- May 24, 2026
The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 13)
The Royal Lunch
“People forget, we are also animals, we can turn on you in a second.”
Lady Camilla Lexus
Potempa Lexus
Lunch used to be my favorite meal of the day, especially when we were home in the castle. It didn’t have the best food, but I could spend lunch with whoever I wanted. Breakfast, I had to spend alone with my mother, and dinner was a family affair, sometimes with Diadect Lexus, sometimes with our father and brother. Those went better when they could best be defined as boring.
On Drota, I thought lunch would get better because the food had gotten better, and I could spend in a room full of people who didn’t know me. I could listen to what they were saying, interesting or not. Sure, it got lonely when Cutta or Lemon couldn’t come, our training didn’t always line-up, but still better than the breakfasts and dinners at home.
Then, I learned that lunch on Drota was about to become the new family dinner time.
I recognized the click of her heels before I saw her.
My aunt Flavia walked around the little table, looking down at me with an apple in her hand. She did the same thing I always remember my mother doing. She rubbed her arm around her chest, right under her breasts, and held her elbow with the apple in it. She would take the most aggressive, loud, crunchy bite she could all without smearing her lipstick.
It felt like a flex, but what was she flexing? Eating an apple? That she’s a good kisser? It just… confused the hell out of me.
“Expecting anyone?” she asked me.
“Not really,” I said.
“Not really?”
“Someone was bound to come to talk to me.”
Flavia chuckled in a way Mother never did. In fact, she sat down with a smile on her face, but not before giving the seat a look of disgust. “I forget how much I miss your candor, your time with the Khan gave that to you, no other Lexus is like that.”
I couldn’t tell if there was some subtle insult, so I kept eating my sandwich and took the compliment.
I knew she was only here to talk to me, the only place she find me when I’m not with Atolli.
“Should I expect one of your siblings?” she asked me, to which I responded with a shrug. “I see I’ve had better luck finding them than you then.”
The moment I saw her I knew I would have to control myself. I tried to keep as neutral a face as possible as she began to tell about how she wanted to kill my siblings. The sandwich helped.
“Lemon’s trainer usually ditches him around this time, but instead of coming here, he flew off with someone, I can get him another time.” As weird as it was to hear about Lemon leaving with someone, I had to focus on not moving my fingers as my aunt talked about ‘getting him.’ That could mean poison, or stabbing him in this sleep, or some kind of cakra disturbance attack while he’s flying. My mind was going to worse places than Flavia could venture.
“I was thinking that poison would be easier, but getting a bunch of people in the room to stab him by surprise would so very us, you know? The Takedas would know it was us.”
“Why would you want that?” I asked her. “Wouldn’t it be better to frame one of the other Diadects?”
Flavia smirked, and not in a nice way. “I’m glad you have that much confidence in me, but even if Lexus didn’t kill him, they would never believe it wasn’t us unless Calcutta killed him herself. They’ll always believe it was us, so it’s more about the mind game, of putting them in turmoil rather than letting it be something they can ignore.
“But I like your line of thinking, very devious Potempa, thinking of turning our enemies on each other.
“Since you’re so very much thinking like a Lexus,” she said while clapping her wrists, “maybe you’d like to help me take out Calcutta. I hear she’s practicing healing, didn’t believe it at first, but I thought of the perfect idea.”
It took a moment for me to realize she wanted me to speak. I barely croaked out, “What?” as I clasped the little last bit of my first sandwich.
“They practice on dummies, and when they do them wrong they light on fire. The fire doesn’t hurt the healer, but if you sneak some kind bomb or flammable gash, could surprise her while she’s not paying attention.”
Flavia’s pale white face made her red smirk all the more horrifying to me. She was like some ceramic doll that had woken in my room to bring my nightmares to life.
I could see her plan in her eye too. Calcutta trying to heal the dummy or whatever, and then her choking and burning and dying, all happened in the water painting that was Flavia’s eye.
“Is it overreaching?” Flavia asked me.
I was so lost in thought that I missed who had walked up behind her.
“Is what overreaching?” Calcutta asked her, just as her shadow cast over Flavia.
There was something so satisfying about the way Flavia’s smirk fell, and every other muscle in her body froze. I always went back and forth on how much I liked seeing people afraid of Cutta. This was one of those moments where I could enjoy it.
“Flavia, who would have thought to see you here?” Cutta said, her voice getting really high at points, matching that fake smile that had some real sadism underneath.
Flavia put on a smile with nothing behind it. “I’m talking to my niece, believe it or not. As much as I would like to catch up—”
“Oh, that’s nice, me too,” Cutta said as she sat right down next to Flavia and still looked down at her until she rested her chin on her hand, flexing the arm that could snap Flavia in a few seconds.
Flavia looked away as she licked her lips and opened her mouth to speak.
“You got an apple?” Cutta said before she snatched it from Flavia’s hand, and immediately took a bite out of it. “I usually go for the green ones but the red ones are good too.”
I tried to look horrified as Flavia’s hand slowly closed around where the apple used to be.
“This doesn’t taste so bad, don’t know why I’ve avoided the red ones so much,” Cutta went on as the vein started to pulse on my aunt’s forehead.
“Maybe because people put poison in them,” my aunt threatened and Cutta acted like it didn’t even register.
“Nah, not this one,” as she took another bite, not even looking at Flavia, who then looked at me.
I hoped more than anything that my expression did not betray me like she wanted me to betray my sister.
Flavia put her hands on the table and stood up. “Don’t let her bully you, Potempa,” she told me as she turned and walked away with the sister she thought was our enemy.
I watched her back until she had completely left the cafeteria.
“Is she gone?” Cutta said. I nodded, and she immediately threw the apple over her shoulder. That’s how I found out there was a trashcan there. “Always hated red apples.
“So,” she started as she wiped her hands, “are you alright?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking to my other sandwich, and feeling nauseous at the sight, “I guess.”
“You wanna have lunch somewhere else? I don’t think Lemon is going to get the chance to come today.”
I kind of heard her, enough to mumble, “Yeah, sure, I’d like that.”
Before I could look up, Cutta pushed my sandwich into my hands, and then held them.
Pfft.
Before I knew it we were on top of the building, in one of the gardens that was filled with these flowers. In any other circumstance I would have found them incredibly pretty, but I was more shocked by how we got here.
“You’re… really good at teleporting!” I still risked crashing whenever I did it.
“Yeah, whenever I’m not trying to learn to heal from Koki, I’m practicing something else. Figured I’d master something at least.”
I could hear the aggravation in her voice, but it wasn’t really big. Cutta’s natural state was usually some sort of state of aggravation so I just went with the plan. The sun was at its peak on the planet, but here on Drota, ozone was far thicker than most planets I had ever been on. Despite being the spring I thought, it didn’t burn to sit under it.
I could hear Cutta munching on her sandwich as we sat alone in silence, but I couldn’t eat myself. Flavia was on my mind, but I couldn’t wrap my head around my feelings. I could only feel that I had them, and this sinking feeling in my throat, like I should throw up but I didn’t have much to throw up.
She did this to me, her and the Diadect. It could have just been me and my siblings here, hanging out, training, not fighting anymore. But she came and then I knew how everything was without us. They wanted us, me and Lemon, and not because they cared but because they could use us.
My own mother must have wanted to kill my brother and sister, and Flavia thought I would help her without a second thought. What kind of person was I before Drota that she thought I would?
I felt Cutta’s hand on my neck, slowly massaging as it moved up to my head.
I looked to her, feeling a bit teary eyed. She had this neutral face of sorts, trying not to frown, or look angry, or sad. She always did that, tried to empathize but also not. She couldn’t show it, she was known as some man’s fist, not a person.
I sunk my head into my knees, and asked, “Do you ever just hate your family?”
Cutta said, “What?” unable to understand me and muffled whines.
“Do you…” I said as I slowly lifted my head, “ever hate your family?”
“Excuse me?” she said, arching her brow, unable to hide her confusion.
I shook my head as I assured her, “Not us, but like… the Sha’s?”
“Hmm,” Cutta mumbled as she looked away. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t have an answer or too many. “I don’t know them well enough to hate them, I think,” she said with a shrug, so lackluster with her answer, but if one thought didn’t bring feelings to mind, the next one did.
“The women wear their hijabs and cover their faces, but I can still just feel them judging me with their beady little eyes because I don’t believe in that shit. I don’t know why, but the natural sexism of the men stopped me rubbing the wrong way. I think I might hate them a little, for not sticking up for me against their husbands, and brothers, for not accepting that I wasn’t like them. But they’re all the same, no matter how much they say they’re on your side. Gods, who even knows what the men are like? Probably way worse since they weren’t allowed to talk to me.”
“I… I hate Lexus sometimes.” I felt Cutta’s hand squeeze a bit on my head, like a massage.
She put her sandwich down and pulled me closer, holding my head to her chest. She told me, “It’s okay to feel that way, Poppy, it’s not like any of the Diadects are particularly good.”
“I… I know but… but it’s strange. I hate my mom a lot, like more than our father I think, th-that feels unfair. Isn’t that unfair?”
Cutta shook her head in response. “Father was less a person and more an idea, an institution. He was the establishment that gave us so much of our power, and our pain. He wasn’t a father to us, I’ve seen enough other fathers lay down their lives for their daughters. I know Kita Khan would never, but…”
Cutta trailed off as if she had run out of things to say. I looked up, and it wasn’t like she was done thinking. In fact, she was thinking hard and fast, with the expression on her face tightening, as she searched for something that wasn’t there. It wasn’t difficult to realize it.
“You didn’t really know him?” I asked her.
Her agitation grew a bit of sadness in the way her brow dropped. It was like they were being drained of energy and will.
“Yeah,” she admitted, her voice breaking a bit, sounding so small. “How can you hate someone you don’t know? Truly?”
I guess, there might be truth to that. I knew my mother, I knew her well, and I hated her, but there was this similar hate for my father. It’s hard to decide if I knew him at all. I’m not sure who, if anyone alive at that time could claim to have really known him. He was an enigma who played everything close to his chest and died that way.
A man like that doesn’t talk, and my father wasn’t much different… except when he was.
“I… I think I had an honest conversation with him once, I think, when he was dying, and his power was pulsating…” I remember my father’s last few days, as age and deterioration began to take him over. It was horrifying to see, even if my feelings weren’t clear on him.
I explained to Cutta, “I was attending him, you, the Khatun, Kincade, you were all busy with something… arguing over something I think… and I was the only one available who had the power to wade into his room and care for him.”
“He said something to you,” she knew.
“Yeah, he… he said… ‘Men like me always tread over little girls like you. It seems, with all the time I lived, I could have done something about that.’
“I told him he was probably too busy to… I don’t know, give him piece of mind in death? He didn’t accept it, then he said, ‘Don’t coddle me, don’t coddle me the only time you’ll have the chance to dig into me.’”
“Did you?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Not really. I told him I didn’t have anything to say because that’s the truth. What is there to say about such an empty monolith in my life?”
Cutta wolf whistled, which made me chuckle a little. “That must have killed him.”
“Pretty sure the heart attack did that.”
“Ouch…” Cutta said as she had to cover her mouth from laughing. It was nice, sharing a laugh. I wasn’t sure I would be able to today, but as soon as it left, that nauseous feeling began to form in the back of my throat, and I began to realize what it was.
“Hey… Poppy…” Cutta had begun to say, but I had something to say. “Do I…? Do I bully—”
“You know I won’t betray you, right?”
There was eerie silence, but anyone could have predicted that happening. The way she pulled away from me, and gasped that indescribable word, “What?” and held my face between her hands, may have seemed logical and loving.
We just weren’t usually that kind of people. Cutta let me sleep with her when I was scared, she’d wrap in her arms to take a blow, and she’d wrap an arm around me to let me know I was okay. But those were protective things… gestures I guess. This was just tender. I can’t remember the last time Cutta was tender.
I could feel the difference in her touch, and I could see the fear in her eyes that she had for me.
I shut mine, the guilt Flavia and being Lexus had put on me broke me after barely a day. “Flavia wants me to join her,” I told my sister, “to betray you since everyone knows you killed Killua but not me and Lemon. She wants me to poison you or something.” I opened my eyes to take her hands and ask her, “But I would never, you know that, don’t you? It’s you, me, and Lemon, that’s it! You believe me, right?!”
“Of course, I do,” she said as she rested her hand on my head, and her affection began to feel more familiar to me. “Do I bully you, Poppy?
It was my turn to say, “What?”
“Is that why you’re afraid I don’t trust you?” she pushed further.
I couldn’t close my mouth after she said that. This girl who had to grow up faster than anyone I knew, who would tuck my adult ass into bed when I’m upset, was worried that I felt bullied by her?
What had our family done to us? We were so afraid of being like them that we see what’s not there, but maybe we failed.
But in this instance it was a Lexus who slithered her way between us.
“Are you asking because of what Flavia said?” I asked Cutta. She hesitated before deciding not to answer, which was an answer enough.
I threw my arms around her, hugging her chest, as I told Cutta, “She’s the bully, you- you’re the first person I want to see everyday because you make me feel wanted, and the last person I want to see because when everyone else has let me down, you bleed to make sure you never do.” I squeezed her tighter as her arms slowly closed around me, holding me as I ranted on and on. “Flavia’s the bully, that’s why she has to call you one! So she can hide in plain sight!”
“Okay, okay…” Cutta told me, before she was stroking my head, holding me in her big arms. “Poppy.”
“I know, Cutta.”
“Hmm… okay.”
*****
Lunch with mother was the worst. I couldn’t even eat the meal with the best food.
I couldn’t even eat actually lunch food. Burgers were beneath me apparently.
“You have expectations to meet,” she would tell me as I was keep my head down and try to avoid her eye. What a stupid fucking idea it was that you could hide from the only person in the room when they were talking to you.
But I still did it.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Potempa,” she ordered me and I lifted my eyes.
I was immediately met by her pale face. Usually it was made paler by the skin balm she had rubbed all over it. She looked the best for the family, for our father, but not for me. Others would have found that flattering, that she would be so personal, but it never felt like a privilege.
She snapped her fingers at me, and her finger snap always came with more orders. “Fix the slouch and pick up your head, you’re not a dog no matter how much you like to think so.”
I loved being told what I thought.
“One these days, and I don’t know when,” she started muttering as she stabbed through her food, “you will realize that you are a royal bastard and what that means.” She always had this vein pulsating in her forehead when she gave me this speech. “You’re a weapon for the Khan and his heir to use to maintain order. To maintain order, you must venerate fear, and how can you do that when you let an old letcher grope you in front of your father.”
“I—” I stuttered, shocked that the incident had become my fault, but in hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised. “But mother—!”
My mother spoke over me as if I had never started speaking. Most cut you off, but she spoke as if she had never stopped speaking. “It’s pathetic, your sister is probably laughing herself to sleep. Clearly, your reaction speed is not up to snuff, and that changes once you come back from your mission.”
Another session of Lexus training I had to look forward to.
“I—,” I started, wanting to say it wasn’t my fault, that how could I expect him to be there, for him to do that to me… but it was already my fault, she had deemed it so. I had dishonored her by being a victim, and in her eyes, that was worse than whatever was done to me.
“I understand, Mother.”
“No you don’t,” she corrected me one last time, “but you will, and one day you will thank me for this. Right now, the only one who expects anything of you is me, and it’s pathetic that you find this acceptable.”
That’s when I noticed she had yet to look me in my eyes.