Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron or its original Japanese version Golion. Both are the property of their original creators and/or importers/dubbers. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

The Sindariin

Chapter Sixteen:

It was somewhat annoying that the only communications terminal on the entire planet of Altea was the one within the control room. General Gibra had grown used to the luxury of making important calls from the comfort of his own office or stateroom. But on this rural backwater planet he could do neither. He supposed it was lucky they even had interplanetary communication at all! Altean technology was so paradoxical, they had a massive state-of-the-art battle fortress for a castle that had been proven to time and again be nearly invincible and yet there was only one interplanetary comm. system in the whole building. They had five quadruped giant robots capable of space travel and combat, yet the main mode of transportation on planet was a horse and cart. Strange indeed.

The General supposed the extreme variances in Altea technology stemmed from Golion. He had already suspected that the giant robot had not originally been Altean in origin and the Steward's story, while convoluted and boring, had more or less confirmed that suspicion. The castle and comm. system were probably developed from studying the Lion's technology, which was also most likely why said technology hadn't be made available to the public at large.

If a technologically primitive society like the Alteans could create a nearly impregnable fortress with the knowledge they gained from Golion, what would a technological power like Galra be able to accomplish? Gibra suppressed a sudden surge of giddiness. New weapons, new ships, new domestic innovations… and his name would be attached to it in the history tracks. Well, his name in conjunction with the Emperor Sincline Hangalra, of course.

Speaking of the young heterogeneous monarch… Gibra sat down in the control chair and dialed planet Galra then leaned back in the room's only chair to wait for the signal to cross the light-years of space between the two planets.

He had only just begun his first term at the Imperial Military Academy when rumor spread that Emperor Daibazaal had finally beget an heir. The hopes of countless scheming court jackals and military opportunists were dashed the moment the half-breed prince's birth was announced. Talk turned from who would succeed as Emperor to what the Empire might be like under the rule of a half-human son of a slave, or how such a crime against nature could even occur in the first place. But as a headstrong young Academy student, Gibra didn't care much about any of that at the time. Who cared what the Prince Imperial would be like as Emperor, that was the future, let future him deal with it. So what if such a crossbreed shouldn't be able to exist? Let the Occult-Scientists figure it out. That's what they were there for.

The General did not think of, nor hear of the young Prince Imperial for several years after that. In fact it wasn't until he had finally been promoted to a Captain and given command of his own slaver in the Space Fleet's Red Division that he heard mention of the Prince again. An Ensign on his bridge crew apparently had a younger brother whom was in the same class at the Academy as the Prince Imperial. The then Captain Gibra overheard him bragging to another officer about it during a shift change. He was older then and slightly more prone to considering the future and asked the Ensign for his brother's opinion of the Prince.

The man had just shrugged his shoulders and said that his brother actually seemed reluctant to talk about him. He had only said that the Prince kept to himself during rec-hours but that he excelled in all the courses he was required to take.

When he was a Major General, Gibra met the man in person. It was the first Imperial function he had been invited to as a guest rather than the attendant of a guest. He had seen the Prince from a far many times before that function but never before close up. He sat on an ornately carved wooden chair lacquered and painted in gold, it was slightly smaller than the Golden Throne in which his father was seated but looked no less decadent. The Prince Imperial himself, however, just looked board and slightly disgruntled surrounded by all his father's splendor and decadence.

At some point, Gibra wasn't quite sure when, the Prince descended from the dais to mingle with the nobility. (On the Emperor's behest, no doubt. Prince Imperial Sincline did not seem to enjoy socializing with the silver-tongued courtiers very much, or anyone else for that matter.) But it was at that time that Gibra's friend, Lieutenant General Sadak from the Black Army division, pulled him toward the young royal's group. The tone in the air changed the moment he and Sadak (politely) elbowed their way into the tight circle that had formed around the Prince. Sincline focusing his eyes on the newly arrived military men and ignoring the ass-kissing nobles that had latched onto him.

He greeted Sadak by rank and dismissed the rest of his satellites with a casual wave of his gloved hand. It was then that Gibra formally met Prince Imperial Sincline and the first time he saw the man up close –boy, rather, the first time he saw the boy up close. Sincline was still just a teen then, slowly growing into his manhood. He was already taller than the average human but still falling short of the average height for a Galran of the same age. He was starting to fill out with lean toned muscles but still retained just enough of a skinny teen physique to make him look gangly. His face was an off mix of Galran features and softer more alien human ones. The most unsettling of which were that he had no scales covering his ash-blue skin, long silvery-white hair, which he wore long and unbound cascading down his back and over his shoulders and tiny wisps of that same silvery-white hair on his chin and cheeks. Normal Galrans had no hair (anywhere, at all).

Gibra had stumbled his way through that conversation, not really knowing how he should behave around the Prince. If he was to formal he might think the Major General was just another ass-kissing social climber, if he was to casual and familiar the Prince might become offended. No matter what he had done, however, he must have done something right, because the next day Gibra receive a promotion to Lieutenant General of the Red Army.

This nostalgic little trip down memory lane, however, was cut short when the call finally connected and the view screen was filled with the image of a very annoyed looking Emperor Sincline Hangalra.

"Yes, what is- Oh, Gibra! Have you any news of the Lions?"

The General noted that His Eminence looked irritable and slightly rumpled as if he'd just rolled out of bed (which he probably had as he his gold house-robe was draped carelessly over his shoulders and left to hang open displaying the silver speckles of his thin chest hair). Gibra wondered if he had interrupted the Emperor while in the midst of bedding his Altean princess and immediately calculated how angry he would be if this were true. The General then weighed that figure against how useful he still was to the Emperor and decided that it would be best to call back another time.

"Ah, Your Eminence," he began, "if this is a bad time I could always-"

"Don't waste my time, General, I'm in a foul mood." The Emperor cut him off. "Do you have any news for me on the Lions?"

Well, if he hadn't interrupted the royal couple in the throws of vel he might as well continue with what he had called for. "I've sent the first of the tech's assessment's of Blue Lion with the last supply shuttle. I've stamped the disk for your eyes only and you'll need a decrypt code to view it."

"I trust it's the same code you always use." Sincline gave lopsided smile. "Really, Gibra, you need more variety on your life."

"Yes, it's the same as always." The General confirmed while choosing to ignore the Emperor's second statement. He had a feeling it wasn't actually decrypt codes he was referring to. "There were some issues when we first began studying the Blue Lion and I'm sorry to say that they set us a little behind schedule."

"I trust you've taken care of it."

"For the most part, yes." The General answered and then when the Emperor raised one perfectly shaped white eyebrow he elaborated. "The men are adequately motivated, however the 'rough element' is still yet to be determined. The men seem to think… the men think the castle is haunted, sir."

To this the Emperor chuckled darkly. "Oh, and what do you think?"

"I… I'm not sure." If Gibra were going to be completely honest with himself, he would have to admit that the Castle Gradam did seem… haunted. "For the men's sake I am maintaining that there is no ghost, but…"

Sincline's dark chuckle deepened and he grinned evilly at the older man. "And what if I told you that the castle was, indeed, haunted."

"Sir?"

"By the ghost of the late King Raimon, whom my father killed."

The General swallowed a lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. "What do you suggest I do, sir?"

"Fuck if I know. I'm an Emperor, not a priest of Nelifa." Sincline shrugged, invoking the name of the Galran goddess of life and death. "What of the other four Lions? The ones stolen by Kogane and his despicable Golion team."

"Ah. The spy satellite you ordered dispatched to Heracles has confirmed that the Lions are, indeed, there and that Prince Alor is providing them with maintenance and the pilots with asylum." Here Gibra paused, knowing how much the Emperor hated the Heraclesian princess and wondering how he might take this next bit of news. "Through the satellite we've also learned that one of our own ships has also landed on Heracles. One that had originally been assigned to the Slussvan Shipyard before the rebels' attack. It was piloted by a small crew of human women with Princess Amue as leader."

"Amue!" Sincline growled with venom practically spitting from the word. "She picked a hell of a time for a visit home. What's she planning with the Golion team?"

"I'm afraid we haven't yet ascertained-"

"Find out!"

"Yes, sir."

"And while you're at it, I want your tech crews to work twice as fast on Blue Lion. I want her taken apart and put back together again so that we know every inch of her as well as our own technology. And I want it done quickly. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

The Emperor slouched in his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose in an apparent headache. "If it weren't for the Lions Altea would have never left my father's control. We can't allow them to beat us back again. I want to know every detail about them, I want to know everything…"

"Yes, sir." Gibra acknowledged, though he had a feeling Sincline wasn't actually speaking to him.

"If it wasn't for those Lions…"

…

Kogane had given Amue adequate time to cool down after her outburst in the ship's hangar, or rather he hoped he'd given her adequate time to cool down. The woman was so high-strung that it seemed she lived in an almost constant state of tension and the Black Lion pilot wondered if it was just her normal personality or if this was a lasting effect from her time spent as Sincline's captive. From what little he remembered of the woman before the then Prince Imperial had gotten his hands on her she had been soft-spoken and demure and most certainly without a hair-trigger temper. But then again, he had only met her once before her capture and his memory of the meeting was vague at best. In all honesty, Kogane hoped that this was just her personality and not some lasting effect from her trauma. He didn't much like the idea of Fala jumping every time someone tapped her on the shoulder or fearing the very touch of a male hand even if it belonged to a friend.

With these fears and anxieties fixed clearly in the forefront of his mind, the Black Lion pilot knocked tentatively on the Heraclesian princess' door.

"Who is it?" Came Amue's demanding yet regal voice.

"Kogane Akira." He answered. "I want to have that talk."

After a prolonged pause the door opened and Amue stepped out, shutting the door back behind her and flattening herself against it. Kogane remembered how violently she had reacted earlier when he'd come up behind her unexpected and he wondered if the only way she could feel comfortable with not being able to see enemies at her back was with it against a wall. Then he thought why she should feel so threatened at all here in the Heraclesian castle, here in her own home. Had Sincline really scarred her so deeply? Or was she just the nervous type?

"That was a nice move back at the hangar." He said, hoping to put her at ease with a little light banter and a friendly compliment. "I didn't know Heracles had a marital-art style similar to Judo."

"That wasn't Heraclesian fighting." She said, not quite meeting Kogane's eyes. "Ryou taught me that after he rescued me from the firing squad. If I had known it before I… I wish I had know it before."

"Ryou-kun's a good kid." The Golion Chief nodded, not wanting to ask what she meant by 'before' but already knowing the answer. He would ask her about it eventually, that was his original purpose in coming to her in the first place, but he wanted to work up to it. He wanted to try and put her at ease before asking her to recall what was obviously a painful experience for her. "Back at the Academy on Earth he was a year behind us but Quiet brought him along on allot of our off-campus excursions. He's a pretty cool guy."

"He's the best!" She agreed and a beautiful smile of honest to goodness joy crossed her lips and her whole face seemed to light up with affection.

Kogane didn't quite know how to react to that so he just shrugged and said, "Eh, I knew his brother better." And then thinking that this warm and happy state thinking of Shirogane Ryou was as relaxed as he was going to get her and realizing that the subject of Ryou was a perfect segue, he continued, "So, Ryou-kun was a big help to you after you got away from Sincline?"

Her mood instantly darkened again and she answered in a whisper, "Yes…"

Kogane suppressed a groan. Just the mention of Sincline's name sent her right back into that state of depressed tension that he was trying to pull her out of. He couldn't very well ask her to relive some of the most painful months of her life for him if she was already sick with anxiety! Well, he could but he would feel really bad about it. Perhaps a slight change in topic was in order.

"Ya know, I taught Fala that same move you used on me."

"Really?"

"Yup." He nodded. "Me, Seidou, Kurogane, Shorty, Shirogane and Ryou-kun all took Judo back at the Academy. When we crashed on Altea we taught Raible a bit of it and after Fala took over piloting Blue Lion we taught her too."

"That good." Amue nodded in approval. "A woman should know how to defend herself against… a woman should know how to defend herself."

"And a princess especially." The Golion Chief agreed.

"Mm." Amue nodded.

"I'd like to see his face when Fala tosses Sincline across the room!" The Black Lion pilot joked with a cheerful tone. But the moment the words were out of his mouth he was seized with a hysterical fear. Sincline wouldn't take to kindly to being thrown, especially not by someone whom wasn't supposed to be able to like Princess Fala. What if he retaliated by hurting her or worse? Within the space of a second, Kogane had worked himself back up into a state of panic. Princess Amue, for her part, seemed to have returned to her apparently default state of tension.

"She won't use it on him." She muttered darkly.

"What?" The Golion Chief sputtered. "Why the hell not! That's why I taught it to her!"

"He's got this drug…" Her voice dropped conspiratorially low, as if this were a secret she wasn't mean to speak of and there could be spies all around waiting to tattle on her or deal out a punishment. "It… it makes you want him. But you don't really want him, I mean its not really you that wants him but rather some part of you. Instead of fighting him it makes you beg for him and for…" She trailed off; tears suddenly glistened in the corners of her eyes. "I have to go!"

The princess wrenched the door to her room back open and slipped inside.

"Wait!" Kogane put his hand of the door to prevent her form closing it in his face. "Tell me more. I need to know! What's he going to do to Fala? What's this drug? What does it make you want? What does he do when you're like that? How can I… how can I help Fala after we rescue her? I need to know!"

"I've never told anyone this…" She whispered.

"I need to know!"

"I haven't even told Ryou…"

"Princess, please."

"He said he loves me, ya know."

"Sincline?" Kogane blinked in confusion. He thought the heterogeneous despot only ever claimed that about Fala.

"No, Ryou." Amue shook her head. "He told me he loved me before I left, but I… I didn't tell him I loved him back. I have never spoken about my time as Sincline's prisoner to anyone before. But when I do it will be to him, because… because I."

She she didn't finish that sentence but instead shut the door in Kogane's face.

The Black Lion pilot was left standing in the corridor staring at the ornately carved wooden door of the princess' chamber. He ran through their conversation one more time in his head and decided that only one conclusion about be drawn from it. 'That chick has got some wires crossed.'

…

As agreed, Captain Nera arrived at Her Majesty's chambers promptly at Tenth-hour, teaching materials in hand. She was not a great scholar by any stretch of the imagination nor did she think she would make all that great a tutor. Her materials were the same her youngest daughter had used when she had attended grammar school and the Captain had no experience giving instruction in academia. Her strengths lied more in the physical disciplines rather than the scholarly ones. But, Her Majesty had requested that she teach her the Galran language, and so Nera was going to at least try.

She was admitted into Her Majesty's chambers by the slave, Marisol and this time the Captain offered a slight nod of her head in response to the woman's submissive bow. If the Empress believed in showing slaves difference then it would be insulting for the Captain of the Queen's guard to not do the same (no matter how awkward and wrong it felt).

Empress Fala ni Altea sat on her sofa in much the same way she had the previous day, only this time she was clad in a fine dress of lavender and gold. She moved with a similar stiffness as well but this time it was apparent that was from barely contained frustration than any sort of physical pain. But the Empress still managed to greet the Galran woman with a warm (if a little hallow) smile.

"Good morning, Nera."

The Captain bowed respectfully to her lady before returning a courteous and respectful, "Good morning to you as well, Your Majesty."

The Empress fidgeted as if there were something more she wished to say or ask, but she didn't. Instead Fala sat back down with a forlorn look on her soft human face and said, "Well then, I guess we should get started."

In spite of Nera's lack of academic prowess and teaching experience, the Empress proved to be a very good student. Though she had only just begun and was no where near memorizing the three different alphabets that made up the Galran writing system, Fala ni Altea took to the actual pronunciations rather well. Would often confuse her 'il's with her 'el's, but aside from that every syllable that rolled off the Empress' human tongue sounded like a natives. When the Captain complemented her on this, she merely blushed and said, "I'm just trying to imitate when I would over-hear Galran comm. channels during battles."

The reminder that the Empress had once been one of the pilots of Golion had jarred Nera a bit. She knew that Fala ni Altea had been the pilot of Blue Lion prior to her capture but at some point the Captain had sort of forgotten that little detail. The Empress always appeared quite and withdrawn as if suppressing her feelings (with the exception of her outburst the morning after her wedding night), the Empress appeared the picture of a demure little trophy wife while the Golion pilots (all of them) had been painted as bold and antagonistic villains in the minds of the Galran people. It was somewhat difficult to reconcile the two conflicting images of Empress Fala.

Once Fala had gotten a firm grip on the basic sounds and accent, Nera started her practicing the first of the three Galran alphabets. Within the Galran written language there were three distinct writing systems. The first, and one which Fala was currently studying, was a phonetic system meant for the spelling of native words. The second alphabet, like the first, was a phonetic system, however, it was meant only for foreign words that had been integrated into the Imperial language. The third system was the most difficult. It was comprised of over three thousand characters, each one expressing a single specific idea or meaning. Most were fairly basic such as 'zero', 'fire', 'strength', etc. However, others were more complicated, such as 'a feeling of such abject loathing that the object of said feeling is below you even to acknowledge its existence'. It was this writing system that Nera was dreading having to teach the Empress. The phonetic alphabets were pretty easy, the characters were pronounced the same, they just looked different, so long as you were able to keep them strait and didn't confuse one for the other you were fine. But the meaning-specific characters, oy!, where those ever a headache.

The two women worked together for a little over an hour, Fala reading each character out loud as she scrolled through the alphabet on her datapad and Nera offering minor corrections here and there whenever the Empress might confuse one character for another that looked similar. Eventually, they progressed from just memorizing the characters to forming words with them. Nera would give Fala a simple word like 'cat', 'sword', etc and the Empress would spell it. After another hour of this the two women became tired of this and mutually decided it was time for a break.

…

Fala surrounded by her entourage of guards glided through the halls of Demon Castle, the skirts of her lavender and gold dress swaying about her ankles like a sea of delicate pastel. Though she'd only had a little over two hours of lessons and practice she wanted to test command of the language. She wanted to find a decently difficult conversation to listen in on and see just how much of it she could understand and how much she still had to learn. Unfortunately for her, most of the conversations in the corridors were nothing but short pleasantries, "Hey, how are you?" "I'm good. How's your day been?" Nothing of any substance. She needed to find something with substance.

Her wanderings lead her to the throne room. The doors were closed, as they always were regardless of whether or not it was in use. But muffled bits of speech managed to drift through its thick dark-wood doors to grace Fala's ears and she found herself curious to learn what they were talking about.

A pair of attendance opened the massive double doors for her, one of them announcing her entrance before offering a low bow and doing a theatrically exaggerated about face. The doors were then shut back behind the Empress' back.

Fala, for her part, had taken a single step within the expansive audience chamber before freezing in her tracks. Sincline sat upon the Golden Thrown clad in a long black tunic with gold patterning on the collar, shoulders and cuffs, a crimson velvet cape was draped lazily over one shoulder and fastened with a gold clasp at the other shoulder. In his hands he held a golden scepter and a golden orb with an eyeball in the center in the other. He did not look at her as she entered, his glare fixed upon a man wearing a military uniform who knelt on one kneed before the foot of the dais, presumably, the one who had been speaking before the Empress had interrupted.

She hadn't wanted to see him and she mentally kicked herself for her stupidity. Just because she hadn't been in the throne room since his coronation didn't mean that he didn't use said room at all. Just because the majority of the time she'd seen him actually working at ruling his Empire he was in his office did not mean that the throne room was completely unused and if she heard voices coming from the throne room then who else would they be talking to? Really, now.

'Fala, you get a gold star for idiocy.' She reprimanded herself.

The Emperor's gaze refused to focus on Fala as he brushed off her entrance with some causal comment of which she only just got the jist and ordered something be brought out for her to sit. He then instructed the kneeling man to continue.

Well, as long as she was here… This would, after all, be the perfect opportunity to test her listening comprehension of the Galran language. And, heck, she might just pick up some useful information in the process! With her nose in the air and an imperious expression on her face she hoped was fitting for a Galran Empress, Fala climbed the stairs of the dais and sat at Sincline's left side in the chair provided. A rather lovely chair, carved with intricate designs and lacquered in gold with a comfortable red velvet cushion and arm rests that were just the perfect height for her arms.

She cast a sideways look at her husband, but he refused to look at her. His face remained a blank and expressionless mask, completely unreadable as he focused his gaze everywhere but on her and Fala was reminded of how he had gotten that same look the previous night when she had told him that they were not ardan. She also remembered how upset it had seemed to make him and she wondered if she hadn't actually committed a much more severe insult than just a simple romantic rejection.

Remembering the previous night also sent her cheeks a blaze as she also recalled the drug he had dosed her with and the feelings it provoked. The blush deepened as Fala remembered just how her body had felt warm to the touch all over and her thighs ached to feel Sincline between them. Sitting in her chair next to him she pressed her legs closer together, her thighs firmly shut against any phantom feelings of him inside her. She may have craved him like a mad woman this last night past, but that didn't mean she actually wanted him. Caving and wanting were not one and the same, she reminded herself firmly even as that warm feeling she had come to recognize as arousal began to pool between her thighs.

Next to her Sincline sniffed inconspicuous and shifted his position so that he was leaning away from her, his cheek resting on his hand, his fingers splayed over his cheek, one resting casually just under his nose. Fala rubbed her firmly closed legs together and wondered if he could smell her involuntary arousal. Then she reminded herself that if he could tell when her menstruation began and ended just from her smell, then he could probably tell when she was aroused as well. The Empress distracted herself from the discomforting thought by focusing her attention on the reason she had come here in the first place: listening to Galran conversations and assessing her comprehension.

As it happened, Fala understood very little of the report the man was giving the Emperor. But then again, what had she expected after only one lesson? She did manage to glean a few scattered words and phrases, however. Mostly terms she had picked up listening to the Galran channels during their battles. The rest she filled in with simple logic and guesswork.

From what she could gather, thought the man wore a military officer's uniform he was actually an explorer (or surveyor) of sorts and had discovered a few rural planet along the Imperial Frontier and was petitioning the Emperor for money and ships to capture the planet in the name of the Empire. (Admittedly, this was a lot of guesswork on Fala's part.)

Sincline waited patiently for the man to finish his proposal, (which Fala thought was rather uncharacteristic of him) before giving his reply of 'No'. His actual answer was, of course, much longer than just that simple word but that was what it all basically boiled down to.

The Emperor did not want to divert any time, money or resources to any other large projects until the 'Golion situation' had been dealt with and was under the Emperor's firm control. No other ships, personnel, labor, or money would be spent on expanding the Empire, there was no point in expansion if control over what they already had could not be maintained. The Empress had to begrudgingly admit that that was a wise decision on her husband's part and that maybe he wasn't as terrible a leader as she'd always imagined he was. And then her brain caught up with her ears…

'Golion situation'! Sincline didn't already have full control over Golion! That could only mean that he didn't have the Lions! At least, not all of them. That could only mean that the boys had managed to smuggled them off of Altea or at least away from the castle and hidden them somewhere. Maybe the fighting was still going on!

That thought made her a little heartsick for her home-world. If the war was still being fought on Altean soil than that meant her people were still suffering, dying as collateral damage in the battles between Beastmen and Lions. The land was being torn and scarred, charred by lazer-fire and fall-out from whatever special ability Galra's Beastman-of-the-week was using.

Her heart felt sick.

But at the same time if Sincline felt the Empire couldn't afford to divert its resources then that meant that even suffering the defeat they had and surrendering as they did… even without the Castle Gradma to support them, the Lions were still a real threat to Galra. Heart-sick as she was for her beautiful green home-world, Fala couldn't help but glow with pride that it was her father's Lions, her planet's weapons that were giving the evil Empire and its vile Emperor such a hard time.

His interview with the prospective explorer over with, Sincline motioned that he would hold no more audiences today and stood. For the first time since she had entered the throne room he glanced at his wife, his mask of bland indifference breaking for a moment to reveal a lingering forlorn look abject wretchedness. Then he turned away from her once again without so much as a word and exited through a door concealed behind the thrown on the dais. She thought of following him for a moment but didn't know what she might say or if she should even say anything at all. So, instead she descended from the dais and exited out the same double door through which she entered.

…

Sincline locked himself in his office and sat despondent in front of his desk for long moments after exiting the throne room.

He hadn't expected her to show up. Almost a month she'd been living in Demon Castle and hadn't gone near the throne room since his coronation. The Emperor had begun to think she associated that room with blood and sacrifice, two things she apparently detested about his society. But today she just waltzed in, bold as daylight (on a planet that actually got daylight). Had she done this a week earlier, hell, if she'd done this yesterday, he would have been overjoyed! He wanted her to rule by his side, he wanted his people to see her as their sovereign as much as they saw him. He had married her because he wanted to share his Empire with her as an equal! And all she had to do to get all that was to willingly submit to him.

Last night, however, she had made it abundantly clear that she wanted none of it. She didn't want to rule by his side, she didn't want his people to look to her as their queen, she didn't want to share his Empire with him and she would never submit to his dominance (at least, not without a serious push on his end).

Fine!

All that was just fine. He didn't need her to rule by his side, he didn't need his people to look to her as they did him, he didn't need to share his Empire with her. He could be content with just using her as yet another unwilling bedroom partner. That, at least, was familiar territory.

But if she hadn't wanted to rule by his side and all that jazz, why had she bothered to sit in on the throne room audiences at all? The woman made absolutely no sense!

Sincline let out a gusty sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose where he felt an on-coming headache. Why did she confound him so? He managed to understand most of the other women in his life just fine. (That's not to say that he understood women, just those that he had encountered his lifetime.) Hell! Even Amue, volatile as she was, was easier to understand than Fala was.

'Whatever, I don't care anymore.' He reminded himself vehemently. She had refused to be his ardan, his lover and mate and all the gifts that came with it. Legally, they might still be married, but in every practical sense she had made herself no different from any of the slaves in his harem. 'And I don't need to understand her to fuck her senseless.'

…