A metal egg, no larger than her palm, gleaming like liquid mercury under the fluorescent lights.
“What is that?”
“Transportation.” Gerri cradled the object like it might hatch. “The most efficient way to travel between worlds these days.”
Faith watched, transfixed, as Gerri whispered something too soft to hear. The egg lifted from Gerri’s palm as if gravity had suddenly become optional.
Faith’s rational mind scrambled for explanations—magnets, holograms, elaborate stage magic designed to impress gullibleclients. But the air around the floating object shimmered with heat, and the scent of vanilla lightning grew stronger until it filled her lungs.
The egg expanded. Not growing larger but unfolding—reality peeling back like flower petals to reveal something that shouldn’t exist. Blue light spilled from the widening circle, casting everything in aquamarine shadows that moved independently of their sources.
A portal. An actual, impossible, completely real portal hanging in the air like a window into somewhere else.
“Ready for some fun?” Gerri’s eyes flashed pure gold, and her smile held secrets that could rewrite physics.
Faith stared at the swirling blue gateway, her heart hammering against her ribs like a caged bird. Every survival instinct she’d honed through years of standing on her own screamed warnings. This was insane. Reckless. The kind of leap that ended in disaster or fairy tales, with no middle ground between the two.
But her rent was due in thirty days, and extraordinary problems required extraordinary solutions.
“Sure.” The word came out steadier than her pulse. “Why not?”
Faith stepped forward, her practical sneakers carrying her toward impossible light. The portal’s edge tingled against her skin like static electricity, and for one crystalline moment, she balanced between worlds—one foot in a sterile office beneath New Jersey, the other reaching toward something that defied every law she’d ever learned.
Then she stepped through, and existence rewrote itself around her.
Purple forests stretched beneath twin suns that painted the sky in shades of amber and rust. One sun blazed gold like Earth’s familiar star; the other burned blood-orange, casting everythingin double shadows that danced across alien ground. Pink oceans caught the light and threw it back in sheets of rose-colored fire, while yellow sand crunched beneath her feet like crushed gemstones.
The air hummed. Not with machinery or electricity, but with something alive and watchful—as if the planet itself breathed around her.
Faith stood frozen, her breath stolen by beauty that belonged in dreams rather than reality. The scent of foreign flowers mixed with salt spray from impossible seas, and somewhere in the distance, birdsong painted melodies across alien air.
One thought anchored her spinning mind.
I’m really on an alien planet.
TWO
KOVRAK
Twenty years of watching the Festival of Twin Suns unfold like clockwork had carved patterns into Kovrak’s soul deeper than scars. Every year, banners in royal blue and silver rose from the palace spires. Every year, the pride gathered with barely contained anticipation crackling through the air like electricity before a storm. Every year, he arrived with a different woman at his side—competent politicians, ambitious nobles, bored socialites who saw him as a stepping stone to greater influence.
And every year, the whispers followed the same trajectory.This one will be the mate. This one will secure the line. This one will finally make our prince a king.
The crown and title hung in the balance like a sword suspended by ancient pride law. He could govern, could lead, could command absolute loyalty from his people—but until he mated, until he proposed, until he fulfilled those daunting requirements carved in stone by their ancestors, he remained Prince Kovrak Auryx. Not King.
Twenty years of disappointment had worn thin the patience of his people. Twenty years of festival companions who leftwithout rings, without bonds, without the future his pride demanded.
Last year had been the breaking point.
Kovrak’s jaw tightened as he stood on the terrace of his palace, watching servants string lights between columns in preparation for another round of theatrical hope. Last year, he’d refused the charade entirely. Attended alone. The silence that followed had cut deeper than any insult.
Nobles exchanging meaningful glances. Elders frowning behind their ceremonial masks. Rivals—particularly Varrek Deynar—smiling with predatory satisfaction.
A leader without a visible future invites challenge.
Varrek had wasted no time sharpening that truth into a weapon, planting seeds of doubt throughout the pride.Kovrak is unstable. Uncommitted. Unfit to secure our future.The formal challenge hadn’t come yet, but the threat hung over every conversation, every political gathering, and every moment of apparent weakness.
The twin suns cast double shadows across the palace grounds—one gold, one blood-orange—painting everything in hues that reminded him daily of the duality he navigated. Prince and future king. Leader and genetic asset. Man and symbol.