Chapter 52

"Do you know what he is thinking now?" Quynn did not try to fight the healing pleasure of Staefyn's breath. Without it, she had been in agony from burning herself because she could not control her reaction to the warlord's repulsive touch.

Quynn watched as Amyr lunged towards the viewer and she was not surprised when Taeron seized his hair and knocked him unconscious by slamming his head on the control panel. Ignoring Staefyn's amused smile as he watched his brother sag unconscious to the floor, Quynn laughed, "Hey, brother, that was excellent payback." She wondered if Taeron had it in his mind when he knocked out Amyr.

But when Taeron raised his head and stared straight at the viewer, his dark amethyst eyes seemed unfamiliar to Quynn. "Make your peace with the gods, Staefyn."

"Are you threatening me, lord prince? You cannot act without my father's sanction and he will not give it when he knows you come for my head." Staefyn stared at Taeron with a strange mixture of feelings. Since coming to Guerani Palace as his prisoner, Quynn had found him impossible to understand, and as he stared at Taeron, she thought she could decipher the look on his face now. Did she see regret?

"You overestimate your worth in his eyes," Taeron told him coldly.

"Oh, I think I do not. You have been gone for many weeks, and yet my father has not moved against me. Do you think it would be easy for him to destroy his own son?" He glanced briefly at Quynn before turning his attention back to Taeron. "Quynn has managed to convince me that you are not my father's bastard, but it does not really matter, does it? He claims you because you were born into his hands, and you can usurp my rights because it happened months before my own birth. Why should he not claim you? If two of his sons are Guerani healers, the ancestors will surely claim the third as well. Does it matter whose bastard you are if he can call you son and you have the power to wield the sword that has slain emperors?" Taeron stared at Staefyn silently for several uncomfortable moments until Kai shouldered him out of the way.

"You took something from me, Calabrian dog, and I will not rest until it is mine again." Before Kai could speak any more threats, and Quynn knew he had plenty concerning Taeron, her brother took away the opportunity by cutting the communication link.

"That bastard!" Kai kicked the ornate chair with his booted foot and he spun to look at Quynn who had not moved from the wall. He crossed the room with long strides and she tried not to cringe when he seized her shoulders and he shook her. "How did he do it?" he demanded through gritted teeth. "How did he despoil my Dijana?"

What could she say to the mad Varoonyan? She did not understand his rantings, and she certainly had no answers to his questions.

"Let her go."

The deep voice sent a chill down Quynn's spine although she knew she had no reason to fear the Guerani who faced Kai. In the years that Quynn had been gone, Staefyn had changed. Gone was the young man that she thought possessed a gentle soul, and in his place was a matured man, with hardened features and pitiless eyes that he now fixed on Kai. Those eyes had gone from the mossy green he had from his father to the Guerani golden of his mother from whom he had his considerable power.

"We will talk later," Kai hissed for only her to hear as he released her and stepped away from her to run his hands through his dark hair.

When he looked at her, Staefyn's eyes faded back to green and he looked now more like the emperor, but when he used his magic, Quynn knew he had more of his mother in him, that his magic was stronger by far than Amyr's. She knew little about Guerani, but she could not imagine that he could have grown so powerful in so short a time.

He glanced away and signaled to a woman who came to escort her back to her chamber. As they left, she heard Staefyn snap at Kai. "I told you not to harm Lady Quynn!"

Outside the hall, Quynn stopped to listen to them, glad that Staefyn had sent her with the serving woman, Vaedra, and not the brutal guards that Kai had sent to fetch her from her chamber. The older woman looked exasperated by her behavior, yet she did not force her away from the door.

"And what will you do?" scoffed the warlord. "You need me and my men, sorcerer. Why do you care what I do to her when you can heal her? I have seen that when I hurt her, you are over eager to use your magic, so I am doing what you cannot do, and you enjoy it, so stop protesting. "

Staefyn did not respond and Quynn winced from the dirty feeling she got to know that he enjoyed healing her far too much. Kai might not be goading her into hurting herself with her magic or handling her roughly for Staefyn's sake, but Quynn had seen the pleasure in his eyes when he healed her just as the warlord had.

"What magic has Taeron used to break his bond?" she heard Staefyn ask the Varoonyan. "Where does this magic exist?"

Knowing the answer to the question, Quynn waited only long enough to hear Kai deny any knowledge of such magic. She was sure that Staefyn wanted to break Amyr's bond with her, so she had no intention of telling him about Carrinda. Quynn wondered why Taeron had returned to Norvana to seek Carrinda's aid and she feared what had happened to Dijana after Quynn had been tricked into leaving with the wounded. Taeron had discussed the probable aftermath of their victory with his commanders. He expected retaliation from the factions that had supported Balak, and Quynn could only guess, based on the desolation she had seen in her brother's face and the fact that Carrinda had broken his bond that Dijana had not survived the war on Teralon. Kai would not be pleased to learn of her death.

As she moved away from the hall and followed Vaedra back to her chamber, Quynn thought about the day she had left Teralon. She had not wanted to leave before seeing Amyr, but the messenger that had delivered the order to take the worst of the wounded back to Ulfynaeus told her that the lord prince and his men would not be able to leave Nidum until the palace and city were secured. She had no reason to distrust the man who wore the colors of Neria's warriors. After taking as many of the men as she could onto her ship, she sent the messenger back to inform Taeron that she had complied. Knowing her brother, he would make short work of securing Neria's rule and Amyr would probably be only a few days behind her. That would give her enough time to ask Lady Larya to design her something extra special to dazzle her mate in their bedchamber.

She had discovered Kai among the wounded on the ship on the second day of travel when she had gone to the hold to check on the injured. He had been leeching blood from the wrist of one of the men, and when he heard her gasp of surprise, he raised his head and although she had never seen the beast, she knew exactly who he was. Quynn had been horrified to find him, and the fire she shot at Kai missed him when he leaped at her. She managed to evade him, but when she tried to reach the control room to send a message to Teralon warning them what had happened, he caught up with her and clubbed her over the back of the head. She did not know how long she had been unconscious, but when she awoke, the bejeweled collar was around her neck. The Calabrians that she had taken on the ship to return to her mother's care on Ulfynaeus were gone.

"What did you do to them?" she had demanded furiously although she was tied to one of the command chairs. She was horrified to imagine that he had thrown them out the airlock.

He wet his lips with his tongue and she thought she was going to be sick as she imagined him draining their blood before killing them. His smile was unpleasant. "I feasted upon them, but do not fear, human, I needed to keep them alive. I sold them on the slave market on Endair to earn the credits to buy that collar."

The stones that ringed the collar were uncomfortably warm. "Am I to assume this is some type of device to keep me from using my magic?" Carrinda had told her that such things were to keep magic wielding slaves subdued, but Quynn refused to believe it could stop the power she had developed, and to prove it, she tried to project flames around the Varoonyan warlord. But the stones around her neck flared with such heat that she cried out in pain and nearly lost consciousness. The sickening stench of burning flesh made her gut wrench and she realized it was her own flesh blistering.

Kai had laughed, the sinister sound penetrating her pain. "You can buy much on the frontier markets."

Quynn knew she was going to have to find a way to control her fire or she would be burned to a cinders before they reached wherever they were going. Since she had a great difficulty controlling her impulses, she knew the coming days would be the very definition of hell.

"Where are you taking me?" she demanded when she was able to speak although the flesh around her neck throbbed painfully.

"You were purchased from the Norvanans," he reminded her. "I am delivering you to the buyer."

She had to take several calming breaths to keep from shouting in angry frustration. "What does Prince Staefyn want of me?" she demanded.

The warlord shrugged. "We are not confidantes. He is useful to me at the moment, so I do what I can to keep him satisfied."

"Useful to you?" She narrowed her gaze. "Do you have some grand scheme, my lord?"

He lifted the corner of his lip in scorn. "When I have destroyed Calabria, I will take my armies to this place which spawned your kind. What do you call it? Earth? You humans are a filthy blight upon the universe."

"And you Varoonyans epitomize the natural order," she mocked. "You have to feed on other races just to survive. Have you been feeding off me?" She wondered if his reason for wanting to attack Earth was for the source of food.

There was disgust in his crimson eyes. "Your blood is poison. My Dijana was able to ingest it, but she is just my thrall. Her blood is now polluted and it will take many months to remove the poison of her feedings from that human bastard Taeron."

Quynn almost mocked his stupidity because she knew that Taeron did not have human blood, that he was cursed by his Calabrian mother to the same ill effects every Calabrian suffered. He could not drink spirits and he had been enslaved with a blood bond to his mate, and since Kai admitted to feeding off Calabrians, that was not the reason for the poison in Dijana's blood. Thinking of the golden glow of Taeron's holy magic, she suspected that was the true reason Dijana's blood was toxic to him. Given his revulsion to her magic and his haste in warding against it, she was sure that Kai was at least terrified of magical beings if not vulnerable to them and he had inadvertently revealed weakness to whatever was in Taeron's blood. Unfortunately, Quynn had no way to use that information and no way to contact her brother.

But the thought of the brutish warlord brought low by magic almost made her laugh. "Well, too bad you can't get a snack off me. It's a long trip back to Calabria."

"Even injured Calabrians are worth many times their weight in credits. After purchasing the collar, I still had enough credits remaining to purchase slaves for my use. "

Remembering what Mordrad had paid for the imperials he had purchased when Quynn requested it she knew that Kai had made a tidy sum with the dozen or so injured warriors she had on the ship when she had taken off. She had made a log of who she had been returning and their injuries were not terribly severe, but her mother's warnings about infections and foul conditions that seemed to describe the northern marshlands perfectly had Quynn anxious to return the men to Calabria to be treated by her mother's squad of healers. Most had been mildly poisoned and more than half had complained at having to leave Teralon when they were enjoying themselves in the marshlands. There were too many for Amyr to handle on his own and he would have tried, so when she received the word to leave the planet, she hadn't even wondered why Taeron would send her away without speaking to her. She should have waited to see Amyr, but she had been convinced that he was too busy with his duties as Taeron's imperial guard. Amyr probably thought she was acting impulsively again and he would not know what had become of her and the injured men for a very long time.

By the time they reached Calabria, Kai had used up the slaves he had purchased. After draining them to near death, the loathsome Varoonyan brute released them to space. Although only a couple resembled humans, Quynn knew by their screams and the pleading for their lives that she could understand thanks to the translator that had not been removed that they were sentient creatures who were terrified of death up to the moment that Kai had taken their lives.

As if he wanted to prove his power to her, he brought his victims to the command room and as she watched him, she was horrified to imagine how Dijana must have suffered in this horrible man's power for many weeks until the Calabrians had arrived to liberate Teralon. A long braid of golden hair hung from his belt and she knew without him telling her that it was Dijana's hair. She often saw him stroking the braid, a faraway gleam in his eyes that made Quynn nauseous for Dijana's sake. She understood now how Dijana had fallen prey to her stepfather and siblings, how Kai had made it easy for them to manipulate her.

Once they reached Calabrian space, Quynn was sure that sensor sweeps from the moons would detect her ship, but they would have no reason to suspect anything amiss until they neared Ulfynaeus where she would be expected to leave injured warriors. The disruption in communications through Edgeland Fortress kept Calabria isolated, and when the moon tried to contact her ship, Kai responded by activating the boosters and directing the ship to the surface. Because of his trouble with the emperor, Quynn knew her father would not send any warbirds after the ship because it might be considered an act of aggression. He probably guessed the hyperspace craft had been stolen and yet there was nothing he could do to prevent it from reaching the planet.

The transport landed on a small clearing high in the Guerani Hills. Kai dragged her out of the ship and shoved her to her knees in the dewy grass, holding her down with his heavy hand on her shoulder as if she were some wild animal needing to be subdued. He did not seem to be in a mood for chitchat, and she had exhausted all the subjects that he had a knowledge of, scant few in her opinion, so she stayed silent as she waited. She had seen the top of an elegrant structure over the trees and she knew from the trance she had been in with Amyr, that it was Guerani Palace, the palace that was to have been her home as well as the summer residence of the emperor. Well, she thought with a mental shrug, she was coming home.

"An optimistic way of looking at it."

She turned her head in the direction of the voice and saw Staefyn approaching flanked by several men who glanced warily at Kai. Staefyn's green gaze had flared briefly amber before returning to the soft green she had once thought charming. Now that gaze moved over her body encased in the battle suit and she remembered Amyr's anger when the other men had seen her.

Staefyn's mouth moved in a strange manner as if he were both excited and repulsed by the sight of her, and then he snarled at his men to turn away from her. The mindless Calabrians did as ordered, turning their back and Staefyn strode to her, pulling off his tunic probably to cover her indecent attire and when he ordered Kai to untie her, she did not have a chance to attack him to escape through the densely wooded area surrounding the palace because Staefyn put his hand on her head and she became limp for just a moment before she was in a place she had difficulty recognizing at first.

The sky was dark and she stood before a large window overlooking space. "Where am I?" She thought she was speaking, but her lips did not move as she stared at the black emptiness of space.

"At the beginning." Staefyn's voice was silky smooth but she did not see him as she stared at the void of space.

"Hey! Babe, I got your message."

Quynn turned in the direction of the voice and she was surprised to recognize her father, a very young version of her father, certainly not the Calabrian sword arm of the emperor that made others quake in his shadow as he moved past. A teenager with a disarming smile ambled towards her wearing the uniform of the Cinq Kingdom and she was reminded of Stryfe when he was that age.

"I had a bad day," she said although she had no control over the words that left her lips.

"I know how to make it much better." Her father slipped an arm around her and dragged her close.

She should have been repulsed, but she was erotically moved by his embrace. "Not here, Duo."

His lips were against her neck, his teeth grazing sensitive skin that made her shudder. "Why not? There is no one around."

Quynn realized what was happening, where Staefyn had taken her in this trance even before she asked her own father, "Do you have any protection?" At least her mother had some foresight, lot of good that had done her.

He pushed her against the thick glass of the window and he made her forget about such mundane matters as birth control. Who knew her father could be so persuasive or that her mother could so easily lose her grasp on common sense.

"Let me go," Quynn begged Staefyn, disgusted by what he was forcing her to witness, to endure as if she were there. In a way, in a matter of moments, she was going to be there.

Before he released her, she saw the wormhole open in the viewing window, heard her mother's pleasured gasp, and then Quynn found herself standing before Staefyn in a room, probably in the palace. She was shocked by his power, appalled by what he had made her experience even though it had not been her experience at all.

She swallowed nervously and ran a shaky hand through her hair. "I think I could have done without that trip down memory lane."

"Memory lane?" he raised his brows in question, then frowned. "Ah, one of your quaint human expressions."

Quynn looked around the large chamber, noticed the seductive pile of pillows that put Amyr's bed to shame in her father's palace, and she turned back to look at Staefyn. "Is this the part where you tell me of your undying love for me and I reciprocate by rolling around in that bed with you?"

"Rolling around in the bed? Why should we do that?" Staefyn pursed his lips in disapproval again. "Do you speak this strange language to my brother and does that idiot understand you?"

"Right on both counts," she said with a shrug. "Well, most of the time the idiot understands me, but sometimes I need to explain. Do I need to phrase my question so that you can understand because I think even your idiot brother would understand what I meant by rolling around in the bed."

Staefyn narrowed his gaze on her. "Are you implying that I am a greater fool than my brother, because truly, no greater fool can possibly exist."

She threw up her hands. "You got me, Staefyn! I was insulting you."

"You have no basis in which to question my intelligence," he told her haughtily.

Quynn blew out her breath in frustration. "What do you want of me?"

He nodded to another door. "There is a bathing chamber. Prepare yourself for me." Turning, he headed to an opposite door.

She raised a brow. "Aren't you expecting a bit much on our first date?"

Staefyn stopped, pivoted and turned to look at her. "To what are you referring now?"

Putting her hands on her hips she said, "You know, courtship. Even Amyr courted me in the manner dictated by your father."

Staefyn snorted derisively. "My father's dictates are ridiculous and unnecessary. When a male wants a female, he takes her and does not beg for her permission." She opened her mouth to argue, but Staefyn did not give her a chance to speak. "What did you see in the trance? Did Lord Duo beg his mate with flowery words? I saw him dominate her."

"Hey, you and I did not see the same thing!" Staefyn could not have felt what Quynn had felt as her mother, and Quynn knew from those feelings that her mother had expected exactly what she got because she had called her father wanting exactly that. If anybody had been dominating, it had been her mother. She was probably not expecting the conception of children, but that was her own fault for forgetting the biological purpose of what they had been doing.

He read her mind. "Does it matter? You are here now because he took what he wanted that day, disregarding his mate's call for prudence."

If Quynn escaped this madman's lair, she intended to have a long talk with her father about his cavalier attitude towards the repercussions of sex and her mother about allowing teasing randy young pilots talk her into life-changing situations. Then again, she would not be there now if they had not thrown caution to the stars.

Staefyn continued. "I have no intention of courting you. I paid for you and you are my female. If you cannot prepare yourself for me, I shall send serving women to do the job."

"Don't bother. I know when I have lost."

He seemed pleased by her capitulation, but he did not speak as he turned on his heel and walked out.