The Ugly Dukeling Read online

  The Ugly Dukeling

  Cosmic Fairy Tales

  Bex McLynn

  Contents

  Once Upon a Time…

  A Rare Bird

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  And They Lived Happily Ever...

  Dearest Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Other Titles

  Cosmic Fairy Tales

  About Bex

  Copyright © 2019 by Bex McLynn

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by Maria Spada

  Copyediting and Proofreading by Lindsay York at LY Publishing Services

  Developmental Editing by Chris Westwater

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Honey and Emmy

  I am ready to retreat.

  Just say the word.

  I’m there.

  (Seriously, just say it already…)

  Once Upon a Time…

  An alien spaceship orbited the planet Gisth, circling several times before settling over the Kingdom of Mayren. The aliens hovered in the sky for an entire generation before they finally made contact. The Otar offered wondrous technology. All they asked in return was that noble families bear and raise hybrid children.

  The Mayreni accepted the aliens’ offer.

  Now, dozens of Otaric-Mayreni hybrids—all destined to be lords and ladies—dwelled in the Kingdom of Mayren.

  A Rare Bird

  Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno

  “A rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan”

  Juvenal, Satires

  Chapter 1

  Atrates stared down at his father.

  Well, one of his fathers.

  For all the miserable fucks. The man was still alive.

  The moment Atrates had strode into his father’s apartments, he anticipated finding a shrouded corpse on the bed. Mayreni medicine was hundreds of years behind Otaric practices. Surely the ministrations of the duke’s country doctor would have sped his father’s passage into the next life.

  No such luck.

  Lord Andrake’s rattled breaths carried across the room to where Atrates stood on the threshold.

  The smell of sickness struck him, clogging his nostrils and fouling the taste receptors in his mouth. He even saw the slight rise and fall of his father’s weak lungs as shadows stretched and retreated over the wrinkled bedding.

  His keen, seemingly supernatural senses were traits he inherited from his Otaric sire. He didn’t know his perception was superior until the Otar had placed him amongst the Mayreni for longer periods. As a child, he’d mentioned a stink to the duke—flatulence of all things. To Atrates’s misfortune, a footman had been present and had heard him. The duke’s face had bloated and turned red, then he’d proceeded to beat Atrates for uttering vulgar language.

  That beating had christened his relationship with his Mayreni father.

  Staring at the duke now, Atrates knew his father had no strength left to lift a switch. The Mayreni nurse in the room had to slip her hand beneath the duke’s snow-white hair to raise his head, all so that he could drink from a straw.

  His father’s rheumy, mossy brown eyes drifted to the doorway. Atrates matched the duke’s stare, looking upon his father with no recognition lighting his eyes. No welcome. No wrath. Just apathy.

  His father’s lips went slack, the straw rolling to the cracked corner of his mouth.

  “Ugly,” the duke wheezed, “swain.”

  “Pardon, your grace?” The Mayreni nurse leaned closer to his father rather than look around the room.

  Atrates slipped away in that moment. Agility, another trait he inherited from his Otaric sire, enabled him to move silently despite his mass. He’d never seen the nurse before, and he refused to give his Mayreni father the satisfaction of witnessing yet another person gasp in alarm when she caught sight of him.

  The Ugly Dukeling.

  Ugly, indeed.

  Atrates’s appearance proclaimed his genetic manipulation. He was an Otaric-Mayreni hybrid with three sets of genetics: a Gisthean mother and father, plus a grafted Otaric sire. Whereas Mayreni citizens had lovely bronze skin and either green or brown eyes, the hybrids had granite black skin and blue eyes. No one in Mayreni—or anywhere on Gisth—looked like the hybrids. The Otar, for unfathomable reasons, had deliberately made them distinctive.

  The Otar had also deliberately recruited noble families to beget and raise the hybrid children. They had incentivized the exchange by offering technology that wasn’t widely accessible throughout Mayren, and the Duke of Andrake had been one of the first Mayreni noblemen to sign a contract.

  The duke had also been the first to divorce his hybrid-bearing duchess and marry his gravid mistress. Trone, Atrates brother, was the eldest by a handful of weeks.

  As much as the bon ton adored fresh gossip, The Dubious Dukes scandal had never faded over time. The Beautiful Bastard had become the duke’s heir, while the Ugly Dukeling had become the bastard.

  Suppressing a frustrated growl, Atrates abandoned stealth as he exited the duke’s apartments. He snatched up his military rucksack that he’d dropped by the door and then thundered down the hall, determined to locate Trone. After all, someone must answer for pulling him from his post on the Continent. Trone was one of those responsible. The other was Valment, Atrates’s Otaric sire. Their combined meddling had forced Atrates to leave his armatura battlesuit unit and scurry home like a cur.

  Atrates pounded his feet down the marble steps of the grand foyer. He’d never been permitted to take those steps as a child. Too public. But it was the fastest route to find his brother. His body needed to expend restless energy. His rage needed to exchange blows.

  Since the decrepit duke presented no contest and Valment was offworld, Trone, by god, better oblige him.

  Cisnetta, with her nose in her ledger, followed the ruckus down the hall and into the library.

  Trone loomed over the desk as he stared at the open black case before him. His rapt focus had coiled him so tightly that his shoulders bulged, stretching his fine linen shirt over his back.

  “Bloody hell, you bugger!” He snarled, jabbing his fingertips onto the polished wood. Trone had been raised a Mayreni nobleman, thus he refrained from placing closed fists on the desktop. “Run, goddammit. Run!”

  Cisnetta sighed. “People typically come to the library to read quietly.”

  Trone flipped a big, meaty hand at her without turning his focus from the screen mounted inside the case. “I do know. This way, no one can find me.”

  “You—”

  Trone, the heir to the Andrake ducal estate, roared in triumph as he jumped back. He pointed at the screen. “That’s right, you nimble bastard. Fucking run!”

  An earsplitting honk had Trone taking a knee and peeking under the desk.

  “That’s bloody right, Cobbs,” Trone said to the black swan lying on a nest of blankets. “Two points ahead.”

  Trone plucked a sardine off a plate on the desk and tossed the treat to Cobbs.

>   “Oh! No,” Cisnetta cried. “Don’t feed those to my swan. They’re too salty for him.”

  Trone waved her off as he stood, his green eyes back to the black case. “They’re the best protein for the price point.”

  She rolled her eyes. Once Trone figured out he could bribe Cobbs into tolerating him, he crammed cases of canned sardines into the pantry of the Zentrale townhome.

  Knowing her employer was enthralled by the follis ball match on the display, she began jotting down notes in her ledger. She wouldn’t get a fraction of his attention until the play finished.

  She ran through her handwritten list. She had the ladies from the recovery facility resettled at Barbotière, and the movers were scheduled to transport the remaining belongings and wares still at the Zentrale townhome. A shipment of magone extract, ready for immediate processing, should be arriving any day since the farmer used a horse and trailer. She’d placed a hold with the Zentrale Daily Journal in anticipation of Lord Andrake’s page-spanning obituary. And—

  “Flowers,” she said to Trone as she set her ledger next to the Otaric black case, jotting a note while she tugged at his sleeve with her free hand.

  He shrugged her off, like dodging unwanted hair-tousling by a matron. “Flowers? What flowers? You handle the flowers.”

  He made a good point—so she added a note about rotation of the flower fields—but that wasn’t the point. “Flowers for your father’s service, Trone.”

  With his eyes on the game, he grumped and flipped a hand toward the double glass doors that opened to the ducal manor’s garden. “Right there. Tons of bloody flowers.”

  With a long-suffering sigh, Cisnetta stared out at the manicured garden filled with blue magone. Those flowers were not fitting for the occasion. Women used those flowers for medicinal herbal teas and scented soaps and lotions.

  Trone knew this.

  Unless he wanted to make a scene in Zentrale’s Royal Cathedral.

  Which he very well didn’t need to stage. There would be numerous scenes for the bon ton to titter over once Trone inherited the title.

  Cisnetta shook her head while accepting the inevitable—there would be gossip. Although, she refused to be daunted by its grim approach. They’d stiffen their spines and muddle through somehow. They always did.

  Turning to a fresh page, she made a new note. ‘Funeral flowers.’

  She tapped her penpoint on the paper. Now, she knew better, but still…

  She wrote ‘NO MAGONE’ just in case she got struck by a lancar—an Otaric vehicle—and Naosim, god bless him, would try to carry on. He would think magone a lovely idea. Probably order the blooms in bulk and hold back half of the shipment for himself and the recovery facility ladies. They never declined magone donations.

  Which only reinforced her imagined debacle of Naosim ordering a palette of magone, him full-well knowing the flowers would be ghastly inappropriate at the duke’s funeral.

  “Bloody hell,” she mumbled, her hand twitching as she underlined ‘NO MAGONE’ twice.

  Then she circled it.

  “You’re shaking, Ciss.”

  She startled. Trone always caught her off-guard when he went from frustratingly self-absorbed to endearingly attentive.

  With a silent curse, she realized that she was squeezing her pen in her trembling hand. Well, making a fist hadn’t solved the problem. The Mayreni never closed their hands unless they intended to fight. If anything, it blared like a klaxon that she teetered over the chasm of a frenetic episode.

  She forced her hand open and the pen plopped onto her paper. She and Trone stared at it like damning evidence.

  “I see Naosim when I get back to Zentrale,” she said in concession.

  Naosim would siphon off her excess energy.

  “Good.” Using his fingertips—his hand so dichotomous for being large and sinewy, yet immaculately manicured—Trone flipped back a few of her ledger’s pages. Cisnetta swore at her own handwriting. At some point, her book had gotten flipped, and her words now appeared upside-down. “Just in time, eh, Ciss?”

  She snatched up her ledger and snapped it closed. “Yes. Right on schedule.”

  Like all Gisthean women, Cisnetta’s body produced a hormone called bezeten. It played a role in her people’s evolutionary reproduction. Women made bezeten; men siphoned it through skin-on-skin contact. This biological link was the basis of Mayren’s society: offering and accepting by engaging in an even exchange.

  But for some men and women, the biological scales tipped, plaguing them with frenesia. For women, becoming frenetic meant producing too much bezeten. For men, frenetic meant never getting enough. The symptoms for both men and women were similar: physical and mental restlessness and increased agitation and arousal.

  Cisnetta had been living with frenesia since reaching puberty. The symptoms were always there, flowing under the surface. She’d been managing her frenesia with a strict routine schedule and a keen, constant awareness. Despite her best efforts, occasionally her frenesia would roil her like boiling water—bubbling to the surface. Very rarely, her symptoms would boil over, plunging her into a full frenetic episode.

  Could her shaking hands mean that…

  A ripple ran down her spine. Trone had siphoned from her a few days ago. Were her symptoms right on schedule?

  She yanked open her ledger and began flipping until Trone flattened his palm over the pages, blocking her view.

  “Ciss.” He gently tugged her ledger down, his eyes crinkling with a suppressed smile.

  Oh, she knew why. She’d tightened her grip and locked her bent elbows. But if it came to a contest of strength, she was well outmatched. Trone was large for a Mayreni man. Although gray strands peppered his temples, he’d not let himself go soft. His constant boxing regimen left no room for imagining any scenario where she’d win.

  Therefore, she did what she always did so well: she conceded. For now.

  She relaxed her arms, letting him extract her beloved ledger. He pulled his farsimi from his breast pocket while he one-handedly closed her ledger. His deft, yet careful handling of her tome had her flashing him with a small, appreciative smile. They’d swapped roles like this many times before. Cisnetta would panic and fumble; Trone would mitigate and soothe.

  “That’s my Ciss.” He winked at her and then handed her the closed ledger as he started tapping on his farsimi.

  When the Otar began sharing their technology with the kingdom, there had been picketing over transport vehicles, like lancars, and endless Council sessions over the strangely suspicious advancements to medicine and agriculture.

  But the farsimi? The Mayreni couldn’t integrate it fast enough.

  It let people talk to someone who wasn’t present in the room, even if they were on the other side of Mayren. It also contained a host of tools, called ‘applications,’ that could hold an entire record’s room worth of data. One could both access and update information within seconds. It was marvelous.

  Of course, only the wealthy had them, and Cisnetta was far from wealthy. Trone could only afford a base-model farsimi for her, enabling her to simply talk to people.

  She clutched her ledger to her breast as she waited for Trone to access his calendar. From under the desk, Cobbs rustled his feathers and honked a soft greeting at her.

  She went down on one knee and peered under the desk. “Quite a set-up you have here, Cobbs.”

  “Fella’s doing well for himself,” Trone said above her. “Safe nesting. Abundant food.”

  Cisnetta held out her hand and Cobbs nudged her eagerly with his head, then pointedly looked up, toward the desktop. “You’ve right spoiled him, Trone.”

  “You say spoil, I say respect,” he said proudly.

  What could she do but nod in agreement? Her swan was an ornery cob who exercised extreme caution when introduced to any new person. Trone had determinedly won Cobbs over, and gaining her swan’s confidence was like being granted an appointment with the queen herself.

  When s
he stood, Trone angled his farsimi screen toward her. “You’re right on schedule, Ciss.”

  There it was, in unimaginable clarity and detail, with unlimited storage capacity and multi-functional application, the last day she let Trone siphon her excess bezeten. Four days ago. Right on schedule.

  There must have been something on her face, a longing perhaps as she started at the Otaric communications device, because Trone’s cheeks colored as his mouth pressed into a grim line.

  “Not much longer, Ciss.” He flicked his eyes away.

  It had become a rare moment when she couldn’t read her employer’s thoughts. Was he embarrassed that regular siphoning from both himself and Naosim didn’t quell her frenesia? Or that he knew how badly she wanted a farsimi, but it had been on hold?

  Hell, everything had been on hold for years and years.

  “I know, Trone.” She chose to address the farsimi only, lifting her ledger like a champagne toast as she patted her pocket where she had her own simple farsimi. “I’m making do.” Then doubt struck her. “You have no complaints, right? I’ve been meaning to restructure—”

  “Ciss! Ciss!” Trone grasped her shoulders and laughed, and his mirth was a hearty booming that knocked her in the chest, stealing her breath as she exhaled in relief. “You more than ‘make do.’ You are phenomenal. Indispensable.”

  Caught up in his praise, she giggled. “Underpaid.”

  “But appreciated in abundance.” He tugged her close and gave her a pecking kiss on her crown as she caught a whiff of his cologne. “And I know your room and board are free, plus all travel expenses covered.”