Sylvan sighed. “All right. I’ll keep it in mind.” He followed Merrick’s gaze to the room with the sleeping Elise. “Don’t worry about her, Merrick,” he said, reassuringly. “I’ve programmed the stasis chamber for a controlled exit. That means when her body is ready, she’ll come out of it on her own.”
Merrick nodded. “I understand it could take a little while. I’ll wait.”
“More than a little while,” Sylvan cautioned him. “It could be weeks or even months before she emerges. In fact, I think it’s likely to be a very long time because of what she went through at the hands of the AllFather. Her brain isn’t going to want to come to and deal with those memories.”
“I’ll wait,” Merrick repeated stubbornly. “I’m acting as her protector. I swore to be responsible for her.”
“I can relieve you of that duty at any time,” Sylvan said. “No one would blame you if you wished to leave. As you said, you don’t even know her.”
“I said I’ll stay,” Merrick growled. “And that’s fucking final.”
Sylvan studied him silently for a moment and then nodded. “All right, old friend. I’ve instructed everyone at the med station on what to do and Olivia has promised to pay special attention to Elise every day. She’s an excellent nurse—you can ask her if you have any questions.”
Merrick nodded. “Understood.”
Sylvan seemed to hesitate for a moment. “There’s just one more thing,” he said at last. “If—and it’s a very big if—she starts to come out of the stasis before I get back, don’t touch her.”
“What?” Merrick frowned. “Why not?”
Sylvan shook his head. “It’s a long and involved process—too hard to explain. But the time when she’s coming out of stasis is a critical juncture. It could be dangerous for both of you to have physical contact at that point. Wait until she’s all the way out and awake before you even hold her hand, all right?”
For some reason, Merrick felt a strong urge to disagree—but Sylvan was the one with medical training. He obviously knew best. “All right,” he said grudgingly. “Hands off until she’s wide awake—I got it.”
“Good. Thank you for understanding.” Sylvan squeezed his shoulder. “I must go. The ship is already primed and waiting.”
“Good luck and the Goddess go with you,” Merrick said. “I hope you’re able to cure Nadiah.”
Sylvan’s eyes turned bleak. “I hope so too. If I can’t, I will never forgive myself.” And then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-five
Luckily the trip to First World was very short—straight into the space fold and then a day to make orbit around the Kindred home world.
It was short in terms of crossing the vast distances of the universe, Rast knew. But to him, it felt incredibly, painfully long. Lying in a small bunk surrounded by cold packs, Nadiah alternately burned and froze. It was heartbreaking to hear her begging for blankets, whispering through fevered lips that she was cold, so cold, when Sylvan said her temperature was actually so high her brain was in danger of boiling in her skull.
So though he longed to give in and cover her in the warmest blankets he could find, Rast was forced to ice her down instead, stroking a cold cloth over her hot brow as she cried out weakly and begged him not to. Sylvan and Sophia had both offered to do the job but Rast refused. Nadiah was his responsibility now. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, he meant to do what he could for her…even if it tore the very heart from his chest to do it.
I’m right back to the blood challenge, he thought grimly as he changed her ice packs yet again for fresher, colder ones. Hurting her to help her. God, I hate this. Hate it so much.
“I’m sorry, Nadiah. So sorry,” he whispered, leaning over to kiss her hot forehead before he put a fresh cold cloth on it. “I swear when this is all over I’ll never hurt you again. Never.”
“Rast,” she whispered and at first he thought she’d heard him.
“Yes, sweetheart?” He cupped her cheek, searching her eyes anxiously for any sign of recognition.
But then her dark blue eyes clouded over and she started to shiver again. “Rast, please…Please help me. Cold. So c-cold…”
“I know you are, sweetheart. I’m sorry. This is the only way to keep your fever down.” Not that the damn fever ever went away—they were barely keeping it in check and even as he watched, Nadiah seemed to be melting away to nothing in its hellish heat.
Rast’s eyes stung and once again he swore vengeance. Whoever had done this to her—the owner of the mysterious female voice who had used Nadiah like a fucking short wave radio to convey her message—that bitch was going to pay and pay big.
“I’ll kill her,” Rast whispered to himself. The hand that wasn’t soothing Nadiah clenched into a fist at his side. “Fucking kill her.”
“Who will you kill?” Sophia was suddenly there, frowning uncertainly.
“Whoever did this to her.” Rast looked up, his eyes feeling hot and red, as they had after the blood challenge. “Whoever made her sick. They’re dead.”
Sophia took a step back. “Oh my God, you really are Kindred. You’re…you’re going into rage.”
“What was that?” Sylvan came back, frowning. “What did you say, Talana?”
“L-look at him.” Sophia pointed at Rast, her voice shaking. “He looks just like you did back when…when you were trying to protect me from the urlich.”
Sylvan frowned. “So I see.” To Rast he said, “Take some deep breaths and try to calm down. We’re about to visit a very holy and sacred place and you cannot appear before the priestesses in that state.”
“I don’t want to calm down,” Rast snarled. “I want to hurt whoever did this to her. I want to make them pay.”
“And I feel the same,” Sylvan said evenly. “Nadiah is my kin—I love her as though she were my little sister. But you cannot go into the temple of the Empty Throne with murder in your heart. The priestesses will sense it and punish you.”
“You think I give a damn for their punishment? For anything but her?” Rast saw everything through the red curtain now, even Nadiah’s beloved face was painted with crimson.
“It is not you they would punish,” Sylvan snapped. “Think of Nadiah. We are going into a place of healing—what if they refuse to heal her because of you?”
“What if they’re the ones who did this to her in the first place?” Rast countered. “What about that?”
“Then they are the only ones who can undo it,” Sylvan said heavily. “Please, Rast, we must not give them reason to refuse us.”
Finally what Sylvan was saying penetrated the red haze of anger that seemed to hang around him like a burning curtain. Nadiah. I have to calm down for her sake. Can’t let the anger take me. Make me do things I’ll regret later. There was nothing he could do for Nadiah in his current state. Nothing but make an already desperate situation worse.
With a huge effort, Rast closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then again. And again until he felt the anger leave him, leaking slowly away like air out of a balloon.
“Sorry.” He opened his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t…don’t know what came over me. I just got so mad at whoever hurt Nadiah and everything went red…”
Sylvan nodded. “That’s rage all right. It’s a state a Kindred male goes into when he feels his female is threatened.” He sighed. “But I’m afraid it won’t help in this case. We’re dealing with much more than a physical threat here.”
“What are we dealing with? And who?” Rast demanded. “Was it one of the priestesses of this Empty Throne thing? Who has the power to reach through space and make someone sick? Who—”
A beeping sound from the front of the ship cut him off.
“I don’t know,” Sylvan said, turning to go back to the controls. “But we’re about to find out. Prepare yourself, Rast—we’ve achieved orbit around First World.”
Chapter Twenty-six
First World was nothing like Rast had imagined it would be. H
aving been to the sacred grove aboard the Mother Ship, he’d thought that the whole planet would be a lush, deciduous forest filled with green and purple trees and carpeted with lavender and emerald grass. Instead, it was a desert world. A flat, sandy plane that seemed to extend for miles in every direction with no sign of life. Dotted here and there around the barren landscape were towering mesas that jutted from the sandy ground like mountains from the sea floor.
Some of the mesas seemed to have steps leading up their sides and most had colored smudges at their flat tops but they were too high for Rast to see what the smudges could be. Houses, vegetation—who could tell? But more than the far off mesa tops, it was the color of the ground—or rather the sand that caught his eye. When you gathered a handful of the stuff it looked to be no color at all—almost transparent, like tiny flecks of clear quartz. Yet, when the rays of the strange green sun shining down from above struck it, it turned every color of the rainbow—every color but green, that was.
Rast couldn’t understand it. Shouldn’t the green light make everything under it also look green? But somehow it didn’t. They walked over cerulean blue and hot pink and magenta dunes. Aquamarine and chartreuse waves of sand washed over their feet like water in the ocean, even though Rast could feel no breeze. High above he could hear the sharp, distant scream of what he assumed was a type of hunting bird. Black specks soared through the cloudless sky high above—too high for him to make out anything more than their basic shape. It was a strange land—the rainbow desert with its massive mesas—stark and rich, desolate and beautiful at the same time.
“How long ‘til we get to this Empty Throne place, anyway?” he asked Sylvan, who was guiding the hover-stretcher where Nadiah lay. Sophia was walking on the other side of it, silently drinking in the beauty of First World. “And why’d we park so far away, anyway?”
“We are making for the holy mountain, just over that ridge.” Sylvan nodded at a distant turquoise and royal purple dune ahead. “And we landed where we did out of deference to the Goddess. It is said she is closest to this of all the Kindred worlds and she suffers no one who cannot fly of their own power to take to the skies around her sacred grounds. It is death to approach the holy mountain on anything but foot…or wing.”
For some reason Rast’s shoulder blades began to itch. “What—you have flying people out here?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders in an attempt to stop the irritation. “Now that must be a sight to see.”
“So the legends say,” Sylvan murmured, unperturbed. “But even if they’re true, those old tales are ancient. No one has taken flight from the Goddess’s mountain in over a thousand years—if they ever did at all.”
“I’m gonna guess no to that one.” Rast reached behind him, trying to scratch the damned itch but it always seemed to be just out of reach. “I mean, I’m no physicist but it’s a simple matter of weight ratios. In order to support a six and a half foot tall warrior—assuming they were the same size you guys, uh, we are now—a pair of wings would have to be—”
“Enormous. Vast and beautiful—feathered with the light of the Goddess herself,” a strong, feminine voice interrupted them.
“What?” Rast said, looking around. He soon saw the source of the voice—a female with long, curling emerald green hair and eyes that were solid emerald green to match with no white or pupil to break up the unnervingly blank expanse between her lids. She might have been forty or eighty or anywhere in between—it was impossible to say. The look on her face was not in the least welcoming.
All of them stopped dead as if by silent consent and Sylvan halted the hover-stretcher as well. “Priestess,” he said, bowing respectfully.
Sophia and Rast followed his lead although Rast didn’t like it. Not that he minded being respectful to a woman but this particular female looked like she was used to being bowed to and expected it. No, demanded it.
The priestess looked at him sharply. “It is my right to demand respect, Challa. As the High Priestess of the Empty Throne, I am due it in your thoughts as well as your actions.”
Rast frowned. “Can you read my thoughts? Because I’d rather you didn’t.”
She looked at him with distain. “Only part of your mind is revealed to me. If you wish to change that, then shield yourself.”
“Shield myself?” Rast demanded. “How the hell am I supposed to—”
“Your pardon, High Priestess,” Sylvan cut in smoothly. “But Rast has only recently discovered he is Kindred. He was raised on the human world of Earth and has little understanding of matters of the mind.”
“I am well aware of his origin.” The priestess sniffed. “Though how he could remain among those primitives for so long without discovering that he was different is beyond me.”
“His DNA was altered,” Sylvan explained. “By someone—we don’t know who—to help him fit in. When I gave him a shot with Kindred blood compounds in it, he began to show more signs of his true heritage.”
“Yes. Such as the rage I felt directed at myself when your ship made orbit.” The priestess frowned at Rast. “I will satiate your curiosity now, Challa. Yes, it was I who called you through the female that now lies upon yon stretcher. And yes, it was I who struck her down with the fever.”
“Why, you—” Rast started toward her but Sylvan put out a hand to stop him.
It was Sophia who stepped forward instead. “Why?” she asked. “Nadiah is my friend and you’ll never meet a sweeter, kinder girl. Why would you do something like that to her?”
The priestess made a dismissive gesture. “She is a weak vessel. Not worthy to be Lyzel to the High Counselor ’s Challa.”
“I don’t know what those words mean and I don’t give a damn either.” Rast was making an effort to control himself, but his voice still shook with barely repressed fury. “All I know is if you made her sick, you’d better heal her now.”
The priestess shrugged. “I’m afraid healing her is beyond my power. I can raise the fever for a little while…” She made a careless wave of her hand and Nadiah coughed and sat up on her elbows, looking around in confusion.
“Rast?” she whispered through cracked lips.
“Oh, thank you!” Sophia smiled gratefully as she ran to embrace her friend. “Thank you so much.”
“Do not thank me yet, child.” The priestess frowned. “As I said, healing her completely is beyond my skill. The fever will return and in the end she will certainly die of it.”
“What?” It was a full throated roar of rage and disbelief, torn from Rast’s throat. He lunged forward and Sylvan intercepted him, obviously using all his strength to hold him back. “Let me go,” he snarled, trying to get past the Blood Kindred. “Let me go, I’m going to kill this bitch.”
If the priestess was worried about his threats, she certainly didn’t show it. “Fear not, Challa, I only said that I could not heal her. But there is one here who can.”
“Who?” Rast demanded. “Who, damn you?”
The blank green eyes opened wide and the priestess’s thin lips curved into a cruel smile. “Why you, of course, Adam Rast. You alone can heal the little female.” She nodded at the distant dune and the mountain beyond. “Come to the holy mountain and I will tell you how.”
Then she disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Nadiah couldn’t get over the breathtaking beauty of First World or the fact that she was conscious enough to enjoy it. She was still weak with fever but it was less now, as though someone had taken a roaring blaze and banked it carefully, ready to stir it to life again at any moment. She had a vague understanding that the strange high priestess—who seemed more overbearing than any other priestess Nadiah could ever remember meeting—was the one responsible both for her illness and her partial recovery. But every time she tried to think about it, her head began to ache.
In the end she decided it was better to just drink in the scenery and make small talk with Sophia, since Rast was apparently too upset to talk.
“This place
is amazing,” she murmured, squeezing her friend’s hand. Sophia was walking along beside the stretcher where Nadiah still rode, though at least now she was sitting up. “I’ve heard stories of the rainbow desert on First World all my life but I never thought I’d actually see it.”
“It is amazing,” Sophia agreed. She was obviously making an effort to be cheerful but the worried look on her face ruined the effect. “Nadiah, maybe you should lie down again,” she coaxed. “You still look so tired.”
“I feel a hundred percent better though,” Nadiah lied—it was more like fifty percent but she would take what she could get. “Besides, how can I lie down when there’s something like that to look at.”
She flung her arm out, pointing over the multicolored dune they were just cresting. Beside her, Sophia’s breath caught in a gasp.
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