"I will be gentle," Grant said, grasping my neck in his hands and pulling me against him. He pressed his lips to my neck, delivering a careful kiss, and then I felt his fangs pierce my skin. I must have drawn in a breath, because Thurlow was there beside me.
"Lara'Kayan, it will be over soon," he was stroking hair away from my temple while Grant drank. He also told Grant when he'd had enough and Grant pulled away, licking stray drops of blood off my neck. He was nearly asleep when he looked into my eyes and smiled. Thurlow folded all of us to Grant's suite of rooms, and got him onto his bed. Grant was asleep already when that happened.
"Now, you," Thurlow said, lifting me in his arms before I could protest and folding me to my bed.
"I have work to do," I complained, but light was forming around his fingers, lulling me to sleep as they gently stroked my face.
"Sleep, my lady," he breathed, and just like that, I was out.
* * *
"She is sleeping," Thurlow allowed Rigo to step inside Lissa's suite. Rigo walked silently over the thick rugs scattered across Lissa's marble floors.
"I only want to touch her," Rigo whispered. Thurlow nodded.
Rigo settled on the side of the bed and lifted one of Lissa's hands, kissing each of her fingers. Before Thurlow could protest, he had her pulled against him, her cheek settled against his chest. "I have dreamed of this," Rigo whispered.
* * *
I was awake four hours later, eating a meal that Karzac set in front of me. He'd angrily crossed arms over his chest and waited for me to eat while I zipped through tons of information on my handheld computer. All sorts of laws were being put forward, including what to do with surplus recyclable materials. That bothered me—one of the proposals was to dump it on an uninhabited planet. Well, maybe not inhabited by humanoids—I was going to check that out myself. Another proposal suggested that each member planet be allowed to decide which religions to approve. That raised my hackles and made my skin itch furiously. Approval of that item would open the door for those Solar Red fuckers—I just knew it.
I wanted the Founder and the Grand Alliance Council to have final approval, and the matter would be debated during the Conclave. If it were left to individual worlds, then Solar Red and Red Hand could waltz right in under an assumed name to murder and plunder, all in the name of their state protected religions. Yeah, I was all for religious freedom, as long as it supported the population instead of killing and sacrificing. I'd seen firsthand what they could do. I didn't want to see any more of it.
"Karzac, please sit, you're making me tired by standing there." I scooted out the barstool next to me and patted the cushion. Karzac came to sit next to me. "Honey," I said, "look at this." I passed the small computer over to him and let him read the proposal. He looked at me as soon as he finished skimming the resolution.
"As long as Solar Red changed their name, they could be approved across the Alliance," he muttered, his green-gold eyes troubled at the thought.
"Anybody could do this," I muttered, "including Red Hand and Black Mist; all they have to do is set themselves up as a religion," I snorted.
"And by the time the Alliance figures out exactly what they are, they may not have enough support among the Alliance worlds to get rid of them again. They may be plotting a takeover," Karzac snorted.
"Oh, good lord," I muttered.
* * *
There was no sleep for me that night, which upset my twins quite a bit. I was busy, reading information on every ruler on every Alliance world. I knew, just by pulling up their records, which ones had been invaded already by Solar Red or Red Hand, under a different name. I figured a lot of them had taken money under the table, too, to allow the torturing assholes in.
Erland doesn't appreciate being wakened out of his beauty sleep—I learned that, but he and I had a long conference inside my study that night. I also had a promise from him and a promise from my grandfather, by the time it was finished. No way was I going to approach my father—he hadn't even bothered to say thanks when I'd restored Wyatt's immortality. Maybe he'd been too insulted when I'd told him he wasn't any different from his mother. It was time, too, to have a talk with Kiarra. I waited until she was awake; I had to
Look
to get that information.
"Hey, Adam," I folded into the kitchen at Gryphon Hall while Adam was having a cup of tea and reading stock reports on his handheld computer.
"Lissa, sit down and have a cup of tea with me." He was smiling. Adam isn't hard to look at, by any stretch of the imagination. He reminded me of an English actor that had been popular when I'd been snatched away by Griffin. Long dead, now, but Adam bore a slight resemblance.
"I'll get my own tea," I motioned for him to sit down again. I'd interrupted him, not the other way around. He didn't seem to mind, either, that I'd just shown up, without any notice.
"I'm used to it," he smiled and went back to his computer. I made myself a cup of tea and was sipping it when Kiarra and Merrill came in for breakfast.
"Lissa, what brings you here?" Merrill asked, coming to give me a peck on the cheek.
"I just wanted to talk to Kiarra about the Ra'Ak that I killed on Vionn." Kiarra had gone to pull something for breakfast from the fridge, but she turned to look at me when I spoke.
"What about him?" she asked. "Dragon said you had a few words with one of them before you killed him, but he didn't know what was said."
"We had a few words, all right, but he was stalling for time, trying to work his mojo. He wanted a Saa Thalarr under his thumb," I said.
"As if that's possible," Merrill snorted.
"Maybe not for you, Merrill, because of what you were before—a King Vampire that wasn't susceptible to compulsion. Or to me, because of what I am. He thought I was Saa Thalarr. And let me tell you, the compulsion, or whatever it was that he had, might have taken one of the others down. Some of the Spawn Hunters, for sure, and maybe others. He was full Dark Elemaiya, Merrill, before he became Ra'Ak. Have you heard of that, before?"
"That isn't good." Belen folded in, shining brightly before gathering his light and forming a corporeal body.
"Yeah. That's not good," I agreed. "And if there's more of those schmucks out there, well, who knows what will happen? If somebody challenges them, can they just place compulsion to win the battle or send somebody back to destroy things from within?" I was thinking about my twins, Gavin, Tony and Jeral. It made me feel sick, to be honest.
"Conner's inviting us over for breakfast, so I don't have to cook," Kiarra had gotten silent mindspeech, her beautiful face set in a frown as she received the message. All of us were folded to Connor's, I didn't know by whom, and Franklin was sitting down beside me in a blink, telling me I was exhausted and needed to eat and then sleep. He'd gotten his hands on me, first thing, using his healer's skill to fix what he could.
"Honey, I appreciate the concern, but this is scary," I muttered. Franklin sat down and ate breakfast beside me—Shane and Thomas had fixed enough to feed a real crowd. It was a good thing, too—a crowd showed up. I listened while Kiarra, Belen, Conner and just about every other Saa Thalarr came in and talked the whole situation over.
Dragon and Crane were there, of course, with Grace and Devin. Fox folded in with Wlodek, Weldon and the rest of her mates. Gilfraith came to give me a hug. I patted him on the back and smiled. Cleo arrived with her mates; Glinda even folded in, Jayd and Garde right behind her, with both tiny girls asleep in carriers. The babies were growing, though, and that was nice to see.
"Are you stirring up trouble again?" Russell came in and patted me on the back.
"You haven't seen trouble, yet," I teased him halfheartedly.
"We can't seem to get a handle on this, to tell if there are any more out there," Kiarra sighed after conferring with Conner, Dragon and Grace.
"There are plenty of other voids—Lissa only sealed up the biggest one," Joey was helping himself to the breakfast buffet.
"So, there could be Ra'Ak everywhere, and a lot more full-blood Elemaiyan Ra'Ak," Dragon sounded worried. "Who would know about the Elemaiya—enough that we might figure this out?"
Well, Griffin must have been listening in, because he folded in shortly afterward, his mother—my grandmother—gripped by the collar. She looked as if she'd been freshly washed and dressed, and I hoped Narissa hadn't given Amara too much of a fight while she did it. "I think maybe Lissa can get answers out of her. I wasn't able to, before, and I only started thinking about that recently," Griffin muttered.
He didn't meet my eyes as I stared at him. He was right, though—when he'd taken Cleo, Kyler and me to meet Narissa, she'd told him then that it was a good thing I'd placed compulsion. Of course she'd tried to cover it up, muttering some nonsense about Wylend and a spell he'd cast. I hadn't thought anything about it either, at the time, thinking that Wylend Arden, as King of Karathia and perhaps the strongest Warlock on that world, had managed to achieve that particular result. He hadn't. He'd only been able to keep Narissa from telling others whose child she'd had. Compulsion had nothing to do with it. Her talent, combined with Friesianna's, had likely accomplished that feat.
"So, grandmother," I began, "tell me about the Elemaiya and compulsion."
"Many might have some form of compulsion," she snorted. "But that’s not what this is. We use another word for this," she snapped. She didn't want to be there, no doubt about that. I put a plate of food together and handed it to her. She ate as if she hadn't had a meal in days. Most likely that was true.
"Then what word do you use and what, specifically, is this?" I asked when she'd slowed down on her eating.
"We use le'meruh," she muttered.
"Extreme coercion," Griffin explained.
"Only a few are born with the talent," Narissa went on, scraping up the last of her eggs with a fork and a wedge of toast. "Bright and Dark. It is coercion so strong, few can withstand it—even those among the powerful. The ones born with this gift have to be handled carefully, so they don't turn on the others. Friesianna was born with it. Became Queen, as soon as she was old enough. Some say she forced the old Queen to step aside."
"Is the old Queen still alive?" I asked.
"Don't know. She was forced from camp and we never saw her again."
"The new Queen is the one who made the deal with the Dark ones and the Ra'Ak?" Griffin was getting in on this. I didn't care, as long as we got to the bottom of it.
"Yes. But she has done many things in the past that should not have been." Was it me, or was my grandmother starting to sound more reasonable?
"So, not everybody agreed with her? That sounds like she forced some people to do her will, then."
"Yes. Many were afraid to say anything against the Queen's decisions, because of it." I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to ask my grandmother if she'd been for or against the Queen on that one. "Rabis tried to warn her, but she ignored him as she usually did. He also tried to warn her against the alliance with the Dark ones and the Ra'Ak, but when she refused him that time, he disappeared and did not return."
"Rabis was their Seer," Griffin said softly, when I raised an eyebrow. "He knew I had the gift."
"She still plays Queen, though she doesn't have a drop of power to her name—even the le'meruh is gone, now. She holds court and her pretty males are still lined up to do whatever she asks. They've killed for her, as often as not. She'll kill to get a handful of berries away from the ones who've gone out to pick them, rather than lift a finger for herself." There was contempt in my grandmother's voice. Well, she'd just described what I thought she'd become.
"Mother, don't sit there and tell me you didn't follow along right behind her, all those years when life was good."
"I did." She didn't look at Griffin when he spoke to her. "I should have gone to Rabis and asked him about it, long ago. He'd learned to keep his mouth shut, though. He wasn't volunteering anything, unless he thought there wasn't any other way. She would have gotten rid of him, too."
"So, you're saying that Rabis wasn't there on Kifirin with the rest of you?"
"No. There were a few others, too, that have disappeared over the years, one or two at a time. Rabis was the last to leave, before we met up with my granddaughter there. I wish Rabis had told me about her." Narissa nodded in my direction; she seemed particularly miffed that she hadn't been informed of my existence.
"My fault," Griffin said. "I knew somebody would come looking for her, so I brought her forward in time. I thought she'd died in the future, too, just as most of the others did."
"That's why he didn't see her. She skipped over some years." Narissa snorted.
"Around three hundred," I muttered. "Grandmother, I have to say you sound a lot more reasonable now than the last time I saw you."
"My great-granddaughter," she mumbled.
"I did it." Cleo came in and looked down at Narissa. "When I made my pronouncement, it broke any remaining compulsion that Friesianna had on her. I didn't realize it until later. That doesn't mean she's undeserving of what she got," Cleo held up a hand. "She still had some will left in the matter. She just chose not to exercise it."