To The Princess Bound by Sara King Page A

being funny.”
    “I used to own a poodle,” she said.  “It bit the butler on the rump.  A lot.”
    Dragomir grinned.  “Well, I’m more the fluffy, primped-up, lazy version of a poodle.”
    She snorted, but gave him an appraising look.  “Tell me about one of my past lives.  Then I’ll think about it.”
    Demoted to entertainment for a princess, Dragomir thought with a sigh.  Still, it was worth a try.  Anything to relieve the growing ache in his shoulders.  He closed his eyes and concentrated, seeking out the residual images and drifting emotional tags that, once he snagged with his consciousness to examine deeper, revealed a door into the past.
    He randomly pulled one of the stronger ones from her au and began to delve deeper.  He ducked through the door of that particular soul-bead and watched her life replay before him like one of the Imperium’s vid-chips, looking for something interesting to tell her.
    He watched her born to a hard life in a mining-family on some unknown planet.  He wasn’t even sure that, throughout her life, she ever knew the name of her planet, so backwater was her home.  He watched her grow up, watched her build forts with the boys and run through the upper mine shafts, playing.  He watched her poke out her eye on a broken branch, while playing tag.  He watched her grow into a beautiful woman, with sleek curves and long, flowing red hair.  He watched the village boys ridicule her, turn away from her because of her missing eye.  Then he frowned, watching the land darken in the valley below, a mass of soldiers.  He watched villagers scream and run for the rocky clefts above their home.  People marching, by the thousands, their armor gleaming in the sun.  He watched a man on horseback thunder up, sweep her, screaming, onto the back of his horse.  He felt her hands bound behind her back, her ankles lashed together.  He watched her turn, saw the man’s face for the first time…
    “Oh shit.”
    The princess perked up, leaning forward intently.  “You saw something?”
    “Uh,” Dragomir said.  “No.”
    She frowned.  “No?”
    “I mean yes,” he said quickly, “But you don’t want to hear it.”
    The princess growled.  “Tell me.”
    “Uh,” Dragomir said, frantically trying to come up with something that would satisfy.  “You had one eye.  You were very ugly and dirty and people laughed at you.”
    She scrunched her face.  “One eye?”
    “Uh huh,” he said.  “One eye.  Yep.  That’s it.  That’s all I saw.”
    She gave him a long, narrow look, but let it go at that.  “You going to go to sleep, then?”
    “Plenty of room for two up here,” Dragomir said.
    Snorting, she said, “No, thank you.  I’m not sleeping tonight.”
    “Suit yourself,” Dragomir grunted, sliding down to lay on his stomach, trying to ease some of the pressure in his shoulders.  “Would you mind tossing a cover over me?”
    For a long moment, she gave him a suspicious look, like he had asked to see her underwear.  Then, slowly, she inched forward just far enough to flip the cover over him before she quickly backed away.
    And, miracle of miracles, a Royal Princess of the Imperium sat there on the floor, watching him in silence as he fell asleep on her bed.

 
    When Victoria opened her eyes, she was in a fetal position on the sheepskin rug, her body being bathed by the warmth of the sun.  She groaned and sat up slowly, her body aching from sleeping on the floor.
    She froze when she saw the deep blue eyes, watching her.
    “Morning,” the man said. 
    Victory screamed and flailed backwards across the rug.
    The Emp yawned and flexed his huge shoulders.  “Hope you had a better night than I did.  Feels like someone’s tearing my arms off.”  He cocked his head at her.  “Hungry?  I think they were calling for you to come eat, earlier.  You slept through it.”
    Victory blinked.  She had fallen asleep?  With a man in the room?  It was beyond