Page 39 of Dark Destiny: The Turning Of The Loom

"I have not been with anyone for a very long time, and I think the Fates were behind my uncharacteristic stretch of abstinence. They must have let my soul know that you were returning to me long before we captured Navuh and I learned you were alive."

15

KHIANN

Khiann knew that Annani had not been celibate during the five thousand years she had waited for him to return to her. He would have been devastated if she had spent all those years living without joy.

He loved her.

It was impossible not to, and not only because the mate bond still hummed under his skin after all that time.

She was spectacular in every way, and her beauty was only a small part of who she was.

A goddess who was the sole heir to the crown of the Eternal King, the ruler of the gods. He was still trying to internalize the enormity of that and the fact that her grandfather wanted her dead.

Khiann still did not know how she knew that. Who did she communicate with on the home planet of the gods, and how was it even possible?

Even though he did not remember his life before stasis, he had certain expectations that must have stemmed from knowledge buried somewhere his conscious mind could not reach. He did not expect communication with distant planets to be possible, but space travel did not seem absurd to him. He had no concept of what a spaceship would look like, and all he could think of was a seafaring ship.

That was good news on its own. At least he knew what travel over water looked like, even without remembering it or being told about it.

It gave him hope.

"You have gone somewhere inside your head," Annani said. "Do not close up on me now. We have made good progress today."

She sounded worried, and he realized she assumed he was mulling over her past lovers.

"I am not closing up." He brought her hand to his lips again and kissed it gently, reverently, letting her know he did not begrudge her the pleasures of the flesh she had enjoyed while waiting for him. "I am just trying to figure out how you found out all those things. I do not remember whether communications with other planets were possible back when we were young, but my instinct says they were not."

Annani looked relieved. "Your instinct is correct. Communications were severed on El's command. He did not want the people of Anumati to find out what befell the exiled heir to the throne. He declared Earth an excommunicated planet and forbade all contact with it. Its location was removed from navigation charts, and its existence was erased from historical records."

"Why did El go to all that effort? He is the Eternal King, and from what you told me, it appears he can do whatever he wants."

"He can, but even though his rule is absolute, he maintains the illusion that he is not a despot and that he is a merciful ruler and a loving father who was betrayed by his only legitimate heir. El's hold on the throne is secured by many threads, and the main one is the population actually believing that he is a benevolent king who only wants what is best for his people and that Anumati will fall apart without him."

"Will it?"

Annani nodded. "According to my grandmother, it will. That is one more way El holds on to power. Ahn was the only one who could have taken over from him and held Anumati together. The royal families would have supported him because of the queen's connections. That is why the Eternal King did away with his son."

A gasp escaped Khiann's throat. "El did that? I thought it was Mortdh."

Annani had not told him what had happened to the gods, but he knew they were gone. Esag had confirmed that.

From everything Annani had told him, he pieced together that a war had broken out between Mortdh and his loyalists and Ahn and the gods loyal to him.

"So did I, until I learned a few more facts, or rather, possibilities. No one knows for sure what happened." She sighed. "After the witnesses told the story of how Mortdh murdered you, the Assembly of Gods convened to decide how to detain Mortdh and bring him to justice. The punishment for killing a god was entombment, but Mortdh had his own army in the north, with many immortals and humans at his command. The gods had no army, so they lacked the means to enforce their verdict. I spent most of those deliberations crying my eyes out, but I soon realized they were not going to do anything. It was more likely that Mortdh would come south with his army and subdue the other gods than that they would be able to head north and do that to him. I knew that if he caught me, he would either kill me or keep me just to torment me. I humiliated him when I chose you over him, and he was never going to forgive me for that."

Instinctively, he moved closer to her and wrapped his arm around her slender shoulders. "What did you do?"

"I ran away. I took my Odus, Ekin's tablet, my flyer, and flew to the Northern Lands."

"Scotland?"

"Even farther north than that. I knew there were primitive tribes living there, and I figured that with Ekin's tablet, I could start a new civilization."

"Did you?"

She chuckled. "I quickly realized it was not going to be as easy as I thought. I did what I could on my own, pretending to be one of the goddesses in their pantheon, or her priestess, but one person is not an army. I needed to duplicate myself. I had to have children with mortals."