Revealed Read online

  “A sweet one?” Kat objected. “Then what do you want salsa for?”

  “Never you mind,” Olivia said crossly. “Just pass it. And the peanut butter and chocolate chips while you’re at it.”

  Kat made a face but passed the requested ingredients to her friend. “Okay, now that Queen Olivia is happy, go on with your story, doll.” She nodded encouragingly at Nadiah.

  Nadiah wasn’t sure where to begin but she found herself telling them how she’d realized that she was in love with Rast. The way he stood up for her against her parents and Y’dex, and the way she thought he could never love her back because of what Sylvan had made him promise.

  Sophia let out a sigh at this point. “I love him with all my heart and I know Sylvan was just trying to look out for you but…”

  “But men sure are stupid sometimes, aren’t they?” Olivia finished for her, licking a mixture of salsa and peanut butter off her fingers.

  Sophia gave her a mock slap on the arm. “Hey, that’s my guy you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Liv grinned unrepentantly. “Don’t worry about it, I’m sure Baird would have done the same thing. Or any of the guys, really. It’s not a Sylvan thing, it’s a male thing.” She nodded. “Go on, Nadiah. What happened next?”

  “Well…” Nadiah told about the three challenges but when she got to the part about Y’dex’s tharp inching up and falling down to expose him to the entire audience, the girls broke up into a fit of giggles.

  “Oh no!” Sophia gasped, holding her sides. “I know I shouldn’t laugh because I’ve had that happen to me before and I totally understand how mortifying it can be.”

  “What happened to you is actually what gave me the idea in the first place,” Nadiah admitted. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course she doesn’t mind,” Kat said. “But go on with the story—what happened next?”

  Nadiah was really beginning to enjoy telling her story but when she got to the challenge of wills with the mud worms, she couldn’t help noticing that both Olivia and Lauren looked sick.

  “Skip the in-depth descriptions if you don’t mind, please,” Lauren said faintly.

  “Yeah, it’s enough for us to know Rast had to eat a live worm as big as his forearm,” Liv said. “We really don’t need details.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nadiah said contritely. She hurried on, telling them how Y’dex had lifted and dropped her and Rast had caught her and saved her life. The girls exclaimed in horror and Liv offered the opinion that Y’dex should be “strung up by his balls.” But it wasn’t until she told about the last challenge, the challenge of blood, that Nadiah really began to blush.

  “You shared blood with him?” Sophia asked softly and Nadiah nodded. Being bonded to a Blood Kindred, she knew her friend really understood the significance of the act. But the other girls seemed to sense it too. And when she spoke of the way she’d been pulled between the two males, all four of them made sympathetic faces.

  “That must have hurt like hell,” Kat remarked. “Being torn in two like that.”

  “It was the most painful experience of my life,” Nadiah said softly. “I didn’t think I could stand it. Didn’t think I could free myself from Y’dex—it hurt too much. But when Rast shouted to me that he loved me, I finally found the strength.”

  “It nearly killed her, though,” Sophia put in. “Tell them about seeing your dead grandmother, Nadiah.”

  “What?” Lauren’s amber eyes were wide. “You saw who?”

  Nadiah told them as much as she remembered about the experience but she couldn’t help feeling like there was something she was leaving out. Something important. She wished she could sit and think about it for a minute but the other girls were hanging on her words. She had to finish her story. Oh well, she thought uneasily. Maybe it will come to me later…

  “And then I woke up in Rast’s arms,” she went on. “Because he’d taken the other half of the blood bond into his own heart. But the magistrate didn’t want to let us go even though Rast had won me fair and square…” She told about Magistrate Licklow’s attempt to declare the challenge void and how her friends had stopped him by threatening to tell the Elders about his attempt to fix the challenges.

  “Good for them!” Sophia declared. “I never liked that nasty Magistrate Licklow ever since he accused me of fondling him under the table.”

  “He what?” Lauren demanded and then, of course, they had to digress and talk about what had happened on Sophia’s trip to Tranq Prime. When they had all finished laughing about that, Nadiah was finally able to finish her own story.

  “So he carried me back to our ship and told me he loved me. And we’ve spent the last three days on the ride home, er, enjoying each other’s company.”

  “Oh, no…” Kat shook her head. “You don’t get off that easy. We can all see you have the same color eyes which Sophia informs us means you’ve still got your V card. But there’s no way you spent three days and nights in one of those dinky little ships with the man you loved without doing something dirty.”

  Olivia nodded. “Details. We want details.”

  Nadiah could feel herself blushing to the roots of her hair and she twisted her fingers together nervously. “I’d be happy to tell you, uh, details, but I thought Sophia had something to say.” She looked at her friend, pleading with her eyes. “Sophia?”

  “All right.” Sophia took a deep breath and Nadiah noticed that the other three girls immediately got quiet.

  “You gonna tell us what’s been bothering you the past few days, hon?” Kat asked.

  Sophia nodded. “I am but it’s not easy to say.” She looked down at her hands. “I…I’m barren. I can’t get pregnant.”

  “What?” the three of them shouted together.

  “And you’ve known this how long?” Olivia demanded.

  Sophia bit her lip. “Just a little while. I…I had Sylvan run some tests after Lauren found out she was pregnant and—”

  “Wait a minute,” Nadiah interrupted. “Lauren? You’re…?”

  “Going to have a little girl,” Lauren said quietly. She looked happy but worried, Nadiah thought. “Xairn and I are very…excited.” She glanced at Sophia. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for my news to bring you pain.”

  Sophia shook her head firmly. “Don’t be silly, Lauren. I’m happy for you and Liv. I just…I wish I had good news too. But when I went to ask the high priestess about it—”

  “The high priestess who died?” Olivia asked, interrupting her.

  Sophia nodded miserably. “She had some kind of a fit or a vision. Talked about how my womb had been…had been closed for a reason. She said I must go and stand before the Empty Throne.”

  For some reason her words gave Nadiah a strange tingle along her spine. The Empty Throne, she thought. What is that? Something I forgot?

  “I don’t understand,” Kat said, breaking her train of thought. “How can an empty throne heal you?”

  “Not the throne itself, whoever sits on it,” Lauren corrected. “But who sits on it?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t know.” Sophia looked unhappy. “And she never even promised it would heal me—she just said I had to go stand in front of it. It’s somewhere on First World—the Kindred home planet, that’s all I know. So Sylvan and I are planning a trip there as soon as…as… Oh my God, Nadiah,” she exclaimed suddenly, looking at Nadiah. “Are you okay?”

  Nadiah, as it happened, was not okay. From the moment Sophia had said the words, “empty throne,” a strange feeling had been coming over her. A tingling sensation that started at her fingertips and grew to encompass her arms, head, and face. An al’lei, she thought, beginning to feel panicked. I’m going to have an al’lei. A waking dream. Oh, Goddess, please…

  Suddenly Sophia’s suite and the coffee table with the girls gathered around it disappeared. Nadiah found herself standing in a vast, empty space with rounded white marble pillars rising to the sky. A flood of pale green light seemed t