"You know the Flakkar cannot be found by Looking," King Baltis of the Dark Elemaiya complained. "How will we determine how successful this venture is?"

"By checking the devastation instead," Narval smiled maliciously. "I have already done this only this morning. The first world has lost a quarter of their population already. The second has suffered even more losses." Friesianna and Baltis both Looked, they knew which worlds were seeded with Flakkar. Narval had bent time greatly to gather the nesting pairs from known worlds destroyed by Flakkar. And then, with the help of the Elemaiya, his kind had spread the starving creatures across vulnerable worlds, sending them through gates located on those worlds while the Elemaiya held the gates open. The creatures were easy enough to capture; starving Flakkar on devastated worlds dropped their shields—they had no strength to maintain them.

"Very nice," Baltis complimented Narval's efforts. Being of the Dark Elemaiya, he reveled in death at times. Friesianna was less comfortable with it, but felt it necessary to accomplish her goals.

"Good," she nodded instead. "The Ka'Mirai should be ours soon. I will draft the demand."

"No, we will draft our demand; we share in this, remember?" Baltis growled at Friesianna, his words causing her to go cold. Baltis had his own designs on the Ka'Mirai. Who knew what he might ask to change with her Power? Friesianna hid her shudder.

* * *

"Lissa, we want you to come for dinner," Merrill folded into my bedroom while I was wrapped in a fluffy robe and drying my hair with a towel. A bath had been a necessity after taking out Flakkar earlier.

"No," I snapped, dropping the towel onto a chaise in my sitting area.

"Lissa, are you going to be angry with me forever? I made a terrible mistake. I admit it. I apologize." Piercing blue eyes begged me to accept the offered apology.

"So, an apology is supposed to magically make everything all right?" I glared at Merrill.

"Lissa, I was hoping to make things up to you, somehow. That you'd consent to give me a chance. Kiarra and Adam both want to thank you for what you did for us on Kifirin—as do I. We'd have died if you hadn't come."

"Merrill, I didn't do it for you." I turned my back on him. I wasn't about to explain the screams of the comesuli, or the dead ones surrounding me when I made the decision to go after the Ra'Ak Prince.

"I know why you did it. That doesn't make the rest of us any less grateful."

"Merrill, we were on a collision course," I sighed, turning toward him and shaking my head. He was still as handsome as ever, and it wrenched my heart. "You're a nice person to most people. Respected and loved. To me, you were the one who agreed to a beating because I tried to save your ass. Also the one who withheld the information that a friend was dying, so I'd keep doing what you wanted me to do. I wanted to love you, Merrill. Truly. Only you sabotaged that at every turn." I shook my head, still confused over the blows life had dealt me.

"And now," I went on, "I know we had a M'Fiyah. You asked Griffin to destroy it. He knew then I was his daughter, and he did it anyway. Both of you have done nothing but cause me pain. How am I supposed to forgive that, Merrill? How? Why did you agree to teach me in the first place? You could have refused and had me sent off to someone else. Neither you nor Wlodek ever gave me credit for having the sense to come in out of the rain. Explain that to me Merrill. Explain what you want from me now, Merrill." I wanted to cry and beat on Merrill's chest, I felt so hurt and angry.

"I'd allow it," he nodded, reading my mind. "As would Wlodek. I know you don't trust us, Lissa. That you may never trust us. I also know you're not comfortable around us. I hope that bridge can be repaired someday. We owe you everything Lissa, and we haven't repaid our debts very well, have we?" Merrill sighed as he sat on the edge of my bed.

"Merrill, you refused to give the love I needed when I desperately needed it. How do you think that makes me feel?"

"I don't often use the term like shit, but it's appropriate in this case, I believe."

"Got it in one," I said, hugging myself. I still wanted to cry. I just didn't want Merrill to see it.

"I will go to Belen, and ask to have the M'Fiyah reinstated, if that's what you want," Merrill offered.

"Don't bother." I didn't want Merrill's charity, and Belen already said neither he nor any of his kind would consider it.

"Lissa, I know you suffer. I just," Merrill raked a hand through black hair in frustration.

"Merrill, you made a choice. You get to live with that choice. As I have. At least I don't have to answer to the fucking Council anymore," I grumbled.

"Lissa, I've gone over this in my mind for the past few days. I don't look good in any of the scenarios presented." Merrill shook his head. "I made Sarita, did you know that? I couldn't love her either; I held myself away, again because of Kiarra. Perhaps I shouldn't have. Wlodek loved her, and she loved him—as much as she could. She walked into the sun because she couldn't have children and she couldn't have me. Do you think I don't feel guilt over that? Do you? When the second Queen was placed in my care, I managed to fuck that up, too, didn't I?"

"You can't help whom you love. Or don't want to love," I muttered.

"I loved Kiarra for centuries, yet it was Adam, who had no idea who she was, who got to her first. Punishment, I believe, for my past mistakes. He was made Saa Thalarr first too, for those same reasons." Merrill heaved a frustrated sigh. He was a handsome man—I'd always thought that. He'd only treated me as a child, though. That's what I'd been to him. To hear that he'd callously destroyed what could have been between us, well, that was a pain in my heart and one he could never repair. I didn't want anything from him that he wasn't willing to give. Love was one of those things.

"Now it's too late, for so many things," Merrill said, his voice filled with regret.

"Well, Merrill, I hope you got everything you wanted," I said. He had Kiarra; she was what he wanted. Isn't that the way things happened? Some people got everything, leaving the rest of us to scrabble and scrounge.

"What do you want, Lissa?" Merrill raised his eyes to mine.

"I can't answer that," I said, "because I would be asking for the impossible."

"At least tell me something," Merrill said.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "I want to feel safe, even if it's only for a little while," I began. "I want someone to love me. Someone who loves me completely, just as I am," I continued. "I want someone I can trust with my life. Somebody who doesn't think I'm young and stupid, Merrill, or who treats me with contempt because I haven't lived as long as they have. Somebody who isn't going to use me for what I can accomplish for them. Point out that person to me."

"Lissa, I want all those things for you, too." He disappeared, right in front of me.

"Fuck," I mumbled, wiping tears off my cheeks.

* * *

I was finally satisfied with the boulder, after misting it a few feet back and forth and turning it on its side more than once. It had stood on a corner of Merrill's property before, but there was a big hole there, now. Merrill could find another fucking rock to replace it if he wanted. This one was a memorial to René. It covered the spot where I'd held his hand as he breathed his last. Now I settled on the damp ground before it, staring up at it with a sigh. At least a dozen feet high, it was oblong in shape and moss and lichen grew on parts of it.

"What am I supposed to do, René?" I asked the question a second time, wiping tears away. Things were spiraling out of control. I had a husband who didn't remember me. Three others who wanted to be husbands. One who'd refused me, sight unseen, with help from my own father. And that didn't include Kifirin, whom I hadn't seen since I left the High Demon's planet. Truly, if it hadn't been for the Flakkar attacking worlds, I might have gone looking for a way out. As it was, I was the one who could destroy the monsters, so I was the self-appointed rescue committee.

I don't know how long he'd been sitting beside me; I was so involved with my misery. Nonetheless, he was there—tall, blue-skinned, with dark blond hair. I stared up at him—I didn't know this Larentii.

"I know you," he smiled down at me, and his smile stopped my heart. "My mother is Conner, who is also the Guardian. You have met my father—he is Barrigar, Graegar's Protector. They are both mated to my mother."

"She's so lucky," I sniffled, turning away so he wouldn't see the tears falling.

"Little rose," he turned my face back to him with a large, blue finger. "The bloom is on your cheeks, my pretty one. I thought you would never come to me."

Chapter 12

"Other races can be reborn as Larentii, although it seldom happens." Conner set a cup of hot tea before me. Connegar, her very tall Larentii son, sat beside me at the island in Conner's kitchen, a large blue hand on my back to steady me. Conner's southern accent belied what I'd heard of her before, but then I hadn't seen the Guardian, either. She was beautiful, with long, pale blonde hair clipped back from her face and blue eyes that studied me with a worried frown. I'd fainted when Connegar repeated René's final words to me, so he'd taken me immediately to his mother. Together, they'd gotten me conscious again and Conner made tea for me.

"Mother can see who anyone was before, in their former lives. But I, having many of her talents, can also see this," Connegar smiled gently at me. "I held back from coming to you before, as you were upset and confused about the others. They only want your love and attention, and fail to see it is overwhelming you."

"I told Merrill he should have kept his mouth shut," Conner grumbled, sitting next to me with her own cup of tea. I almost smiled—Conner had a soft, southern accent, and it was such a contradiction to the Power clouding about her.