Page 86 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

What was muted didn't die. It's waking up again, and it's beautiful. I never knew it could be like this. None of us did.

Every word was true. That was the trap of it. Bardov hadn't done anything wrong to Sullha by saying that, and she hadn't done anything wrong to Bardov by flinching, and Yaaf couldn't find anyone to be angry at, which left the anger circling with nowhere to go.

She'd kissed one man, and all eight had felt the sun come up. To his team it was a miracle. To her it was a theft, an intrusion, and both of those things were true at the same time, and he didn't know how to reconcile them.

On the screen, people in bright clothes were arguing about fixing a house.

His phone rang.

Yaaf looked at the name and answered it before it could ring again. "Sullha."

"Hi." The van's engine hummed in the background. "Are you somewhere you can talk?"

"I'm in my room. What about you?"

"I'm in the van, but no one here has super hearing." She took a breath, and he heard her move, maybe turning toward the window, curling around the phone. "I didn't want to wait for tonight to tell you that I'm sorry I overreacted. I heard what Bardov said, and I got angry, but I shouldn't have. I replayed it in my head, and I know now that he wasn't mocking us. He sounded giddy, like a boy finding something precious that he thought was lost forever. Something that was taken from all of you came back today, and he couldn't hold it in." Her voicedropped lower, steadier. "It's just that I forgot for a moment that we are never truly alone. It hit me hard. It's complicated, but we will make it work. We'll have to talk about what's yours and what's everyone's, but I didn't call about that."

"You didn't?"

"No. I called to tell you that I love you."

The sound of the television faded, and Yaaf held his breath.

"I've said it to you before," she went on, before he could suck in air, "not properly, though. I attached reasons to it. I love you for this, and I love you for that, but this time I'm not attaching anything. I love you, Yaaf. All of you that there is, however much of you that turns out to be."

Yaaf sat on the small couch in the room that used to be a cell, with the television producing background noise, and for the second time in his life, Sullha's words floored him.

When he'd told her he loved her, he hadn't said it properly. It had been roundabout too.

"I love you, Sullha," he said. "No reasons. All of me that there is loves you with everything I have."

At the edge of his mind, seven minds tried to stay very still, holding the walls of his privacy with everything they had, and failing.

30

ANNANI

"Good morning, Mother." Alena dropped a kiss on Annani's cheek and took a pastry from the tray Oridu had set in front of her. "Are you ready to go?"

"Almost. I want to finish my tea. Would you sit with me for a few moments?"

"Of course." Alena sat on the chair Ogidu pulled out for her. "It's not like I'm in a rush to go anywhere. Orion took E.T. to Geraldine, and I know she won't release them until after dinner."

"Would you like some tea, Mistress Alena?" Oridu asked.

"Yes, please."

He returned a moment later with a teacup and saucer, placed it in front of her, and poured her tea.

"Thank you." Alena took a sip and then put the cup down. "I have a brilliant idea."

Annani tilted her head. "If you say so yourself."

"I do. Transcribing the stories you are telling the five takes me forever because I'm not proficient enough in the old tongue, and there is no application that can do that either. I thought of asking William to create an app that would turn your speech into text in the language but developing it would have taken forever. Then I realized that we don't need to transcribe the stories at all. We can turn the recordings into audiobooks. People will love listening to them told in your voice."

Annani lowered her teacup. "Most clan members do not know enough of the old language to understand what I am saying. The idea was to later translate the stories into English."

Alena leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. "They need to learn it, right? We need to preserve the original language, and now that we have the former harem ladies living with us, we can actually arrange classes. I thought about it when Tamira told me that the island language is so different from the original that she sometimes has trouble understanding the enclosure women. Mostly, it's about the way they pronounce the words. They have a different accent, and some words were taken from different languages."