Page 3 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

Dear merciful Fates. I thank you for what you have done, for all the impossible threads you have woven to bring me to this day. I implore you to fulfill your promise and bring Khiann back to me.

She traced the events in her mind, the improbable chain, marveling at how impossibly it had been wrought. None of this would have come to pass had Tula not conceived a child and refused to surrender that child to Navuh. From that refusal had come the rescue of the harem, and from that rescue had comethe moment on the cliff when Tula had slipped and screamed despite the harness holding her. Areana, reacting instinctively, had reached over the edge to catch her best friend, who was in fact not falling, and had slipped over herself. She had been miraculously caught by Yamanu, who had held on to both women.

Navuh, seeing his truelove mate go over the edge and believing her lost, killed on the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff, had thrown himself after her. And so, the head of the Brotherhood, her archenemy, had fallen onto the rocks and into the hands of the clan. Captured, he had revealed that he had Khiann, that he had kept his body in stasis for thousands of years, and he had offered the one thing he believed would get him free. He would trade Khiann for his release.

Annani had been tempted because nothing was more important to her than getting her truelove mate back, but in the end, she had not needed Navuh to find where he had hidden Khiann.

They had found the answer without him, piecing it together from what the rescued ladies remembered and what Elias and Tony had told them.

In the end, Navuh's one card, the bargaining chip he had kept against exactly such a reckoning, had bought him nothing.

2

SULLHA

They had surfaced too soon.

Yaaf had warned Sullha that it might happen. The scooter that had pulled them through the water, the thing that she'd clung to with both hands while Yaaf drove it, had carried them most of the way, but then Yaaf had brought them up short for some reason, and the moment her head broke the surface and she spat out the mouthpiece and tried to breathe, she started flailing.

The swells were lifting and dropping her, the scooter was dragging at her arms instead of pulling her along, and she began to sink, saltwater filling her mouth.

Panic surged, and then Yaaf had her.

He came up behind her, his arm locked across her chest, under her arms, and he pulled her back hard against him so that her body went from vertical to horizontal in the water, her back against his chest, her face tipped up into the air. The change was so sudden and so total that her panic spiked before it eased.

"I have you," he said at her ear, calmly, unhurriedly, as though they were standing on dry ground. "I have you. You are not going under. I will not let you."

"I can't—" She got a mouthful of air and half of a wave with it. "I can't swim, I never learned, there was nowhere to?—"

Did he know how? Were Brotherhood soldiers taught how to swim?

She'd come to think of him as an all-powerful superman, but what if he'd never learned?

"I know. You do not have to do anything. That is the whole point." With his free hand, he unclipped the scooter from between them, where it had turned from a vehicle into an anchor, and clipped its tether to a ring on his own harness so it trailed behind instead of dragging at her. "Listen to me. The only thing you have to do is calm down and stop fighting. Let your body float, let me hold you, and do not try to climb, kick, or right yourself. If you fight me, you push us both down. If you go still and trust me, I will carry you the whole way. Can you do that?"

It was the hardest thing he could have asked. Every instinct in her screamed to stay upright, to claw for the surface, to grab hold of him and climb, but she trusted him, so she forced herself to do the opposite. She forced herself to go limp against him, let her legs rise, let her head rest back against his shoulder, and put her life in his hands.

Yaaf rolled onto his back beneath her, her body stretched along the front of his, and he began to swim, towing her with him. His free arm swept long strokes, and his finned legs drove both them and the scooter through the water toward the boat. She lay against him in her borrowed wetsuit, with no fins on her feet,nothing to do but be carried, and looked up at the pale sky, and felt the swells lift and drop the two of them together. Her face stayed clear, and the air kept coming, exactly as he'd promised.

"Two incoming," someone called. "Take her first."

The Guardians came down for her. Two of them leaned over the side, caught her under the arms, and hauled her dripping over the rail and onto the deck. They set her on her feet and steadied her until she found her footing.

A breath later, Yaaf came up behind her, hauling himself up and over the hull.

"Hand me your fins and the scooter," one of the Guardians said, and there was a grunt and a clatter as Yaaf passed the things up.

Then he was beside her, dripping, his hand on her back.

"You see?" he said. "We made it. You did well."

She had not done anything. He had done it all, keeping her from drowning in the last stretch, but she did not have the breath to argue. Instead, she swept her gaze across the deck, searching for her son. She found him sitting cross-legged on the deck beside Bowen, the Guardian who'd transported him from the cove inside a waterproof case. They were both sitting with their backs to her, so she had a moment to marvel at what she was witnessing.

Tomek was dry and fully engaged in conversation with the Guardian as if he'd known the man for years and considered him a friend. It was astonishing to see a boy who'd grown up surrounded by mostly women, in a place where the only men were guards, trusting a stranger so easily.

Was it a good sign? Or was Tomek unprepared for the outside world?

Now that he wouldn't be taken to the training camp, the only survival skills he'd learn would come from her, and she didn't know if she was enough.