Guarding the Goddess Read online

  “Yes, Your Holiness,” Fundreg said again and then the two of them turned to go, taking the light with them and leaving Ty in darkness and despair. Everyone he loved was in danger and there was no way he could save them.

  No way at all.

  Forty

  “Dying? You can’t mean it!” Ellina was already scrambling to her feet and fumbling for her slippers. “Grandmamma, please—say it isn’t so!”

  “I didn’t want to upset you, my child,” her grandmother said, speaking through Lor. “But I fear that my time is near. I wanted to speak to you one last time and tell you how much I love you—how much I have always loved you.”

  “Oh Grandmamma no—please don’t leave me! Not…not now. Not you, too…” Ellina’s voice broke on the last word, turning into a sob.

  “My dear, I must go when Thufar calls me,” her grandmother said. “At least I have the comfort of knowing that you are well settled on the throne with a strong protector at your side. And so I bid you goodbye. Soon I shall be gone.”

  “Good…goodbye, Grandmamma. I love you!” Ellina choked on the words, feeling her eyes sting with tears.

  She knew her grandmother had been talking about Ty when she mentioned Ellina’s “protector” but she couldn’t bear to explain that the big Kindred had left her and wasn’t returning.

  But she also couldn’t bear to just sit here while her grandmother died, she suddenly realized. Despite the law which forbid the old and new Potentates to be in the same place at the same time, she knew she was going.

  Of course, she couldn’t go out the front door of her royal apartments—the loyal Captain Kiyda would never sanction such a foolhardy quest. He was a good guard, but a rather unimaginative one, she had found. He went strictly by the book and wouldn’t at all approve of her going to see her grandmother, no matter what the circumstances.

  But there was another way.

  Do I dare? Ellina hadn’t used the secret passage since she was a little girl and her mother occupied these apartments, shortly after she’d been crowned and before she was assassinated. Ellina had used the passage to run the long, dark stretch between the royal apartments and her grandmother’s suite. She’d been much smaller then—and faster. But maybe she would still fit.

  Going to her bed chamber, she went to the back of the deep closet and pulled up a thick swath of the moss carpet which grew there. Under it, was a trapdoor which led down into darkness.

  For a long moment, Ellina sat there staring down into the empty void. She would be breaking the law and she knew it. But her grandmamma was on the other side, she reminded herself, and this might be Ellina’s last chance to see her.

  Making certain that Lor and Tisa were securely perched on her head, she lowered herself down into the hole.

  Hang on, Grandmamma—here I come! Please still be alive when I get there!

  And she dropped into darkness.

  Forty-One

  Oh Goddess, forgive me. I’ve been so blind—such a damn fool!

  Ty could move a little now—he was beginning to get the feeling back in his arms and legs, which was a relief. After hearing the plans the High Priest had for Ellina and Tisa, he was wild to get free. His body kept wanting to go into Rage—the state of berserker fury all Kindred enter when their loved ones are threatened—and Ty kept having to take deep breaths to fend off the fury.

  But to be honest, he wasn’t completely sure that even going into Rage would help him get out of here and rescue Ellina and his new chewchie.

  He’d studied the bars of the cage he found himself in, as well as the lock, while Kikbax and Fundreg had been standing there with a light. The bars were as thick as his bicep and apparently made of solid plasti-steel. The locking mechanism was old and rusted but it looked solid—too solid, perhaps, to break or pry open.

  What if the drug wore off completely and all he could do was rant and rage and pull at the bars? What if he couldn’t get out to save Ellina and Tisa in time?

  What if he was a Goddess damned fool?

  That’s exactly what you are, whispered a nasty, mocking voice in his head. A damn fool for leaving the woman you loved unprotected. A fool for believing you couldn’t really be in love with her, because of your own sordid past.

  It was true and Ty knew it. He’d been deluding himself—doubting his love for the curvy little Potentate. Telling himself that he couldn’t truly care for her and his emotions were only the result of his altered DNA and early conditioning.

  “Your emotions are not the results of these things, warrior—though they are enhanced by your past.”

  The powerful feminine voice caught him by surprise.

  “What…where…?” Ty looked around, completely blind in the blackness of the dungeon. Kindred had excellent night vision but even they had to have some light to see by. There was none here and so he couldn’t tell who was speaking to him—or where the voice was coming from. It seemed to surround him, as though the speaker was everywhere at once.

  “It is I, the Mother of All Life,” the voice told him. “You must not be frightened, warrior—I have come to help you understand yourself.”

  “Under…understand myself?” Ty croaked, scarcely believing what was happening. He had heard of other warriors speaking to the Goddess, but he had never thought to be so blessed and singled out himself.

  “I singled you out to help correct your misconceptions of yourself,” the Goddess assured him. “For deep down, you despise yourself. You hate what you are because someone else made you that—someone else genetically engineered you to be the perfect bodyguard and companion—and then they trained you to serve a female in power and love her passionately. For these reasons, you feel that your emotions for Ellina cannot be real.”

  “Well…yes,” Ty admitted, somewhat bewildered. “That’s exactly what I feel.”

  “But do you not see, my son, that though your creators meant the changes they made in you for bad, I have turned them to good?” the Goddess asked. “For I was there at your conception—when they manipulated your DNA to make you stronger, faster, and resistant to poisons. I guided you all through your training and I approved.”

  “But…how could you?” Ty asked, surprised into questioning the Goddess’s judgment. “I mean, how could you approve those bastards taking one of your own children and turning him into a freak?”

  “You are not a freak—you are my creation just as surely as those who are born in the natural way are,” she exclaimed “Do you not think that I could see into the future and know what awaited you? For you were not born and raised to serve some spoiled Mistress of Yonnie Six. Your special skills and your ardent devotion have always been meant to serve Y’res the Fourth. She needs you, Ty’rial—needs you desperately. And serving her—loving her—is your destiny. Embrace it.”

  Understanding flooded Ty. The Goddess was right—he must concentrate on loving and serving Ellina—he had been made to love and serve her—made to devote his life to her.

  If he could only get to her.

  “I perceive that at last you understand,” the Goddess said smoothly. “And so I take my leave of you, warrior.”

  “Wait!” Ty roared, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “Wait, Goddess-aren’t you going to help me get free? Aren’t you going to break the lock and help me get to Ellina?”

  “Alas, warrior, I do not work in such overt ways.” She sounded very far away now and Ty began to despair again. “But never fear—you will have help. And if you love your lady with all your heart, all may yet be well.”

  And then the voice was gone as suddenly as it had appeared and there was no sound but Ty panting in the dark as he struggled to get up and go find Ellina.

  Forty-Two

  “Oh Grandmamma—how tired you look!” Ellina wanted to cry as she sat by her grandmother’s bedside and held the frail old hand in hers.

  “My child…you should not be here.” Her grandmother sighed wearily. Her third eye was sunken deep in her forehead—a bad sign.