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“Well, it couldn’t do that without attracting attention,” Lydiah said. “Besides, if it had come back to you, how would you have explained it? Didn’t your mother drag you off and ask you about a thousand questions after that first challenge?”

  “Yes, she did.” Nadiah shuddered. “She demanded to know where the tharp was and everything else. If she’d caught me with it…”

  “But she didn’t because it was smart enough to come to me.” Lydiah stroked the living garment affectionately. “But it belongs with you. Keep it safe, dear friend. It has served you well.”

  “It certainly did and it will again.” Nadiah looked up at Rast. “Hold me closer—I’m going to wrap it around both of us.”

  He started to protest, then realized that he was still wearing the traditional Tranq Prime outfit of a fur skirt and furry boots. His chest, legs, and arms were bare and it was past nightfall outside, so the temperature was going to be in the double digits below freezing.

  “All right,” he said, pulling her closer. “Do it.”

  With a little help from Lydiah, they got the tharp wrapped around themselves. Either it was bigger than Rast remembered or it was stretching itself to cover them both. Whatever the reason, once it was fastened securely around them, only their faces stuck out. Nadiah murmured some words to it and it puffed out, putting any down jacket Rast had ever worn to shame.

  “Wow, that’s warm!” he exclaimed. “Let’s get out of here before I fall over from heat exhaustion.”

  “You’ll need every bit of heat you can muster to get from here to your ship,” Havris said grimly. “Winter is coming—its chill is already in the air.” He raised an eyebrow at Rast. “Are you ready? You’ll have to run for it.”

  Rast took a firmer grip on his precious burden and Nadiah squeaked with protest. But she was smiling so he knew she was all right. “Ready,” he said, nodding. “If you’ll open the door we’ll get out of here.”

  “On the count of three then,” Havris said. “One…two…”

  “I love you, Lydiah! Be sure to call me when you’re bonded,” Nadiah said, smiling at her friend from the cover of the tharp.

  “I love you too, dear friend. You do the same.” Lydiah’s eyes shone as she waved a last farewell.

  “Three!” Havris called and flung open the door.

  A blast of icy wind so cold it nearly stole his breath away hit Rast like a slap in the face. And then he was off and running.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Please, please help me. I’m begging you. I’ve tried everything but nothing works. I don’t know where else to turn. Who else to ask.”

  Sophia fell on her knees in the green and purple grass of the sacred grove. She lifted her hands in supplication to the priestess who towered over her, a forbidding look on her face.

  “Of what do you speak, human female? What troubles do you bring before the Mother of All Life this day?” she asked, her green-on-green eyes flashing.

  “I am…barren.” Sophie could barely get the word out—it stuck in her throat like a bone. But it was the only way to describe her situation. The only word that fit.

  “Barren, you say?” The forbidding look in the priestess’s strange eyes softened a bit. “How do you know this? You have only been bonded to your warrior a little while, have you not? Perhaps a few more months of trying…”

  “That’s not going to help,” Sophie told her. “After my cousin, Lauren, got pregnant I had Sylvan run some tests. I…my eggs actually reject his seed. They repel it for some reason—some kind of syndrome. And even though he’s been working at the lab day and night, he can’t find any way to solve the problem.” She put her face in her hands and sobbed. “I just want a baby so badly. A little boy I can love and care for and raise.”

  “I see.” The priestess nodded. “And how does Sylvan feel about this?”

  Sophie shrugged helplessly. “He says he’ll love me no matter what. But I know he wants a son of his own as much as I do. There’s so much sadness in him since we found out. It’s like…like he’s grieving for the son he’ll never have. The son we’ll never have.”

  She broke down crying again, all the stress and pain and worry of the last few days catching up to her. Sylvan believed that their problem might be due to a rare disorder which sometimes ran in Kindred bloodlines and became active when introduced to the right stimulus. When a male with the condition came into contact with a female who activated the disorder, the very genes which enabled him to trade with other species somehow got flipped, causing them to do the exact opposite and reject a pairing with an alien female. Which in this case is me, she thought miserably. I’m the one who set him off, it’s my fault we can’t have a baby!

  “If you will allow me, I must lay hands on your head and try to see into this matter,” the priestess said.

  Though that feeling of cool fingers rifling through her mind was on Sophie’s list of top ten hated things, she nodded humbly. “Yes, of course.”

  “Very good.” Two strong hands descended onto her hair and Sophia held her breath and closed her eyes, waiting to feel the strange tingle of an invading mind inside her own. But somehow, it never came.

  She opened her eyes again and dared to look up. The priestess, her hands still buried in Sophie’s hair, was staring up at the artificial green sun which hung above the sacred grove and chanting something under her breath.

  At last, after what felt like a very long time, she removed her hands from Sophie’s head and looked down at her. “Rise, daughter of another star. I believe I have your answer.”

  “You do?” Sophia looked at her with hope. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

  “Silence!” The priestess’s voice cracked like a whip. “You may not be pleased with what you hear.”

  “I…I may not?” Sophie faltered. “Oh, please—”

  “The Goddess has revealed to me that your womb has been closed for a reason.”

  “What?” Sophie said doubtfully. “I mean, what does that even mean? For what reason?”

  “To prove that he who was lost has returned.”

  “But who? Who was lost and when is he coming back?” Sophie wished the Kindred priestesses wouldn’t always talk in riddles but there seemed to be nothing to do but try and follow along.

  “One who comes from the mists of time to claim the Empty Thone.” The Priestess’s voice had taken on a hollow, ringing tone and when Sophie looked at her she saw that the woman’s strange green-on-green eyes had rolled up in her head. It reminded her a little of what had happened to Nadiah when she had an al’lei or waking dream.

  “Uh…are you all right?” she whispered, taking a step back. “Do you want me to get you a doctor?”

  “Be silent,” hissed a voice in her ear and Sophie turned to see another priestess standing barefoot on the holy grass beside her. This one was younger—only the irises of her eyes were green, not the whites—but she was somehow no less forbidding than the older one. “The high priestess is having a vision,” she told Sophie, taking a firm, pinching grip on her arm. “Kindly be silent and let her continue.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You must go to him,” the first priestess intoned. “Go and stand before the Empty Throne which shall be empty no more. Now it shall be filled as the Goddess decrees it must.” Her eyes rolled further up in her head and a narrow stream of spittle started to leak from the corner of her thin-lipped mouth. “They are coming…The Blackness which Eats the Stars…the nameless horror from ancient times. Something has awakened it, has awakened them. They are evil, horror…they are legion. And when they come all of creation will be devoured by their insatiable hunger. The Blackness…it comes…ahhh!”

  Suddenly she fell to the ground and began to convulse. With a little cry, Sophie shook off the younger priestess and ran to her. “Get some help,” she yelled. “Somebody help me—call the med station!”

  But before the words completely left her mouth the seizure or vision or whate