Chapter 6: Garden of Secrets
Dolores woke to the scent of something green and alive. It was a stark, welcome change from the ozonic tang of the ship, the cold stone of the palace, and the lingering metallic whisper of blood from the council chamber. Sunlight—real, golden, warm sunlight—streamed through the arched windows of her suite.
It was artificial, she knew. A curated climate. But the feeling of it on her skin was a balm.
Ullan was already dressed, leaning against the window frame and watching her. The severe lines of his face were softened by the light. “You slept,” he said, as if it were a minor miracle.
“I was tired,” she mumbled into the pillow, her voice husky. “Somebody kept me up.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Complaints already, Empress?” He pushed off the wall and came to sit on the edge of the bed. His hand, rough and warm, brushed the hair from her forehead. “Get up. I want to show you something.”
What he showed her was a dream.
The Imperial Gardens of Slaya didn’t obey any earthly logic. Bioluminescent vines cascaded from floating trellises, pulsing with a soft, internal light that shifted from blue to lavender. Orchids the size of dinner plates drifted lazily on unseen currents, their petals mirroring the hues of the twin moons—one a sliver of silver, one a swollen drop of crimson—that hung permanently in the daytime sky. The air hummed, not with insects, but with a low, pleasant resonance from the plants themselves. It was a living tapestry of light and sound.
“Oh, Ullan,” she breathed, her hand coming to her mouth.
He watched her, a quiet satisfaction in his eyes. He knew. Of course he knew. Back on Earth, her small, messy garden had been her sanctuary. Her hands in the dirt, nurturing life, had been her therapy. This was that feeling, amplified into a symphony.
“It’s… it’s incredible,” she said, stepping onto a path of smooth, warm marble that wound between crystalline bushes that chimed in the gentle breeze.
“Come on,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically light. He took her hand.
Ullan led Dolores through the imperial garden, pointing out clusters of night-blooming scent-vines that released perfume on command, and shimmering moss that recorded footsteps in fading patterns of light. He watched her face, the way her eyes lit up at each new wonder, and a deep, possessive warmth settled in his chest. He knew she loved gardening. This was a piece of her old world he could give back to her, perfected.
“It’s so alive,” she whispered, crouching to gently touch a flower with petals like folded cobalt silk. “It feels… friendly. Not like the rest of the palace.”
“It’s been here for centuries,” he said, stopping beside her. “It remembers better times. Simpler ones.”
She looked up at him, squinting in the dappled light. “Could I… I mean, is it allowed if I help? With the care? Maybe just a small section?” The request was shy, an offering of her old self.
He chuckled, pulling her to her feet. “Dolores. You are the Empress. You can do whatever you want. You could uproot the entire glowing grove and plant terrestrial tomatoes if it pleased you.” He slung an arm around her waist, drawing her close as they walked. “Though I’d miss the glow.”
She laughed, the sound bright and clear in the humming air. “No tomatoes. I promise.”
They walked deeper into the garden. His hand rested comfortably on the curve of her waist, his thumb tracing idle circles through the fine fabric of her simple day dress. The path began to slope downwards, away from the central terraces where the soft echoes of reconstruction work—the dismantling of old barracks, the conversion of spaces—could faintly be heard.
The garden grew lusher, more private. The artificial sunlight filtered through a dense canopy of weeping crystal-leaves, casting fractured, dancing rainbows across their path. The hum of the plants was softer here, more intimate. He guided her subtly, his touch on her waist becoming more directional, turning her down a narrower path bordered by tall, whispering reeds of light.
A structure emerged ahead: a secluded gazebo crafted from living, entwined wood that gleamed with its own soft gold bioluminescence. It was nestled in a natural bowl, surrounded by a breathtaking ring of flowers whose faces turned slowly to follow the slow arc of the crimson moon. It was the most private, beautiful spot in the entire garden.
Perfect.
His plan was going flawlessly. The stroll, her joy, the seclusion. He would take her right there, in that soft, living light. He’d enter her from behind as she leaned over the gazebo rail, mesmerized by the turning flowers. He could already picture it—the gasp she’d make, the way her hands would clutch the wood, the complete and utter possession in this place of beauty he’d given her.
His hand, resting on her waist, began to move. It was a slow, deliberate migration, disguised as an affectionate caress. His fingers dipped lower, skating over the swell of her hip. His palm slid from her waist, across the soft plane of her lower belly, his intent clear as he aimed for the warmth between her legs.
Smack.
The sound was sharp, a crisp interruption of the garden’s hum. Dolores’s hand had come down on top of his, stopping its progress firmly. She didn’t push it away so much as trap it there, against her stomach.
She turned her head, looking up at him. Her expression wasn’t angry. It was utterly unimpressed. She took in the secluded gazebo, the complete absence of any other soul, the dappled but undeniable daylight.
“Ni se te ocurra,” she said, her voice dry and flat. Don’t you dare. “It’s a public place. In broad daylight.”
Ullan’s hand went still. He looked from her face to the perfect, empty gazebo, then back to her face. His brows drew together. His full mouth, which had been curved in a anticipatory smile, settled into a straight, dissatisfied line. His eyes took on a familiar, petulant shadow—the same look he got when she used to hide his favorite welding tool on the farm, or when a storm ruined his plans to fix the roof. It was the expression of a magnificent, powerful emperor who was not, in this very specific moment, getting what he wanted.
He didn’t say a word. He just stared at her, the picture of thwarted expectation.
Dolores held his gaze for a count of three, then her stern expression cracked. A snort of laughter escaped her. She shook her head, her wavy hair catching the rainbows. “You are unbelievable. You have a whole empire. A palace with, I’m sure, a hundred locked rooms. And you try to get me in the garden shed.”
“It’s a gazebo,” he grumbled, the emperor’s voice replaced by a tone of genuine grievance. “Crafted by master growers. It’s romantic.”
“It’s outside,” she countered, finally releasing his hand. She turned to face him fully, crossing her arms. “What if a gardener comes by?”
“I am the Emperor. I would have him executed,” Ullan stated, as if discussing the weather.
“You would not,” Dolores said, poking him in the chest.
“I might.”
“No.” She took his sulky face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. “You’re reforming. Remember? No more executions for inconvenient witnesses. Especially not gardeners. I like gardeners.”
He sighed, a long, dramatic exhalation that ruffled the hair at her temples. The petulant shadow slowly retreated, replaced by a rueful, affectionate warmth. He leaned his forehead against hers. “You ruin all my best plans.”
“I improve them,” she whispered, kissing the tip of his nose. “By adding basic privacy.”
He chuckled, the sound vibrating through her. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close in the circle of light and flowers, his grand plan abandoned but something simpler and better taking its place. For a long moment, they just stood there, wrapped in the hum of the garden and each other.
The moment was shattered by the unmistakable, polite clearing of a throat.
They sprang apart. Standing at the entrance to the secluded path was General Zaltar, his posture rigid, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere over their heads. He looked like he wished the shimmering reals would swallow him whole.
“My profound apologies for the intrusion, Your Radiances,” he said, his voice stiff. “A… situation requires the Emperor’s immediate attention in the west negotiation chamber.”
Ullan’s face closed off, the softness evaporating. “What situation?”
Zaltar’s eyes flicked to Dolores for a nanosecond. “It concerns the… relocation logistics of the former court attendants. There is a dispute. Marquis Voss is… vocal.”
Ullan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course he is.” He looked at Dolores, genuine regret in his eyes. “I have to go and prevent a diplomatic incident. Or start one. Whichever is faster.”
“Go,” she said, squeezing his arm. “Be scary and effective.”
He kissed her, hard and quick. “Stay here. Enjoy the garden. Claim your plot.” He turned to follow Zaltar, his imperial mantle settling back onto his shoulders with every step.
Dolores watched them go, the ease of the morning tightening back into the reality of their new world. She turned to look at the beautiful, empty gazebo, then at the vibrant, humming life all around her. A small, determined smile touched her lips.
She walked to the edge of the golden gazebo, not to lean over the rail as Ullan had envisioned, but to examine the soil at its base. She knelt, ignoring the fine fabric of her dress, and scooped up a handful. It was warm, teeming with faintly glowing microbes, and rich with a smell like rain and cinnamon.
Her plot. Her hands sank into the alien earth, and for the first time since arriving, Dolores Gonzales, Empress of Slaya, felt the first, faint stirrings of being at home.
Her hands sank into the alien earth, and for the first time since arriving, Dolores Gonzales, Empress of Slaya, felt the first, faint stirrings of being at home. The soil crumbled warm and vital between her fingers, a silent promise. She could work with this. She could grow something here.
A soft crunch on the path behind her broke the hum.
Not the heavy boot-tread of a guard. This was lighter, a whisper of slippered feet on marble. Several sets. Dolores brushed her hands clean on her dress and stood up, turning.
Four women stood on the path. The one in front was breathtaking. She had hair the color of spun cotton candy, a silken pink cascade over her shoulders, and eyes of clear, startling aquamarine. Her figure was willowy, elegant in a gown of subtle grey, a living sculpture of aristocratic beauty. Three others, dressed more simply, stood half a step behind her, their eyes downcast.
The pink-haired woman was staring directly at her, an intense, unblinking fixation that felt like a physical touch. Dolores managed a small, timid smile. “Hello?”
The woman didn’t speak. Her exquisite face crumpled.
She dropped. Her knees hit the marble with an awful, audible crack, and she folded forward, hands clasped in desperate supplication. A sob ripped from her throat. “Please,” she wailed, the word wet and shattered. “Please, Your Radiance, do not send me away! Do not make me leave the palace!”
Dolores stumbled back a step, shock freezing her lungs. “Wh-what? Get up. Please, get up.”
The woman didn’t move. Her shoulders shook with the violence of her weeping. It was a raw, ugly, unchecked breakdown, the kind of crying that came from a bottomless well of terror. It was all wrong for someone who looked like her. This wasn’t courtly distress. This was pure survival instinct.
“Get up,” Dolores said again, her own voice firmer. She reached out, her earth-stained hand hovering near the woman’s trembling shoulder. “Look at me. Get up.”
Slowly, the woman pushed herself up from the ground. She swayed on her knees, her beautiful face ravaged by tears, mucus, and smeared cosmetics. She gasped for air between sobs, trying and failing to compose herself. The three women behind her had also sunk to their knees, their foreheads pressed to the cold marble in a posture of absolute submission.
“What is happening?” Dolores asked, keeping her tone low and calm. “Who are you?”
“I am… I was…” the woman choked, swiping uselessly at her cheeks. “One of them. The concubines.” The word was a poisoned thing. “My father gave me to him twelve years ago, after the conquest of my world.” She sucked in a shuddering breath, her aquamarine eyes wide with panic. “He only visited me a few times, my lady, I swear it was not many! Please, do not send me back. I heard you have a good heart. Please.”
The plea was so specific, so dire. “Why?” Dolores asked, kneeling down to be level with her, ignoring the dirt on her dress. “Why don’t you want to go home?”
A fresh wave of sobs took the woman. “Home?” she spat the word. “It is a pit. For women, there are only two functions: to bear children and to give men pleasure. I failed. I have no imperial child. I was not a favorite.” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if against a chill. “They will make me a criadora. A breeder. A vessel for any man’s heir, with no status, no protections. Just a… a used womb.”
Dolores felt the blood drain from her face. She looked past the weeping woman to her three companions, their faces still pressed to the ground. Their silent terror was worse than the screams.
“For them, too,” the woman whispered, following her gaze. “They are from my world. They came with me. It will be the same fate. Please.”
The formal, terrifying beauty of the palace dissolved, revealing the brutal machinery underneath. Ullan’s decree, his proud declaration in the council chamber, had been a death sentence for some of these women. He hadn’t known. He couldn’t have.
“Okay,” Dolores said, her own voice surprisingly steady. “Okay, calm down. We’ll talk. You can explain everything to me.” She stood and offered her hand.
The woman stared at the offered hand, then took it, her fingers ice-cold and trembling.
Dolores led her toward the gazebo—the same secluded, golden structure Ullan had just tried to steer her into for a very different purpose. Now, it was simply a quiet, shaded place to sit. The irony was a bitter taste in her mouth.
They sat on the smooth, living wood. The three maids remained kneeling on the path, a silent, pathetic clump of fear.
“Tell me your name,” Dolores said softly.
The woman wiped her face with the hem of her sleeve, a childlike gesture at odds with her ethereal beauty. “Zirella,” she whispered.
“Zirella,” Dolores repeated. The name felt fragile. “The Emperor’s order… he doesn’t understand what sending you back means. He saw it as cutting away an old, corrupt system. He didn’t see the people in it.”
Zirella nodded frantically. “He never saw us at all. We were statues. Decorations. A treaty obligation.” Her voice hitched. “This palace… it was a cage, but it was a gilded one. The cage at home is made of rust and knives.”
Dolores looked out at the breathtaking, humming garden, this symbol of life and peace. It was built on the back of a universe where women like Zirella were currency. Ullan’s love for her was a wildfire, scorching everything in its path without looking at what might burn. First Tecklan’s head, now this.
“You will not be sent back,” Dolores said, the words leaving her mouth with a finality that surprised her. It was a promise she had no clear idea how to keep, not with a furious Marquis Voss lobbying for the old ways. But she said it anyway.
Zirella’s eyes flooded again, but this time with a desperate, disbelieving hope. “My lady?”
“I said no,” Dolores stated, and a strange, cold certainty settled in her gut. It was the same feeling she got when a predator threatened her chickens back on the farm—a simple, non-negotiable line. “You and your attendants are under my protection now. Do you understand?”
Zirella just stared, as if hearing a language she’d forgotten existed.
Dolores stood. The soil was still under her nails. The garden still hummed. But the faint stirrings of home were now tangled with the urgent, complicated weight of responsibility. She had just declared a war Ullan didn’t even know was being fought, right in the spot he’d wanted to claim her.
She looked at Zirella’s tear-streaked face. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. And then you’re going to tell me everything about the others.”
The consort’s quarters smelled of faded perfume and dust. It was a beautiful, hollow space adjacent to the Emperor’s own chambers, all ivory silk and mother-of-pearl inlay. Dolores led Zirella inside, the three attendants shuffling behind them like silent ghosts. The main receiving room held a palpable loneliness, the air untouched.
“Sit,” Dolores said, pointing to a plush settee.
Zirella perched on the very edge, her spine rigid. She looked alien here, a creature of vivid panic in a room designed for placid ornamentation. Dolores found a carafe of water and a clean cloth on a sideboard. She wet the cloth and approached.
“Let me,” she said, her voice gentle.
Zirella flinched as the cool cloth touched her cheek, then went still, her aquamarine eyes wide with shock at the touch. Dolores worked carefully, wiping away the streaks of black and pearl that had bled from her eyes. The makeup was some advanced, creamy substance that came away easily, revealing skin as pale as moonlight underneath. Each pass of the cloth was methodical, an attempt to wipe away not just the mess, but the evidence of a system that had reduced this person to a weeping statue.
“You’re safe in this room,” Dolores murmured, more to convince herself than Zirella. “Just breathe.”
The door crashed open.
It slammed against the mother-of-pearl wall with a sound like breaking bone. Ullan filled the doorway, his frame blocking the light from the corridor. His breath was slightly ragged, as if he’d run. His eyes, sharp and blazing, scanned the room, skipping over the cowering attendants, ignoring Zirella entirely, and locking onto Dolores.
He saw her standing there, the soil-stained cloth in her hand, her fingers tipped with Zirella’s ruined makeup. His gaze flicked to the pink-haired woman on the settee, her face now half-clean, half a smeared mask of her former role. A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“What is happening?” The question was a low crack of sound, demanding and tight. “Why are you here?”
Dolores lowered the cloth, her own pulse a frantic drum in her throat. She met his stare. “Zirella found me in the garden. She explained her situation and asked for my help.”
“Her situation,” Ullan repeated, the words flat. He took a step into the room, his presence making the space feel suddenly, dangerously small. His eyes never left Dolores. “This is not your room.”
“It’s a room,” Dolores said, a spark of defiance cutting through her fear. She turned fully to face him. “Ulli, we have to help her. You don’t know what that planet is like, what they’ll do to her. We acted without thinking first.”
“I know exactly what her planet is like,” Ullan said, his voice dropping to a chilling calm. He finally looked at Zirella, a glance as assessing and impersonal as someone checking a vessel for cracks. “I govern it.”
Dolores stared at him, incredulity washing over her features. “And you still cast her adrift?”
Ullan shrugged. A single, effortless lift of his shoulders. The motion was like a door slamming. It said the matter was insignificant, a administrative adjustment, a line item resolved.
The casual dismissal hit Dolores like a physical blow. She looked from his impassive face to Zirella’s terrified one, then back. She closed her eyes for a second, pinching the bridge of her nose. She took a slow, deep breath, reaching for the memory of sun on dry grass, of the rusted porch swing, of a thousand quieter conversations.
“Do you remember,” she said, her voice quieter now, strained, “what we talked about constantly on the farm? About empathy?”
Ullan frowned, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion. He crossed his arms. “I don’t see what that has to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with it.” Dolores stepped toward him, gesturing back at Zirella without looking. “Based on what she’s told us, she could face a fate worse than death. So here, we apply the empathy. We think about what that must feel like. And we see how we can help her.” She held his gaze, her own fierce and clear. “Without getting anything in return. Because that’s what empathy is.”
The silence stretched. The dust motes danced in the slivers of light. Zirella had stopped breathing. Ullan’s crossed arms tightened. He looked from Dolores’s determined face to the weeping woman on the settee, a problem he had already solved and deleted from his mind. He saw the dirt under Dolores’s nails, the stubborn set of her jaw, the entire inconvenient, messy weight of a single person’s suffering that she was now making his problem again.
He sighed. A long, weary, surrendered exhalation that seemed to deflate the room’s tension by a single degree.
“Bueno,” he muttered. Fine.
He uncrossed his arms and rubbed a hand over his face. “She stays. For now. Her attendants can be reassigned within the palace staff.” He fixed Zirella with a look that was not cruel, but utterly pragmatic. “You will have a stipend. You will not be a concubine. You will find another function. Do you understand?”
Zirella nodded so violently her pink hair swayed. “Yes. Yes, Your Radiance. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Ullan grumbled, his eyes sliding back to Dolores. “Thank her relentless… gardening.” He said the last word like it was a strange, mildly irritating philosophy. “But this is the only one, Dolores. We are not running a sanctuary for every dissatisfied treaty obligation.”
Dolores opened her mouth to argue, to say that they absolutely were, but the warning in his eyes stopped her. It was a concession, not a surrender. She had won this battle, this single, specific life. The war was larger. She nodded slowly.
“Okay,” she said.
“Good.” He looked around the consort’s quarters with palpable distaste. “And you are never to be in this room again. It’s for visitors. For political hostages. Not for you.” He held out his hand to her, calloused and familiar. “You belong in my room.”
Dolores looked at his outstretched hand, then at Zirella’s tear-streaked, hopeful face. She walked to Ullan, placed her clean hand in his, and let him pull her from the hollow, perfumed silence. As they passed into the corridor, she glanced back once.
Zirella was still on the settee, one clean hand pressed over her mouth, her shoulders shaking with a relief so profound it looked like a new kind of pain. Her three attendants had finally lifted their heads from the floor, their eyes wide with a fragile, dawning hope.
Ullan pulled the door shut behind them, cutting off the view. The sound was final. He didn’t let go of her hand as they walked toward his chambers, his stride long and impatient.
“You are going to be a significant complication,” he said, but his thumb was stroking the back of her knuckle.
“You married me,” she replied, leaning into his arm. “You literally asked for this.”
He made a noncommittal noise, but his grip tightened. “The garden was better.”
“The garden was a terrible idea.”
“It was a great idea. You lacked vision.”
Their bickering faded down the hall, a familiar, mundane thread woven into the immense, silent tapestry of power and consequence they were both still learning how to hold. Behind the closed door, in the room of visitors and hostages, a woman who was neither anymore began, very slowly, to learn how to breathe.