Page 1 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

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ANNANI

First kiss, if done right, left an impression to last a lifetime, or in Annani's case, multiples of them. Five thousand years, give or take a few hundred.

At some point, she had stopped counting.

Age was irrelevant when you were that old. She did not look much different today than she had at seventeen, when she had gotten her first kiss, the one that had changed not only her life but altered the course of history, affecting the destiny of gods, immortals, and humans.

Annani smiled at the memory. She'd had to coax that kiss from Khiann.

"I want you to kiss me," she had told him on that first meeting, when she had snuck out of the palace to talk him into marrying her.

She had been promised to Mortdh, and she would have done anything to get out of that arrangement, but she had pursued Khiann because she had always known he was the one for her.

Her truelove mate.

It had taken some effort to convince him, though, and not because he had not felt the same. It was because he had not wanted to start a war.

Had he been right? Would the chain of events that had followed their marriage have still unfolded if she had not broken her engagement to Mortdh?

There had been a time when Annani had believed that yes, history would have taken a different path if she had not been so selfish, and in those moments she had blamed herself for the demise of her people and all the suffering that had befallen humanity as a result.

Now, she knew better.

"What?" Khiann had spluttered, shocked by her bold proposal.

"I have never been kissed," Annani had admitted, looking at him from under lowered lashes and hoping that he would find her irresistible.

She had been a seventeen-year-old girl who had never tried to seduce anyone, but she had witnessed it done, and it had not looked too difficult.

His eyes had gone to her lips, but he shook his head. "I cannot."

The rejection had been a hard blow, and for a moment she'd allowed herself to feel defeated, but then she had remembered who she was.

She was Annani, daughter of Ahn, the most formidable god among gods, and Nai, the goddess who had seduced him and convinced him to marry her.

Annani was a princess, and she had inherited her indomitable will from both her parents. She never accepted no as an answer.

She had been about to tell him that when Khiann smiled and hooked a finger under her chin, lifting her head back up. "But you can. I cannot refuse the princess."

Had he read her mind?

Whatever had made him change his mind, she hadn't been about to question it.

"You are too tall for me to reach," she had told him. "If I am to kiss you, you need to sit down."

He had dropped to the bench as if it had risen up to meet him.

She had sat on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I think this will work." Pulling his head down, she'd pressed her lips to his, and the universe had tilted on its axis because history's trajectory had just been irrevocably altered.

"Mother?" Kian's voice reached her as if traveling through a tunnel, and in a way it had, a tunnel built of five thousand lonely years.

"I am sorry. What did you say?"

"I said that you are falling asleep in your chair. You should go home and get into bed. The mission is almost complete, and the chests are on board the submarine. There is no reason for you to torment yourself any longer."

Everyone in the war room, including Annani herself, had been up for nearly forty-eight hours, but she refused to abandon her vigil so close to the end.