Lady of the Star Wind (39 page)

“The inheritance situation is too unstable right now,” the old man said. “Guess wrong about which faction to become involved with, and your chances may turn to ash. You don’t want to incur Ekatereen’s wrath either, so stay away from anything and anyone likely to offend her. The empress is the center of the universe on Throne. Cross her at your peril.”

Good advice. Too bad that in some ways he hadn’t heeded it.

A small sound snapped his attention to the overgrown tangle of garden in front of him. Sandy walked into view, young and demure in her white dress. “I thought you weren’t coming.” Stepping over the threshold of the library, he went to meet her.

“I almost didn’t.” She stopped about two yards away. Wringing her hands, licking her lips, she avoided his gaze. He had the impression she teetered on the verge of fleeing.

This reality diverged from his memories of the events. He reached her in two steps, taking her into his arms, relieved she offered no resistance. He gazed into her eyes, realizing he was finally in the presence of Alessandra of the Future, the woman who’d journeyed with him to Nakhtiaar. She had the face of the beautiful girl, but her eyes were far too knowing.

“Thank the Lords of Space, you’re back with me. When did you realize what was going on?” He hugged her, relief running through his body like a cool rain. He’d been afraid she might never catch up to him, dreaded the idea of going through this nightmare alone.

“Yesterday morning when I awoke. You called me Sandy last week, in the garden, which certainly seemed an odd form of address from someone I’d never met. Yesterday I realized why you called me by that nickname.” Her lovely face was set in a troubled and sad expression, eyes hooded, lips turned down.

“What’s the matter?” He kissed her on the cheek, nuzzled her neck playfully.

She studied their clasped hands. “You do realize if we stop now, right now, if we never let ourselves take this affair further, you can have your life back? Accomplish all the ambitions luring you to Throne in the first place?”

Her words surprised and shocked him, as if she’d slapped him. Astounded, never expecting this line of reasoning from Sandy, he released his hold on her. A flash of anger made his next words come out harsher than he’d intended. “Do
you
want your life as an untouched imperial princess back? Does knowing you’ll become the heir mean so much to you?”

“Please, listen to me.” She took another step away from him. “I’m consumed by guilt right now because of what’s going to happen to you. All my fault! When I think about the hell my grandmother is going to put you through—”

Reaching out, he took her hand, tugging her into his arms. This was the Sandy he knew and cherished. He skimmed her forehead with his lips, a gentle kiss before tilting her face to his. “I love you. I can endure all the pain and hardships as long as I know we’re going to be together at the end. I didn’t have such comfort the first time I lived through torture and exile.”

“You wouldn’t change a thing? Not anything?” Toying with a fastening on his cadet tunic, she challenged him but made no attempt to escape his embrace.

“No. When I woke up in my cadet’s quarters last week, all I could think about was getting to the damn garden before the assassins arrived. I had to save your life all over again.”

She wasn’t giving in yet. “What if we left right now? What if we escaped Throne together, today, and made a life somewhere else? Maybe even in the Sectors?”

He contemplated the intriguing idea for a moment. He had the skills to get them off Throne and safely to the Sectors. He hadn’t forgotten a thing he’d learned—would learn—in the Special Forces. At the moment he was an unimportant cadet and she only a minor player in the imperial family’s dynastic calculations. Not a Favorite of the Empress, Sandy wasn’t spied upon to the same degree as other girls of her generation. At this point no one knew they loved each other, which could make an escape easier to pull off.

But even as he toyed with plans and contingencies, he shook his head. He led her into the library, joining her on the deep couch. “It’s no good. Your grandmother would have us hunted down no matter where we fled for shelter. She’d stop at nothing because she never lets anyone or anything she considers to be hers escape her control. You know that. She’d have her own secret service after us, bounty hunters, every lowlife in the Sectors. The price on our heads would become astronomical until someone bagged us. A fugitive’s life is cruel, hopeless.”

“I know,” she admitted. “I hate to think of what’s coming, so soon. And all those sad desolate years until we find each other again.”

He rubbed his hand over the velvet-soft skin of her arm.

“What are you doing? You’re giving me goose bumps!” Laughing, she pulled away.

“I’m looking for the bite marks from Sherabti. Remember Nakhtiaar?”

“Of course I do. As clearly as I remember this life we’ve plummeted back into. I just don’t know if we’re trapped in a dream together, or if Haatrin’s door really sent us through time to relive the turning point of our lives. What are you getting at?”

Waving his hand at the surroundings, he said, “I think this—all this—is some kind of a test.”

Forehead furrowed as she pondered his guess, she said, “You mean we’re being tempted with other possibilities to see what we choose?”

“I didn’t have to go to the garden and save your life. When I arrived there the first time decades ago, it was by accident. I’d gotten lost, and I walked into the middle of a situation where I had to take immediate action to save you and myself.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “When I woke the other day, the idea of abandoning you never even crossed my mind, but I think it must have been the first decision point in this—this test, if you want to think of the events in such terms. I think that’s why I knew what was happening to us before you did. The initial choice—saving your life—was mine to make. And according to Babsuket, loathsome old crone that she is, I’m the weak link in your ability to use the mirror.”

“You could have stayed away, let me die, and lived a totally different life,” she said. “Followed the path you’d originally set out upon, as one of the empress’s officers.

“No, I could
not,
” he said, anger flaring that she could even suggest such a thing. “I love you, and I want to live my life with you, come what may. I’d give my life to save yours, here and now, or in the future, or on Nakhtiaar. If that isn’t enough to satisfy whoever the powers are that control the mirror you desire so much, I don’t know what else to do or say.”

“I appreciate the effort you’re making. If this test involves me choosing between the mirror and you, I’ll always choose you.” She kissed him. “How much of our history do we have to relive? What’s expected of us if we’re trying to repair the rupture Babsuket saw in our ability to wield magic?”
 

“I don’t know and I don’t much care, to be honest. I feel trapped.” He stroked her back. “Not trapped by you. By the situation. But then, I think about Nakhtiaar, and I want to be
there
. It’s become home to me—I belong. I never fit into the Sectors, and I certainly don’t have a place in Outlier anymore. In Nakhtiaar I’m needed, part of something I believe in, somewhere I can make a difference.”

“You mean working for Rothan, part of his rebellion against Farahna?”

He considered his answer. “I can help Rothan, not as one more spear carrier in the ranks but by teaching his army techniques, strategies, mentoring… There’s more potential for me on Nakhtiaar. I can put my talents to use because we fit in there, both of us.” He tapped his finger lightly on her chest. “You have a valued place whether you can use that damn mirror for anything or not.”

“I know. But I could be so much more help to them if I could unlock the power in that mirror.”

He frowned. “At first, life in Nakhtiaar was odd, primitive, compared to what we’re used to, but the place grew on me. They’re good people. We can help them. And we can be together freely there, you and I, and make a life, the way we never can here. Even if we did escape to the Sectors, we wouldn’t have a happy life.” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts to explain to her what he was beginning to realize himself. “In the beginning when we got to Nakhtiaar, you were angry with me because I wanted to stay on the move. I threw us into Rothan’s quest to find the lost city and the Crown of Khunarum without hesitation, right?”

Her face was serious in the gathering shadows, her voice pitched low. “Yes, I was livid. And hurt. The oasis seemed so perfect, offered a wonderful opportunity to rekindle our love, a dream come true, for me at least. But I realized immediately you weren’t comfortable, as if you were in a cage or a trap. Being with me wasn’t enough for you.”

“I never meant to hurt you.” He kissed her to emphasize his regret. “I was confused by what I felt, seeing you again. Scared of reopening my heart to emotion after all the years of locking it inside. Keeping in motion, going into action represented an easy escape from having to deal with the feelings right away. But then, when you nearly died from the snakebite, when I thought I might lose you, I was ready. I wanted time out to be together and sort through our relationship, there in the Mikkonite village. But you were already caught up in the search for the mirror. Served me right for trying to hide from my emotions in the first place.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t ask the Moon Sisters to snatch you. I’ll never take anything about us, or you, for granted ever again.” He kissed her long and hard. “The mirror is part of who and what we’re meant to be there, an integral piece of what we can do to help them. No one else has the ability but you. I accept that. Maybe our connection to the mirror is the reason Lajollae sent us there, which is fine by me. I love you. Lajollae’s magic bubble took us to the one place where we could be happy and build a life.”

Sandy left the couch, strolling along the walls, stopping here and there to pull a book off the shelf and leaf through it for a moment before setting each volume carefully in its place. “You know this room isn’t here anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Grandmother had the entire wing burned and the gardens dug up.”

He found the news distressing, like a punch to the gut. This library had been their one special place to be together, to be themselves. “Does it bother you to be here again?”

“No.” She glanced at the crowded bookshelves, at the pillows and quilts she’d stacked on the old couch, then at him. “No,” she repeated in a soft voice, a blush spreading over her cheeks. “It makes me happy to have a chance to revisit it with you.”

Returning to the couch, she tugged at his scarlet uniform tunic and pulled him closer, kissing him with a hunger and a passion stoked by all their years apart. Sandy broke off the embrace, running her fingers through his hair. “I’m glad you want to return to Nakhtiaar, whatever happens. I felt at home the first moment we arrived in the Travelers’ oasis, but I knew you were unhappy, restless—”

“Not anymore. I know what I want. I’m at a loss for how we get there, other than living through all the intervening years again.”

“Thanks to you, at least I always knew what it was like to be loved, to be wanted for myself, not for my bloodline.” She reached up and smoothed his hair off his face, feathered small kisses along his jaw. “I don’t think any other imperial princess was ever so fortunate in that regard. Even though the time we had together was short, it gave me a foundation to make something of my life. I could never be like the rest of them, like her. The scheming and plotting, cruelty and treachery—” She took a shuddering breath and shook her head.
 

“No regrets?” he asked softly.

 
She stared into his eyes. “Not now, not ever. We took the chances together, same as we did—will do—on Nakhtiaar. If we don’t stay true to ourselves and our history right now, none of the rest of it can happen. I won’t relinquish our future. I won’t give you up, not even to truly possess the powers embodied in the mirror. I believe in us.”

Her words echoed strangely in the room. Assaulted by vertigo, Mark rose to his feet, keeping a tight grip on her hand. A door had materialized in the garden, surrounded by mist as the sky darkened and thunder rumbled. Keeping his balance with an effort, he tugged Sandy out of the room, stumbling toward the just-arrived portal. “Dreamtime is over, and we’d better not miss our return ticket.”

The door opened easily when he put his hand on the handle, and they stepped across the threshold to find themselves in the middle of a desert on sparkling black sands. A smooth ebony road, darker than the glittering sand, began a few feet away from them, running toward the horizon as far as he could see. The sky glowed a midnight blue, although there was no moon or stars.

 
Far away, an eerie howl echoed and rose into an outright scream. A second and then a third answered. The sound pricked at the nerve endings and stirred ancient instincts of fear and flight. Releasing the door, which swung closed with a solid thunk, Mark said, “We’d better hurry.” He realized the door had no handle on this side, no way to retreat if he and Sandy decided they’d made a mistake.

“But where are we?” Sandy glanced in all directions. “How does this place help us? It’s a barren desert.”

“No time to stop now. The road is our obvious next move. We have to have faith in the process, since Haatrin told us we’d been given permission to try our quest.” Mark tugged her hand as the eerie howling echoed in the distance. “Come on, the road has to lead somewhere.”