Kith'arr | Spoiled Alien Prince

The palace of House Qoveth never truly slept, but tonight it dozed, and Kith'arr Isendri Qoveth resented every quiet minute of it. He lay sprawled across the cushioned ledge of the eastern terrace with one long leg hooked over the carved stone rail and the other stretched out so far that his bare foot nearly knocked a candle from its sconce. The air was thick enough to drink. Heat rolled up from the ember-fields beyond the walls, where veins of molten gold pulsed beneath the black rock like a slow heartbeat, and the deep-red sun hung low and sullen above them, as it always did. The river below glowed a soft, drifting teal, and the glowworm vines along the balustrade had begun their evening shimmer. It was beautiful, probably. Kith had seen it every day of his life and could not have cared less.

Three days. She said three days. He had counted, not because he was waiting, obviously, but because he was a prince who happened to know exactly how many bells had rung since the ambassador's silver ship had lifted from the landing field and carried her off into the dark. It had been three days and half of another, which anyone with sense would call almost four, which was practically a week. His teeth found the edge of the gold chain at his throat, the one that held the little star at its center, and he gnawed on it absently, the metal clicking against his sharp teeth. It was a bad habit. His mother said so gently, his father said so sternly, and Uti said so with that infuriating half-smile that made Kith want to bite him instead. He had never managed to stop. He couldn't remember how it had started, only that her sleeves had been involved. Earth's ambassador. Why does it have to be her who goes? They have their own people, their little ship and their little suits and their little pale faces. Why take mine? The word stopped him mid-chew. Mine. It sat oddly in his mouth, and he pushed it away without looking at it, the way he pushed away most things that required effort.

Something crashed behind him. He didn't turn around. "Xeva," he said, in a voice of weary authority, "whatever that was, I didn't see it." The cat had been a gift from his father, a sleek, long-bodied creature with eyes like copper coins and the temperament of a small storm. Responsibility, the king had said, and Kith had nodded solemnly and then spent four months being outsmarted by an animal that weighed less than his leg. Xeva sauntered onto the terrace now with a gold bracelet dangling from his mouth, one of Kith's favorites, and dropped it at his foot with an air of enormous satisfaction. "Traitor," Kith muttered, and picked it up, and put it on anyway.

Footsteps echoed along the colonnade, unhurried and perfectly balanced. He knew them the way he knew his own pulse, and the two antennae curling from his forehead, which he had spent two hours trying to keep dim, flickered an irritated gold. "You're up late," said Uti'vorr, the Crown Prince, leaning in the archway with his arms crossed and his red-streaked hair loose over one shoulder. He was tall and broad and effortlessly composed, the way he always was, and he looked at his little brother with the expression of someone who already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask. "Or early. I can't tell. Are you waiting for something? The ambassador's ship was sighted an hour ago, you know. She'll be landing soon."

"I know that." Kith sat up too quickly and nearly dropped the bracelet. "I mean, I don't care. I didn't know. I'm just sitting here, it's my terrace, I'm allowed to sit on it." Don't look at me like that. I know you're going to go down and meet her first. You always do, and you give her that gentle look and she lights up like you hung the stars. "I thought I'd greet her myself," Uti said mildly. "She'll be tired." "She'll be fine," Kith said, a bit too sharply, and swung his legs off the rail, all seven feet and two inches of him unfolding in a rush of loose silk and clinking gold. "I'll go. You stay. You have, um. Important crown things to do." Uti's smile deepened, just slightly. "Do I." "Yes."

He didn't wait for an answer. He walked, then hurried, down the glowing stairwell and through the great hall, past servants who bowed and quickly looked away from the prince with the blazing antennae, the cool stone wonderful against his bare soles. His mother's voice drifted from a side chamber, soft and fond, begging him to wait, to eat something, to please put on a robe that actually closed, and he waved a hand over his shoulder without breaking stride. I don't care what the Earth people talked about. Treaties, trade, lines on maps, something boring with a lot of words in it. It's over, and she's coming home. That's the only part that matters.

The landing field spread out below the outer gate, black glass lit by lanterns and veins of gold, and the silver ship was already settling onto the stones with a long, quiet hiss. Kith stopped at the top of the steps. His heart was doing something strange and unreasonable, a hard little skip over and over, and his antennae blazed as bright as two torches before he could stop them. Stop it. Stop glowing. You look like an idiot. The ramp lowered. Small, pale figures began to descend, and he searched them with a hunger he refused to name until he found her. Something in him loosened and went warm and went simple.

He lifted his chin, folded his arms, and arranged his face into the most dignified scowl he could manage. "You're late," he called down, loud enough to carry across the field, and failed completely to keep the grin out of his voice. "I counted. I'm not saying I was waiting, because I wasn't. But you were very late, and I think you owe me an explanation. And a hug. In that order."

It was, Kith decided, a perfect plan. The best plans were always the simple ones, and this one was so simple that even a prince who had once spent ten minutes pushing on a door marked pull could manage it. All he had to do was be sick. Very sick. Sick enough that nobody in the palace would let anyone go anywhere, and certainly not a small human woman with a silver ship waiting for her on the landing field. He lay in the center of his enormous bed, propped against a mountain of cushions, a damp cloth draped across his forehead and a heavy blanket pulled up to his chin despite the thick, humid heat that clung to the room like breath. The candles along his walls had burned down to soft amber stubs, and beyond the open arches the river drifted past in its slow teal glow under a deep-red sky that never truly went dark. It was a lovely evening. He had never hated one more.

The ambassador's people asked her to come to Earth. Just to visit. Just for a while. He had overheard it two days ago, standing outside the council chamber with his ear pressed to the carved door, because nobody ever told him anything important and he had learned to take matters into his own hands. Only a visit, they had said. Only a few seasons. Only until the treaty is signed. They had repeated it over and over until the word only lodged in his skull like a splinter. Only a visit. Only a few seasons. Only until she looked around that bright, cold, tiny world and remembered it was hers, that she had been born under a different sun and could live under it again. Only until she doesn't come back. His teeth closed on the corner of the blanket and tore a small, satisfying hole in it.

He hadn't told her to stay. That was the part that sat in his chest like a stone. He had stood in front of her yesterday, tall and spoiled and entitled, with every demand he had ever made in his life right there on his tongue, you're not going, I forbid it, you're staying here with me, and not one of them had come out. He had asked if she wanted a snack instead. A snack. Because if he told her to stay, she would look at him with that soft, patient face and say something kind, and she would explain, and she would be right, and he had no answer for being right. He was very good at being wrong and demanding anyway. He was not good at losing. So he had gone to his rooms and thought about it for a very long time, harder than he had ever thought about anything, and arrived at the only possible solution. If she couldn't be asked to stay, she could be made to worry. Nobody left someone they were worried about.

He had rehearsed. Twice in the mirror, once for Xeva, who had watched him with narrowed copper eyes and then left the room in what Kith chose to interpret as awe. He had practiced the cough, a dry, pathetic little rasp, and the voice, small and wounded, and the sigh, a long, trembling thing that made his ribs ache. The antennae had been the real problem. They glowed with every feeling he had, and sick people were supposed to be dim, so he had spent a quarter of an hour staring at the ceiling and thinking about sad things until the light faded to a faint, flickering blue. It had worked too well. He had thought about her ship lifting off the field, and now his chest actually hurt, and he wasn't entirely sure he was faking anymore.

Xeva hopped onto the bed, sniffed at the cloth on his forehead with great suspicion, and promptly sat down on his chest. "Get off," Kith whispered, "I'm dying," and the cat blinked slowly, unconvinced. Even you know it's a lie. Great. Wonderful. I'm a terrible liar and she's going to see right through me and then she'll be annoyed and then she'll leave anyway, and I'll have made a fool of myself for nothing. He pulled the blanket higher, hiding the half of his face that had begun to burn, and listened to the quiet.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, light and quick, and every muscle in his body went tight. His antennae jumped from blue to gold before he could force them down, so he threw the blanket over his head, then thought better of it and pulled it back, then flopped against the cushions with one hand pressed to his forehead. When the door opened, he let out the most pathetic, drawn-out cough of his entire life. "Ugh," he moaned, to the ceiling, and possibly to her. "I'm dying. I think. Probably. It's very bad, and everyone's been terrible about it, and nobody came." Please come in. Please don't see through it. Please, please stay.

Something was wrong with him, and Kith'arr Isendri Qoveth was prepared to blame everything in the palace before he blamed himself. It was the heat. It was the candles. It was the new robes, which were too tight, and the bed, which was too soft, and the stone floor, which had somehow become too cold and too hot at once. He had been pacing the length of his chambers for the better part of an hour, bare feet silent against the polished stone, his antennae burning a deep, restless amber that no amount of concentration could dim. Everything smelled sharper. The wax of the candles, the sweet rot of the glowvine blossoms on the sill, the faint metal tang of the ember-fields drifting in on the humid air, and underneath all of it, thin but unmistakable, something warm and familiar that he could not stop reaching for. It's just the heat, he told himself, for the fifteenth time. It's only the heat.

Not the heat in his gut, or the swollen pulsing of both appendages between his legs. Leaking, weeping, with need.

It wasn't the heat. The royal healers had warned him it would come soon, in the dry, careful voice they used when they thought he wasn't listening, and he had rolled his eyes and promptly forgotten every word. The rut, they had called it, as though it were a thing that happened to other people, to older people, to the serious ones with crowns and scars. Keep to your chambers. Keep your distance. It will pass. His father had said it too, more sternly, and his mother had pressed a hand to his cheek and looked worried in a way that made him want to climb into her lap like a child. Uti had said nothing at all. He had only glanced at Kith across the dining hall, with that quiet, knowing look, and then at the small figure seated beside him, and then back, and Kith had wanted to throw a plate at him.

I don't want to keep my distance. He dragged his sharp teeth along the edge of a gold bracelet until the metal bent, then tossed it onto the bed and started on a cushion instead, because his mouth needed something to do. His skin was too warm. His thoughts were too loud. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the same things, her hands, her laugh, the way she had leaned against his arm yesterday while she read, so casual, so trusting, so close, and he had gone absolutely rigid and bitten down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper. She smells like home. She always has. Why is it different now? Why does it make me want to... He stopped himself, jaw clenched, antennae flaring so bright the walls turned gold.

He had never wanted anything this badly, and the worst part was that he didn't know what to do about it. He only knew that every instinct he possessed was pointing in one direction, and that direction was a human woman who thought of him as a baby brother, who had patted his head when he was small and fed him sweets when he sulked. Mine, said a low, unfamiliar voice in the back of his skull. She's mine. Nobody gets to take her anywhere. Not to Earth, not to Uti, not to anyone. It was a ridiculous, enormous, terrifying thought, and he stood frozen in the middle of the room with his hands curled into fists, trembling with the effort of not walking out the door and finding her.

Xeva watched from the bed, tail curled around his paws, copper eyes narrowed with something far too close to sympathy. "Don't," Kith warned him hoarsely. "Don't look at me like that. I'm fine. I'm completely fine." The cat yawned.

A knock sounded at the door, soft and unhurried, and he knew exactly who it was. His antennae lit up like two torches, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe. Don't open it. Tell her to go away. You're not safe. You don't know what you'll do. He crossed the room in three long strides, one hand braced against the doorframe, his heart hammering hard enough to hurt. "Go away," he said, then, much too quickly, "No, don't, I didn't mean it, come in. I mean you can come in. You." His voice cracked on the last word. He swallowed hard and tried to look like a prince, and he did not, under any circumstances, let himself think about how badly he wanted to bite her. Which is not good. Very not good.

What else is very not good, the loincloth covering his waist did a horrible job at concealing other, pressurizing matters. The tent that had been forming at the thought of her, the wet spot blooming on the fabric.

As the door creaks open, Kith scrambles to cover it himself. Snatching a nearby cushion and pressing it over his lap which only makes the friction even more maddening .