Woman Bewitched

by Tianna Xander

  “This,” he said waving his arm again. “Is the Gate To Fate. And I,” he added as he waved his arm to indicate himself, “am the Gatekeeper.”

  “What is this Gate To Fate?”

  “It is the doorway to other worlds—worlds where soul mates cannot find one another. I am charged with seeing to it that the mates are brought together. Not only so they find happiness, but so their unions will ensure the continuation of the space-time continuum.”

  Right.

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “You have been separated from your mate. Just like your brother, you have lived lifetimes searching for the one man, or woman, who can make you whole.”

  Crossing her arms, she gave the man a stoic look. “Since we’re on the subject, I would like a man, please. While I have absolutely nothing against same-sex relationships, it’s just not something that blows my skirt up, if you know what I mean.”

  “Fear not, Marteeka. Your mate is a male and he needs you almost as much as you need him.”

  “Oh, just almost as much?” she asked dryly, then crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “Why is it the little woman who always desperately needs the man? Why can’t he need her as much as she needs him?”

  Ignoring her question, Garrick continued. “I work for the Wyrd sisters. You might know them as—”

  “The Fates! You work for the Fates?” Great! Now I know I’m screwed. What have I ever done to draw their attention? “Why have they turned their sights on me? What did I ever do to them?”

  Why does everyone dislike them so vehemently?” Garrick shook his head and sighed. “They aren’t the bitches everyone seems to think.”

  “I must agree, in this case.” The guards had been gaining on her. She would have certainly lost her battle for freedom, if not for the timely intervention of the man in front of her. “If not for your, um, transport, the guards that were chasing me would surely have captured me.” Her only concern at the moment was whether she’d been tossed from the frying pan into the fire. Only time will tell.

  If only she could convince him to let her go home, she would never have to worry about Prince Valko or his minions ever again. “When can I go home?” She held her breath, hoping that he wouldn’t deny her.

  “I will send you there as soon as the thread locator finds it.” He frowned down at the device, gave it a good whack with the side of his hand and then showed it to her with a smile. “There you go. What do you think?”

  Marti glanced at the device, her mouth dropping open as a photo of her stared back at her through the device. She looked happier than she ever remembered being as she stood in the arms of a gorgeous, dark-haired man who looked upon her as though he adored her.

  How she wanted that. Marti wanted a man to love, who would love her in return, more than she would ever admit to anyone. She blinked, her eyes burning. Her heart clenched as she stared at the image and forced away the tears that threatened to fall. How many times had she wished for a man to look upon her with such devotion? How many times had she prayed for such utter happiness?

  She thinned her lips, hardening her heart against the pain. And how many times had life denied her the very thing she held most dear?

  Clearing her throat, Marti stiffened her spine as well as her resolve. She stared Garrick in the eye. “Send me home to my brother. There is no fairytale romance for me, or for him. If my brother and I can only have each other, it will have to be enough.”

  * * * *

  “What is it about these females?” Urd asked no one in particular as she strode away from the scrying cauldron. Her disgust was evident. “They are never happy. They whine, whine, whine. They think of nothing but me, me, me.” She waved her arm in a dismissive gesture. “They are all the same.” She scowled. “I say we let them all suffer. They can rot on their lonely worlds. Why should we help them when they never appreciate us? None of them appreciate us.”

  “Urd is right,” Verdandi said as she joined her sister, wrapping her arm around Urd’s shoulders, most likely to show her solidarity. “Look at how she stands before the Gatekeeper as though ready to do battle.” She snorted. “As if she could do him harm. He has seen battles the like of which would give the chit nightmares.”

  “Sisters, sisters,” Skuld said as she clapped her hands. “You know what the happiness of these women means to the fate of mankind. Do not begrudge the entire universe its right to exist.” She stopped, waved her arm over the cauldron and stared down into it. “Besides, Lena is happy and she appreciates us. If we win them over one at a time, we have still won them, have we not?”

  Peering down into the cauldron, Skuld watched the future with a small smile. “Remember what the all-father said, my sisters. Without the existence of humans, our lives would be ever so boring.”

  Skuld glanced at Urd, seer of the past. “What would you do if you could no longer see and weave the happenings of the past?” She turned to her other sister, Verdandi. “What would you do if you could no longer weave the fabric of the present?”

  Moving around the cauldron, she seated herself and placed her hands primly in her lap. “Have I not already told you that the future as it remains is not bright? Must I tell you again that we must continue to reweave the fabric of time or even we could perish?”

  Standing again, Skuld moved to the cauldron and peered into the smooth surface. Lifting her arms, she began to weave the threads only she could see. Around and around her arms moved, and then she moved them back and forth. The threads fluttered about in a graceful dance as she continued to weave Marteeka’s new future. “You both know that for us, time is fluid. Everything happens at once. We must change her past and present as well as her future. I need your help or I cannot complete the pattern.”

  With a sigh, Urd and Verdandi joined her. Their arms also moved gracefully as the three sisters continued to reweave the threads of fate.

  Chapter Four

  Kyl watched the other defenders and wondered what they expected him to do. “I don’t understand why we’re here. We have no idea where the females have disappeared to.”

  “Well.” The female defender cleared her throat. “We have it on good authority that we should be right here, right now. Something is supposed to happen, though we have no idea what.”

  “Who is this good authority?” Kyl frowned. “There is no psychic here.”

  “Perhaps not, but let’s just say that we have a trump card and leave it at that, shall we?” Artu said as he patted his woman’s hand. “We have no idea what to expect. We were just told to expect something.”

  Sitting back, Kyl watched the others, his fingers drumming on the table in front of him. What did they think to do, sit here until one of them came up with an idea? If that were the case, they were in for a long, long wait. By the looks of them, this group wouldn’t know a good idea if someone shot it out of their ass.

  Patience, defender. You must have patience. Your answer is coming faster than you think.

  His fingers stopped moving and he looked to the others. Did they also hear the voices or was he going mad all by himself?

  “I think we should tell them,” Lena said to her mate as she pushed away from him and stood. “Many of you don’t know how we met.” She turned away from her husband who kept shaking his head in an attempt to dissuade her from talking. “I was brought here from a planet in another galaxy, possibly another universe, from what we can figure out. We have yet to find my planet on a star map.”

  She paced around the table. “I was on my planet, running to keep fit, minding my own business, I might add, when the Fates snatched me up and dumped me on Artu’s world. They insisted I was his mate.” She smiled back at him, giving him a look that Kyl was sure the rest of them could have killed to receive, including him.

  “They were right.” She turned to look through the window before continuing. “I believe they were also right when Skuld whispered to us that something momentous would happen here today. She also said we must form
an alliance.”

  Turning around to face them, she pinned them all with a glare in turn. “Gentlemen, are we going to just sit here and argue, or are we going to form this alliance? When the time comes, will we be ready for whatever fate awaits us?”

  “This is ridiculous.” Kyl stood and began to pace. “Do you expect us to believe that the gods have placed you here and that these…deities have told you to come here for a sign?”

  Good god! The woman is crazier than I am. That was saying something since he’d been hearing voices all day. His father had warned him that this would happen. He’d said that if he spent too long alone that he could go mad from seeing those he cared about and protected die. Seeing his friends die year after year had finally taken its toll…apparently.

  Perhaps he really had gone mad and this alliance wasn’t even happening at all. What if this meeting wasn’t taking place anywhere but in his own tortured mind? What if all of these people didn’t exist?

  Kyl clenched his fists in an effort to keep his fears at bay. The last thing he wanted or needed to do was pick a fight with another defender. He couldn’t shake the idea that, as impossible as it seemed, this was real and the people sitting in this room would rather help him than hurt him. That alone kept him from doing something stupid.

  Artu stood and motioned to the chair he’d just vacated. “Sit, love. Maybe I can convince Kylar Gareth that we are not mad.”

  The woman gave her husband a look that spoke volumes before she did as he asked. Sitting on the edge of the chair, she reached up and stroked the translator attached to the inside of her collar.

  She wears a translator. That is interesting. Everyone born within this galaxy spoke the universal language. They only spoke the tongue of their own planets when on their home world. The fact that the woman wore a translator spoke more about her being foreign than anything else ever could have done.

  Kyl watched Artu approach. The other man tilted his head as their gazes met. “You have heard them speaking to you, haven’t you?”

  Though phrased as a question, Kyl could tell by the other defender’s tone that he already knew the answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kyl returned by way of a denial.

  “The Fates, of course.” Artu smiled. “I know that feeling well. You think you have gone mad. Yet everything tells you that you have not. You look the same way I felt when they first spoke to me.” He paced away before shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “I thought I had gone mad.” He shrugged. “Who in his right mind hears voices in their heads? I thought I had surely lost my mind. Either that, or I was well on my way to doing so.” Artu glanced back at his mate. “This happened just before they gifted me with Lena.” Turning back, he met Kyl’s gaze. “If you’ve heard them speaking to you, it could mean you are about to meet your mate.”

  “I have no mate.”

  That’s what you think, a strange female voice said from behind him.

  Kyl spun around and casually peered out the window when he found no one at his back. He didn’t want the others to know he heard the voices even now. How could he convince these people that he wasn’t going mad when he couldn’t even convince himself of the same? He stared down into the empty courtyard with a sigh. It wasn’t empty for long. At first the cobbled path was void of human presence and then a woman appeared, seemingly out of thin air.

  “What the devil?” Kyl closed his eyes and shook his head before risking another look. The woman was still there, looking about her as though she had no idea in which direction to run.

  Surprise! That strange, young-sounding female singsong voice said into his mind. What think you of that?

  What he thought was that he was truly going mad. Where before there had been nothing more than an empty walkway, there was now a beautiful woman who looked as lost as Kyl’s mind.

  Her dark gold hair all but glowed in the light of the two suns. Her too-thin frame looked sickly, but for some unknown reason he failed to deduce, she was the most fetching woman on whom he had ever set his gaze.

  Kyl turned to face the others. Gesturing to a servant near the door, he barked, “There is a female in the courtyard. Bring her to us.” The man turned to go and Kyl felt the need to add, “Do not frighten or harm her. She appears…ill.”

  The steward gave a short nod and slipped through the door.

  Kyl turned back to the windows, unable to stop himself from keeping watch over the waif of a woman until his man reached her side. As he stood sentry from above, the woman faltered and then fell to the ground in a heap.

  Without thinking, Kyl bolted from the room, using his defender’s speed. He knew he was nothing more than a blur when he passed the servant he’d sent for the woman. He believed the servant’s name was Durdor, but was unsure. It was of no consequence. He didn’t know why, but all that mattered to him now was reaching the woman before the cold flagstones chilled her already too-pale flesh.

  Kyl reached the woman seconds later. Kneeling, he gathered her into his arms and lifted her slight weight, holding her close.

  Thick, golden lashes formed golden crescents against her cheeks. Her breath even, she seemed to have no difficulty drawing in air. However, the light blue ring around her mouth gave him pause. He’d seen that before in people whose body temperature had reached dangerous lows. Full, red lips, cracked with dehydration, had that same blue tinge beneath them. They formed a slight moue even in her unconscious state.

  Pulling her tighter against his chest, Kyl willed his warmth, his strength, into her as he carried her toward the consul, her head resting limply against his shoulder.

  Some unnamed feeling came over him. Call it instinct, perhaps. Whatever it was within him wanted to know who had starved her and to whom he would teach some manners. On this world, one didn’t treat women with such blatant disrespect. If he could have his way, no one would treat this woman with anything but the upmost deference for the rest of her days.

  Chapter Five

  Marti woke in a man’s arms. After five years of captivity, she had managed to train herself to awaken without moving and hyper-aware of her surroundings. She had learned that trick quickly and well.

  The men on Katkari liked spirited women who would fight them or play strange sexual games with them—as the guard she’d bribed had wanted. Marti had learned that early on from a seasoned slave. If she wanted to preserve her sanity, as well as what peace of mind she could, she would stay as still and limp as a doll made of damp rags.

  The men, so intent on the spirit of their ride couldn’t perform when they thought a woman willing or asleep from too much wine or drugs. The practice had served her well the last five years. With luck, it would serve her yet again on this world.

  Schooling her features to remain passive, she stayed still as the dead while he carried her into one of the structures that surrounded the square garden where the Gatekeeper had dumped her just moments ago.

  The cool air inside told her this was a more civilized world than the one she’d just escaped. But how much more sophisticated were they? That was the important question.

  Another question was, where was she? Eyes still closed, Marti strained to hear a language other than the universal tongue everyone in the galaxy spoke. However, to her disappointment she heard nothing more than the sound of the man’s footsteps as he easily navigated the spiraling staircase up two more floors.

  Before her capture, the action would have convinced her that the man was a defender—someone she could trust. After all, who other than a protector could have had the strength to carry a healthy woman up two flights of steps without losing his breath? However, after years of too much work and too little sustenance, Marti feared that a man-child could carry her up five flights with little effort.

  After a short pause, the man walked into a brightly lit chamber. It was all Marti could do to keep herself from squinting even though she kept her eyes closed. Years spent hiding in the dark, attempting to avoid the notice of the men of Ka
tkari, had conditioned her eyes to seeing with less than optimal light. This brightness actually hurt her.

  “By the Fates!” a man gasped.

  It felt as though her heart leapt to her throat at the sound of that voice. She knew that voice! Throwing caution to the wind, Marti opened her eyes.

  “Marteeka! My sister. This is my sister!”

  Surely it wasn’t anguish she heard in her brother’s usually emotionless voice. And those certainly couldn’t be tears she saw glistening in his eyes. She looked on, her mouth agape as he rushed to gather her in his arms.

  “Artu!” Marti wrapped her arms around her brother’s neck as her feet slid to the floor. This was the first time in years, centuries really, that he had shown her any emotion other than barely concealed contempt. “I never dared to hope that I would see you again.” For once, Marti didn’t care that tears ran down her cheeks unchecked or that she showed so much emotion to a brother who, up until now, had never even indicated he cared.

  “Where have you been?” Artu asked as he gently set her on her feet. He held her at arm’s length and looked her up and down with a frown. “Why are you so thin?” A muscle jumped in his jaw as he studied her. “Who has mistreated you?”

  A strange woman sidled next to Artu. She wrapped her arm around his waist and smiled at Marti, her strange blue-brown gaze staring deep into her own. “Hi.” She held out her free arm, her hand open. “I’m Lena. You must be my new sister-in-law.”

  “Sister…” Marti felt her eyes widen as she glanced between them. So that explains the change in him. Perhaps having a mate has softened him up a bit. Smiling slowly, she glanced back to her brother. “I see you have finally found your mate.” How fortuitous.

  Marti glanced at the others in the room. The only man she didn’t exchange glances with stood behind her. He was the man who had carried her up the stairs. Was he a defender after all? She stared at those she could see, determining that everyone in the room was a defender—even the woman. What hurt was knowing that she could no longer add herself to that list. Prince Valko and the people of Katkari had robbed her of that right.