Part 35
[i] "ZAN!" She screamed his name, yet knew it was too late. She was never going to reach him in time. His despair was crushing her, making her stumble.
Their connection had never been so strong - not even in the first moments after they had bonded themselves eternally through the [/i]Rashna[i] . She was actually seeing through his eyes, was listening through his ears…
But he could not hear her, could not [/i]feel[i] her. They had shut him off from her somehow. He was all alone.
"Just do it. Kill me." His voice was cracking with grief. He was standing near the main fountain of the palace gardens, staring down in horror. Kadiya felt the hard stone under his knees as he fell to the ground, his face in his hands to block out the sight of Rath floating lifelessly in the still water.
She was aware of hands under her elbows, hauling her to her feet, knew it was Khivar. "Come along little whore. Let us go and witness the destruction of the king. The destruction you have brought about." He sounded gleeful. She struggled against him but was pulled along against her will, distracted by what she was seeing in her mind's eye - what she was going to be unable to stop.
He thought she was dead. She knew it as certainly as she knew that she loved him.
"You betrayed me!" It was Ava, shrieking at him. "I am your wife and you were going to set me aside for a [/i]servant[i] - a whore!. She died because of it and now you will as well."
"I died the moment you sent Khivar to kill her," Zan replied tonelessly. "Just do it. I will do nothing to stop you." He could not see Ava, was forcing himself to stare down at the body of his best friend, to reflect on the death of his sister in defense of his life.
She could feel him trying not to think of her, Kadi. He was desperately trying to erase his horrified imaginings of what Khivar had done to her before he had killed her.
**ZAN! It is not true my love! I still live!** She sent the frantic message through their connection, felt the block instantly. Khivar's hold on her elbow tightened. She knew that it was he invading their bond, cutting it off somehow.
She could not feel him at all anymore. He was gone.
"ZAN!"
Kadiya wrenched away from Khivar, desperation giving her wings. She flew through the maze of garden paths but was forced to an abrupt halt as she ran head-on into someone fleeing in the opposite direction.
She tumbled to her knees, managed to stare up at the other woman, who was also on the ground, gasping with horror.
Ava - her eyes wide with guilt and fear. As she recognized Kadi, her face hardened into a mask of hatred. "YOU! You still live!"
"What have you done?" Kadiya whispered, sympathy for the other girl running through her despite herself.
Ava's fate was sealed after all. She had killed the king. She would die for it. Already Kadiya could hear the marching steps of the palace guard as they descended on the fountain court.
Too late.
And Ava knew it. Kadi could see it in her eyes.
But Kadiya did not have time to waste with Ava. She had to get to Zan, had to see for herself that there was no way left to save him.
She stumbled to her feet, pushed past the new queen.
The scene near the fountain was exactly as she had envisioned it through the connection. Rath in the water, Zan on his knees, his head lowered in defeat.
"ZAN!"
She saw him start. Her heart soared with disbelief, with hope. He lived! She was not too late.
The world seemed to move in slow motion as he fell to his side, collapsing right in front of her.
She was at his side in a moment, falling to her knees, sobbing as she pulled him into her arms.
Blood everywhere. It drenched her light-colored dress instantly. He was gasping for breath.
"Zan! What have they done to you?" She lowered her head over him, ran her hands down his body, trying to determine how he had been hurt. Why was she so useless? She could feel his life draining away as she held him.
"Kay…" He panted, trying to speak.
"My love, stay still. The guards are on their way. You will live. Stay still!" She gently pressed her lips to his cheek, felt it growing cold under her kiss.
His dark eyes widened as a spasm of pain ran through him. "Kadiya." She jumped at the clarity with which he said her name. "They….they lied to me. How…how could…"
"Be quiet. Zan, do not speak. Concentrate on staying with me…" Her voice was breaking. She could not control the tears that were coursing down her face, falling onto his.
"They…broke…
"They broke the connection somehow. I know it Zan. All will be well my love. We will regain it. But you must live."
"I am glad." His words were so quiet, she had to strain to hear them. "Glad…that you will be free." He closed his eyes, shuddered against her.
"No. Zan! NO!" She grasped at him desperately. "I do not want this! Zan!"
"You… are free… my love." She felt his head move, felt his lips brush against her palm. He gently kissed the small scar that still marked the spot where they had mingled their blood during the [/i]Rashna[i] .
He sighed once. And all was still.
"I am sorry."
Kadiya almost snapped her neck her head came up so quickly. Khivar stood on the other side of the court, a mocking expression on his face.
"What did you do? How did you do this?" She asked quietly, her hands still stroking down Zan's body, unwilling to believe that he was really gone - that his soul had left her.
"I did nothing," Khivar smiled. "His own grief did it - his own fear. He cut himself off from you the instant he thought you were dead."
"That's impossible. I was still connected to him. It makes no sense."
"You knew he lived! Don't you understand what the [/i]Rashna[i] is my sweet?" Khivar eyed her, looking momentarily disbelieving. "Were you really so innocent and stupid?"
She closed her eyes, remembering the ceremony they had performed alone in her chamber one night, the exchange of blood through their palms, the kiss of commitment after the words of bonding.
She had known - had tried to forget after she had understood that he was to marry Ava, that none of it mattered any longer.
"If your souls are to meet in the next life Kadiya then you must die together." He shook his head, amused. "How could you not have known this? Your time left is disappearing as we speak. Fate will intervene at any moment, will take you to join him. Zan's own subconscious cut off the connection as soon as he believed you dead. It started to prepare him to follow you. He [/i]wanted[i] to follow you." Khivar snorted with laughter. "It is the best joke I have ever heard that you do not feel the same."
But, of course, Khivar could not understand. She was not sorry that she would be joining Zan. She was grieving because she would not.
Kadiya stared at Khivar, unseeing. Because she had understood exactly what Zan's kiss against her palm had meant.
He had left her, did not want her to join him. He wanted her to [/i]live[i] . He had broken the connection himself.
He was lost to her forever.
She would not allow it. She would see him again. The iron entered her soul as she glared at Khivar, who was still snorting in amusement.
She would see Zan again and she would destroy Khivar - even if it was the last thing she ever did.
*********************************************
Kadiya watched from within the massive throng in the Great Square as Queen Ava was executed for the assassination of her husband, King Zan. She slid away as the crowd surged forward with a great gasp as Ava breathed her last.
All the pieces were now in place. Larek would now help her.
She refused to look up at the Palace where she knew Khivar, the newly crowned king, was watching it all unfold, likely barely containing his glee.
She had not set eyes on him since the day of Zan, Rath and Vilandra's deaths. Amazingly, he had simply let her go, absolutely positive that it was only a matter of hours before she died anyway. She would not look upon him now.
She would not look upon him again until she took her revenge.
Larek was waiting for her in the small house she had moved to after Zan's death. The Queen Mother had arranged for him to be absent from the execution. Normally, Larek, ruler of one of the five planets under the high kingship of Antar, should have been there representing his people. But the Queen Mother had sowed the seeds of a story that Larek's guilt over arranging the marriage of his beloved friend and king, Zan, to the murderess Ava had rendered him unable to witness the ending to the tragedy.
Kadiya knew that Larek despised her, blamed her for the failure of the marriage of Zan and Ava. But he would help her because the Queen Mother had ordered him to and because he wanted his friend back on the throne. His only condition was that Ava should be sent to Earth as well, she having been an innocent victim in all of this. Kadi had begun to suspect long ago that his complete faith in Zan's love for Ava stemmed from an obsession of Larek's own…One he had attributed to his friend.
Because Zan had been his king, had he not deserved the best and brightest woman in the system? Which Kadiya now understood Larek had perceived Ava to be.
Larek's loyalty to the monarchy was almost an absurd irony because of his scientific genius. That he could clone the very soul of the dead and blend it with the DNA of another species…it was almost god-like.
Of course, he also blamed Kadi for the fact that Zan had wanted to dissolve the monarchy, a rumor that was beginning to circulate through the population now that he was dead. And what would not have been accepted during Zan's lifetime was beginning to be perceived as something worth examining now that he was gone. Because their king had been beloved, destroyed in the prime of his life, he had become a martyr. Whatever his goals had been, they had to have been in the best interest of his people. Or so it was whispered.
Kadiya's satisfaction that Khivar's reign would likely not be long was not enough. He would die for what he had done.
But she was in no rush. She would wait for the moment when he least expected it. She would wait a lifetime if necessary.
She descended the darkened staircase into the cellar of the house, followed the long tunnel that led to Larek's laboratory, the tunnel the Queen Mother had had built in the night during the months following the deaths of her children. It had taken almost a full year for Ava to stand trial and for her execution to be arranged. Justice moved slowly on Antar.
Not that it had been justice. Kadiya could not blame Ava for what had happened after all. She had not been a pleasant girl, but she had not been evil.
Khivar was to blame. He would pay the final price.
In the months they had waited, Zan and Vilandra and Rath were cloned, the small human fetuses, which looked nothing like Antarians except for their shape, placed within organic pods for incubation. They were already beginning to develop distinct differences. Kadiya had spent hours watching Zan's pod for any change. It was entirely fascinating.
Earth had been chosen as the site of Zan's rebirth for many reasons, but the main being that it was still under-developed enough that a ship could be landed there without too much notice, and yet advanced enough to allow the royal children to develop intellectually - perhaps not to Antarian standards, but far enough that they would be possible to integrate.
Her beloved would return to his throne in triumph in Kadiya's lifetime, different and, yet, still [/i]Zan[i] . And then he would bring about the changes he had never managed to complete during his far too short first life.
She would be at his side - no longer as a lover, it having destroyed him once, but, rather, as a guide, as a protector.
He would not remember her after all.
Kadiya smiled slightly to herself as she ran her hand down the pod in which he grew, innocent and helpless, but soon to be safely away from the planet that had doomed him.
"Are you sure that the delay in cloning Ava won't cause difficulties?" Kadiya asked Larek softly.
Zan's friend glared at her. "For the one hundredth time Kadiya - no. Do you not believe that I know what I'm about?"
"I believe it Larek." She traced the face of the small human infant that housed the soul of her beloved. "All is arranged for the transport. The protectors have been chosen?"
"Yes. Two shapeshifters loyal to the Queen Mother," Larek replied grudgingly. "One for each set of clones."
Kadiya had argued against the duplicates at first, telling Larek that dividing the essences of the Royal Four could potentially dilute their personalities, but he had insisted, admonishing that if something should happen to one set of pods, at least the other set would survive and the whole mission would not have been in vain.
But Kadiya had already chosen which was the [/i]real[i] king. He floated in the pod on which she presently rested her hand. It was the pod in which she had enclosed the royal seal in the form of the ring that Zan had given her what felt like yesterday.
The day that they had decided that they would be together forever. And the day he had left her.
Alone. It was almost unbearable the loneliness. But she did not blame him, knew why he had done it. He had [/i]lived[i] her death before finding out that he had been lied to. He could not bear to reflect on it a second time and so he had broken their bond so that she would live. He had broken her heart in the process, but she could not blame him. He had done it because he had loved her.
"I can't believe it is almost time," Kadiya sighed now.
Larek finally softened slightly. "Yes. The legitimate royal house of Antar will rise again."
Zan will rise again, Kadiya thought with satisfaction. And Khivar will fall.
"And you are no longer needed."
Kadiya whirled, felt her eyes widen. Larek was staring at her, unmoving, his disintegrator pointed directly at her heart.
"I would have done this long since Kadiya. But the Queen Mother would not allow it, insisted that it would not be what Zan wanted." He shook his head in disgust. "But I know better. You destroyed him as surely as I stand here. And now you will pay."
"Why now?" She asked quietly, closing her eyes, accepting it. She had wanted to see him return, but perhaps this was better anyway. Her only regret was that Khivar had not suffered at her hand.
If she ceased to exit, she would no longer be alone.
"Because now is the only time that the Queen Mother will accept that you took your own life. She will understand that once the goal of assuring the rebirth of Zan was complete, you were ready to meet your end, unable to exist any longer without him." He was sneering at her, his hatred a palatable force.
She simply bowed her head in acceptance. "Know that I forgive you for this Larek. You are trapped in your own guilt. If you must place the blame on me to survive so that you can be of use to Zan when he returns, then I will die without regret."
There was a long pause. She wondered briefly if he was going to be unable to do it after all…if he would be unable to commit this act of treason, this act that would have been the last thing his king would have wanted.
But she knew better. Larek only knew what he knew. He did not understand true love.
When the end came, her last thought was of Zan's smile.[/i]
**********************************************
The connection was so easy to make, it made Liz gasp in astonishment. She had chosen to use her lips to do it, knew that whenever she had received flashes from Max, they had always been the most intense when they had kissed. It had stood to reason that it would be the same with Khivar - although she could already feel nausea rising within her.
The first emotion she felt from him was fear.
He knew who she was and he knew that she could kill him.
The next emotion was not from him at all.
She felt a flash of determination and knew it to be Max. She had found him in the one place Khivar had never dreamed that she would look.
She had found her love in Khivar's own mind.
She would not do this alone. Unlike Kadiya, she was not alone.
*~Max!*~
There was a long silence…and then, as though from a great distance…
**I'm here Liz!**
*~Show me what to do!*~
She could feel his essence wrapping itself around her as they connected on a level beyond anything she had ever experienced before. It was exhilarating, brought such a sense of completion, it was actually weakening her physically.
**Combine your strength with mine.** Max told her calmly. **I know exactly what to do.**
[i] This is pointless Zan.[/i] Khivar broke in. [i] She is not Kadiya. Did you not see what I saw? You broke the bond on Antar. She is merely human.[/i]
Liz almost burst into joyous giggles that he still did not understand. **Khivar, I [i] am[/i] Kadiya. Zan broke the connection, but I never did. My soul found his anyway because we are meant to be. It has always been so.**
*~We chose it Khivar,*~ Max continued grimly. *~I never chose this disgusting bond to you. And it is going to end. Now.*~
Liz felt Max gathering her energy - the very substance of her mind - and she gave it over to him without reservation.
She was human, but she was his - at heart she was still Kadiya. They were one. Together they were strong.
**I love you Max!**
*~I love you too.*~
Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she had had her revenge. Khivar had finally paid.
Kadiya could rest in peace.
[i] "ZAN!" She screamed his name, yet knew it was too late. She was never going to reach him in time. His despair was crushing her, making her stumble.
Their connection had never been so strong - not even in the first moments after they had bonded themselves eternally through the [/i]Rashna[i] . She was actually seeing through his eyes, was listening through his ears…
But he could not hear her, could not [/i]feel[i] her. They had shut him off from her somehow. He was all alone.
"Just do it. Kill me." His voice was cracking with grief. He was standing near the main fountain of the palace gardens, staring down in horror. Kadiya felt the hard stone under his knees as he fell to the ground, his face in his hands to block out the sight of Rath floating lifelessly in the still water.
She was aware of hands under her elbows, hauling her to her feet, knew it was Khivar. "Come along little whore. Let us go and witness the destruction of the king. The destruction you have brought about." He sounded gleeful. She struggled against him but was pulled along against her will, distracted by what she was seeing in her mind's eye - what she was going to be unable to stop.
He thought she was dead. She knew it as certainly as she knew that she loved him.
"You betrayed me!" It was Ava, shrieking at him. "I am your wife and you were going to set me aside for a [/i]servant[i] - a whore!. She died because of it and now you will as well."
"I died the moment you sent Khivar to kill her," Zan replied tonelessly. "Just do it. I will do nothing to stop you." He could not see Ava, was forcing himself to stare down at the body of his best friend, to reflect on the death of his sister in defense of his life.
She could feel him trying not to think of her, Kadi. He was desperately trying to erase his horrified imaginings of what Khivar had done to her before he had killed her.
**ZAN! It is not true my love! I still live!** She sent the frantic message through their connection, felt the block instantly. Khivar's hold on her elbow tightened. She knew that it was he invading their bond, cutting it off somehow.
She could not feel him at all anymore. He was gone.
"ZAN!"
Kadiya wrenched away from Khivar, desperation giving her wings. She flew through the maze of garden paths but was forced to an abrupt halt as she ran head-on into someone fleeing in the opposite direction.
She tumbled to her knees, managed to stare up at the other woman, who was also on the ground, gasping with horror.
Ava - her eyes wide with guilt and fear. As she recognized Kadi, her face hardened into a mask of hatred. "YOU! You still live!"
"What have you done?" Kadiya whispered, sympathy for the other girl running through her despite herself.
Ava's fate was sealed after all. She had killed the king. She would die for it. Already Kadiya could hear the marching steps of the palace guard as they descended on the fountain court.
Too late.
And Ava knew it. Kadi could see it in her eyes.
But Kadiya did not have time to waste with Ava. She had to get to Zan, had to see for herself that there was no way left to save him.
She stumbled to her feet, pushed past the new queen.
The scene near the fountain was exactly as she had envisioned it through the connection. Rath in the water, Zan on his knees, his head lowered in defeat.
"ZAN!"
She saw him start. Her heart soared with disbelief, with hope. He lived! She was not too late.
The world seemed to move in slow motion as he fell to his side, collapsing right in front of her.
She was at his side in a moment, falling to her knees, sobbing as she pulled him into her arms.
Blood everywhere. It drenched her light-colored dress instantly. He was gasping for breath.
"Zan! What have they done to you?" She lowered her head over him, ran her hands down his body, trying to determine how he had been hurt. Why was she so useless? She could feel his life draining away as she held him.
"Kay…" He panted, trying to speak.
"My love, stay still. The guards are on their way. You will live. Stay still!" She gently pressed her lips to his cheek, felt it growing cold under her kiss.
His dark eyes widened as a spasm of pain ran through him. "Kadiya." She jumped at the clarity with which he said her name. "They….they lied to me. How…how could…"
"Be quiet. Zan, do not speak. Concentrate on staying with me…" Her voice was breaking. She could not control the tears that were coursing down her face, falling onto his.
"They…broke…
"They broke the connection somehow. I know it Zan. All will be well my love. We will regain it. But you must live."
"I am glad." His words were so quiet, she had to strain to hear them. "Glad…that you will be free." He closed his eyes, shuddered against her.
"No. Zan! NO!" She grasped at him desperately. "I do not want this! Zan!"
"You… are free… my love." She felt his head move, felt his lips brush against her palm. He gently kissed the small scar that still marked the spot where they had mingled their blood during the [/i]Rashna[i] .
He sighed once. And all was still.
"I am sorry."
Kadiya almost snapped her neck her head came up so quickly. Khivar stood on the other side of the court, a mocking expression on his face.
"What did you do? How did you do this?" She asked quietly, her hands still stroking down Zan's body, unwilling to believe that he was really gone - that his soul had left her.
"I did nothing," Khivar smiled. "His own grief did it - his own fear. He cut himself off from you the instant he thought you were dead."
"That's impossible. I was still connected to him. It makes no sense."
"You knew he lived! Don't you understand what the [/i]Rashna[i] is my sweet?" Khivar eyed her, looking momentarily disbelieving. "Were you really so innocent and stupid?"
She closed her eyes, remembering the ceremony they had performed alone in her chamber one night, the exchange of blood through their palms, the kiss of commitment after the words of bonding.
She had known - had tried to forget after she had understood that he was to marry Ava, that none of it mattered any longer.
"If your souls are to meet in the next life Kadiya then you must die together." He shook his head, amused. "How could you not have known this? Your time left is disappearing as we speak. Fate will intervene at any moment, will take you to join him. Zan's own subconscious cut off the connection as soon as he believed you dead. It started to prepare him to follow you. He [/i]wanted[i] to follow you." Khivar snorted with laughter. "It is the best joke I have ever heard that you do not feel the same."
But, of course, Khivar could not understand. She was not sorry that she would be joining Zan. She was grieving because she would not.
Kadiya stared at Khivar, unseeing. Because she had understood exactly what Zan's kiss against her palm had meant.
He had left her, did not want her to join him. He wanted her to [/i]live[i] . He had broken the connection himself.
He was lost to her forever.
She would not allow it. She would see him again. The iron entered her soul as she glared at Khivar, who was still snorting in amusement.
She would see Zan again and she would destroy Khivar - even if it was the last thing she ever did.
*********************************************
Kadiya watched from within the massive throng in the Great Square as Queen Ava was executed for the assassination of her husband, King Zan. She slid away as the crowd surged forward with a great gasp as Ava breathed her last.
All the pieces were now in place. Larek would now help her.
She refused to look up at the Palace where she knew Khivar, the newly crowned king, was watching it all unfold, likely barely containing his glee.
She had not set eyes on him since the day of Zan, Rath and Vilandra's deaths. Amazingly, he had simply let her go, absolutely positive that it was only a matter of hours before she died anyway. She would not look upon him now.
She would not look upon him again until she took her revenge.
Larek was waiting for her in the small house she had moved to after Zan's death. The Queen Mother had arranged for him to be absent from the execution. Normally, Larek, ruler of one of the five planets under the high kingship of Antar, should have been there representing his people. But the Queen Mother had sowed the seeds of a story that Larek's guilt over arranging the marriage of his beloved friend and king, Zan, to the murderess Ava had rendered him unable to witness the ending to the tragedy.
Kadiya knew that Larek despised her, blamed her for the failure of the marriage of Zan and Ava. But he would help her because the Queen Mother had ordered him to and because he wanted his friend back on the throne. His only condition was that Ava should be sent to Earth as well, she having been an innocent victim in all of this. Kadi had begun to suspect long ago that his complete faith in Zan's love for Ava stemmed from an obsession of Larek's own…One he had attributed to his friend.
Because Zan had been his king, had he not deserved the best and brightest woman in the system? Which Kadiya now understood Larek had perceived Ava to be.
Larek's loyalty to the monarchy was almost an absurd irony because of his scientific genius. That he could clone the very soul of the dead and blend it with the DNA of another species…it was almost god-like.
Of course, he also blamed Kadi for the fact that Zan had wanted to dissolve the monarchy, a rumor that was beginning to circulate through the population now that he was dead. And what would not have been accepted during Zan's lifetime was beginning to be perceived as something worth examining now that he was gone. Because their king had been beloved, destroyed in the prime of his life, he had become a martyr. Whatever his goals had been, they had to have been in the best interest of his people. Or so it was whispered.
Kadiya's satisfaction that Khivar's reign would likely not be long was not enough. He would die for what he had done.
But she was in no rush. She would wait for the moment when he least expected it. She would wait a lifetime if necessary.
She descended the darkened staircase into the cellar of the house, followed the long tunnel that led to Larek's laboratory, the tunnel the Queen Mother had had built in the night during the months following the deaths of her children. It had taken almost a full year for Ava to stand trial and for her execution to be arranged. Justice moved slowly on Antar.
Not that it had been justice. Kadiya could not blame Ava for what had happened after all. She had not been a pleasant girl, but she had not been evil.
Khivar was to blame. He would pay the final price.
In the months they had waited, Zan and Vilandra and Rath were cloned, the small human fetuses, which looked nothing like Antarians except for their shape, placed within organic pods for incubation. They were already beginning to develop distinct differences. Kadiya had spent hours watching Zan's pod for any change. It was entirely fascinating.
Earth had been chosen as the site of Zan's rebirth for many reasons, but the main being that it was still under-developed enough that a ship could be landed there without too much notice, and yet advanced enough to allow the royal children to develop intellectually - perhaps not to Antarian standards, but far enough that they would be possible to integrate.
Her beloved would return to his throne in triumph in Kadiya's lifetime, different and, yet, still [/i]Zan[i] . And then he would bring about the changes he had never managed to complete during his far too short first life.
She would be at his side - no longer as a lover, it having destroyed him once, but, rather, as a guide, as a protector.
He would not remember her after all.
Kadiya smiled slightly to herself as she ran her hand down the pod in which he grew, innocent and helpless, but soon to be safely away from the planet that had doomed him.
"Are you sure that the delay in cloning Ava won't cause difficulties?" Kadiya asked Larek softly.
Zan's friend glared at her. "For the one hundredth time Kadiya - no. Do you not believe that I know what I'm about?"
"I believe it Larek." She traced the face of the small human infant that housed the soul of her beloved. "All is arranged for the transport. The protectors have been chosen?"
"Yes. Two shapeshifters loyal to the Queen Mother," Larek replied grudgingly. "One for each set of clones."
Kadiya had argued against the duplicates at first, telling Larek that dividing the essences of the Royal Four could potentially dilute their personalities, but he had insisted, admonishing that if something should happen to one set of pods, at least the other set would survive and the whole mission would not have been in vain.
But Kadiya had already chosen which was the [/i]real[i] king. He floated in the pod on which she presently rested her hand. It was the pod in which she had enclosed the royal seal in the form of the ring that Zan had given her what felt like yesterday.
The day that they had decided that they would be together forever. And the day he had left her.
Alone. It was almost unbearable the loneliness. But she did not blame him, knew why he had done it. He had [/i]lived[i] her death before finding out that he had been lied to. He could not bear to reflect on it a second time and so he had broken their bond so that she would live. He had broken her heart in the process, but she could not blame him. He had done it because he had loved her.
"I can't believe it is almost time," Kadiya sighed now.
Larek finally softened slightly. "Yes. The legitimate royal house of Antar will rise again."
Zan will rise again, Kadiya thought with satisfaction. And Khivar will fall.
"And you are no longer needed."
Kadiya whirled, felt her eyes widen. Larek was staring at her, unmoving, his disintegrator pointed directly at her heart.
"I would have done this long since Kadiya. But the Queen Mother would not allow it, insisted that it would not be what Zan wanted." He shook his head in disgust. "But I know better. You destroyed him as surely as I stand here. And now you will pay."
"Why now?" She asked quietly, closing her eyes, accepting it. She had wanted to see him return, but perhaps this was better anyway. Her only regret was that Khivar had not suffered at her hand.
If she ceased to exit, she would no longer be alone.
"Because now is the only time that the Queen Mother will accept that you took your own life. She will understand that once the goal of assuring the rebirth of Zan was complete, you were ready to meet your end, unable to exist any longer without him." He was sneering at her, his hatred a palatable force.
She simply bowed her head in acceptance. "Know that I forgive you for this Larek. You are trapped in your own guilt. If you must place the blame on me to survive so that you can be of use to Zan when he returns, then I will die without regret."
There was a long pause. She wondered briefly if he was going to be unable to do it after all…if he would be unable to commit this act of treason, this act that would have been the last thing his king would have wanted.
But she knew better. Larek only knew what he knew. He did not understand true love.
When the end came, her last thought was of Zan's smile.[/i]
**********************************************
The connection was so easy to make, it made Liz gasp in astonishment. She had chosen to use her lips to do it, knew that whenever she had received flashes from Max, they had always been the most intense when they had kissed. It had stood to reason that it would be the same with Khivar - although she could already feel nausea rising within her.
The first emotion she felt from him was fear.
He knew who she was and he knew that she could kill him.
The next emotion was not from him at all.
She felt a flash of determination and knew it to be Max. She had found him in the one place Khivar had never dreamed that she would look.
She had found her love in Khivar's own mind.
She would not do this alone. Unlike Kadiya, she was not alone.
*~Max!*~
There was a long silence…and then, as though from a great distance…
**I'm here Liz!**
*~Show me what to do!*~
She could feel his essence wrapping itself around her as they connected on a level beyond anything she had ever experienced before. It was exhilarating, brought such a sense of completion, it was actually weakening her physically.
**Combine your strength with mine.** Max told her calmly. **I know exactly what to do.**
[i] This is pointless Zan.[/i] Khivar broke in. [i] She is not Kadiya. Did you not see what I saw? You broke the bond on Antar. She is merely human.[/i]
Liz almost burst into joyous giggles that he still did not understand. **Khivar, I [i] am[/i] Kadiya. Zan broke the connection, but I never did. My soul found his anyway because we are meant to be. It has always been so.**
*~We chose it Khivar,*~ Max continued grimly. *~I never chose this disgusting bond to you. And it is going to end. Now.*~
Liz felt Max gathering her energy - the very substance of her mind - and she gave it over to him without reservation.
She was human, but she was his - at heart she was still Kadiya. They were one. Together they were strong.
**I love you Max!**
*~I love you too.*~
Her last thought before she lost consciousness was that she had had her revenge. Khivar had finally paid.
Kadiya could rest in peace.