Page 99 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

Khiann. That was the groom's name.

It meant no more to him than the bride's name had. They were two beautiful-sounding names belonging to two beautiful strangers, and yet the second name resonated somewherebeneath his ribs with a strange, hollow thump, like a knock on the door of an abandoned house.

The groom had prepared his own beautiful words. He had labored over them for a whole moon, but when the moment came, he stood before his bride with a heart so full that he forgot them.

And he, watching from the crowd, felt heat climb his neck. Felt the embarrassment as his own, and his lips moved half a breath ahead of the groom's, saying words he could not have known.

"My love, my life, my everything," the groom said a heartbeat later, giving her own pledge back to her, and the hall sighed with delight. "In front of all these witnesses, I, Khiann, son of Yaeni and Navohn, pronounce you as mine, Annani, daughter of Nai and Ahn, and I pledge myself to you for eternity and beyond."

He stood among the cheering guests, his lips still parted around words that were not his and did not know why his heart wanted to leap out of his chest.

And then the voice paused, drawing a breath, taking a small rest, and the world it had been building began to fade. The gold leached out of the hall, the guests paled to mist, and the music unraveled thread by thread. Then the groom faded along with the thrones and the petals, until all that was left was the bride, radiant skin and flaming hair, a beacon of light in a graying world.

He reached for her with his ghostly hand, straining after that guttering flame, but he was insubstantial, a shape in the dark, and then the flame went out and the dark returned.

But it was not the same dark. It had direction now, and it was up.

The flame-haired bride was still printed on the darkness behind his ghostly eyes, and he needed to find her again.

He was not drifting anymore. He was climbing.

36

ANNANI

Alena reached the clinic's front door first and held it open. "Something is going on. Look at Hildegard."

Through the glass, Annani could see the nurse emerging from the clinic's back door, smiling, which was unusual. It was not that Hildegard was not a happy person. The nurse loved her job and was happily mated, but she prided herself on her assertive personality and sarcastic humor, which she usually delivered with a straight face.

"Clan Mother." Hildegard rushed toward her and Alena. "You are going to want to go straight down."

Annani did not ask why. She went down the stairs to the clinic basement and tried not to run. The Clan Mother did not run, and especially not while wearing a floor-length gown she could trip over.

Hildegard pushed the double doors of the converted operating room open, and Annani immediately sensed the change in the air.

Julian stood next to the bed of patient John Doe One, as he had named him, moving his finger from side to side. The male's eyes were open, and he was tracking the movement.

"That's excellent," Julian said. "You're doing very well."

He had said that in English, so the male could not have understood it even if he had retained command of any spoken language, but his eyes followed Julian's movement long after the doctor had concluded his test.

Next, he took the male's hand. "Can you squeeze my fingers?" he asked again in English. "Like this."

Evidently the patient understood Julian's meaning from the gesture, and his fingers closed around the physician's palm.

"There it is." Julian grinned over his shoulder. "That's the fourth time this morning, and it doesn't get old."

Annani did not wait to hear the rest.

She crossed to Khiann's bed without stopping next to any of the others and looked down at her mate's face.

Khiann's eyes were closed.

His face was so beautiful, so familiar, and utterly at rest, and nothing in it had changed since yesterday, or the day before, or any day of the past week.

Four monitors in the converted ward had learned new tunes this morning, quickening and stumbling, filling the room with the busy irregular music of bodies whose souls were returning home. Khiann's still played the old one. Breath after identical breath. Heartbeat after identical heartbeat.

She took his hand between both of hers and held on.