-imperceptible rumble and was overcome by dread (induced by fear of Her forces or by the infrasound of the ship). When she ran for the door it was locked, and kicked down by soldiers in tyrian. She was pinned to the desk and handcuffed, screaming for help, a knife at her back. All the while her almost-patrons sat back in their seats and watched. They said nothing themselves, for fear that they would be next.
***
Name: Jade Harley Hatching date, Gregorian: 1st December 2015 “ “, Piscean: Thirty eighth week of the dark season, twenty fourth sweep of Empress Feferi Titles: BSc, Natural Sciences; MSc, Nuclear Engineering; PhD, Advanced Characterisation of Nuclear Plant Primary Materials; Nuclear Engineer, Imperial Laboratory 856. Security checks: Level 5 passed; monitor nightly. Status: Cull subject 4.
Jade stood inside a featureless cell. She had been here, according to the almanack on the far wall, for fifteen weeks. She had one small window, which showed her the Earth every few hours as it rotated, and but mostly the blanket of space. She had had her bed confiscated, her wash basin confiscated, her own clothes confiscated, her hairpins confiscated, and her gun confiscated. She was yet to have her carpet confiscated, under which she hid a shank made of twisted scraps from the Empress’s trident.
Her throat was hoarse from shouting. Her knuckles bled from the punches thrown at the door. She fell onto the pile of silken pillows and tossed her knife between each hand. The Condesce would come soon, first to the other subjects, to take them to her temple. She would take them to test the limitations of the human conscious, to push and pull them until, exhausted, they returned to their cells. It was merely an experiment for her; it was knowledge to be applied back on Earth but so unmissable was the opportunity that the Condesce took the challenge upon herself. She would come to Jade last, and would relish their time together. Jade, in her way, would relish it, too.
The peephole cover slid away and Jade was met by a pair of Tyrian eyes. She was tempted to throw her knife at them, but for the inability to escape once she had struck her captor between the eyes, decided against it.
“Jade? Jade! You’re awake!” The eyes creased, the smile beneath them invisible but evidently wide. Jade jumped to her feet. The door unlocked and the Empress stepped inside.
“Get the fuck out!” Jade held her stance and her finger itched for a trigger. For her weapon she had to bide her time.
“Ooh! You are feeling feisty today!” She tittered. Jade took a flying leap at her, brandishing her knife and aiming for her throat. The Condesce pushed her back onto her pillows mid-air. “Chill out, Jade. Aren’t you getting tired?”
“I don’t like your mindgames one bit. Now eat rust!” She pulled herself to her feet once more and rolled across her shoulder to cut at the Condesce’s ankles. She was merely kicked away for her trouble and afforded a troubled sigh. Only Jade noticed that she had drawn blood.
The Condesce brandished her trident and poked it at Jade’s neck while she handcuffed her. She took a remote control from the folds of her skirts, too, and threatened to blow the cuff on her leg up and leave her one foot down should she try anything again. Jade’s knife was taken from her hand and placed in Feferi’s pocket, and she was thrown across Feferi’s shoulder. She was taken to the temple.
The space, too large to be called a room, took up most of the Condescension. It was huge and dark and Jade was tied to a chair in its heart, surrounded by darkness which pulled at her with its tendrils and whispered screams. Secured, Feferi would set about wheeling across a television set, a plasma screen almost as tall as she was. Before, however, she began playing the looped tape she first set up clamps to secure Jade’s head and hold her eyelids open. She seemed to enjoy the operation as a ritual, kissing Jade’s face and pinching at her when she cursed.
Finally, with a seat set beside her, Feferi would press play and hum along to the opening credits, replenishing Jade’s eyes with drops every so often and assuring her, “I’m only trying to cull you.”
***
Name: Kanaya Maryam Hatching date, Gregorian: 25th March 1948 “ “, Piscean: Sixth week of the light season, third sweep of Empress Feferi Titles: BSc, Human Biology and Brooding Studies, joint hons; MSc, Auxilliatrixary; PhD, Troll-Human Relations; H.I.C. Neophyte (retired); Matron Auxiliatrix, Brooding Caverns 69 (retired); Ambassador General. Currently posted: City 1, State 47, Continent 3. Reason for visitation: Summons from H.I.C., under instruction to bypass Royal Vs, regarding Cull Reforms. Security checks: Level 5 passed.
A young woman sat behind a heavy wooden desk between two carapaces, her hair an impressive beehive as was the mode on Earth, a subtle and unconscious divulgence of her homesickness. She scanned her monitor for the relevant security checks, and confirmed the details with Dr Maryam in deft sign language, a polite middle ground between their two biologically incompatible languages. Once they were agreed and Kanaya had given her signature, the woman ushered her through the craft’s labyrinthine corridors and multiple airlocks into a lavish waiting room. Kanaya noticed the cuff on her ankle. She thanked her politely and dismissed her.
Once alone, she adjusted her hat in one of the waiting rooms expansive mirrors. The high, vaulted ceiling was painted in deep blue and showed the various corners of the Empire in enlarged, marbled spheres painted between stellar specks of white. Between the mirrors were panels in alternating pastoral scenes of Earth, Alternia and the innumerable other conquered worlds. Kanaya sat on a sofa, a velvet tie-dyed couch with sweeping armrests. Beneath her feet was a terrifying portrait of an Elder One in marble and limestone, eyes beset with crimson jasper to gaudy effect. The light of a distant sun, reflected off the Earth’s surface and steely moon shone through the stained glass windows, representing the domination of Earth by Feferi’s predecessor and her subsequent usurpation.
Kanaya anticipated the interior of the Imperial chamber, having been received only in the terrestrial palace in the past. Feferi’s visits to the planet were brief and infrequent for the most part, and despite video conferences this would be the first time in decades that Kanaya would meet the Empress.
As such Kanaya carried a large bouquet of Earth flowers. She found the sunlight intoxicating and the variety of flowers a pleasant challenge to cultivate and breed with Alternian strands. Such experiments often ended with writhing stamens or heady, narcotic fragrances. It was those examples which she had brought with her, in the hope that they would appeal to the Empress’s somewhat morbid taste. If nothing else then they would make a vivid, if temporary, addition to her personal chapel. Kanaya hoped that the Empress might make them an addition to her altar sooner rather than later, as the heady fragrances were clouding her vision and leaving her dizzy.
A door disguised as a panel depicting an especially hostile planet slid open and the Empress emerged. She stood just short of nine feet and wore her full regalia, as was her wont; her skirts were full and polychromal, her hair twisted and braided into elaborate tresses. She was excitable enough that only the impressive weight of her jewellery kept her feet on the ground.
“Kanaya!” Feferi’s face lit up and she bolted across the room to greet her with a kiss to each cheek. “I’m shrimply thrilled that you could come! And if you listen I am kelping the glubs under very close control. I don’t do it for anyone else.”
“I always knew you could control the glubs if you really believed in yourself, Empress. Either way you are obviously very excited.”
“I am reely excited to see you but I cannot say I am excited about anything else.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“That was a case of exaggerated hyperbowfinly, dummy.”
“I almost caught what you were saying there, Feferi, but the meaning was expertly concealed by the fish pun.”
“Whatever, Crabaya. Are those flowers for me? You shoredn’t have!” She trilled in delight and poked at an especially active vine. “I’m sure that the Rift’s Carbuncle will aperchiate these. We’ll drop them at the chapel, walk with me.”
Kanaya followed her over the threshold and through the corridors of her suite, walking a step behind as was customary. The walls were high and the ceilings marked with scratches from Feferi’s horns. They passed innumerable fish tanks set into the walls holding rainbow crabs, bettas, cichlids, koi, catfish, jellyfish, lampreys, sharks, dejected whales. Feferi paused as they went to tap the glass of the aquaria, to watch the creatures flit and skitter in alarm.
The chapel was huge, but largely unfurnished aside from a vast altar piled high with fruits, flowers and various corpses in successive stages of decomposition. The ceiling, once again vaulted and carved, a host of octopoid creatures spreading their wings between each arch. Beyond them, painted, was what, at first, appeared to be mere darkness. Kanaya noticed as she stared that in time dark appendages would reveal themselves to her, followed by the emergence of uncountable eyes, lips, beaks. Finally, one would be overcome by awe and the desire to throw one’s head back and allow the seedlings of belief to posses you. Feferi pulled Kanaya along before she had fallen to her knees.
“We won’t stay long. I don’t think commoners handle it too well.” She smiled companionably and led her away. “Especially not Jade. She is so glubbing melodramatic.” She rolled her florid eyes for emphasis.
“If I speak frankly will I be fed to the Eldritch monstrosities which you revere?”
“Of course not! Unless you say something dreadful.” She giggled and hiccoughed, fluttered her gills, and went on. “You’re here on business, Kaneela, so I expect you to be professional. Remember your station and you’ll be hunky John Dory.”
“Perhaps, then, I ought to bypass an initial consultation and meet with her myself. I wouldn’t want to jump to any hasty conclusions.”
“Then I will lead you to her cage and give you my best wishes!”
The rest of their walk was spent in silence. Feferi wore iridescent black-pink slippers which made no noise as she strode through her rooms, which clung to her feet daintily and longed to be slipped off at the mere sight of water. Kanaya felt clumsily overdressed when the sound of her stilettos echoed off the glass walls.
The only airlock in Feferi’s suite led into a wide corridor lined with doors of different colours, numbered, affixed with a doorbell and each with a grille through which one peered in order to see whatever lay inside. The floor shook with an ominous thudding which elicited calls of outrage from other inmates. Feferi approached the source of the sound by leading her to an emerald door. She invited her to look through the grille. A young woman in a heavy black gown, ripped at the shoulders and elbows, long dark hair pulled halfway up in an elaborate knot of plaits and braids, sneered in acrimony.
At the sight of a pair of eyes Jade stopped punching the wall and began hollering loose-lipped gibberish. Kanaya recognised very few of the words which she spouted, largely due to them being imaginatively invented compound slurs.
“I think I’d best take it from here, Empress.” Feferi unlocked the emerald door and hurried Kanaya in before Jade made any move to escape.
Jade ceased hollering, too, when Kanaya entered out of bewilderment and perhaps, Kanaya prayed despite herself, in recognition.
***
Jade wore her hair long, unusually for a human. Most of her colleagues wore their hair short, and permed should they find the time in their schedules. In those days, only very shortly following the usurpation by Feferi, most institutions remained divided into same-sex departments due to the late Condesce’s squeamishness. Kanaya found the decision as bewildering as the emphasis placed on sex by humans in the first place.
She was still a relatively young woman, then. She had made her way across the tumultuous landscape of Earth, tried her hand at numerous careers and navigated crumbling blood-based limitations. Her path had taken her to the newly-birthed discipline of inter-species diplomacy. The path of diplomacy had taken her to the Department of Peacekeeping, and the Department of Peacekeeping had directed her towards a motley crew of physicists working on nuclear bombs. Jade was amongst them.
Jade had said, one night at a party, a glass of soporific liquid in a glass and in her hair, that this was not where she wanted to be. That perhaps one days eh might like to use her knowledge in a different way that didn’t involve killing her own species. She also lamented the distinct lack of nuclear application in the field as it was. Kanaya had not cared, then. She did not know what nuclear application was except perhaps that it might involve human babies. Human babies were a mystery to her, and she suddenly longed for the brooding caverns. Why have I left the brooding caverns, she thought to herself. Jade tripped into a trap and coughed up the contents of her stomach. Curled up and scratching at all who approached her, Jade reminded Kanaya remarkably of a grub. Should Jade have been a grub, Kanaya would have had to cull her for her freakish size, discoloured skin and lack of horns, though the aggression shown was promising. Fortunately, Jade was not a grub and so Kanaya braved her strong right hook to sooth her and mop her up.
The next morning, covered in slime and lipstick, Kanaya returned to her own academy and produced an essay on her findings. She forgot about Jade, mostly because Jade had rather dampened her night and because Kanaya had passed out shortly thereafter.
***
“Hello Dr Harley,” began Kanaya, using the sign language customary of diplomatic negotiations, and hoping that Jade might understand. “Are you comfortable if I sign, or would you prefer we used our respective languages?” In such a situation as Jade’s, Kanaya believed it prudent to place as many decisions as she could in Jade’s hands.
“You’re here on business then, Kanaya?”
“Yes, after I suggested it. Your absence hasn’t gone undocumented on Earth, for one thing. I don’t know a great deal about it, but it seems your team is suffering greatly for its loss. They sought me out to tell me as much in no uncertain terms. Given the nature of your work I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of them, and I don’t believe the Empress would, either. She’s very fond of our planet.” Kanaya paused for a beat, unsure of whether dubiously pale, drunk trysts were off-limits. “Do you remember me?”
“How could I forget. My class wouldn’t let it go for the rest of my doctorate. Between being called Grubsauce and a wriggling day present of a jadeblood prostitute they never let me live it down. So thanks. And thanks again for bringing it up. As for my team, if they wanted to take any form of action, I wouldn’t stop them.”
“I thought that might be the case. I can only apologise on behalf of the Empress that you have found the process so distressing, though I would stress that if you were just a little more receptive-”
“Don’t fucking tell me that you want me culled, too. I do more in a day than she does in a year and she’s keeping me locked up without anything to occupy myself with.”
“Which is why I’d like to reach a compromise. You have it in you somewhere, Jade, I’m sure.”
“I don’t want a compromise! I want her to let me go or I swear I will tear this place apart.” She was not joking. Her room was bare but for the pile of pillows in the corner, her duvet having been removed after she assembled a strikingly vicious firearm out of hairpins and bedsprings, and then firing it at the Empress with verbally expressed intent to kill. The only thing Jade had underestimated was the differences in a seadweller’s mortality, which perhaps explained why she was a physicist rather than a biologist. If nothing else, Kanaya admired her resourcefulness.
“Please do consider that I am working within the parameters of the Empire.”
“When you fucking consider that I have watched hundreds of hours worth of Squiddles with the worst “subliminal messages”” Jade made air quotes with her fingers, “ever all while having my eyelids held open with tweezers!. Bust me out, fucker, or this migraine will turn into something ugly!”
“Dr Harley, I will not stand for any form of threat when I am here to help you. I needn’t remind you that Earth trolls are of a considerably different nature than our somewhat idealistic Empress. Should I need to cull you in the old sense of the term than the onus will be on myself, not Feferi. That is perhaps one of the many reasons which I could be here for. Dependent on your behaviour.” Recalling their previous meeting slowly, Kanaya was surprised to find that Dr Harley’s aggression was not a result of inebriation.
They stood a moment, neither communicating a thing besides distrust Jade stood tall and almost on tiptoes, a habit humans seemed to have developed in hostile situations as though to challenge the towering height of their colonisers. Then, with a sigh, Kanaya backed down.
“Sit with me, Jade.” She motioned to the pile of pillows. Jade cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, so Kanaya sat down first. Jade’s movements were measured and she approached the pillows with a clenched fist. “You never told me where you came from.”
“Can’t we save this for after I’m out of here?”
“I’d like to know. It might help you when I speak to the Empress.”
“Couldn’t you read my files?”
“They’re not very engagingly written. Where did you grow up?”
“You wouldn’t know it.”
“I wouldn’t? I’m an ambassador, Dr Harley, I’m very well travelled.”
“It’s an island in the Pacific, nobody lives there. I grew up with my grandfather, and he taught me how to shoot a gun. I taught myself the rest because he didn’t have much interest in science. He liked adventure. He died trying to save me.”
“You don’t hold it against us, like some of the others. It’s an admirable trait. I never knew before. How did you leave?”
“When I was thirteen a whole fleet of aliens came to my island. They shot Grandpa when he ambushed them. Some of the trolls got away and turned it into Lusus City. It was pretty intense and I could only go so long fighting off huge spiders and crabs, so I put a raft together and paddled to the mainland. When I got to the coast I was chosen to develop nuclear energy for the empire and I wasn’t too happy about that! But it was fun to be doing something with my time besides thinking about my home. Anyway, I learnt sign language there, but we didn’t really use it when I worked with you guys, and from there I guess I just picked up Alternian.”
“But you can’t speak it.”
“Your mandibles can’t say English, either.”
“Maybe you could create something to change that, Jade human.” Kanaya smiled, and extended a hand to touch Jade’s. Jade did not draw away from her.
“You don’t actually need to sign.” Jade muttered. “Are you doing this because it’s your job or because you know me?”
“I didn’t really know you, Jade. I don’t even remember what we did that night, rather worryingly. Not that I think about it often. Or at all. I’m sorry if I overstepped a line that night, I really ought to have known better what with you being human. I doubt you even saw it as a romantic gesture. Did you? I always forget whether our romances are cultural or biological, if anybody has even come to a conclusion on such a topic yet.”
“Is any of this going to get me out?” Jade still sat up in the pile of pillows, bolt upright and looking uncomfortable. Kanaya attempted to sit back a little but found reclining felt too vulnerable. She thought perhaps to request a pair of chairs, then, noticing the flush on Jade’s cheeks that belied her barely-contained rage, decided against it.
“Could you try to engage on a meaningful and cooperative level, Jade?”
“As if anyone would co-operate with me if I did! I was happy with my Grandpa and I was happy on Earth and both times you took it away from me.” Jade jumped to her full height, thrust her finger at Kanaya’s chest. She seethed through her teeth a moment, and then deflated.
“Wow.”
Jade sat back in the pillows, lying on her back, braids fanning and coiling on the silk in black threads. She laughed nervously, “I’m sorry, Kanaya. I know you’re trying! I’m just so sick of being patronised! I was at the top of my game and now Feferi keeps trying to play mind games on me. I’m pretty sure she’s trying to inundate me into her cult, too. Look at this!” She pulled a collection of plush cephalopods from beneath the pile. “I can’t get my head around what she wants me to be! Or even what her weird gods are. It’s like we’re all her pets and also something to do with her being Empress and it is really fucked up!”
“Would you rather we had a sillier conversation?” Kanaya pulled her painted lips into a smile. A small smile, a friendly one, not the grin that she might exchange with other trolls. Jade smiled, too, in appreciation or perhaps harmony.
“Yeah, that’d be nice.” Jade continued smiling. The flush did not leave her cheek, deepening to claret on sienna, and her eyes glistened no longer in ire but puckishly. Kanaya swallowed, her lips wet. Jade rolled onto her front and skulked forward on all fours, then knelt beside Kanaya. The fabric of her dress brushed the sensitive exoskeleton of Kanaya’s claw, thick damask warm from her movement. When Kanaya looked back at Jade, a small, soft hand cupped her face and pulled her to a kiss.
Jade sucked on Kanaya’s lip and tugged at it with her teeth wolfishly. Kanaya could hear the hum of blood beneath Jade’s lip, singing all ferrum and cruor, pulsating under her tongue and bringing verdant blood of her own to her cheeks and ears and chest whilst all the while she heard her own voice repeat in her mind professional integrity.
“Dr Harley-”
“Jade.”
“Jade, you are a vulnerable person and by occupying any quadrant then I would be abusing the responsibility entrusted to me by the Empire.”
“Nope! I am a responsible adult in my own right and am exercising my responsibility otherwise withheld from me by a certain someone. I would just like to forget about politics and for you to shut up about a one night stand five years ago.” Her lips (full, chapped from skirmishes with Feferi, rosewood in colour and texture) fell open with a mouthed breath. “You can speak in Alternian, Kanaya.”
The air between them still, their mouths trembling, Kanaya said, “Thank you.” and slipped Jade into her lap, her lips between Jade’s and her fangs toying at the pink membrane of her mouth. Jade growled deep in her throat, long nails (manicured by force) raked across Kanaya’s scalp. She let Jade’s mammalian behaviours permeate her, make her chitin shiver. Jade smelt like fresh, saline sweat and something earthy and primeval. Kanaya dragged her teeth along Jade’s throat to catch the scent. She thought of the books which she had read in her youth, salaciously stored beneath her mattress beyond the reach of her lusus’ gaze, of rainbowdrinkers and lycanthropes and hoped that Jade might howl.
***
“You can’t keep her, Empress.” Kanaya had resolved herself to frankness. Feferi would handle it.
“Whale, someone needs to learn her plaice!” Feferi’s grip around her fork tightened.
“Let me explain,” Kanaya laid her hands out on the mahogany table between them of Feferi’s diplomacy room. “Your Imperious Condescension, your actions are exceedingly noble and, above all, innovative. Rebellion across the empire is lower than has been seen in dynasties. On Earth, assimilation has permeated the Alternian structure which underpins our society, but I feel we must now extend the respect which you have so marvelously cultivated in our people to this one woman. Culling, as a practice, has been generally successful across all levels of society, with highbloods taking on a custodial role to lowbloods and humans, alike, but Dr Harley is a special case.
“She seems to enjoy her independence, and if culling is to work we must allow those culled some autonomy in the process so as to avoid ill-feeling spreading. Your other, um, pets, seem quite at home in these surroundings, and so may we regard Jade as an anomaly?”
“You put forward an interesting argument! And a show, too, if the noises were anything to go by.” Feferi cradled her chin on her hand, smiled widely and fluttered her gills delicately. Kanaya’s stomach lurched and she made to protest. Feferi cut her off. “Hoki, I guess. I guess I can make one exception. But only for you, Krabcatcha.”
“That’s all I ask, Empress.” Kanaya lent across the table and kissed Feferi’s cheek, rattling the gold which perforated her fins. “Thank you.”
“And, my dearest Ambassanddollar, you will have made the Empire’s most salacious tabloids very happy should they ever find the old Trollbook pictures.”
Kanaya bit her tongue. Feferi waited a moment and, resigned to the fact that Kanaya would not take the bait, winked and stood, signalling to Kanaya to stand, too. She did not offer to fetch Jade herself, so Kanaya went alone. She went through the opulent, oppressive corridors and to Jade’s emerald door, and she opened it and offered her hand. Jade chattered blithely, and Kanaya wanted nothing more than to hear every word she had to offer, to take her to Earth and find a secluded house, to grow a hothouse and crown Jade in hibiscus and magnolia, to touch every inch of her skin and feel it soft as soil beneath her fingers.