Falling Stars

Calli's friends back home would no doubt be smirking and snickering at her for her obviously disgraceful attempt at acting. If she ever met this Chief Advisor Lorian guy, she was going to inform him in the bluntest possible terms that he was a damn fool for getting her roped into this. She had never been trained in the art of chatting up men. She had been trained to pummel them into the dirt. It had been tricky securing her military issue Weizel laser pistol under the lace and silk dress, but she'd managed. She had also discovered with childlike delight that a few pairs of heels and delicate boots that had been sent to her had knife blades in the heels.

It gave her an odd sort of rush, meandering through the halls in the most feminine clothing she had ever worn in her entire twenty-one years and yet she was armed to the teeth and no one was the wiser. She wondered what Prince Julian would think if he knew. A lot of men Calli had encountered in her life were instantly insecure in the face of a girl who could have them flat on their back faster than they could sneeze.

Julian led her into a wing of the palace that was much quieter and seemed less used. He paused before one of the doors, shooting her a sideways glance as though trying to size her up. She stared brazenly back. She was used to being sized up, and she had never yet been found wanting.

"You came all this way because you're interested in my artwork?" Julian asked, reluctantly opening the door.

"Among other reasons," Calli said, shrugging. "I told you, I haven't been in the capital for a long time. I thought I'd stick around for a while, do some exploring. But I saw you at the wedding reception and I was intrigued to see these secret paintings of yours."

It wasn't totally a lie. She did intend to explore the capital, and now her interest in Julian's art was piqued and she was curious to see it. She followed him into the room and almost gasped. It was a sprawling room, with a huge picture window at the far end that gave a spectacular view of the stars and moons beyond the palace. His easel was posted there, with a workbench cluttered with paints and brushes beside it.

The walls were covered in finished works of varying sizes and content. Calli moved around the makeshift gallery, inspecting every piece one by one. She didn't understand why the king and elder princes would want to keep Julian's paintings and drawings hush hush; the art really was quite breathtaking.

"I'm not sure the rumors of your talent did you justice," she remarked. "These are so lifelike. You must spend hours in here."

"I have a lot of free time." Julian stood in the center of the room, seemingly watching her to see if her interest and praise was genuine. But Calli didn't have any need to fake her amazement. She stopped short when she came to a small painting rendered in reds and grays. A wasteland, being taken over by meteor dust while the empty houses crumbled. It was one of the outer planets, like her own home, Evox. It was known as a Ghost Planet now; there hadn't been enough survivors to rebuild it after Tesheni insurgents attacked it. And the outer rim of Centauris was still too unstable and dangerous for the crown to make the effort to put more humans out there. There were a lot of alien races that didn't like humans running a galaxy as prominent as Centauris, and the Tesheni were the most resentful. The most violent.

Calli had been eight when they laid waste to her home, slaughtering her family and her neighbors. They'd been beaten, skinned alive, burned, skewered on pikes. Calli had only survived because of her mother hiding her under the floor, and the fact that Calli had contracted a virus when she was five known as Moon Fever. A cure and vaccine had been made, and she had received it in time. But in some extremely rare cases, the Moon Fever cure effected a patient's DNA makeup. In Calli's case, it had transformed her buttercup yellow hair to ash blond, and made her...more than she should have been. She was nowhere near invincible, but she was faster, stronger, generally hardier than the average person.

It was why her military training began when she was so young, though they didn't let her enlist until she was fifteen. And she'd been kicking ass and taking names ever since. But staring at that picture of a ravaged Ghost Planet, she didn't feel like a soldier. She felt eight years old all over again, lying still beneath the floor of her house and trying to muffle her tears as her parents were dragged away. She stared at the painting without blinking for several heartbeats.

"Kind of a depressing choice of artistic medium," she said finally, working to keep her voice even.

"My tutors had been teaching me about the raids that happen in the outer rim," Julian explained. "I felt compelled to paint that afterwards."

"Pretty flowers not really your thing?"

He chuckled quietly. "Not everything in life is pretty. Why should art always be?"

"That's tragically profound." Calli actually was impressed with his philosophy, but still wished he hadn't chosen to paint this of all things. She dragged her eyes away and quickly moved on to other, less heartbreaking pieces.

"Why does your family make you hide this?" she asked. "Is it not the trend right now to be talented?"

"Noblemen are supposed to be all about combat and warfare and other traditionally manly things." Julian shrugged. "Art isn't really considered a pastime suited to a prince."

"Isn't that a little archaic?"

"Welcome to the royal scene."

"Well, fuck 'em then."

Julian let out a startled bark of laughter.

"Do you just draw or paint everything? There's so many pictures in here."

"A lot of things are inspiring."

"Spoken like a true artist."

That earned her a smile. He had a nice smile; it made his whole face seem light and open. Maybe being forced to tag along after him everywhere wouldn't be as horrible as she's feared.