The first time she’d been strong enough in over nine hundred years. Her breath whistled between her teeth. “That bad.”

“Yes,” he said, the word a quiet hiss. Then he continued, “This is all happening for you in a much more traumatic setting, as an adult in a dangerous situation. To be frank I’m amazed you’re as sane and intact as you are. We didn’t know what we would find when we recovered you. We had to be prepared for you to heal in stages—over lifetimes—and we didn’t dare hope for more than a chance to help you heal in this life as much as you could.”

“Talk about taking the long view,” she muttered. She stared at the night sky. The earlier clouds had dissipated. Now a hard edge limned the landscape as if it were cut from sapphires and diamonds. When the sun rose later, the jewels would melt in a gush of heat and light.

She was disturbed by how Michael talked about dying and being reborn with such apparent dispassion. It seemed as if a part of him didn’t connect with the miracle of being alive in the present.

She tried to look at it from his point of view, to consider the realities he had been forced to endure. The woman Astra had influenced him from an early age. Was that the elder she remembered from her dream? She wondered what kind of person Astra had become.

Then she realized she was falling into a thought pattern of acceptance. The realization made her stiffen. She said, “Do you think I’ll stop dreaming those images, if I accept what is happening?”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Who knows? Maybe after you’re healed you’ll go on to dream of other lives and other things.”

The words he used triggered something else.

“I was a healer,” she said. “Back then, in the first life. Wasn’t I?”

He paused as he shifted track with her. “Yes. It was one of the ways in which you and I balanced each other.”

Healer and warrior. Yin and yang. The two aspects would provide a sometimes tense balance. She chewed her lip as she considered. She wondered if they had managed their partnership without conflict.

In her dream of that first, strange life she had been a fine healer, a really good one. She didn’t remember much, but she remembered that.

Had she always been a healer? It seemed like such an essential part of her. Her mate in the dream had been very much a warrior, just as he was now. How much had they changed? How much had they remained true to their core identities?

“I need to think,” she muttered again. They fell silent.

She rebelled at the thought of going to someone else for healing. She frowned, aware that the feeling was not quite sensible. After all, if she needed an appendectomy she would go to another doctor.

This shouldn’t be any different, but it was. This was, as Michael said, a spiritual wound not a physical one. When she met Astra, she might feel welcome and safe, like she was reuniting with a lost long friend or a mother, but that hadn’t yet happened.

She didn’t know the other woman. All she had were too-brief dream images of Astra, or what had once been Astra, and Mary was tired of being vulnerable. She was tired of feeling broken.

She would much rather heal herself, if she could. Michael was an overwhelming presence all on his own, and her reaction to him was complex and bewildering. Astra must be just as overwhelming in her own way, if not more. When Michael and Astra were together, the effect would be multiplied. They had worked together as a team for a long time, long enough that they would know each other well.

Mary would rather be whole and independent when she dealt with them together. And what if she and Michael ran into more trouble before they reached Astra? She would like to be more useful than she had been when she was last attacked.

Huh, listen to her. When she was last attacked. She shivered as she realized that she had accepted just how much danger they were in.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Just south of Grand Rapids,” he replied.

He was back to being Mister Enigmatic again. She tried to search his expression in the dashboard’s dim light. His eyes were shadowed, and lines bracketed his mouth. “Are you all right?” she asked. She added quickly, “I mean you said you were tired. You’re not too tired to drive?”

“I’m fine,” he said, his tone terse. “I just need food and coffee. We’ll go through a drive-thru when we hit the city.”

“Stopping for a real meal would be nice.” She bit her lip when he looked at her. She sounded like a wife on some kind of crazy-bad vacation. She muttered, “I suppose that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

His voice remained level. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Makes sense,” she said without enthusiasm. “I guess.”

“Things don’t feel very friendly in the psychic realm,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the Deceiver knows somehow that you and I have connected. It feels like he’s picked up the pace of his hunt.”

“About that,” she said. “Why is he called the Deceiver? That’s not just your nickname for him. We called him that in my dreams too.”

“For one thing, we shouldn’t call him by his old name. When we talk and think of him, we open conduits in the psychic realm where all things are connected. We don’t really know for sure what he can sense, and we don’t want to draw his attention to us.”

Shards of ice moved in her veins. She looked around at the already familiar interior of the car, not feeling nearly as secure as she had just a moment ago. “All right, that’s creepy.”

“For another thing, we call him that because that’s what he is. He lived under a cloak of deception for years as he betrayed our laws and our people. He did something unheard of and turned his back on his mate. He was a moral and spiritual deformity, a sociopath in a race that had no concept of what that meant, or a word in our language with which to define him.”

She swallowed hard. “I see.”

He told her, “You should rest while you can. We don’t know what’s ahead of us, but I would bet my shirt that the rest of the trip to Astra’s isn’t going to be easy. We may be caught in a situation where I can’t take time to lend you strength.”

“Understood,” she said.

Actually, that was another good reason to see what she could do to heal herself. She couldn’t rely on Michael being available to keep her stabilized.

She folded his jacket into a pillow and made herself as comfortable as possible. She closed her eyes.

She thought about the wounded woman in her dream. Maybe she could make herself go back in a dream to that life before she was injured. Maybe she could remember what it was like to be whole.

She wasn’t sure she would be able to, but she was tired enough that she fell asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

* * *

HER FATHER WAS an accomplished politician and merchant, a powerful diplomat and a kind man. Her mother was clever, well-educated, happy and lovely. It was not hard to be a dutiful daughter under their doting parentage. Surely their family was the most blessed of all the Faithful in a city fabled for its wealth and beauty, where people came as supplicants from all over the world.

She had been educated as well as any man, and better than most. When she became troubled by mystical dreams and visions, her father searched for sorcerers, soothsayers and magicians of all nationalities to help decipher their meaning.

Many were charlatans. A few were true adepts, and she learned from each one. She became skilled in a variety of disciplines, although each teacher puzzled greatly over the mysteries that she presented to them.

One day, her father came to her and said, “Daughter, I have found a kind man for you, for it is past time you married.”

By then she understood enough of her own nature to know what answer she must give him. “Father,” she said, “I cannot.”

“It is your duty,” he said. He frowned, though she could tell it was from concern and not anger.

She knelt before him and bent her head. “Am I not a good daughter and a faithful child of Allah?”

“You are.”

“And do you know that I love you?”

“Most assuredly.” He passed a gentle hand over her hair. “You are second in my heart only to your mother.”

“Then know this, my father. I would give my life for you if you asked. But I cannot marry your kind man, for I have a task to do. Allah in His infinite wisdom has seen fit to make me incomplete. I must look for the other half of my soul. . . .”

Her father listened and believed, and so they searched again, and tales spread of their inquiries.

[Mary stirred as an echo of a bone-splitting pain throbbed in her chest. She surfaced partway from the dream, pressed her hands against her breastbone, and pushed the memory of pain away as she fought against the pull of awakening.]

. . . And she pulled out of her body.

Marveling, she stood beside her physical body, which was dark-haired and strange looking, and clad in a plain tunic and trousers of homespun cotton. Her physical self sat, eyes closed, in a relaxed cross-legged position, mirroring the posture and position of her elderly teacher.

Then she held up her hands and stared at them in wonder. They appeared crystalline in the heavy amber afternoon. The astral replica of her teacher’s slight, frail body joined her. “Celestial Daughter,” her teacher said. “You have done well. I am pleased.”

She gave her teacher a polite bow as she observed the niceties of his culture. “This person is unworthy of such high praise,” she said. “It is much easier to talk in the mind voice when one is skyborne, honored one.”

“It is easier once one masters the technique,” said her teacher. “But practicing when one is skyborne can be hard on one’s chi, or life force. Therefore we shall continue to work on the mind voice when we are in body. Aiyyee.”

She turned her attention from the window. “Yes, honored one?”

The replica of his face shimmered, as he seemed to smile. “I could see that you carried yourself with grace and light. Like this you shine like the morning. This humble person is honored beyond measure to teach the Daughter of the Sun.”

She returned his smile. “You dismiss yourself much too fast, honored one. Of all the would-be teachers who have made such great claims to my father, only you have shown that you have the true wisdom of the realms.”

“No, child,” he said. “I only have some small store of knowledge. The mysteries you present have shown my true ignorance. It has been a marvelous teaching, for which I am grateful. I can but pass on to you what little I know. Now we must get to our lesson before we tire. As you know, there are four realms—the inner realm, the physical realm, the psychic realm and the celestial or heavenly realm. Each realm is distinct, yet they are intricate in their entwinement.”

“And humans are connected in some aspect to all four levels,” she murmured. “So true healing must occur on all four levels as well.”

“Correct. There are creatures native to each realm. As in the physical realm, some are beneficial and others are not. All are in balance. In the psychic realm we have some of the greatest, most beneficent forces on earth. Here we have the dragons. . . .”

[The amber afternoon faded as Mary half surfaced from sleep again. She stirred, her pulse sounding loud in her ears.

The car slowed. Cold air rushed in as Michael rolled down the window. There was the exchange of voices and the greasy smell of fast food and coffee. She waited until the car sped up again. Then she reached for sleep and the dream images once more, yearning for the spacious home in the city by the sea, the nurturance of tranquility and learning, the love and understanding of a family, all long since gone to dust.]

. . . And she stood in her sumptuous bedchamber. It was furnished with thick patterned rugs, mahogany tables inlaid with ivory and gold, brass lamps and glazed pottery, embroidered cushions, a divan and her bed surrounded by gauze curtains.

Carved, ornate shutters were thrown open to the breeze that blew in from the sea. Beyond the shutters she could see a cloud-studded sky and a wide, private terrace.

The terrace was one of her favorite places, suspended above the city like a jeweled pendant above a woman’s br**sts. She spent much time on the terrace, gazing at the fishing boats and the merchant ships that sailed in the harbor. Sometimes she took her meals there. Often she sat reading, or in thought.

The morning was drenched with sunshine and the promise of heat. Her maidservant had laid out a breakfast of fruit and bread and sweet tea on the outside table. It was an ordinary morning like so many others, filled with many tasks, and she had grown hungry.

She took a step toward the terrace. Dread swept over her body, an unreasoning gush of terror that dried her mouth and froze all rational thought. A trembling set in her bones as though she were a deer surrounded by hounds.

It might be an ordinary day but something terrible waited for her on the balcony, something so terrible everything inside of her wailed from it.

But it was such an ordinary day her feet took another step and then another, and no, no, no, she couldn’t go out on that balcony, she couldn’t bear it, and she couldn’t stop it either, because the terrible thing had already happened—

A male figure, radiant as a black sun, stepped from the balcony into her room. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” said the figure. “You’ve started to mess around with things you might have been happier to leave alone.”

She gasped and gasped, but there was not enough air.

On the balcony the sword had come down. It had almost split her in two. She’d wrapped her arms around her torn body and held her own intestines as they spilled out. Her maidservant had screamed, the whole world had screamed, and the household guards had come running but they had been far too late—