Perfect Master by Ann Jacobs Page B

restore his appearance, even though the old cyborg maker had
tempted him with promises of functional prostheses for some of his missing
parts. “The hook unnerves you, doesn’t it, Father?”
    His expression stoic, King Gawain met
Arik’s gaze. “I admit it does. It looks as though it might become a lethal
weapon.”
    “I promise not to use it to maim you as
your hirelings maimed me. But I will not submit to the knife to make it easier
for you to look upon me.”
    Arik watched a tear slide down his father’s
cheek. “Perhaps you will do it for the fair Emerald, if not for me or your
future subjects. You mentioned being the only prince in Meredith’s inventory.
You may be right about that. It is of no importance, however, for you are to
mate with Emerald tomorrow. I pray to all the gods that she will soften your
heart.”
    It served his father right, having to see
the results of his actions each day. Perhaps someday he would believe his
father’s suffering had accumulated sufficiently to compensate him for all he’d
lost. But it hadn’t yet.
    The king cleared his throat as he stood by
the door, ready to escape. “Your bride has been certified fertile, and I cannot
doubt her beauty will stir your loins. I expect she will produce you an heir
some ten moons hence. Now I bid you good night.”
    “Good night.” And good riddance ,
Arik thought when he heard the tower door close with a satisfying thud.
    He wished he were as certain as his father
that his bride would do her duty, not run screaming when she saw him in the
concealing garments he wore whenever he had to venture from these rooms. He
figured he would chance that, though, over the near certainty that seeing him
naked would make her scream in horror. As forbidding as he looked in
head-to-toe black leather, he looked worse when he revealed his ravaged flesh.
    Drawing his robe around him to ward off the
evening chill, he strode to the other window of his tower, which overlooked the
community where Obsidion’s full-time residents lived.
    Obsidion. The pleasure planet was his home
and now his birthright. From his vantage point he could see all the city. Sex
slave parlors and shops renowned throughout the galaxy twinkled with
many-colored lights, though night had not yet cloaked the sky in darkness.
    Arik turned toward the other side of the
city that was cloaked in twilight. It bathed mansions and cottages alike in a
haze of mottled pink and lavender. Arik stood, fingering the rough surface of
his ruined cheek and idly rubbing a painful spot in his empty eye socket as he
watched dusk fall on his last day as a free man.
    He could not, would not, submit to the
restorative surgeries Pak Song and a team of surgeons had recommended. His
father had summoned the old Earthling exile to the palace along with a
half-dozen plastic surgeons, soon after Arik returned from exile, and he hadn’t
tried to hide his disappointment when Arik had refused his services.
    Pak Song and his colleagues hadn’t
understood, either, that Arik saw his ugliness as a source of well-deserved
pain for his father. He wore his scars as a reminder to all who looked at him
of the cruel fate that befell younger sons of kings who refused to bow to
Obsidion’s laws and sacrifice their genitals to a surgeon’s knife.
    His cock swelled against the sheer golden
silk of his robe, as though in silent thanks to him for having spared it by
fleeing his home rather than becoming a royal eunuch along with his four
cousins, the sons of the half-brother of Arik’s father. The four had been at or
approaching puberty that summer twelve years ago.
    Now they served in the palace as royal
eunuchs, well-fed and well cared for though deprived of their maleness and any
chance to succeed to Obsidion’s monarchy. And he was back, the unquestioned
heir to the Diamond Throne. However Arik might feel about his mating, he
accepted that he must marry and provide an heir. Maybe I should be
grateful that my father arranged this