Page 9 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

"Mother." He held her, and the sensation of her heart thundering against his chest belied the composure she was showing everyone else.

"I am so happy for you," he said.

She leaned into his shoulder and let him hold her for a moment longer before leaning away. Given the haunted look in her eyes, not all the news was good. He'd celebrated too early.

"What's the prognosis?" he asked.

"His mind seems intact." Annani addressed Kian's biggest fear first. "He looks at me, and there is a person behind his eyes, but he cannot speak and is frightened. He doesn't understand what I say to him, not yet, but he understands the tone and tracks my face. He is not empty. Whatever else the Fates took, they let him be who he was."

"Then that's everything," he said. "The rest will come with time, patience, and physical therapy."

"He does not remember me," she said quietly, turning to look at her mate. "He looks at me as anyone would upon seeing me."

"With awe?" Kian supplied.

Her lips curved. "Yes. That and curiosity, mixed with gratitude, though I am not sure what he is grateful for. Perhaps it is just for me sitting here, holding his hand, so he is not alone." She sighed. "He did not react to my name or to his own. I told him who he was, who I was, and what we were to each other, and he looked at me with exactly the same expression. There was not even a flicker of recognition."

Kian could tell her to be patient and let time heal her mate, but he didn't say anything because his mother had not asked for practical advice. She just needed him to listen.

"I'm sorry," he said instead.

"Do not be. He is alive."

"I know, and we are grateful for that, but that does not mean we cannot be sad about what's missing."

She nodded, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but she didn't let them fall.

Kian shifted his weight and took her free hand. "You shouldn't despair just because he didn't know up from down when he first woke up after five thousand years in stasis. Wonder woke up with nothing. Not a name, not a language, not a country. She could not speak. She taught herself Arabic from scratch, then English, and then snuck onto a cargo ship using thralling, which she somehow figured out how to do without remembering she could do it. It took a long time for her memories to return, but they did."

"Ell-rom's did not," his mother said quietly. "Not every story has a happy ending."

Kian shook his head. "Ell-rom's had a very happy ending even without his memories. Morelle helped him reclaim them. He found his truelove mate, and he found you and a family and a home."

Annani said nothing.

"It's been less than an hour," Kian pressed. "After five thousand years. Give it a month. Give it a year. We have all the time there is."

His mother turned to look at him, and the resigned expression on her face stopped him cold.

"I made a bargain with the Fates," she said. "The four guards were surfacing, and Khiann was not. Bridget said his body was recuperating faster than theirs, but he would not come up. I was afraid, so I made them an offer. His memories of me for his return, whole and healthy in body and mind."

Kian understood perfectly. If Syssi were on that bed and he were praying for her return, he would have sacrificed the things most precious to him to get her back. He would have offered her memories of him and even his of her. Truelove mates could not stay apart unless separated by death, and the death of the mind was, for all intents and purposes, death. The body was just the vessel for the soul, the transmitter, and if it could not channel the spirit, it was not worth much on its own.

He wanted to tell his mother that, but she wasn't finished.

"I said that if the price of that was every memory he carried of me, then they were welcome to it." She looked back at the bed. "The Fates accepted my offer. Two days later, he opened his eyes."

"The Fates are merciful. They might amend your bargain."

She turned her hand over so Khiann's hand rested in her palm, and she looked at it. "The Fates give, but they do not give freely, nor do they amend their contracts. I received exactly what I asked for. No more, and no less. That is not a coincidence. That is a transaction, and it has been completed. The Fates do not renegotiate a bargain once it is struck."

Kian nodded because Annani sounded resolute, and when she got like that, there was no changing her mind. "The Fates will not renegotiate the deal you've made with them, but they might show you mercy just because they feel like it."

She smiled. "If they do, I will fall to my knees and thank them for their mercy."

Kian looked past her at the male in the bed.

It was the first time he'd seen Khiann looking like more than a skeleton, but he was far from recovered. The god had deep hollows under his cheekbones, his scalp was nearly hairless except for scattered chestnut fuzz, and he was deathly pale.