Page 41 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

Khiann squeezed her hand.

"See?" She lifted their conjoined hands. "He squeezed my fingers, which is what we agreed means yes. He did that after I said he enjoyed hearing your stories."

Esag shifted on the chair. "Perhaps I should tell him about myself." He leaned his chin on his folded arms.

"I was promised to a girl named Ashegan," he said. "My father arranged it when I was five because her father was in metals and doing well, and my sisters' prospects for finding good matches depended on my union with the nasty Ashegan."

Khiann kept watching this male who claimed to be his best friend.

"She gossiped about everyone, never having a single kind word to say about anyone. It does not sound so bad when I hear myself say it, but it was. She talked from the moment she saw me until the moment I left, without ever asking my opinion about anything. If I tried to insert a word in between hers, she took offense and cried. Eventually, I realized I could simply nod at intervals, and she would never notice."

Khiann shifted his eyes to Annani, and she nodded. "I know the story. That was the way things were back then. Family came first unless you found your truelove mate. That superseded everything."

"I loved Gulan," Esag said. "But she was not my truelove mate. I know that now, but back then I was not sure. I handled it about as badly as possible, which is a particular talent of mine, and I broke Gulan's heart. I paid for it by carrying enormous guilt for five thousand years, not knowing what happened to her and assuming that she was lost along with everyone else I cared about. I didn't know that by making her run away, I saved her life."

Khiann wanted to ask what happened to all the people Esag cared about. Where had they gone? But he could not ask anything. All he could do was answer yes or no by squeezing Annani's fingers.

He felt for Esag, and it was not only sorrow for all he had lost. He liked the male, his directness, his truthfulness. There was a sense of affinity which explained why they had been best friends.

Khiann found the muscles in his face, the ones he had only now discovered, and he lifted the corners of his mouth.

Esag stopped talking.

He just looked at Khiann's mouth, and then his eyes started glowing.

"He's smiling at me," Esag said. "Fates. Look at that."

"It is a terrible smile," Annani said. "But it is beautiful."

"Do it again, you miserable specimen, and I'll tell you what your first curse word was and what your mother said when she heard you say it."

Khiann did it again.

"Donkey dung," Esag said. "Your mother said that you should say droppings, as befitting your pureblooded status, but you kept saying donkey dung like the merchant's son you were."

Khiann had no idea what any of that meant, but he kept smiling because it made Esag and Annani happy.

14

SULLHA

"Look," Mattie said. "The seats lean back."

Sullha looked at the armrest. "Do I press the button with the arrows?"

"That's the one." Mattie was fully reclined now, as if she intended to go to sleep. "I'm so stuffed that I feel drowsy."

"I'm so stuffed that I don't think I'll eat anything tomorrow." Sullha pressed the button, and the footrest rose while the back tipped backward, like the one on the airplane that had taken them from Safe Harbor to America.

"This is nice." She pushed the button the other way. "But I won't be able to see anything from this angle."

There were three rows in the theater, and the screen took up the entire wall. Mattie and Dimitri were on their left, and Petrov and Anita were on their right, holding a bowl of popcorn Bowen had made in the machine that stood in an alcove behind them.

Sullha couldn't understand how Petrov could put anything in his mouth after the meal they'd all had. Apparently, that big belly of his provided extra capacity.

The rows in front held everybody else, mothers and sons.

Asira sat with Bardov so he wouldn't feel left out.