This is for my 2 reviewers. Hope you like it. I couldn't keep quite the same tone as chapter 1, it's been too long since I wrote it,and it may fluctuate a little as I try to establish better continuity. I'm trying not to repeat myself too much so this may be a bit jumpy.

I disclaim as always.

Italics indicate a visit to our favourite aliens' home planet.

Chapter Two

"Zan." Our enemy says the word so calmly. He is not afraid.

I watch from my own, my human, body as Max turns from an average, though more gorgeous than average, teenage boy, into the King of a planet and member of a confederation bearing the weight of a billion souls on his shoulders.

"It's been a long time." Kivar's words come to us not directly from him, but from the alien possessed body of our friend Brody. The man is one of the few on earth prepared for interstellar communications technology, and this must be why our enemies as well as our friends use him. "The last time I saw you," Kivar / Brody goes on, "you were dead. I had your body cremated, you know. The funeral was a very moving ceremony."

Lies, all of them. The last time he saw Zan, he was alive and fighting. Cremation is for criminals only, but how can Max know all of that? He must believe I let Kivar kill a part of his essence.

"And the last time I saw you, Kivar," Zan says so coolly in his Max voice that I can barely hear where the King ends and the boy begins, "you were watching your lover leave you, my sister return to me, and half of your army desert you with her."

Brody's face shows Kivar's displeasure, and if Max wasn't behaving as my King, I would be afraid for us all.

Kivar. He will haunt us forever, I fear. Relia is clinging to my leg and she is not the only who is afraid. Her father, her Rhia, my Zan, faces his worst enemy in the middle of the palace where our last battlefield lies. He wants to stop the bloodshed, the war, and the horror. He ran from the room when he heard the first agonised screams of our loyal soldiers, locking us in when I tried to follow him.

So many people have died since then, their bodies lying broken on the ground where they once danced.

Kivar thrives on the pain, and it is killing Zan.

Despite the suffering, I must believe we are winning, but it so hard. Vilandra, her mother, Relia and I wait with fearful hearts, a furious Rath guarding the last doors against insurgents. This is our last stronghold and I fear it will fall when the rebels reach us en masse. We are watching the leaders from a forced distance. I want to be by Zan's side, but he couldn't bear it, so I'm left here to watch him suffer and kill or die. Even if he survives this fight, if he kills Kivar he will kill a part of himself. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate and I force my thoughts to the present again.

The only word Tess knows for the image before us is hologram, but that doesn't come close to describing the Tyria. It is a perfect recreation of what is happening in the palace courtyard below, every sense perfectly transferred. I can smell my lover's skin, hear the slight catch in his breath, see his aura pulse with the weariness that I know is soul deep, and I can feel the treachery that dances in Kivar's mind.

Vilandra is serene, a small smile playing over her beautiful face, and I can't smile back. The Tess part of me knows that Vilandra thinks she will win either way – her lover or her brother will rule. She believes she will stay powerful whatever happens. I know that even on Earth she rules, even if she has been reduced from a planet's princess to high school royalty.

Ava knows only that Vilandra is hiding something

"Zan," husband, lover, soul-mate for all my lives, I fear for you almost as much as for our daughter. "Please. Don't."

He can't smile at me. His eyes are dulling with the pain of all those around him. I can only hear them scream, he can feel them. I know what he is doing is right, but, oh God of all my Fathers, why does it have to hurt so much?

"I challenge you, Kivar."

The words seal all our fates.

The duel between King and insurgent is begun and can only end in one of their deaths. Zan is the better fighter, but Kivar will never let him win. What I have always feared has come about. I am about to lose my lover, my world, my life.

Zan / Max goes on, "I remember, at the time, you offered a truce for two jilknes" (a jilknes is the equivalent of 3.27 earth weeks) "on the conditions that I wed Relia to you when she was full grown and gave her to you now as an insurance policy, as well as half the planet, the line of my succession without reference to the old laws, and the deaths of the men you termed 'rebels' and I termed 'citizens loyal to me'."

"You refused then, Zan," Kivar spits the words out angrily, Brody's face contorted into an expression of vile hatred, "and it lost you the war."

"I would have won no battles by giving you what you wanted then," Zan is still as cool as ever, but now I see his aura pulsing slightly with his subdued anger. I wonder if Brody's eyes are sensitive enough to convey the effect to Kivar, but when he responds I know he can't see Zan's hidden fury.

"You might have lived," Kivar turns Brody's expression to one of distaste, playing with the human features like a doll. "You can not tell me that this half life, half memory is what you enjoy. Your human body feels nothing of what once was so glorious to you. Your human powers are insignificant to the power you once wielded as King."

"But the emotions are the same, Kivar," Zan has quelled his wrath, his aura is calmer now, peaceful even. "I feel what I once did, I love as I once did…"

He glances at me, and sees both Tess and Ava for the first time. My heart, both alien and human, leaps. He knows me now. He loves me now. Liz Parker is not forgotten, but she is no longer the entire universe to him. Zan had a heart as big as the sky, and finally I have a place in Max's.

Did Vilandra realise that Kivar would betray her as well as his King, that as faithless a subject as he was, he would be worse as a lover? The Tess part of me thinks no, the Ava half thinks yes. Vilandra's royal person is inviolable of course, but that didn't stop me slapping her hard when I saw she was helping our enemy. If Zan wins – no, I must believe when Zan wins – there will be a price to pay for her treachery, but neither Rath nor I can bear to send her away when so much hangs in the balance.

"She's mine." This is no war of words, but spirits. I can only imagine what Kivar is showing Zan, the images of his sister and his enemy entwined in bed, the way she looks with love at the man who is destroying our world. This is a pattern that will repeat, I realise, when Max is betrayed again, this time by Liz and Kyle. The pain will remain the same though.

"I've had her every way, any way, all ways."

Zan grunts and I know he has nothing to combat this with. The connection that threads between them is cruel. He is weakened from helping so many victims, healing all those he can, and Kivar is strong. He has spent his days conserving his strength. I love my husband, but I fear he won't be strong enough to win this fight.

Vilandra's betrayal is eating into him like the juice of the toxic jubi-jubi plant. He is weak and growing weaker. My love seeks him out, supporting him, and for the first time I see Vilandra look torn. She has been holding her head regally high until now, but at last she is beginning to crack as she sees her brother's pain.

Rath is furious, but his fury will do Zan no good. None of this is their fault. Rath isn't powerful enough for Vilandra; Zan is too good to understand Kivar. Between them, the world is lost. Max wonders why as Tess I am so cynical, so likely to suspect people, but I carry memories of this day when he does not.

My Relia is crying and I hand her to her grandmother, ordering them both away. How can I let my only daughter, my mahic watch her Father be murdered at her Aunt's lover's hand?

"Come on, Zan," Rath is growling, "Hit him harder than that."

Zan is slipping away though. Vilandra has shown her lover the way to defeat him and Kivar is exploiting his advantage to the full. Kivar is projecting all the pain and terror he has ever inflicted on his billions of victims back onto Zan's conscious. My King can feel it all and his face is losing colour. His breaths are coming faster and I can feel the horror of it all echo through our connection. He's keeping the worst from me, but what I see is bad enough.

If Kivar kills Zan, there won't be a planet far enough for him to hide on when Rath and I go after him.

Something breaks inside Vilandra then and for a moment I see what Alex will love so much in Isabel. She is learning all that her lover has done and she sees him with clear eyes at last.

"No."

At last, I want to scream, she is seeing what Kivar is showing Zan and she can't bear it any more than he can. Kivar is imagining our world if we lose and he wins, the things he will do, and Vilandra at last understands the nature of evil.

Her beautiful eyes close and I feel a new source of power join us and slip away from Kivar.

For the first time since the fight began, I think we can win.

"This is no half life," Zan has never looked more calm. "This is my next existence."

And I understand our leadership system at last, why Kivar will never be accepted without Zan. Zan is our first leader, the one who brought our civilisation peace, and every time he dies, he is reborn. Max's essence isn't a clone of Zan's - it is Zan's. We don't chose a new leader, the old leader is returned to us, each life increasing his wisdom as he learns more and passes it on to his next incarnation. Kivar's revolt was doomed from the beginning. There is no throne for him to take, only Zan's spirit to hold as an emblem of power. He chased us here to Earth not only for Vilandra, the woman he once claimed to love, but for Zan. He needs him, and Max knows it.

Kivar is scornful. "This? This poor existence? This limited presence in the universe?"

He does not understand, cannot believe that what we have found here is worth anything. He is a fool, and Zan will prove him so.

"I am not the one who is limited, Kivar," Zan is smiling now. "I suggest you leave Brody's body before I prove it."

"You threaten me?" Kivar is laughing.

"No," Max's smile is feral. He has never looked more dangerous. I am proud to be his mate. "I'm promising you. You stay here, you threaten any one of my friends, you so much as touch their footprints, and you will find out what it means to be hurt."

Kivar laughs again, and Brody's eyes are turning dark. "You cannot touch me."

"Not physically perhaps," Max is still smiling. "But I can touch Nicholas."

"He's nowhere near here," Kivar looks slightly disturbed now, Brody's face expresses the faintest trace of worry and his aura, half blocked in its flow by Kivar's presence, is distressed.

Max's smile fades to slight bemusement. "Why would that matter?"

I haven't said a word yet. This is not my fight. It's theirs. Now I'm wondering if I should intervene. I don't know how far Max's powers extend. There is so little that we do know.

"Do you know what I'm doing to him now, Kivar?" Zan's voice is slow and cool. "No?"

"Zan," Kivar thinks he's joking, but I can feel the energy surge out of Max's body. "There is no point in continuing this ridiculous…"

His words trail off as he finally senses what Zan / Max is doing to his faithful lieutenant. "What have you done?"

"Shown him the error of his ways," Zan isn't smiling any more. Max's deep brown eyes are serious.

I speak at last. "Zan, what did you do?"

"Ava," Kivar hisses. "I didn't know you and Maxie were so close!"

"Freeze in Jhawn, Kivar," I spit back, hell being a weak word for Jhawn and all of its tortures.

Zan has won. The four of us, Vilandra at last fully with us, have turned the tide and now Kivar is the one who trembles, who fears for what is about to happen.

Kivar lowers his hand. He knows the battle is lost. "You win, Zan. Have mercy on me."

Zan is merciful. He sentences Kivar to life-long exile, not death. He thinks there has been too much spilt today.

I want to rip Kivar into pieces and I know Rath and Vilandra feel the same, but Zan can't bear to take another life when so many are dead.

He doesn't turn his back on Kivar throughout the negotiations, he's benevolent, not stupid.

We've won. I look over to Vilandra only to see that she is still concentrating. She has sent her essence away and with all of her power, she is tumbling Kivar's rival stronghold. In the middle of it is the power source of the palace and it is there that she is sending herself to expand, shattering the crystal heart of the generator. The shards fly away and Kivar's defeat is almost complete.

I'm crying but the tears are happy; joyous, even.

Relia comes back, and I turn my head to greet her, and in that moment, a scream pierces my soul.

It is Vilandra. After all she has done, first betraying and then saving us, her end has come without warning. A spy, someone we would never have suspected but Tess knows as Nicholas, has murdered her. Ironically it is for her betrayal of Kivar, not Zan, that he kills her.

Zan's attention is distracted and at that moment Kivar takes advantage, and then both the King and the Princess are bleeding on the floor. My attention is all on my lover, as Rath's is on his, but there is nothing either of us can do.

Tess's Nicholas slips away and Kivar stands triumphant. He has cheated, but he has won. It's not fair, but then neither is Max loving Liz and not me on Earth.

Tears fill our eyes and Relia is silent beside me, terrified into speechlessness.

This is the end.

The air around us grows colder. Kivar is trying to send his power from our home world across space to Earth, where he intends to smite us as we stand here.

Max is smiling again.

Brody shrieks in pain, his cries echoing through the park.

Max isn't in control of himself any more. This is King Zan, and he wants vengeance for everything that was done to him, to us, to our people. I think he's remembering what agent Pierce did to Max in the white room and he's using it against Kivar now. Brody is twitching now, his face contorted, and I lay my hand on Max's shoulder, trying to get him to stop this, but for once he does not respond to me.

"Let me show you," he says in our old language, biting the words out. "Let me remind you what you did."

A connection snaps into being between us and I see what he's showing Kivar. No wonder Brody is twitching and shaking. He's showing him everything that happened in the war, all the pain and suffering, all of the death and despair, everything that Zan felt responsible for because he trusted Kivar, compressed into a burning moment of agony. I don't feel it. Zan or Max, I don't know which personality but one of them, protects me from that. I can't help but be grateful. At last, I break through and see what he is doing. Kivar still takes the brunt of it. All of us see the worst of the war. The moment when the betrayal committed by Vilandra / Isabel is revealed, and she breaks down from a regal being into a weeping child. I feel Kivar's contempt for her, but also his disturbance at her lack of control. She has been his lover, and now she rejects him. I know that pain, but mine, unlike his, was an innocent one.

Oh, God of all my Fathers, I see Relia, the images flowing back now from Kivar to Zan and I. She is so beautiful. She has grown, become an adult, but she misses us dreadfully. My child, I want to cry out, my child, give her back to me.

Zan pulls back at last. He is hurt too. He does not understand the last image, the one of Relia grown tall and strong like her Aunt, with the deep rooted patience and goodness of her father, and my temper, hated by Kivar because of all of those qualities. Her eyes are closed in sleep, and I fear it is forever.

"What did you do to my child?" If Zan has ever sounded angrier, I can't remember it. Max's fists are clenched, his jaw thrust a forward and his eyes are burning with a silver light. If he was anyone but Zan, I would be afraid.

"Relia?" Kivar is still shaking from the mental battering Zan inflicted upon him. "She's safe, for now."

If he's lying, I can't imagine what Zan won't do to him. Family, blood, loyalty, these make up the fibres of his very being. If Relia is hurt, Kivar will feel it a thousand times worse. If, oh, God of all my Fathers, my little Relia, my starbeam, my hope, my child, is dead - no. I must not think it. She is no more dead than I am. I must believe that or perish.

He's dying. Oh God of all my Fathers, my King is dying and I can do nothing. That penitent traitor Vilandra has done what no other could do. Rath is furious, but when I look into her tear-filled eyes I can see that this hurts her even more than it does us, and I can't find it in my heart to be angry with her.

Not when she tries to comfort Relia even as she lies dying.

The walls are darkest purple. I know that when Zan breathes his last on this terrible battlefield they will turn black and never lighten again.

And Max imagines I could live as a human after all I've seen. Veins of red spin around me as I see our future and know that I am losing him not only in this life but also in the next.

He looks at me. All I see is him, all I feel is him.

The Ava part of me is screaming. He can't die. Not here, not now, not like this, but Tess knows better.

Kivar has betrayed us all. He has won.

Zan's last words will haunt me forever. "Zahiyt ojji."

The human translation is so inadequate it tears at my soul. How can it only be 'Remember me' when what Zan means is so much more?

I'm losing him and I feel as if I am being torn apart from the inside out.

Their mother is weeping, copious great sobs and even Rath is moist-eyed as he clasps his faithless lover and tells her he loves her, no matter what.

There are no tears to cry now.

The war is over. Without Zan and Vilandra, we are all lost.

"I know what you want, Kivar, but I'm not giving to you." Can Zan do it again? Could he sacrifice all that is most important to him to the greater good? I have watched him give and give until the life blood flows from his heart, and still give more because it is never enough. He could rule now. The power that surrounds him is an aura of light in these dark times, but human things tie him to this world as well. It is not without a fight that Max Evans can give up his Liz Parker, no matter how much the thought chokes me.

Kivar has mistaken Zan's fortitude for stupidity. He thinks he's winning, and even as his walls go up around the memories of that war, he smiles through Brody's eyes. "You will."

Brody slumps as Kivar departs his human host. There is a smell of burning and I realise that Zan forcibly expelled the alien's parasitic spirit. The glow of silver leaves Max's brown eyes and I see my human companion in them once again. Zan has retreated, exhausted by the efforts against Kivar and, I suspect from the way Max's aura is fluctuating, deeply upset by the sight of our only child lying as if dead in our enemy's power.

"Tess?" Max's voice, a moment ago powerful and full of regal authority, sounds hoarse now. He reaches out an arm to me, and I move under it to support him, only to find he is holding me closer. He stares at me as if he hasn't seen me in years, and, like a blind man, reaches his fingers out for my face. "Ava…" he whispers, and I realise Zan is still in him, but now the two parts, alien and human, are both conscious.

Our auras meld, pulse, feed off one another and become stronger, and I feel a connection form between us. Love, oh God of all my Fathers, love is flooding into me from him. Not the brotherly affection for Michael and Isabel, our fellow aliens, nor the friendly feeling he holds for Maria who I see moving through his memories like a roller skating pixie, but the love he previously reserved for Liz alone on this planet.

His fingers weave into my hair and I giggle as I see his memory of another time like this, soon after we found each other, and his comparison between the two. I no longer look like Lady Ava, daughter of an hundred Earls, future Queen of our planet, or the child I was then, young and carefree and so happy when chosen by the man I had loved for my entire life. Then, as we walked through the Royal Gardens, whispering secrets to each other, his hand had touched my waist length locks and slipped under them, their glory hiding the way he was holding me too close for regal dignity, until Rath and Vilandra, themselves a courting couple, had come upon us suddenly. We had all jumped apart too quickly not to betray our interrupted intimacy, and Vilandra and I had laughed at each other while the boys scowled.

Across the humming silver line of our connection, I toss back another memory. It was later in our time together, when we had been building the private rooms of the palace from our imaginations, and he and I had built ourselves a secret chamber, connecting to the Great Hall of State beneath by a long and winding passageway. We often hid there, when Rath was in a temper or Vilandra and he had fought, or when the duties of being King were tiresome without importance, and there he had kissed me so many times. As we made it from our minds, we had let the power run free between us, deepening our connection until we no longer knew from whom each part sprung. Like earth children painting, we had played as we worked and it showed in the happiness that exuded from us both. We want to go back, we want to go home, and our spirits sing with joint longing and love.

Max's lips curl into a smile, and then I feel his human body reach for me.

There is nothing to which I can compare that moment, nothing that comes close. Human passion, alien love, too many years of separation, all fuelled the fire of my love. At last, he knew me as Ava, his bride, his wife, his lover.

Perfection is inhuman, however, and when no more than a millimetre separated our lips, even as the sweet scent of his breath mingles with mine, he stops. His body arches back, his eyes filled with pain. There is someone else here and I turn to see where he is staring.

The growl of a tigress crosses my lips and I stand defensively in front of my lover, alien and human, as I faced our enemy.

"Liz."