Zwarg. Two years ago.
The woman looking back at me from the mirror was polished and composed: a silk ivory slip dress, thin straps, the family moissanite necklace at her throat. I had neither the energy nor the desire to wrestle myself into something elaborate, so I'd gone with a simple evening dress. A severe updo held in place by oversized pins studded with blue moissanites more than compensated for the plainness of the rest. I was critically examining my makeup when the electronic butler announced, in his usual quiet tone, "Madam, you have a visitor."
I glanced at my communicator. 7:40 PM. My second husband was early? That was genuinely encouraging.
"Let him in, of course."
I found myself wondering which restaurant Kristof had booked to mark the occasion. It wasn't every day you got married; and on Zwarg, not every man was lucky enough to marry at all. Or had he been so overwhelmed that he'd forgotten entirely? Maybe I could talk him into a quiet dinner on the penthouse roof, no witnesses required.
I took a slow breath, smoothed my expression into its customary polite coolness, and walked out to the entryway. But instead of Kristof, it was Michel standing at the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Short stubby horns, skin too pale for a pureblooded Zwargian, frame too slight, irises of the wrong light shade. Michel was Zwargian on paper, and the planet was happy to have him as a functioning member of society, an excellently educated man and honest taxpayer, but no one had ever looked at him as a Zwargian eligible for the marriage candidate registry. One more piece of state hypocrisy. You didn't even need lab results to know the Planetary Laboratory would never accept his profile; there weren't enough women for the purebloods as it was.
I smiled at him, genuinely, for the first time all day.
"Michel! I never expected you to come in person. I thought you'd send the contract over by drone and call it done."
I knew better than anyone how busy good lawyers were. And Michel loved his work.
"I decided to come myself." He swept a heavy mustard-eyed gaze over me and settled on my face. "It's not every day your best friend from childhood gets married. Second time around, no less. Are you sure about this?"
His voice was tight. Of everyone I knew, he was probably the only one who had any real sense of how unhappy my marriage to Martin had actually been. Funny, this half-Zwargian with his underdeveloped horns was the one person I'd never been able to deceive, no matter how much I sometimes wanted to. I gave a breezy shrug. With Michel, I could afford the truth.
"Not even slightly. Did you find any loopholes I could use?"
"No. The law was rushed, but it was drafted carefully. No gaps."
Well. There was my answer. It had been foolish to hope, but I felt the disappointment land anyway. An oppressive silence settled over the entryway for nearly a full minute. Then Michel collected himself and pulled two copies of the prenuptial agreement from his briefcase; they were on electronic paper, digitally signed to confirm they were originals.
"You'll both need to sign here and here." He handed me the documents, then frowned and added, "You know, I'm actually not in any rush tonight. I could wait in the kitchen until Kristof arrives. Just in case he wants to change something last minute, or his lawyer decides you owe him a share of your first husband's estate. I don't want anyone pushing you around on that."
I smiled, and it came out sadder than I intended. I would have given every last credit I owned to never have to deal with Zwargian men and their mental influence again. Michel continued to hover quietly in the entryway.
"I'd be glad for the company. Can I make you coffee?" I offered, setting the documents carefully on the tall decorative table by the floor mirror.
"I'm exhausted, honestly; these last few days have been brutal… but I've never quite made peace with Zwargian coffee machines, I'm afraid…"
"Who said anything about a machine? I can make it myself. We have time, we're waiting for Kristof anyway."
"Yourself?" The lawyer stared at me. "Celesta, you're in a dress."
"Oh, that's nothing." I waved a hand. "I have a portable stain remover, and about seven replacement cartridges scattered around the apartment."
Michel's face did something wonderful, and I laughed. He was used to weddings being significant events for Zwargian women. I was treating this one as a necessary inconvenience; and honestly, making coffee was exactly the kind of distraction I needed from a moment I'd been privately hoping to postpone, and ideally cancel altogether.
"If you don't mind…"
I'd almost forgotten how much I loved making coffee. Martin had said I should stick to detox teas, as caffeine might be harmful to a baby, if I ever happened to conceive. I ground the beans to a fine powder, added boiling water, and a rich, dense aroma drifted through the kitchen. The banana syrup I'd once bought from Luke for next to nothing turned out to be a perfect match for the Zahran blend. One thing led to another, and Michel and I fell into easy conversation until I glanced at the wall clock and the numbers read 8:17 PM.
I frowned. Where exactly was Kristof?
Fine, I didn't think of this as a grand occasion. But for him it was a first.
"Don't worry, he'll come," Michel said, following my gaze. For someone who barely registered beta-waves, he was remarkably observant. "He's not stupid enough to throw away the only chance he'll ever get."
I smiled, tightly. I hoped he was right. The thought that my groom might have changed his mind pulled my nerves to their limit. If Kristof didn't show, I genuinely didn't know what I'd do. The anxiety built steadily, minute by minute, and only released at 8:32 when the electronic butler announced a second visitor.
"Go. I'll wait here." Michel nodded.
I wiped my palms on the kitchen towel, checked that the dress was spotless, and walked back to the entryway. With Michel, I could be almost entirely myself. Kristof, whatever he was about to become, was still a stranger. Whether I'd ever trust him was an open question.
The greeting I'd prepared died on my lips when my future husband dropped to the floor at my feet.
"Celesta, please forgive me, I'm begging you!"
I stared. The man was practically in tears, with swollen eyelids, trembling lower lip, and reddened eyes. But not the red of rage. When Zwargian men were angry, the entire white went crimson and lit up like a warning signal. This was just inflamed tear ducts and visible capillaries. What on earth had happened to him?
"Kristof, it's alright, get up. You're going to ruin your trousers… Whatever happened, you're here, and that's what matters."
"No, Celesta, you don't understand! I really wanted to marry you! I wanted it so much!"
Wanted. My ear caught the past tense immediately, and something in my chest went quiet in the wrong way.
"Something changed? You changed your mind?" My voice dropped to a rough contralto.
I didn't know anything yet, but the pain had already started spreading, not just on the left side, radiating into my back, pulling slightly to the right. Without thinking, I braced my hand on the table where Michel's carefully prepared documents were waiting.
"After your call I felt like the luckiest Zwargian alive! Not everyone gets an opportunity like that, especially at my age…"
"Kristof, what changed?!" I lost the battle with my composure and nearly shouted at the tear-streaked young man.
Watching him crawl on his knees and try to catch my hand suddenly revolted me. Was this how men were supposed to behave?
"I… I was on my way to you, to sign the contract! I swear!" Kristof said, nervously chewing his full violet lips. "But in the middle of the drive I got a call from an unknown number, and then someone took control of the flyer. The car just kept accelerating and accelerating… Celesta, I genuinely thought I was going to die."
"And yet here you are, completely unharmed," I said, flatly. Not a scratch on his face. If he hadn't thrown himself at my feet the moment he walked in, I'd have said his suit didn't even have a wrinkle.
My-future-no-longer-husband gave a frantic nod.
"Yes. Exactly. When the flyer lost control, someone connected through the onboard computer; distorted voice, I couldn't identify it. They said I had two options. Either I insisted on marrying you, in which case the car would definitely hit something, or I walked away."
"And you walked away."
An infinitely stupid question. The answer was self-evident.
He looked up at me with those enormous dark eyes, fringed with absurdly long lashes, drowning in guilt. Hurt, anger, irritation, the particular sting of betrayal—it all hit at once, sharp and astringent. The pain that had been spreading quietly under my heart at the word wanted transformed into something corrosive and began burning through me from the inside. I held onto the edge of the table because I understood that if I let go, I would fall.
You didn't need to be a genius to work out what had happened. Yudes had gotten the recording of my call with the medical center and decided to move first. Horned bastard. Or was I the idiot for pulling the Zwargian's tail so openly? I should have grabbed Michel and gone straight to Kristof's place, signed the contract there, quietly, without announcing it to anyone. Lacoste had apparently scared the boy half to death with that little stunt. How had he even managed it? If it was a standard rental vehicle, the Planetary Management Apparatus would have had full access. Of course they would.
Kristof was still looking at me, unblinking. At the bottom of those dark, lash-framed eyes there was so much guilt and remorse that something instinctive told me he wasn't telling me everything. Why did he feel that guilty? From his perspective, I was fine, I'd just marry someone else. There was still time.
"Is that all?" I asked, quietly tired.
Even if he was holding something back, did it matter? With his admission that he was backing out, the last thin thread of hope snapped somewhere inside me with a quiet little pop.
"Well…" this time Kristof looked away, staring at the floor, still on his knees. "The voice said that if I turned you down, I'd get a promotion immediately. I didn't believe it, but I agreed anyway. And… well… on my way here, my director called almost right away and told me that…"
He shot me a sideways glance from under his brows. I don't know what he saw on my face, but my former fiancé swallowed loudly.
"Celesta, look; I mean, a wife is wonderful, obviously, but you and Martin were married for twenty years and had no children, and our compatibility score is even lower than yours was with him… Marrying you doesn't exactly guarantee anything, and I'm only fifty-five, I could spend another hundred years submitting compatibility requests with Zwargian women I actually…"
How humiliating.
"I understand," I cut off the pathetic rambling of the man I'd almost married. "Kristof, I understand completely. Thank you for coming in person to explain. You can go."
"What?"
For a moment he stared at me with such genuine shock that for the first time in my life, I simply didn't care what he was picking up on the beta-wave frequency. I didn't even try to compose myself, didn't reach for the image of the ice peaks. I just said, "Kristof, your career matters more to you right now. I understand. Thank you for clarifying. Please leave."
"Celesta, but he threatened me."
The pain was eating through me like sulfuric acid. Why me? Why was this particular mountain of garbage happening to me? Everything I actually wanted to say was pressing toward the surface, with the softest version being: I don't care. If I'd mattered to you even slightly, you would have taken the risk. Zwargians regenerate faster than any species alive, so what if the flyer sped up a little? But that would have been beneath a lady, as Martin would have said.
I said nothing. I looked toward the door. Kristof, remarkably, understood. He scrambled to his feet, reached for my hand to kiss it out of habit, then flinched when I sent a wave of pure revulsion at the gesture. He tucked his head into his shoulders and fled.
Standing was hard. Breathing was harder. What made it worse was the sharp voice of my personal lawyer coming from behind me.
"What an absolute coward."
My nose stung traitorously. I tried to turn toward Michel, but my fingers, locked around the edge of the table, refused to cooperate. There was a loud crash as the decorative table hit the parquet floor, the marriage contracts scattered in both directions, and I started to go down. The half-Zwargian caught me before I reached the floor. Throwing out every rule of propriety about asking permission before touching a lady, he grabbed me around the waist and got me onto the small bench, the one thoughtfully placed in the entryway for putting on shoes.
The tears came all at once. I just cried. I was mortified that Michel was seeing this, but I couldn't stop it. Martin had never permitted me to feel things loudly; he said it reeked of sourness, and for years I'd held myself in check through sheer grinding willpower. And now the dam I'd spent so long building had broken, and there was no fixing it.
For a second, Michel looked completely lost. Understandable, he probably didn't encounter sobbing women all that often. But within half a minute he'd brought a blanket from the bedroom, draped it around my shoulders, and pulled me into a hug.
"It's alright, Celesta. We'll figure something out."
I hiccuped.
"Maybe you could marry me?"
The thought was genuinely appealing. Of all the Zwargians I'd ever known, Michel was the only one I actually trusted, and his underdeveloped horns were not an insignificant part of that. There had never been anything romantic between us; it had been obvious since childhood that the Planetary Laboratory would never permit him to date pureblooded Zwargian women, let alone anything more serious. But there had always been a quiet warmth between us. After my marriage, I'd had to let the friendship go almost entirely, as Martin had suddenly decided that a respectable married woman couldn't have male friends, but I'd known Michel for most of my life.
I lifted my head and looked into his eyes, that odd mustard shade. Only at this distance did I notice that his skin was actually the right shade of violet, it just looked much paler because of the yellow freckles scattered across his nose, his cheeks, even his forehead.
"I can't," he said, with a sad, quiet laugh. "My profile was rejected, not even reviewed, just flagged as ineligible for the Zwarg database. They said there were more suitable candidates. And you're a pureblooded Zwargian woman. If Yudes has decided to come after you this hard, contesting our marriage would cost him nothing. It wouldn't work."
And Michel would pay for it. Yudes would make sure of that, out of pure spite. The thought landed with a wave of guilt. The last thing I wanted was to drag Michel into my disaster.
He went to get me water. By the time he came back, I'd nearly steadied myself and was starting to think that I still had a few months; enough time to find someone, anyone, for the role of second husband. That was when the incoming call signal lit up on my bracelet. I tapped it on autopilot, assuming it was Kristof calling back with something he'd forgotten to say.
"Celesta?"
The holographic image of the person I least wanted to think about materialized in the air. He studied my face, gave a slow, satisfied nod at whatever he found there, and I realized, a bit too late, that I'd activated video, not audio.
"I see Kristof relayed everything word for word. Good. I'm calling to make sure you understood it correctly."
"Hello to you, too, Yudes," I said, in the coolest voice I could manage. If Lacoste was laying his cards on the table, there was no point pretending to be confused. "I won't say it's good to hear from you. Or see you."
Instead of taking offense, he clicked his tongue with what sounded almost like admiration.
"Oh, Celesta. Those sharp little teeth of yours. That tongue. I always suspected Martin was hiding something when he talked about you. Clearly he never mentioned your passionate side. Tell me, are you like this in bed too?"
Anger boiled up through my veins. I laced my fingers together in my lap and focused very hard on not letting him see how thoroughly repulsed I was by the whole performance. Especially from a man who'd received a clear no and decided to bulldoze straight through it.
"Well," Yudes continued, more business-like, getting no response. "Trusting in your good sense, I'm giving you two weeks to prepare for the wedding." he studied me again, taking his time. "I do hope that in those two weeks you'll order something from a proper designer and not wear what you have on now to our ceremony. Your taste is impeccable, I'll grant you that, but I'd like my future wife to wear a classic full gown with a long train on the most memorable day of my life. All of Zwarg will be celebrating. I'm not insisting, I want to be clear about that, but it would mean a great deal to me. You understand?"
I gave a single, minimal nod. Yudes Lacoste's attempt to come across as reasonable and considerate was not going well. Martin had also been all smiles and warmth at first. I hadn't had the faintest idea what I was walking into. But those rose-colored glasses had long since hit the floor and shattered.
"My schedule is extremely full, and my secretary couldn't find a window for anything sooner. I've set the date for the twenty-sixth. If you'd like to invite any friends, just send a message to my secretary. Are we clear?"
The question was obviously rhetorical. Friends. Right. Zwargian women had always looked at me sideways.
"Moving on. I don't want you living in the estate or the penthouse or anything bought with that fossil Gyu-El's money. I've already arranged for one of my country houses in the mountains to be freshened up for our honeymoon. You'll likely stay there afterward; there's a room that can be converted to a nursery. I'll get you a new flyer as well. And frankly, I was not pleased with how fast you peeled out of the Palace parking lot. Is there even a speed limit there—"
I told myself, silently, to stop listening. Yudes had gotten so absorbed in mapping out our future life together that I felt physically ill. My head had started throbbing again, not from the base of the skull the way it did after mental influence, but from the ordinary causes: too little sleep, too much crying, too much of everything. For a moment the pulsing at my temples was so bad I would have welcomed unconsciousness.
"You'll take my name as well. I assume that goes without saying, but I'm stating it explicitly to avoid any misunderstanding. I think that covers everything."
I nodded, to avoid provoking him further. Universe, give me strength. I am begging you.
"Celesta?"
"What."
"Don't do anything foolish. If you go and marry some nobody, I will contest it. And if that doesn't work, you'll find yourself a widow again. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
His voice was perfectly neutral. Perfectly cool. And I knew, with complete certainty, that he meant every word. A chill ran down my spine and, oddly, along my left arm. Maybe because that was the arm with the communicator on it. I swallowed.
I had been wrong earlier. Compared to Yudes, my first husband was a spineless jellyfish.