Page 18 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

He felt the kiss as if the goddess was kissing him. He could feel her mouth and her body pressed against his as if he was the young god, and the small sounds she made were having an effect on him that belonged to the other male. He felt his fangs emerge and struggled to keep them hidden, but they were not his fangs. They were the god's.

He was still standing three paces away, hidden in the trees, watching something private that did not belong to him and feeling stolen sensations that did not belong to him either.

The kiss lasted an eternity, and when it finally ended, the young god walked away while the bright goddess remained, her fingers pressed against her mouth.

More than anything, he wanted to be the tall god walking away with something enormous in his heart, but he was not. He was a specter, an onlooker, standing in a strange garden that was already fading.

The trees were gone first, then the flowerbeds, and then the incense dissipated.

The bright goddess was the last of it.

She stayed after the bench and the path were gone, sitting on nothing in the middle of the dark. She turned her head and looked in his direction. At him. She couldn't possibly see him, could she?

He had no body.

He was nothing, and no one could see him, not in this dream, and not in the one before it. That was the rule.

And yet, she looked right at him.

He tried to say something, but nothing came out.

It grew dark, and the darkness swallowed what was left of the garden, including the bright goddess.

His eyes popped open, and the darkness was replaced by a white light.

He was in the strange room again, the one with the humming machines and the smooth ceiling with lights embedded in it. He knew that if he turned his head to the left, there would be two more beds, and if he turned it to the right, there would be two on that side as well.

He lay still and waited for the dream to drain out of him. It was going to happen whether he wanted it or not, and he was sorry to see it go, but being sorry did not change the inevitable or slow it down.

The bright woman was in the room, and he wondered if she was the goddess from the dream. He did not see her, but he did not need to. He could feel her radiant warmth whenever she was near and could feel its absence when she was not.

She was over to the left of him, at the far end, talking to the male in the last bed. Her voice was exquisite, the finest of music, but he still could not make out the words.

He had heard her say the same words over and over again, the same run of sounds in the same order in the same voice, and he had stopped trying to understand them.

"Good morning. I am…"

Khiann stopped breathing.

"I am Annani, daughter of Ahn and Nai. You are among friends, and you are safe."

It was not just a run of sounds anymore. He understood what she had just said.

He lay there with his eyes on the ceiling, motionless, certain that if he moved it would fade, the way the garden had faded, the way everything did. She said it again, and he understood it again. She said it a third time, and he understood every word, noticing the brief pause she made before her father's name, as though the name were supposed to mean something to whoever heard it.

She was proud to be Ahn's daughter.

Annani.

The goddess in the garden had not said her name, but he knew the name belonged to her.

Annani, daughter of Ahn and Nai.

She was the bright goddess wearing a servant's brown dress, and she was the bride in the carriage, and she was also the voice in the dark who had spoken to him and painted stories in his mind.

He felt something on his hand. Something that had not been there before.

A weight, a band of something around the thumb of his left hand, and he was sure it had not been there the last time he had surfaced.