Because it cooled off, the Waresti started a small campfire. Sebastian created a few tents and a number of blankets for them to use when they were ready to sleep. He and Ariana began preparing some food for supper.
Sitting on a log away from the chaos near the fire, Sophia tried to keep her mind off Quincy. It was rather difficult, especially considering the niggling feeling of guilt that sat at the back of her mind. She couldn’t help but picture his face when she issued her response to his declaration of love.
But she’d been right, hadn’t she? Here she was, dwelling on that when she should have been over with Ariana making sure her friend was okay.
Sadly, Ariana looked steady and determined. It was Sophia who felt off-balance and scared.
“Hey, Soph,” Tate said, gesturing to the log next to her. “Care for some company?”
She really didn’t, but couldn’t see why she should say so. She shrugged to avoid getting pegged with a lie.
“Cool.” Tate sat down and stretched out her long legs. “What a day.”
“Yeah,” Sophia agreed. She spotted Zachariah standing in the gathering shadows of the trees a few feet away and knew he was maintaining a watch over her cousin. “We’ve never flown this long before.”
“I know. I feel ready to drop. Hopefully some food will help.”
Glancing at the center of the campsite where lavender light flashed, Sophia nodded. Whatever the Lekwuesti had conjured up smelled wonderful.
“Are you all right, Sophia?”
Blinking with surprise, she automatically replied, “Sure.”
Tate raised an eyebrow. Sophia knew the lie had probably blasted from her and felt herself flush. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Is it something you want to talk about?”
“Not really.”
“Soph?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re lying to yourself.”
Sophia sighed. She didn’t need Tate’s second power to tell her that. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I suppose I should talk about it with someone.”
Tate gave her an understanding look. “I’m not trying to pry. Just offering a shoulder.”
“Thanks, Tate.” She took a breath and then blurted, “Quincy kissed me.”
“He did?” Tate’s smile beamed from her face. “Well, geez—it’s about time!”
Sophia’s lips parted in shock. “You knew?”
“Of course I did,” Tate said cheerfully with a wave of her hand. “He’s been over the moon about you for years.”
Getting slowly to her feet, Sophia stared at her cousin and considered how carelessly she had just dismissed what Sophia could only think of as a betrayal. “You
knew
and you didn’t tell me?”
Tate’s expression fell. “I’m sorry, Soph. I just thought it would be best—”
“Why is it everyone else gets to decide what’s best when it comes to my feelings?” Sophia interrupted, not caring that her voice rose and she drew the attention of the others. “Didn’t you ever consider how I would react, finding out about this after so much time? After all these years of thinking much worse about Quincy’s opinion of me?”
“It is not for Tate to share someone else’s feelings,” Zachariah said from behind her.
Furious with her cousin, furious with Quincy, and especially furious with herself for feeling so out of control, Sophia whirled on the Mercesti.
“As if I should listen to anything you have to say on the subject,” she snapped.
If she expected a reaction from him, she was in for a disappointment. He merely stared back at her.
“Soph—” Tate began, reaching for her.
“Leave me alone, Tate. I’ve had enough of being deceived by everyone I trusted. I need some time by myself.”
“Do not go far,” Zachariah warned.
Lifting her lip in a snarl, Sophia turned and ran. She shifted into her panther form and bounded into the forest, knowing that she wasn’t truly escaping anything.
“I see you are beginning to regain consciousness.”
Malukali gazed up at Kanika with eyes that felt like they had been scraped with glass. She was once again in a state of numbness. And still, the Mercesti leader spoke to her.
“Do not worry. This time you will not be harmed. I wanted to let you know that your husband has agreed to aid me in my plans. Apparently your screams were enough to obtain his cooperation.”
Malukali tried to blink. Where was she? Why couldn’t she form any real thoughts?
An image of a teacup flashed through her mind, but it faded as quickly as it entered.
“You may be wondering why I am doing this. As there is no one else I can tell, I will share it with you. Mind you, if I get any sense that you are getting closer to full consciousness, I will have to take action. It would not be a good thing to have the Orculesti elder inside my head, I have been told.”
Her words made little sense. Malukali attempted to turn her head so that she wasn’t staring into Kanika’s face, but movement was impossible.
“Before I begin, you should also know that we have broken a number of your bones in our bid to encourage your husband to cooperate. You should not fight too hard to free your mind unless you wish to feel the pain that will accompany it.”
The words barely registered in Malukali’s hazy mind.
“My name is Metis. I killed the Mercesti female whose form you now see. Well, in fairness to my dear Deimos, he did most of the work. He does so enjoy his time with females.”
Kanika...she wasn’t Kanika?
“But in order for me to assume her form, I had to be the one to finish the task. She has been dead for some time.”
Kanika was dead.
The thought brought with it a brief flash of insight, but Malukali was unable to hold onto it.
“Eirik was near when Deimos and I made the kill. He had been hunting the Mercesti leader himself. He gave me quite the education about how things work on the Estilorian plane. I have only been free to roam it for a short while, you see.”
No, Malukali didn’t see. Where was Knorbis?
“I was kept from you...from all of you. My creator wanted to keep me all to herself. If I had allowed her to live, I am sure she would regret that decision.”
Murderer. She was in the care of a murderer.
That realization brought with it a stinging pain in her eyes. Her vision blurred.
“I see you have enough of your awareness to express sympathy for me. Do not expect the same in return. Although I was schooled in human emotions by my creator, I do not experience them myself. If I see any further signs of your recovery, I will dose you again.”
Teacup. Falling.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. My creator, Tethys. Before the creation of this plane, she had the lack of sense to fall in love with a human male. When she could not conceive, as no Estilorian female can, the male abandoned her for another. As a result of her experience, Tethys wanted to find a way to create a female Estilorian with the ability to reproduce. I am the result of her efforts.”
Females who can reproduce...
“Tethys was a failure. I cannot reproduce. What I can do, I discovered after I killed Tethys, is assume the forms of those I kill. Changing forms is a painful process, however, so you will just have to trust me on this.”
Kanika...no, not Kanika...lifted an eyebrow.
“I am still debating whether I should attempt to kill you and assume your form. Tethys advised against such an act, believing I was not strong enough to go against an elder. Only because I had such difficulty assuming this aged and powerful Mercesti female form did I decide to consider my creator’s warnings. Tethys was centuries old, after all, and I bested her. But my creator was not very powerful.”
Malukali’s captor paused for a moment, her eyes unfocused. Then she continued, “Deimos was my own attempt at creation. Unlike Tethys, I allow him a certain amount of freedom. His appetites do require me to keep him largely within my control. If the Waresti discover him, I doubt they will let him live.”
Waresti...Uriel.
A twinge of pain in Malukali’s leg made her draw in a sharp breath.
“And that, I believe, concludes our session for today.”
A small prick in the arm.
“Next time, I will explain how your husband is going to make me the next elder.”
Despite her irritation over Zachariah’s unwelcome advice to stick close to camp, Sophia wasn’t stupid enough to ignore it. She wanted to be alone, not get herself captured or harmed by any Mercesti who might be in the area.
She ended up shifting into an orangutan and climbing a tree located a far enough distance from the camp that she couldn’t easily hear anyone. Once up in the tree, she shifted into her harpy eagle form to make use of the bird’s heightened eyesight. She realized as she scanned the immediate vicinity that the Waresti had established a perimeter. There were a number of them about a hundred yards in any direction.
She considered the idea of shifting back into her Estilorian form, since maintaining a shift—even while just sitting—took a toll on her energy. The idea of sitting naked in a tree, however, didn’t seem like a ton of fun. On top of that, she could more easily control her emotions while in the form of an animal.
Maybe that’s why she enjoyed it so much.
Now that she’d had some time to get over the initial astonishment of Tate knowing about Quincy’s feelings for her, she could acknowledge that she had been wrong to lash out at her cousin. She had even been wrong to lash out at Zachariah, as he had spoken nothing but the truth. How many times had she issued a lie in Tate’s vicinity throughout their lifetime? Too often to count. Yet from the time she was old enough to understand her second power, Tate hadn’t ever revealed Sophia’s secrets.
Sophia shouldn’t have expected any less of Tate regarding Quincy’s feelings. She might feel as though her cousin owed her a greater loyalty, but that wasn’t fair. Tate and Quincy were good friends. And Zachariah was right. It wasn’t Tate’s place to tell her how Quincy felt.
It was Quincy’s place…and so far, he had failed miserably at it.
Even as that thought flashed through her head, Sophia wondered whether she was still being hypocritical. Tate said she was lying to herself. Just how far did that lie extend?
She had been trying to convince herself that the kiss in the forest had occurred only because she was under the influence of the plant she had eaten. That was definitely a lie. There had been many times over the years that she had daydreamed about kissing Quincy. The plant had merely given her the courage to act upon something she wanted to do.
She had also waged an argument with herself that the only reason she found Quincy so attractive was because he was one of the few males she knew to whom she wasn’t related. Yet another lie.
Her attraction to him extended to before the age of thirteen, if she was being truly honest with herself. The Kynzesti matured more rapidly than humans, after all, and she had spent a great deal of time with him. She had always loved the curve of his mouth and the line of his brow, especially when he was concentrating. There was also the fact that he worked hard at maintaining a physical form that devastated her senses.
But what had attracted her from a very tender age was his keen intelligence and his eagerness to share it with her. So why had he been so willing to share his knowledge and so reluctant to share his feelings?
“I still don’t understand why I can’t have even
one
feather in my hair.”
Sophia gave an internal wince when she heard Tate’s voice. Of all the places in this forest her cousin and Zachariah could go to have yet another spat, why did it have to be close enough that she could hear it? She had grown so weary of their bickering.
“You have not listened to a word I said,” Zachariah countered.
Ugh. They were getting closer. Sophia heard their footsteps and soon watched them enter her range of vision. Tate had her arms crossed over her chest and a frustrated pout on her face. Zachariah followed her with his usual blank mask of an expression. Sophia wondered what form she could assume to get out of the tree she was in without them noticing.
“Oh, I’ve listened,” Tate said as they got within feet of the tree. “I just chose to—”
“Far enough,” Zachariah interrupted.
Then he grabbed Tate, spun her around and kissed her.
If Sophia had been in her Estilorian form, her jaw would have proverbially hit the ground. Even in her emotionally-subdued state, shock and confusion rolled through her.
Tate, however, didn’t appear at all caught off-guard by Zachariah’s passionate assault. She slid into the kiss with ease and enthusiasm, telling Sophia that this was a well-practiced form of encounter for them. Her cousin’s hands moved from Zachariah’s muscular chest up to behind his neck and the back of his head, where she wound her fingers into his already disheveled hair.
Zachariah’s hands, well...they had Tate making sounds that explained to Sophia just why they were doing this so far from the hearing of others. She knew if she hadn’t been in the eagle form that her cheeks would have been on fire.
She suddenly thought back to the conversation she’d had with Tate after Zachariah pulled her into the guest bedroom at Clara Kate’s to “lecture” her about her clothing.
“Any time you wear something he finds objectionable,” Sophia had argued, “he gets all over you about it.”
“Oh, yes,” Tate had said in a tone that Sophia now realized was filled with feminine appreciation. “He sure does.”
Sophia
so
got it now.
They finally broke apart after a couple of minutes of serious making out. Sophia felt like a forced voyeur and wished she could shift into a tree so she didn’t have eyes or ears.
“We really,” Tate panted, “have to come up with some better argument material than my wardrobe.”
“Why?” Zachariah’s response was barely audible since his mouth was currently doing something to Tate’s neck.
She made a sound between a gasp and a moan. She forced Zachariah’s head back up so she could kiss him again. He didn’t seem to mind the rough handling. When they broke apart this time, she replied, “Because the weather is cooling off. My clothes are going to be less skimpy.”