The line of people waiting to speak to the king and queen trailed half the length of the ballroom. Zaya leaned sideways to look ahead. The man speaking to them currently had been doing so for the last ten minutes. This was going to be quite tedious. She was hoping to be the distraction for Hale, but she hadn’t expected the line to move this slowly. But it was important to introduce herself to them because no one here had met Hale or her before. They needed to avoid suspicion. Not saying hello to the king would be more suspicious, at least in the eyes of their client. He told them they must introduce themselves. Zaya listened because he knew more about K’aldi customs than either of them combined.

While impatiently waiting, she looked over at Hale to see how he was doing with the princess. She could barely believe what she saw. He had already managed to steal her away from the entire group of people she had been talking to only moments ago. Hale had her undivided attention. How could she be surprised though?

The princess was standing too close to Hale, her husband… in the eyes of everyone surrounding them. The princess had no shame in flirting with Hale. She laughed when he laughed and smiled too widely. Zaya saw the way she looked at Hale. Her eyes were openly lustful. She was naive, unaware that she was being played by him. Zaya couldn’t expect her to know.

No one would notice his deception because he could even fake being genuine. He would stare into her eyes, at her very soul, and convince her to believe every promising lie from his lips. And she would die just to be touched by those lips, hoping to be closer to unlocking the essence of who he really was. She wouldn’t know that he never let anyone in, until her heart was already his. And he would cast it aside for anyone new.

Poor girl.

Zaya hoped the princess didn’t think Hale cared about her. He didn’t and never would.

“It is your turn,” the person behind her said, disrupting her thoughts.

“Oh, thank you,” Zaya said with a smile. She couldn’t know how long she would have stood there watching Hale if she hadn’t been interrupted.

Zaya walked up to the king and queen and bowed gracefully.

“How are you tonight, Duchess?” The queen asked her.

They knew who she was. Zaya was surprised they paid attention to the names of their guests. But she supposed people of K’aldi offered more respect to others than she was accustomed to. “I am doing well. Your castle is more beautiful than I could have ever expected.”

The queen covered her heart with a gloved hand. “How kind of you! I am glad you and your husband were finally able to come. I am hoping to make a trip over to Soruta one day.”

“That would be wonderful. You will have to let me know when you arrive,” Zaya went on.

The king asked, “How is the weather on your home planet?”

Zaya’s arms tensed up. She couldn’t remember if her client had mentioned anything about Sort’s climate. “It’s… very mild… most of the year. Not too humid, not too dry.”

“That sounds nice. I would expect Soruta to have good weather. You produce good crops all year round.”

While the king and queen were talking to her, Zaya pretended to pay attention and glanced over to Hale. Things between him and the princess hadn’t progressed any further. Didn’t he know she was already within his reach? Zaya reached for the thick silver bracelet she wore and pressed a hidden button on the rim. Her bracelet sent signal to Hale that would cause the matching bracelet he wore to vibrate. They would send signals like this when they couldn’t talk through their earpieces.

As soon as she sent a signal, he glanced at her knowingly. This was when he would end his conversation with the princess. Hale kissed both her cheeks and said goodbye. He started walking towards her. The princess quietly exited the ballroom. Hale’s part of the job was halfway over. Zaya needed to catch up.

She quickly ended her shallow conversation with the king and queen and went to meet Hale on the dance floor. With barely a word of acknowledgement, Hale took her into her arms and swept her away into the crowd of people dancing. He held his hands tightly around his waist. The firmness of his touch immediately comforted her nerves. Because of his confidence, she felt security tonight. She would have seen this job as an impossibility with anyone else but him. But Hale was here, holding her. If he could make It, so could she, and his part was far more gruesome than hers.

“Are you going to be able to do this?” She asked Hale, though she knew his answer.

“Why wouldn’t I? She’s nothing more than a target to me.”

Pandora had once told Zaya that Hale had changed. But hearing him speak about the K’aldi princess as merely a means to payment, Zaya doubted Pandora’s conviction. Since she began working with Hale, she was amazed with his ability to see past human life and kill without a second thought. Killing was reflex of his.

“Good to hear. I’ll let you get to it then.” The song was ending, and Zaya saw this as the perfect opportunity for her to escape to her target.

Hale left her and sneaked out of the ballroom the same way the princess had. Then Zaya stepped across the floor and waited by one of the entrances to the ballroom. This was the door she saw the waiters go in and out from. About a minute later, a medium sized waiter approached the door and held an empty tray in his hand. Zaya waved to him.

“Can I help you, Madame?”

“Yeah, I need you to come with me.”

He looked down at her hand that held the smallest gun she owned. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, I just need something.”

The waiter cautiously followed her through another set of doors. Zaya looked around and saw what she thought to be a closet. She opened the room which luckily happened to be a cleaning closet. Zaya pushed him inside and punched him in the head a single time, knocking him out. Then Zaya kneeled to the floor, and with her sharp teeth, she bit into the flesh of his neck. Her four longest teeth reached deeper and impaled his jugular veins. Those four teeth injected her venom into his bloodstream. A little would make anyone fall for her, but too much would make them die as soon as the venom reached their brain. She overloaded his bloodstream with enough to make him die within the next five seconds. He was probably an innocent man who didn’t deserve death of any kind, but she couldn’t leave any loose ends. At least his death was quick.

Zaya took off all her jewelry and threw it in the corner. She pulled off her dress and replaced her clothing with the waiter’s uniform. She put on his black shirt and black pants. She pulled her braids back into a ponytail. Next, she took of the waiter’s boots and slipped them over her own feet. They were slightly too big, but she could work around that.

Her makeup would usually be the biggest obstacle, but she came prepared. She brought a facial modifier: a flimsy face mask that once worn changed the structure of the person’s face as long as it was worn. These had been banned fifty years ago, but Zaya had her ways of buying them. The mask stuck to her entire face and changed her features randomly. Not even Hale would know it was her.

With the empty tray in hand, Zaya left the cleaning closet and returned to the ballroom.

* * * *

Hale reached for the door handle and pulled. The princess left the door to her bedroom unlocked for him. He entered and quickly closed the door behind him. He couldn’t let anyone see what he was about to do. Zaya was counting on him.

The princess— her name was Talia, but if he couldn’t give her a name in his mind— was sitting on her bed with her ballgown of pink and gold fanned out over her lap, waiting for him patiently. She had already set her crown aside and let down her hair. Her blonde hair was draped to the side and touched her waist. He couldn’t meet her eyes yet. He was too afraid to see the innocence he knew was there.

He walked around her room and looked around, faking an arrogant smile. Inside he was terrified about what Zaya had asked of him. Had loving Pandora changed him that much?

He definitely couldn’t think about Pandora. He would never go through with this then.

The princess’s room looked like it came from a picture from an ancient history book. She had a wooden wardrobe along the back wall, a real mirror between two windows, and a bed stool with golden legs at the end of her bed frame. The duvet covering her large bed was cream-colored silk embroidered with the family crest in gold string. Her bed frame reached close to the ceiling and from it hung sheer white drapes.

“Len?” She asked. That was his name to her.

He finally met her eyes. Her thin brows were twisted in concern. “Sorry, I just wanted to get a bearing of my surroundings.”

“For?”

“No reason really. Everything’s just very different here than what I’m used to.”

She stood up and waltzed towards him. “Are you trying to stall?”

Hale shook his head and picked up her gloved hands. “Of course not.”

“Well, then do what you promised me.” The princess turned, facing him with her back. “Aren’t you going to undress me?”

He placed his hands around her waist. “Just waiting for your permission.”

Hale could feel her silent laugh. She looked back at him for a moment. “The lacing is kinda difficult to remove. I guess I should have had my handmaidens—”

“All done,” Hale interrupted. He had finished unlacing and loosening her dress.

The princess’s face was surprised though she remained silent. Her dress now hung loosely around her body. He pulled her dress down and assisted her in stepping out of it. Beneath her ballgown, she wore a thin, flowing nightdress. She reached behind herself and grasped for his arms. She pulled him against her and wrapped his arms around her. Hale leaned down and kissed her shoulder. Talia was soft, warm, and felt small to him. As he breathed the sweet scent of her skin, he closed his eyes, and Talia became someone else to him. She was small and mostly slender like the one whom he loved. Relying only on his sense of touch, she became Pandora to him.

Talia turned around and faced him so that she could kiss him. Hale shouldn’t have, but he wanted to kiss her now. What if her kiss felt like Pandora’s? Closing his eyes, it did. And like she wanted, he led her to the bed. With her gentle hands, Talia started taking off his clothes for him. He hadn’t asked her to; she just knew what she wanted. It wasn’t supposed to get this far. The moment he entered her room he was told to… how could he now?

She had become someone to him. She was no longer just the princess. She had a name.

“Talia,” he voiced shakily. This was the first time he let himself say her name aloud

She looked up at him with her precious blue eyes. “Yes?”

“You sure about this?”

She stood up from the bed. “Of course. I don’t care that you’re married. This is just a one-time thing.”

That was all the reassurance he needed in the moment. While she hadn’t finished taking off his clothes, he pushed her down onto the mattress as he fell. Hale knew he should end this. It was so wrong. Talia didn’t know who he truly was. In her mind, he was an attractive stranger who offered her an escape from her dull life inside the castle. But he couldn’t stop thinking that her body was as close as he would ever get to Pandora.

* * * *

Dressed in a waiter’s uniform, Zaya entered the kitchen. No one paid any attention to her as she passed by several of the workers. She stopped by the wine cellar at the end of the kitchen. She pulled out the fanciest bottle she could find. The bottle itself was kept in a gold case decorated with diamonds and rubies. There wasn’t a label to be found on the bottle. So, she couldn’t be positive this was the wine saved for the royal family.

A waitress approached her and tapped her shoulder. “What are you looking for?”

“The king requested that I bring out his favorite wine. It’s this one, right?”

She seemed confused. “This late? Well, alright. That’s the one. He must want to impress his guests.”

“Thank you.” Zaya quickly moved to avoid the waitress looking at her too closely.

Zaya set the tray on one of the counters beside a stack of glasses. She placed fourteen glasses onto the tray and filled each of them a third of the way full with wine. She took a quick glance around the room. Everyone else was too busy with their own tasks to be concerned with her. She pulled out a vial of black liquid from her sleeve. She poured a generous amount into each glass. Not a single soul noticed. Even if she was being recorded, it would be too late. She quickly stepped out of the kitchen and made her way to the king’s table.

She smiled at each royal family member as she handed out the glasses to them. All fourteen of her targets sat together, including the king and queen. How perfect. They were certainly making it easy for her.

As she returned to the kitchen, she sent Hale a signal again, this time to let him know that she was done with her part.

He should have been done too. They would meet up within five minutes in the ballroom.