Page 88 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

The second had a brow that was a little flatter than Khiann's. She stood over him for a long moment, giving her subconscious every chance to object, but it stayed silent, and her mind insisted that this could not be Khiann because Khiann's brow had a more pronounced arch. She had traced it enough times to remember its shape perfectly.

She moved down the row, skipping the middle bed because she wanted to keep him for last, and started on the other end.

The third male was slighter than the others, his frame narrow through the shoulders even as the muscle returned, and Khiann had not been narrow anywhere. He had been tall and broad.

The fourth she lingered over, because his was the face that had troubled her on other days, close enough in its proportions to be an option, but now she could see that the cheekbones rising under his skin were a little too wide, and Khiann's had been higher.

None of it was proof. She reminded herself of that at every bed. Alena had warned her about wishful thinking, about a longing that could sculpt what it wanted from unfinished clay. None of them had regrown hair yet, which was strange. Ell-rom and Morelle had not been found bald. They had long tufts of hair that had to be sheared, and Morelle had been self-conscious about her missing hair when she had woken up. Luckily, the godly genes that promoted rapid healing also promoted rapid hair growth, and Morelle's hair was now reaching past her shoulders.

With a sigh, Annani walked over to the one she had saved for last and stood beside it.

The pull had been there from the first night.

It was irrational, the placement determined by nothing more than where the Guardians had set the chests down. And yet, every day her feet had brought her here last, and her heart beat differently here, but she had not allowed herself to believe it was he until now.

The brow was arching, not flat and not heavy. It was the exact long curve she could have drawn with her eyes closed. The cheekbones were climbing high, higher than any of the other four, sitting in the face precisely where they sat in the portraits that hung in her house and the little figurines that Esag had carved of his childhood friend.

The emerging face still did not look like him, but it had to be him by simple process of elimination. The others looked even less like her Khiann.

The mouth was still deflated, the lips thin and sunken where they had been full. It was the part of him that she knew best of all because she had kissed it hundreds of times. He was the first male she had ever kissed, and if the Fates had not cruelly taken him away from her, he would have been the last.

She closed her eyes and used her imagination to inflate the lips and fill the hollows of the cheeks. The face she constructed behind her closed lids was unmistakably Khiann's.

Annani opened her eyes and looked at the unfinished face, still not completely his.

It could be her mind playing tricks on her.

Five thousand years of longing was a sculptor with no scruples, and she had no proof. All she had was that the other four hadbecome less likely, one ruled-out feature at a time, and this one had become more. She trusted her gut above all.

Plastic scraped softly against the floor behind her, and when she turned, she saw Julian positioning the white chair she usually sat in for her storytelling right next to Khiann's bed.

He didn't say or ask anything. He just placed it there, met her eyes for a moment, and inclined his head, and in that small gesture she read his acceptance of the declaration she hadn't made yet.

This one. This is the one I have been waiting for.

"Thank you, Julian," she said.

"My pleasure, Clan Mother." He smiled, then turned around and returned to his monitors.

Annani sat down, arranged her skirt, and looked at the hand lying on the blanket beside her. It had a little flesh on it now, and she reached out and took it.

She held it so lightly. The skin felt surprisingly warm, impossibly alive, and she cradled his hand between both of hers with the care she would give a hatchling. The converted operating room, the monitors, the whole world faded away as she touched her husband, her Khiann, for the first time in five thousand years.

Her eyes burned, and for once she did not try to stop the tears.

Somewhere behind her, she heard Alena's and Bridget's footsteps retreating together, then Julian's and Gertrude's. Then she heard the double doors swing closed behind them.

The only sounds remaining were the hums of the monitors and the other medical equipment, as well as the barely perceptible breathing of five males in stasis.

Still holding Khiann's hand, she rose to her feet and leaned over the arching brow, the high cheekbones, and the mouth that was not ready yet.

"Hello, my love."

31

NAVUH

The procession was the same every day.