Change of Plans Episode Four

By Odette C. Bell

Jupiter’s a king now – just without a crown.
The sanctuary planet recognized his right to rule, but he has no firepower. He desperately needs it. Horatio won’t stop. Nor will the Dark Kingdom. The galaxy is weak once more, and they will take it. Only Jupiter and Emilia stand in their way. To defeat the infection, they’re taken out of time to the place it all began yet ended. There, they will find redemption not just for the Milky Way, but for one another.
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Change of Plans follows two runaway royals fighting to save their crooked galactic kingdoms. If you love your space operas with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Change of Plans Episode Four today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Oct 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005369699

Book preview

Chapter 1

Jupiter Orion

Light started to engulf Emilia. It played around her face so brightly, I thought it would start to burn her cheeks off. I couldn’t get close to check, though. The entity wouldn’t let me.

They’re coming, it repeated, and it was very much not her voice. It was too low and felt like it shook through all of reality. It felt as if it had waited for this chance, waited over millennia to warn everyone once more.

I shook, but I didn’t allow myself to plunge down to my knees. What… is happening? What happened to Emilia? She—

She has momentarily resurfaced our personality. We are what remains.

What remains of what? The entity?

You call us that, but our name is Divine Light.

Those two words sent an electric jolt of pure cold force racing down my spine. Divine Light? Sure, there were still places around the Milky Way that believed in gods, but the Orions were not one of them. If you ran a smart enough empire, then you replaced any divine leader with a king. Someone tangible, someone visible, and someone who could hold all of the power of their empire in real, controllable hands.

Still, when the entity said the words Divine Light, they ripped through me. I’d said that I wouldn’t fall down to my knees, but now I had to. I locked my arms around my chest. They were no longer glowing nearly as brightly, but I saw a few flickers of light tracing across the skin. They darted in time with the fluctuations crossing over Emilia’s form.

The Dark Kingdom awaits. It will not be much longer until they push into this galaxy.

Push in from where? I couldn’t get that question out fast enough.

They come from nowhere in particular.

That doesn’t make any sense. Wait… you mean that there is no location in the known universe, right? Another dimension?

They come from a pocket of time and space that was blocked off from this one.

My mind reeled as I tried to figure out what the Divine Light was talking of. It wasn’t just my mind, however. My body shook. As every revelation occurred, I felt them, deep in my damn heart.

We managed to block off the Dark Kingdom in our final act to save the Milky Way. But they will break through again.

How?

It is the Divine Light that they will use.

I shook seriously hard now. I gripped a hand into a fist and re-gripped it. I stared over at Emilia. I was hoping like hell this was just innocent – that the entity was simply using her to communicate. But what if the Divine Light was being corrupted right now…?

We can sense your fear. It is displaced, for now. The princess will not be the means with which the Dark Kingdom pushes through. Her betrothed will be.

I ground a hand into a fist and slowly pushed it into the floor beneath me. "Horatio?

Yes.

I don’t understand. He found Emilia. He was the one who infected… gave you to her, I corrected quickly, realizing that something that calls itself the Divine Light probably wouldn’t be happy with me referring to it as an infection.

He needed another to carry the burden.

I don’t understand.

The princess has a unique biology. But more than anything, she has a unique, open, powerful mind.

I shuddered, knowing every single word that the Divine Light had said was true. If you’d told me that 24 hours ago, I would’ve laughed in your face. The only unique thing about Emilia was the fact that she was so damn pathetic. My past self hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of him, though. Now my current self couldn’t look away.

Emilia wasn’t on the floor. She was floating about three centimeters above it. Her back was still arched, her head still tilted all the way up.

Her lips moved as she spoke, but her eyes remained fixed wide open as if they were a channel for the entity’s wisdom.

I had to know what the entity needed to reveal, but at the same time, I couldn’t see Emilia get hurt for it.

If you need to communicate through someone’s vocal cords, use mine. I slapped a hand on my throat. Let her go.

We cannot. She was the original point for us. Outside Horatio’s body, that was. But unlike Horatio, she allowed us to resurface. She was not afraid of us. She gave us the power we require. And in doing so, she allowed us to give this warning.

The entity became silent for a few seconds. In those seconds, I thought I could see things. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Or maybe it was the Divine Light somehow spreading into my mind and poisoning it. I saw that gaping mouth in the sky again. I saw it as it wiped out that ancient civilization. This time it spread. I saw the planets of Orion. I saw each and every one of them being consumed. Then the rest of the galaxy. Every planet, every sector, every station, every ship. All of it was destroyed.

That dark energy would not stop.

It made me clutch my head and scream. I secured my fingers in so hard, it was like I was trying to dig out my brain.

That is what is coming, the entity said, revealing it could see my visions too.

Tears ran down my cheeks of their own accord. I shook so violently, I thought I’d pop my knees. What… what can we possibly do? My voice trembled as the memories of the Dark Kingdom raced through me.

They were irrepressible. They were unlike any biological enemy I had ever faced, because they didn’t care about the sanctity of life. Rivers, streams, atmospheres, habitable worlds – they were all irrelevant and ultimately there to be destroyed.

You must prevent the infection from spreading.

"How?

You must be stronger.

My stomach twitched. Stronger? You would think I’d have to be pretty strong already considering I’d made it this far, despite the odds, but I could tell the entity wanted more.

I shivered again. I don’t understand. Why did Horatio want to give Emilia to the Dark Traders?

There is a group who is actively helping the Dark Kingdom. They are at the heart of the Dark Traders.

Yes, the mysterious they, I spat. Why do they need her?

They will remove the rest of the Divine Light from Emilia. And when the Dark Kingdom is done this time, it will destroy us once and for all.

But I thought the Dark Kingdom is using you as a doorway to get here?

It is. But once it is done and has claimed the Milky Way, it will need to destroy that doorway. It will be the only way to ensure that we do not rise again and no other civilization will ever be able to challenge them.

Great. So this wasn’t just galactic-wide destruction? This was galactic-wide destruction with the added pressure of knowing that if the bad guys won, no one would ever, ever be able to defeat them again. They would have the assured victory of the Milky Way for all of time.

I balled up a hand. It was a pathetic move. There was barely any muscular control there. It shook, too. Hell, who was I kidding? All of me shook. I doubted I’d ever be able to stand, let alone walk, let alone fight. Everything was stacking up against me.

Before I’d met Emilia, I’d only been concerned about gathering more credits. Surviving, day in day out while ignoring the plight of the rest of the galaxy had consumed me. Now? I doubted I could even remember what my old self was like. The memories of him were rapidly falling away and being consumed by the horror of what was to come.

I brought up a hand and wiped it against my sweaty mouth. Then I stared down at the entity. The Divine Light was playing across my fingers.

It distracted me when I needed it most. I spread my hands, then closed them into a fist. What will happen next?

Horatio will consume more power. He will take the things that he needs to open a larger gate for the Dark Kingdom.

How does he open these gates exactly?

It is hard to describe. In many ways, they come through one’s heart.

My eyebrows immediately knotted together. I couldn’t forget what those Dark Trader mercenaries had let slip in the Astrid throne room.

I slapped a hand on my chest. I went to bounce it off, but at the last moment I couldn’t. I let my fingers sink in as if I was holding on for dear life. I overheard a conversation between Dark Traders. They claimed I had an open heart. That is why you can possess me. Is it the same with Horatio? If it is, I can’t possibly understand what an open heart means, because there is no one with a blacker soul than him.

In many ways, it is the capacity to see a new future.

I paused, then laughed. It probably wasn’t the time to do it. God knows how far away Horatio was. He was hardly our only enemy, anyway. If Emilia really had come across my brother, and she had stolen his most important symbol of rule, then he would be coming here with every single force he had. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that something was happening on the sanctuary world.

In other words, I needed to wrap this up, and I had to get the hell out of here while I still could. I kept rubbing a hand on my sternum. I don’t have an open heart. And I sure as hell wasn’t capable of imagining new futures until Emilia came along.

Whether you recognize this capacity or not, you have it. And it is that capacity that we use. There is a singular and unique power of all minds. They have the capacity to alter probabilities and imagine new worlds and futures. Those individuals who can do so at a significant level can allow us to embody them.

Don’t you care about the futures that they imagine, though? Yeah, maybe Horatio has a singular ability to imagine new worlds. But they are all worlds that will be controlled by him, I spat.

The nature of the imagination is irrelevant. The fact that it is new, beyond what is today is all that counts.

I took a heavy breath. I finally let my hand drop. I stared at Emilia again. I want to pull her out of this, I said, knowing it was true the moment the words left my lips. She shouldn’t have anything to do with this battle. You’re already in me, I said flatly, so I’ll take you the rest of the way. I will ensure that Horatio doesn’t gather more power. I will stop him.

You cannot shoulder this burden on your own.

Why not?

Because it has already fallen on the shoulders of another. You can only help.

I really balled my hand up into a fist now. It felt like I was going to start wrenching my fingers from my knuckles. That’s not good enough. Emilia doesn’t deserve this.

And you do?

My cheeks twitched.

If you’d asked me, I would’ve told you that I was proud of the past five years. I’d survived where so many people couldn’t.

I’d told myself that if any other Royal had fallen like I