Instructing the Novice: A Kindred Tales PLUS Novel: Brides of the Kindred Read online

  He just wished he’d gotten to her sooner—before they had started cutting.

  How much did they hurt her? How far did they get before I got here?

  It was a question he scarcely dared to ask. He would have to ask Commander Sylvan to examine Lizabeth when they got back to the Mother Ship. Until then, all he could do was keep her warm and comfortable and pray that she stayed unconscious until he could get her some pain medication.

  “Come on, lad—this way.” Joren led the way out of the tent and some of the other guards from the Tower of the Higher Mind joined them. “All clear?” Joren asked them, frowning cautiously.

  “All clear,” echoed one of the guards. “All the males are dead or fled. Fucking incredible.” He shot an awed glance at Lone who stared stonily ahead, pretending not to notice.

  “I need to get my lady back to our ship quickly,” he reminded Joren. “She needs medical attention.”

  “Yuh, of course, lad. This way to the landing area.”

  Joren led the way through the icy night and no one else bothered them, much to Lone’s relief. Almost before he knew it, he was strapping Lizabeth’s inert form carefully into the reclined passenger seat and then taking his own place behind the pilot’s yoke. He bid a quick farewell to Joren and the rest of the Tower guards and then turned to his pre-flight sequence.

  As they lifted off into the blackness of space, Lone felt only relief as they cleared the atmosphere of Yonnie Two. They would be home soon—in the blink of an eye. He would have Lizabeth to the med center before she could even wake up and they would help her…heal her…

  But just as he was about to open a com-link channel and call for the Mother Ship to open a fold in space for them, the ship's cabin filled with a presence.

  Lone stilled at once—his hands frozen on the controls. What was this? What was happening?

  The presence, which was most definitely female, grew and grew, seeming for a moment almost to push all the air out of the small space so that Lone could scarcely breathe.

  “Please,” he gasped, feeling overwhelmed and overcome. “Please, who are you?”

  “Do you not know me, Warrior?” a powerful female voice which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere asked. “You prayed to me to give you strength to save your female and so I did.”

  “Goddess?” Lone looked about him, as though he might see her standing there but of course he saw nothing. He didn’t need to see anything—the overwhelming presence proclaimed the Goddess’s existence much better than anything his eyes could have shown him. In that moment he thought that he had never felt anything more real in his life.

  “Yes, it is I, the Mother of All Life, Warrior,” the Goddess said. “I have come to tell you two things. First—that which was broken may be healed with love, patience and devotion. Second, you are NOT to fold space on the way home.”

  “What?” Lone exclaimed. “But Lizabeth’s hurt! She needs medical attention at once! I have to get her to the Mother Ship quickly—I have to—”

  “YOU WILL NOT FOLD SPACE.” The Goddess’s words thundered in his ears, making him feel deaf and also stupid—what was wrong with him, arguing with the Goddess herself?

  “Forgive me, Goddess,” he said in a low voice. “It’s just that I love her so much and she’s been through such horrible trauma tonight. I just…just want to heal her.”

  “And so you shall, Warrior.” The Goddess’s voice was a little gentler now. “Look to your viewscreen.”

  Lone did as he was told and saw, to his astonishment, the blue, swirling vortex of a wormhole opening right in front of the ship.

  “What’s that?” he murmured hoarsely, staring at it. “A rogue wormhole? I’ve never seen one just open like that before.”

  “Don’t be afraid, Warrior—this is your path home,” the Goddess told him. “Fly forward without fear. And remember—that which was broken may always be healed. If you have the patience and devotion to heal it. Now, farewell.”

  The presence faded and at last Lone was able to get a deep breath again. He stared for a moment at the rogue wormhole…then launched the ship into it.

  He had already foolishly argued with the Goddess once—he wasn’t going to do it again.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “All right—here we are, back at your own suite. Home suite home—no pun intended.”

  Kat laughed nervously and Lizabeth got the idea she was making her friend uncomfortable. Probably because she was so changed now—silent and withdrawn—after what she’d been through and her long recovery at the Mother Ship’s main med center.

  “Thank you Kat…Liv,” she made herself say to the girls helping her. She was still walking stiffly because of the Friezen words branded into the skin of her inner thighs. She had been given some ointment to help numb the pain and to heal the worst of the burns, but she would be marked for life in that area.

  Marked in more than one way, she thought bitterly. The last place the Friezen Shaman’s knife had cut her was the worst because she couldn’t feel anything there now—nothing at all.

  “I am so sorry, Councilor Paige,” Commander Sylvan, who was also a doctor, had said when explaining her final diagnosis. “But the nerve endings were not only cut but cauterized by the…” He swallowed hard, a look of pity coming over his face. “By the red-hot knife you told me was used on you. Kindred medical technology is very advanced but in such a delicate area…”

  “It’s all right,” Lizabeth had said dully—or rather, husked. Her voice, like so much of the rest of her, was never going to be the same. All the screaming she’d done had ruptured some of her vocal chords. So she was never going to argue in court again—at least, not without the help of a voice projector of some kind.

  “Councilor Paige…” Sylvan had seemed to hesitate before going on. “I’m told by Lone, your assistant that the two of you formed a…a connection,” he said delicately at last. “Often in these cases, a Kindred male is able to help or even heal the female he is connected to by—”

  “No.” Lizabeth held up a hand to stop him. “No, I don’t want to see him. And no, I don’t want him to try and heal me,” she whispered in her ruined voice. “Lone thinks he loves me but he’s wrong. And I…” She shook her head. “I’ll never be the same again. He needs to get over me and move on.”

  “I don’t think you understand how it is with Kindred. Once they find the one female in the universe they are destined to be mated to they can’t just ‘move on.’ They are forever tied—” Sylvan had begun but Lizabeth had only shaken her head. “Just let me go,” she told him. “I want to go back to my own suite and be alone.”

  “Very well.” Sylvan had looked unhappy. “You’re as healed as we can make you. Unless you’d like to consider the surgery on your voice or the skin grafts on your thighs that we discussed? We have a Tolleg surgeon on board the Mother Ship who is excellent at such procedures.”

  “No thank you.” Lizabeth didn’t like the idea of having an artificial voice box—she thought she would probably sound like a robot. And she’d had enough people between her thighs to last her for a lifetime. She just wanted to go home and lick her wounds for awhile in privacy.

  “All right. Then I’m discharging you. But please come see me again if you change your mind.” Sylvan had called for her nurse, Liv, who happened to be friends with Lizabeth’s other friend, Kat. And so the two of them had brought her back to her private suite on the Mother Ship and here was where Lizabeth intended to stay—locked away from the rest of the world indefinitely.

  “Would you like to sit on the couch? Maybe watch a trashy movie to take your mind off things, doll?” Kat asked her.

  “Sure. That would be fine I guess.” Lizabeth shrugged listlessly. It didn’t really matter what she did—nothing mattered anymore, she thought. She was changed now—not just on the outside but on the inside too. She wasn’t herself anymore—she wasn’t the confident, successful attorney she’d been before she left for Yonnie Two. Now she was just…b