He led her to a room marked “TRANSPORTER BAY” and made her stand on a glowing disc. Iris did as she was told, lost in her thoughts, and paying little attention as the ship seemed to phase out around them and was replaced by a room with a lot of soft furnishings.
There was still so much to forgive. Far more than she thought she was capable of forgiving. The shame. The pain. The public humiliation. The sexual conquest. Archon had shown her his darkest and most terrible sides, he had given her the full benefit of the reality of his monstrous soul. And yet there was something between them, a connection which had no reason to exist.
She looked around herself in concern, temporarily distracted from her emotional quandry by the odd place.
“Why is everything in here stuffed? Are these trophies the inhabitants have killed?”
“No,” Archon laughed. “This is Earth-human furniture. They like padding on almost everything except dining chairs for some reason.”
“Where is my family?”
“Your father runs a dry cleaner, a place people have their clothes cleaned. Your aunts have a small shop which sells crystals and herbal remedies. Your brothers and sisters are being educated in the ways of this world.”
“I want to see them.”
“That is the rub.”
“The what now?”
“In order for them to fit into this world, I erased the memories of the one they lived in before. I also had the basic programming of this culture installed. They know only this new reality…”
“Which I am not part of.” She finished his sentence for him.
“I could make some adjustments, but it would not be the same as it was. I cannot return them to the same emotional states as they experienced in your world. If I did, there would be a chance of the programming crashing. They might go, for want of a better term, insane, if they tried to blend both realities.”
“I’m not insane, and I am aware of both.”
“You are a somewhat rare creature, Iris. You are one of nature’s rebels. You are uncomfortable everywhere and anywhere, so it does not matter to you what world you are on, or time you are in.”
“Nice of you to decide that for me,” she scowled. “What if I wanted to be brainwashed with the rest of my tribe?”
“Do you want to be brainwashed with the rest of your tribe?”
“No.”
“You just want to argue with me, is that it?”
“I want you to respect me. I want you to ask me what I want before you make a decision for me.”
“I am a king. I do not ask people what they want before I make decisions for them. I make decisions and they are grateful for them.”
“Well I’m not grateful.”
“That is very apparent,” Archon growled. “I understand that you are a rebel, that you come from a line of rebels, and that your main, if not only, mission in life is to rail against authority. But I will not tolerate it. I will break your rebellion. I will break you if you cannot give in to my rule.”
Chapter 23
The tingle which zipped through Iris and terminated between her thighs was not supposed to result from his threat. She was supposed to hate him even more for it - but she didn’t.
He was right. She had her role, and he had his role. They were constantly at never ending odds, and always would be. So perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps there was no way there would ever be peace between them. But there would always be passion of the kind which made her part her lips when he tipped her head up toward him and claimed her mouth in one of those searingly hot kisses which drove all sensible thought from her head.
“We are going to see them now,” Archon said. “Stay close. Hold my hand, and don’t talk to strangers.”
She agreed to his terms and was led from the small room into a much larger world of many people and big tall square rocks which had windows carved into them.
“On your world, people live in small collectives. Here, there are as many people in one building as lived in your entire village,” Archon informed her.
“Amazing they managed to find all these rocks to live in.”
“They actually built the buildings themselves.”
“They can build rock?” That astounded Iris thoroughly.
“They can do a great many things,” Archon smiled. “Here we are.”
He lead her into a shiny fronted box with the word DRY CLEANING on it.
“Hello, can I help you?”
Her father, the man she had last seen waving his fists in rebellion, was wearing some kind of apron and standing behind a counter. It was all Iris could do not to burst into tears and hurl herself into his arms. Archon hadn’t lied. This was real. Her family was alive, and safe, just transplanted.
“Uh. It’s me.”
“Is it? Good. Would you like to get something cleaned, have something picked up?”
Iris glanced at Archon, who was blending in by wearing something called a baseball cap and a long coat. He should really have been drawing more attention, but apparently the humans of Earth were too busy building rocks to notice an alien king wearing a cap which said KINGS across the front of it.
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stand here and pretend she didn’t know her own father. She couldn’t play along with the charade. She burst into tears, hurdled the counter, and threw herself into her father’s surprised arms, sobbing intensely.
“You don’t remember me, but it’s me. I’m your daughter,” she told him.
To her surprise, he hugged her back. Tightly, like he used to do when they both wore furs and not this weird thin fabric with no protection from elements or beasts.
“Iris,” he murmured in her ear. “We thought you were lost to us forever. We have mourned you every day.”
“As I have mourned you all. This bastard king told me…”
“I can hear you,” Archon drawled from the proper side of the counter, before stalking toward the door to firmly push it closed in the face of a man.
“You have my wedding tux!” He complained weakly from outside, but Archon was merciless and did not let him in.
Meanwhile, Iris and her father were continuing their hushed reunion.
“We know what’s going on,” he hissed. “We know we don’t belong here. But nobody believes us, and cousin Jestabel was put in a dungeon with padded walls for saying so out loud.”
“They love to pad everything,” Iris hissed back. “I’m going to save you.”
She had no idea how she would make good on that promise, but knowing that she had to, somehow.
“Archon, I’ll do anything to have them back with me. To be with them. I have to have my family.”
“You’ll do anything? Those are not wise words for a female of your stature to be saying to a male of mine,” Archon smiled indulgently and carnally. She felt herself blush. He never seemed to tire of her sexually.
“Probably not," she said. “But I cannot be without my family.”
“I understand,” Archon replied. “But there is a trade off to be made here.”
“Name it.”
“I can leave you here, with them. You can have a full life, among your own kind, with your own people. Or…”