Most of the dinner conversation was mainly Sartika trying to ferret out what this bond meant and why it did what it did when they were completing it. Elan kept asking her to talk about something else and seemed to be getting upset with her.
“Elan is barely able to keep his head up. Once he’s asleep, I will talk to you about the doubts you have of me.”
Sartika was still getting used to hearing Isolde in her head and tried not to be obvious. Elan’s eyes were hooded and his head was nodding by the time they finished eating. Sartika had no idea how Elan was more tired than Isolde given what happened to her when she stole thoughts.
Isolde kissed his cheek and started to pull him to his feet. “Come to bed. You’re exhausted.”
Isolde was gone a while before she snuck back out into the sitting room and joined Sartika on the floor pillows. She was talking in hushed whispers. “I don’t know how long we can talk. He will notice me missing and come find me.”
“How are you more awake than he is?” It didn’t make any sense to Sartika. Elan only fought one man and his mind gifts didn’t tire him like hers did. Isolde took down four men and got inside the heads of fourteen. She should have been the one passed out and her son should have been the one out here talking to her.
“We have to send many people hunting before the big freeze of winter so we have meat to salt. Some of our bigger animals with the most meat are nocturnal. I’m used to spending all day tracking one animal then staying up all night tracking another. Elan has told me a little about hunting here. It’s different than Avala because you don’t deal with everything freezing.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant and you know it!”
“There’s a part of you that thinks I’m playing some game with Elan and everyone here, that I’m pretending to have feelings for him because it’s my duty to the alliance and it would be easier on Elan.”
“Can you blame me after our first meeting?”
“No, I suppose not. But you don’t know me very well. I wouldn’t pretend to spare Elan’s feelings. If I didn’t like him, I would tell him and take a lover unless we needed to make children.”
Sartika’s mouth fell open. She would have been burned for that here if Elan complained. Isolde seemed to find her reaction amusing.
“I didn’t think I would like Elan based on the lies all of you chose to tell me. I didn’t like him when I got here and thought he was part of the lies. I knew nothing about him when you told me he didn’t know all of you lied to me. So, I blew off steam and asked him to spar with me. I felt a spark when he beat me. It’s only gotten stronger since then. The bond was not just about us having sex. It wouldn’t have worked if you just stuck us in bed together. I may not have been here long, but I love your son. The reason I said he may feel me gone is that we can feel everything the other is feeling when we touch. It hurts me when I’m not touching him. I know he’s just in the next room, but it feels like he’s on another planet when we aren’t touching in some way.”
“Is that the only thing the bond did to you? What can we expect?”
“Please, Elan didn’t want to talk about it for a reason. Everything we did to start it and complete it, it was beautiful. When you try to break it down and analyze it, you turn it into something ugly. Why can’t it just be something between me and Elan? If we need to reveal something, we will, but do you all have to ask about it all the time?”
Isolde’s eyes were wide and pleading, like she was begging Sartika to just stop asking and ask everyone else not to as well. From what she had seen from Isolde so far, she never asked and she never begged. She gave orders or she just did what she wanted. If she was begging now, then this was important to both her and Elan. The bond must have been more than any of them had been told.
“I’m glad it was like that, Isolde, for both of you. I’ll try to keep people from asking about it all the time.”
“Isolde?” Elan called from the other side of the room. He was yawning and looked utterly lost without her too. “Why aren’t you with me? I fell asleep and I couldn’t feel you anymore.”
Sartika was reminded of Elan when he was just a child, but he needed Isolde now. Isolde was looking at her like she was asking permission to go to him and Sartika thought she rarely asked permission for anything. She stood up and gave the girl a huge hug.
“Go to him,” she whispered in her ear before she let her go.
Isolde rushed across the room to Elan, apologizing for leaving him alone and swearing she didn’t like it either. He was too tired to question Sartika standing there. Isolde wrapped herself around him and they disappeared into his bedroom. She must have been telling the truth about it hurting being away from him. Tensions had been too high all day to notice, but now that they were together again, that pleasant humming Sartika felt around them was stronger and she could feel it from further away.
She left them to go back to her own chambers, her mind much more at ease. Her people were behind Elan, even if they told a fib, and the girl he had been dreaming about for years was desperately in love with him.
She was so happy for Elan, she drifted off to sleep not even thinking about The Children of Fia.
Chapter 29
Elan had no idea what time it was when he finally woke up. When he checked the display next to his bed, it was really late. No one had woken them with food or come to them with any business with The Children. Could they possibly get an entire day to themselves? Isolde was still sprawled across his chest with her legs tangled in his. He only vaguely remembered what happened after they got back to his chambers.
He could remember Sartika refused to leave and waking up suddenly in a sweat and realizing Isolde wasn’t next to him like she always was now. He stumbled out looking for her and found her right away. He was too tired to ask why he had been in bed alone. He was just glad she was there now. He felt empty when she was away from him and it hurt a little.
If she wasn’t with him, she must have been up later and would be tired now. He didn’t move or try to wake her. He enjoyed the feeling of her in his arms and her cool breath on his chest. Touching her now was like every good thing that had happened to him in his life crashing down on him at once.
She had put him to bed with his trousers still on, but she was nude like always. She had skin like fine silk and he couldn’t resist running his fingers down her arm to enjoy how it felt. She moaned and tried to move in even closer. He thought she was still asleep, but then he felt her littering kisses on his chest. She craned her head up at him. Her hair was tousled and her eyes hooded from sleep.
“Hi,” she said with a sleepy grin. God, she was beautiful.
“Hello, yourself.”
Her eyes fell on the display and she realized how late it was. “They let us sleep this long? I would have thought you would have been pulled away for your new council or Ace or Galih would be pounding on the door asking us to go to work again.”
“I may actually get you to myself today. I’m not sure. You were magnificent yesterday. Were you showing off for Ace and the others?”
“I couldn’t have stolen that many thoughts or recovered that quickly without you. I wasn’t showing off sliding under that hatch, I was being stupid and stepping on your toes.”
“How so? I find you beating that many men sexy.”
“Elan…I don’t know much about your military and how they arm themselves. Ours have guns, but they also have sidearms strapped to their thighs and knives in their boots. You took away the guns they were holding, but I didn’t know if they had other guns strapped somewhere or hidden knives. I can hear someone’s thoughts if they are going for a knife in their boot or a sidearm. You can’t. I dove under that door because someone had already taken a shot at you. I couldn’t handle this entire alliance without you and you don’t have the same medical technology we do on Avala. If you had been stabbed or shot, I couldn’t deal with it. I’d fall apart and this entire alliance would fall with it. I know
you can handle yourself in a fight. I was just being irrational at the thought of losing you. I’ve already told you once I’d trust you at my back but I wouldn’t trust me at yours. I’m not supposed to get irrational during battle. Jovin pushed and pushed so I didn’t.”
“Hey, you didn’t have anything to lose before. I don’t blame you. Let me help you so it doesn’t happen again, okay? All of our guns are big. We want them to be threatening to look at when we carry them. We don’t make guns small enough to strap anywhere on your body. No one designs knives for weapons. It’s considered savage to stab someone or cut their throat. Our knives are for skinning hunts and cutting food. If you were to use a knife as a weapon, you would be burned.”
“Why? I’m not sure I understand.”
“It’s not a clean death. I’ve always been told we burn people because it’s a purifying death. Cleanses them of the evil they have committed. Our guns that shoot bullets, we rarely use them. The general thought is that if someone dies from a gun wound instead of burning, their evils will get released and go into someone else. We only shoot to wound, so we can burn if we are using guns with bullets instead of fire.”
“Do you believe all that?”
“No, but I think stabbing someone is an awful way to kill them. It can take hours to die.”
“At least Jovin never stabbed me.”
The rage stirred like it did every time she talked about Jovin. It wasn’t just that he had her beaten and apparently often. She mentioned something about sticking her in an oven and he had to have shot at her with something if she said she knew how to stop a gun. She didn’t have any scars like she had taken a bullet, but maybe they could erase them on Avala.
“Did he shoot you when he was teaching you to stop bullets?” he demanded. She briefly explained how Jovin did it, but after everything Elan heard so far, he wouldn’t put it past the man.
“He shot me with our laser that stuns so I would know what it felt like, but never with anything that would kill me or have me visit the surgeon to remove a scar. He seemed pretty put out when I would get injured hunting and have to have a wound fixed so it wouldn’t scar. I wanted battle scars like you, but Jovin and Fjola thought it would make me less attractive to you. They already thought I was at a disadvantage because of my hair and eye color and lack of curves.”
“Are you kidding? I thought you were beautiful from the moment I laid eyes on you. And I’m going to have words with Jovin about what he did to you.”
“Can we just forget it ever happened? He’s not going to be able to do that again and I don’t intend to have him anywhere near our children.”
Elan immediately sat up. “I thought you brought some sort of medication so we didn’t? I thought you wanted to wait.”
Annoyance flashed through her green eyes and she didn’t speak. Was she angry with him? Did she think he wanted to wait and now she didn’t? Ever since he saw her, he kept picturing children with white blonde hair, green eyes, long lashes, and red lips. Or black hair and red eyes with a mix of their features. It didn’t matter what mixture of Cendian and Avalian he pictured, they were always beautiful. Isolde looked like she was getting angrier and she still wasn’t speaking.
He heard a strange voice in his head. It was female and had the same accent Tati did, neither Cendian nor Avalian, with a strange lilt he had never heard before he had a bond animal. This voice was deeper than Tati’s.
“My tiny warrior is stubborn. She wants to lie with you again, but you both need to see Tati. You must convince her to go, since she will not listen to me. If Tati confirms our hopes, you will have to find the right words to convince her to do many things she will want to fight you on.”
“Soelva? Do you know of Tati through Isolde or is something deeper going on?”
Soelva chuckled. “Clever king. Bring my warrior to Tati. Most of the deeper meanings you seek will not be revealed to you until Ragnis Crystal.”
Now Elan was angry too. What game was their bond animals playing at? Were they something more than just animals?
“Well, I can hear Tati now,” Isolde grumped. “She and Soelva must intend on nagging me until we go see her. Can’t we have more than just the hours after dinner together alone?”
“I heard Soelva too. If they both think we need to go see her, don’t you think it might be important?”
“If they can both speak to us and Soelva doesn’t even have to be on the same planet, why can’t they just tell us without us trekking through those tunnels again?”
Isolde was sulking and that was something new. He pulled himself so he was sitting next to her and put his hand on her cheek. “You are absolutely adorable when you pout. We’ll go see Tati and we’ll both tell her to keep it short and to the point. Hopefully, it won’t take long and we can spend the rest of the day alone with no one else interrupting us.”
She sighed and her bottom lip was still sticking out when she got up to get dressed. She took his arm as they disappeared into the armoire. She seemed irritated that she had to listen in this time.
“Well, I heard something good,” she said as he opened the hatch to the underground tunnels. “The high born that joined The Children are starting to doubt Hikmat and thinking about coming to your side after what we did when we bonded and seeing you without those shirts. The four I hear are thinking about skipping the meeting at the temple and not giving him any more money.”
“They’ll still have to be arrested and questioned. Maybe Tati can tell us why we froze the planet and set the moon on fire. Aren’t you curious?”
“Elan, that was the most intense night of my life. The things I was feeling…none of that shocks me.”
“I’ve never felt anything like that night either, but I thought it would just mean we would get closer not affect both planets like that. I’ve heard Soelva now. Don’t you wonder why she and Tati have the exact same accent?”
“I asked Soelva why she spoke differently than I did as soon as I could hear her. She said it’s because she’s older than the Avalians. She asked if I paid attention to my history lessons and that there were already advanced structures here when the ships landed. I already knew that, but that was all she would tell me. She wouldn’t tell me why the humans found structures, but no other humanoid beings. She wouldn’t even tell me how old she was. She kept telling me I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. I eventually just stopped asking.”
“We need to start asking again, Isolde. Maybe Tati and Soelva have been around long enough for the civilizations that built the structures on both planets to flourish, then die off. They probably know why the sixteen were born and why we were supposed to do this.”
“Elan, whatever Tati wants, it’s not to tell us the truth. Soelva only tells me what she wants me to know, even when I press her. Whatever happened between us that set the moon on fire, Tati isn’t going to tell us until she thinks we deserve to know why we spent the last eighteen years preparing for this.”
Elan felt his heart sink. “I thought you loved me?”
She stopped walking and grabbed his face. “Never doubt that I love you. I wasn’t in bed with you when you went to sleep because I was explaining to your mother that exact same thing. Elan, I’m just tired of all the secrets and lies.”
“Sartika wasn’t awful to you, was she?”
Isolde smiled and kissed him. She took his arm and they started walking again. “No. She loves you. She knows you are strong and can handle yourself, but she also knows how much you wanted this bond. I think there was a part of her that still thought it was just sex and I was playing some game with you. I think I shocked her, but she knows the truth.”
“After everything you’ve already done and said since you got here, what exactly did you say that shocked my mother?” He was a little amused and wondering exactly what came out her mouth this time. She told him exactly what she told Sartika and he was shocked too. “Really, Isolde? You would have done that right to my face?”
&nbs
p; She shrugged. “I wouldn’t have expected you to stay faithful to me either if we didn’t like each other. We both had our minds set that the other was a certain way before I got on that pod. This could have gone horribly wrong and we could both hate each other right now. Tati and Soelva both knew about the lies and they never chose to correct it. I’m angry at both of them right now. What if I hated you because I didn’t know it could be like this?”
“Maybe Tati and Soelva wanted you angry when you got here? Would you have asked to spar with me if we met under normal circumstances? I felt a spark just watching you assume the Vusi fighting stance.”
Isolde finally relaxed and laughed. They were out of the tunnels and walking through the forest now. The freeze must not have affected everything. The further they got towards Tati’s home, the less the grass was dead and the world became green again.
“I felt a spark when you were still standing after I tried to attack you. Jovin won’t let me come at him like that.”
“Come on, Isolde. I saw you checking me out when I took my shirt off. Admit it.”
She laughed again. “Have you seen yourself in the mirror without your shirt on? You’re quite attractive.”
“You weren’t the only one worried about appearing strange to the other. You don’t find me weird looking?”
“No, Elan. I knew what to expect because I talked to our slaves like real people. I hope that counts for something when Fjola and Viljar gives them a choice. I hope it shows them I’m not lying.”
Tati was pacing when they came to her clearing. She huffed when she saw both of them and Elan heard her in his head chastising him for taking so long. Elan knew Isolde could talk to her in her head like he did, but she must have wanted him to hear it too.
Child of Fire, Child of Ice-A Sci-fi Romance Series Page 22