I was starting to actually like the guy the moment he asked me his question. Before the words left his mouth, I noticed the sky was clear, that the wind was cold, I was in the moment for a few seconds before he slammed me back to what I was avoiding. Theo was calm about it, collected and firm, as if asking me if I was a murderer was as simple as asking me my name.

That was when the roar of my cat pierced the silence of the woods, followed by the reverberating pounding of her claws on the wet ground.

"Stay still." I whispered to him, forcing my muscles to relax from the stance I took to punch his teeth out. If he did something stupid, he would be catnip.

"What's going on, your imperial highness?" He said, the shake in his voice reminding me that the cool exterior of the first son of Antarctica was all an act. In the face of a monstrous albino tiger, he was nothing but a mouse.

That was when Jazzy reached us, stopping only from her sprint when she saw me, her face in a snarl, her eyes no longer enchanting. I shook my head at her. She looked at Theo the way I looked at lettuce, with full hatred but with every desire to consume.

"Sit, Jazzy. I'm okay." Somehow, she sensed my distress and ran to me. "Don't turn around, mister Velez." I said that only to keep him from having a heart attack. Her maw was bloody from her hunting, and her claws gleamed red... she still looked hungry.

"Those things should be in cages." He clenched his jaw, his whole body taut, his hormones telling him to run.

"You've insulted me twice today already, choose your next words carefully before my guards come." I looked him in his cool sealike eyes, giving him as much ice as I could.

He flung his brunette head backward to look at Jazzy. She snarled. "Choose words carefully? Advice we both need to take from where I'm standing. I don't need this stupidity."

Check mate. "Oh, but you do. My council... they send me your eye color, hair color, interests... but I'm keener on information my friend gave to me this morning regarding how your mother has embezzled two billion Antarctican Pesos in the past year alone to fund her campaign for re-election, or how you managed to buy a fighter runner without an actual job." Raza called me earlier this morning to warn me while I also told him to do some masonry on my brother's tomb as queen Aridni would be visiting the crypts today. Truly, I hoped Raza's warning was not needed... a pity. "It would be a pity if I slipped and said something stupid about those things."

He was back to his persona again. Calm like a dead sea. I've already seen through it once, and that was enough. "I can tell everyone everything I know."

Playing your last cards, sir?

"But what exactly do you know? You don't have proof though, do you? Or else you wouldn't have asked me."

"A little whisper in someone's ear is enough to take a new empress down." He was right.

"You don't blackmail me in my own country."

"I have diplomatic immunity in Eurasia, you can't do anything." He smirked. Ass.

I held his gaze for a little while and stared at the sky again. It was so clear. This was annoying him now. "Jazzy."

Slowly, my tiger walked to me, each step silent. She never took her violet eyes off the cunning first son. She looked so ready to go for his carotid. Just when she was in front of me, I touched my head to hers. We were both so close to Theo, I was actually waiting for him to piss himself. "I'm okay. You can go hunting now."

She grumbled a protest.

"I'm safe." And I was. I rarely was ever in true danger.

The moment she left I stared at the snake again. "Are you sure about that?"

Before he could speak, Ilyaas broke through the tree line, automatic rifle at hand, aimed at Theo. The half kilometer he sprinted didn't even leave him winded with the heavy gun he had at hand. "Lesya, what do you need?"

It was all I could do not to heave a happy sigh. His presence was always a comfort even on the most comfortable moments.

My eyes found his and I told him I would tell him everything later. Not now. "Oh, we're fine, Ly." I smiled my sweetest, fakest smile.

"Get that gun out of my face!" Theo said, not doing himself any favors.

"You don't give me orders, Antarctica." Ilyaas grit back, he kept his aim true. He was ready to kill.

I slowly walked in between the gun and Theo, shielding his vital organs with my own body. "I don't want you dead..." I whispered to the entitled ass. "Yet." It would be a mess to clean up and I had no intention of hurting the helpless.

"Ilyaas!" I yelled. "Get that gun out of my face." I smiled at him. He did as asked, lowering it slowly, stifling the smirk creeping onto his lips.

"Lesya, what do you need?"

"You're not a guard today, remember? You're off duty."

"There's no such thing as off duty." He said, offering his hand out to me. I walked to him and took it, looking back at the Antarctican.

"He and I are both pilots. Can the runner go up to my favorite zone?"

"It can get to the stratosphere, yes." He squinted at me, not knowing what I was getting at, then looking up at the sky I stared at all day.

"We're going up!" I said with enough enthusiasm to drown a sea.

"We are?" Theo asked as he inched closer to us, trying to pick up the remnants of his failed façade, wondering where my deranged mind was going.

"We are."

"You need someone to be with you." Ilyaas whispered to me.

"Do you really believe that?" I whispered back. "Not on a runner."

I walked out of the woods, into the gardens, heading for the runner perched at the front courtyard of the main house. "Theo, darling, I'm going in unguarded. Do you need someone to babysit you?"

"No." But of course, manly man.

Ilyaas was next to me, slinging his rifle across his back. He was tense, he didn't like that I was going alone, but he let me go on anyway. He reached out to me silently, cupping my hand in his own to comfort me from the fear in my eyes only he could see. I squeezed hard. "What's the flight plan?"

"Up."

"Up?"

"Up."

He caught my eyes and a small smile played on his lips. "Oh. Up."

Kuscovo was beautiful from there, the front courtyard. It was small compared to the house, which was a set of tall buildings reaching the sky with marble balconies and gilded elevators. Nevertheless, its magnificence was not lost on me. Kings lived at the palace even before the empire came to be.

In its midst I felt like an impostor. The country had so many problems already with the Ravens and the missing prince, and there I was having a date. I didn't even know how to lead, didn't know what the people needed, didn't know if they even wanted me still.

But they said it was my duty to have this date, and survive it, I will.

Theo was lagging. From a far, with his mouth closed, he was handsome as expected of Antarcticans. After years of good breeding, they produced a specimen of messy dark hair and strikingly haunting blue-green eyes. He was tall- as tall as Ilyaas was- and if only he was in a picture, I would have thought he was beautiful, silver to my Ilyaas's gold.

But I always hated silver.

Ly opened the door for me, and I went in the runner first. When Theo came, Ilyaas didn't take his eyes off of him in a silent threat. Theo stared back.

"I prefer the prince." Ilyaas remarked as he closed the door.

"What prince?" Theo asked.

I just gave him a look.

"Where are we going?" He asked, strapping himself in, turning the runner on.

"You'll be my co-pilot."

"Fine." Theo eyed me, with my lack of seatbelt. "Where are we going then?"

When I got in, I turned off the transmitter of the recorder, but I kept the recording on. I opened the throttle, reached the speed I wanted and pulled the collective up with a jolt. Just like that we were rising. I kept the cyclic level, I kept my feet of the pedal, and so the runner rose and rose and rose and rose.

"What are you doing?" He kept his hands off the control, not knowing if we should bank left or right.

Barometric pressure was accurate. According to the altimeter we were almost reaching ten thousand meters up. I still rose.

"Kuscovo survived the nukes you know. Up close it looks so big... but up here when you see through God's eyes it looks like a speck of dust next to a hundred specs of dust." I said to him. He was already strapping his helmet and mask to his face.

"Put a mask on." He said. "Aren't you scared of hypoxia?"

"Never needed a mask in my life."

Twenty-thousand meters.

"What are we doing?!" He was antsy already. I could cut power and we would just go to freefall. I could eject his seat.

"Shhh."

Thirty-thousand meters.

I stopped pulling on the collective. We were hovering. The sky was free of anything according to radar. This was expected. There was always a five-kilometer no-fly zone wherever and whenever I went outside Lesya.

"If you don't tell me what you're doing, I'll-"

"You can blackmail me... since I can't prosecute you in Eurasia because we granted all you assholes diplomatic immunity, right?"

He went silent, finally seeing the height we were in. The hatred in his eyes was the victory I deserved. He held his breath.

"According to the Bali Agreement, which both our countries signed, international airspace starts at thirty thousand meters above sea level." I turned towards him, strapped in, with that mask on his face. "I can't sue you in Eurasia, yes, but I can sue you in international court. Threatening a monarch, a leader of a nation..."

"I loathe you."

"Nobody's listening right now, but you are being recorded." I said. "Tell me everything you know."

"I..." He started, realizing he had to, realizing this was check. Theo sighed with his hands in fists. "Your grandfather went to Antarctica the morning he died. He told us he needed military support against you. He spoke only to my mother and me in a secure room."

Against me?

"I believe there's more?"

"He told us you were going to raise an army against him that even he can't control... he said the military was loyal to you, that you might even know the mutant Onus because your mother might be one."

"I'm not Onus."

"Good to know." He didn't believe me. He rested his back against his seat, seemingly relaxed even with his fisted hands. "And when I heard he died, I was sure you did it."

"Choose your next words carefully, Antarctica." I said, as his face lost the anger, lost the frustration and the hatred. He was making his next move, and it was my turn to hold my breath.

He looked at me with a smirk fogged up only by his oxygen mask. "Marry me."

It was everything I could do not to recoil.

"And if I don't?" Bile was rising in my mouth.

"And if you don't choose me... well you'll land eventually. I'll always have proof of your grandfather fearing for his life because of you."

"I always have the proof your mother stole from your people."

He shrugged.

"I didn't kill my grandfather."

"And maybe my mother didn't steal two billion pesos."

"If I pay you two billion pesos to return to your people and shut you up, would you?" I knew he wouldn't.

"Then I'd have more proof of you trying to buy my silence. If you play smart, we'd be man and wife, I'd be king of Eurasia, my mother's position will last forever. We'll rule the north and the south and maybe eventually everything in between. You can be the Lesya to my Solomon."

"I'm not your Lesya." The venom dripping from my words was enough to kill him in a second, but I forgot I was also speaking to a snake.

"Marry me... and I shut up, you shut up." He raised both hands as if to surrender while his eyes spoke victory. "We both win."