Guarding the Goddess Read online

  “Guffin will always be close to me.” Ellina sighed as she folded his handkerchief and handed it back to him. “I just won’t see him again until I ascend to be with Thufar.”

  “My people believe we go to be with the Goddess,” he told her. “Speaking of which, oh Goddess in the Flesh, are you ready for your public audience on the Grand Balcony?”

  “I guess so.” Ellina nodded. “No, I know so,” she amended, lifting her chin. She was, indeed, the “Goddess in the Flesh” as he had reminded her—it was time to act like it. Especially when she was going to be appearing before the full court and all the common people at once.

  “Here.” The tall Kindred rose smoothly, though he had been kneeling all this time, and offered her his arm.

  “Thank you.” Ellina took his arm, noticing again how muscular he was. She looked up at him, trying to be bold at meeting those strange changeable eyes of his. “You know,” she told him, “I wasn’t sure if I liked you before this. But now, well…I feel almost like you’re a friend.” Which was nice—she could use a friend besides her grandmother and Lor.

  Then she wondered if she had been overly familiar—perhaps the big Kindred wouldn’t like to be thought of as a friend. Perhaps he was only there to do a job and befriending her was no part of it.

  “That is, I mean, only if you wish to be friends,” she said quickly. “Not that you have to be, Commander Ty’rial. I know you’re only here to protect me, so—”

  “You can call me Ty, my Lady,” he interrupted her gently. “It’s what all my friends call me,” he added, with a smile.

  “Oh. All right…Ty.” Ellina returned his smile with one of her own and nodded her head regally. It was time to put on her dignity. “Thank you,” she said. “You are most kind, Ty. And you may call me Ellina—but only when no one else is around,” she added. “Because it wouldn’t be considered proper.”

  He nodded.

  “I understand—in your position, you must preserve appearances at all costs.”

  “I really must.” She sighed. “The nobles of the palace are horrible gossips—especially if they think one of their stiff-necked protocols has been broken.”

  “Well, we’d better go or we stand in danger of breaking one now. Come, my Lady—your people await you.”

  “Yes.” Ellina took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “They do.” And lifting her chin, she stepped forward and let Ty open the door of her sleeping chamber and usher her out.

  She no longer felt so afraid, so hopeless and trapped as she had before. And the swirling grief inside her had been lessened greatly by sharing it with the big warrior. Perhaps Grandmamma had been right about the Kindred after all.

  He’ll keep me safe, she thought, looking up at the tall warrior. Lor chattered softly in her ear in agreement. I’ll be all right as long as Ty is by my side.

  Though it might be only a short time, she felt more secure and relaxed, knowing that the big Kindred was with her, willing to do whatever it took to protect her.

  Raising her head, she strode forward to greet her people.

  Three

  Ty strode down the hall, a step ahead of the Potentate to clear the way before her. A phalanx of Kindred guards, hand-picked by himself personally, surrounded her, ensuring that nothing and no one could get through to harm her. He kept a watchful eye on the surroundings, ready to put himself between the blue-skinned girl and any danger that might confront her.

  And for the first time, he began to have second thoughts about this job, which he had accepted from Commander Sylvan himself. He began to wonder if he had been wise to take this mission.

  His mind drifted back to the initial interview when he had first accepted what had seemed like a harmless task…

  * * *

  “Commander Ty’rial, thank you for coming.” Commander Sylvan, head of the Kindred High Council, rose from his seat and leaned across his desk to offer Ty’rial a warrior’s clasp.

  “The honor is mine, Commander Sylvan.” Ty had taken the offered arm and clasped it firmly. “I understand you have a new mission for me,” he said as he sat down.

  “Yes, I do. But only if you choose to take it. It is rather…” Sylvan cleared his throat. “Delicate is probably the best way to put it.”

  “I can handle delicate,” Ty assured him. As a member of the Kindred Elite Espionage Corps, he was often called to do jobs that required all kinds of dangerous and diplomatic negotiations.

  “I know—which is why I thought of you,” Sylvan told him. “You’re not just a blunt instrument like some of our Corps members. You have finesse when the situation calls for it. But the reason this mission is delicate doesn’t have to do with the details of the job. It’s more…” He cleared his throat again. “Your background.”

  “My background?” Ty said blankly. “Why should that have anything to do with it?” He frowned. “Unless the mission is located somewhere on Yonnie Six?”

  “No, no—nothing like that,” Sylvan said hastily. “At least, the mission doesn’t take place there. But there are…similarities in the duties you will be required to do and the ones you were originally trained for.”

  Ty frowned, trying to decipher this bit of information. His background was unusual to say the least, but it had never interfered with his taking a mission before.

  For rather than being born to a loving father and mother, as most Kindred were, Ty had been genetically engineered on an elite slaving station on Yonnie Six.

  The female-run planet was well known for their brutal treatment of males and their insistence that those with Y chromosomes were lesser creatures, fit only to be servants and Body Slaves.

  A Body Slave was devoted to his Mistress and served her sexually as well as in every other way. Having a big, muscular male to stand at one’s back and serve was considered a status symbol among the ruling class of Yonnie Six, which was what the elite slaving station that had created Ty had been banking on.

  His DNA had been molded from several different types of stolen Kindred genetic material, giving him the most desirable qualities of every kind. He had the fangs of a Blood Kindred—though his served more than just one purpose. He also had the ability to cause his shaft to form a mating fist like a Beast Kindred’s—but only if his Mistress wanted him to. He had the gentle manners and diplomatic skills of a Light Twin and the fierce intensity of a Dark Twin of the Twin Kindred and to all that, the scientists who had manipulated his genes had given him extraordinary physical beauty, increased strength and speed, and extra abilities that no other species of Kindred possessed.

  Ty didn’t know if he could rightfully be called a Hybrid, despite his strange combination of DNA. He thought of himself more as a Modified Kindred, since he was able to do so many things his more conventionally conceived brethren could not.

  But along with all the beneficial modifications, came one which was decidedly not to his benefit. For the scientists who had played God with his genes had taken the trait which caused all Kindred warriors to be loyal and to long to be of service to females and strengthened it exponentially. Then, to compound this error, they had raised and trained him at the station to serve one single female slavishly the rest of his life.

  Ty still remembered his early training—the way his instructors had taught him and the others of his kind to long for the day their Mistress would choose them.

  “When she comes and puts her mark on your heart, you will be hers forever,” the Headmaster of the slave training program had told them. “When she chooses you, you will belong to her body and soul. You will do anything to keep her safe—to pleasure and protect her. Your whole existence will revolve around her for she will be your Sun and your life will orbit hers forever.”

  How he had longed for that day! Ty thought sourly. How he had wished that a Mistress—his Mistress—would choose him. He had spent the entire first nineteen cycles of his life waiting and wishing for her—whoever she might be.

  He had trained in the arts of pleasure