Nephilius - A Walker Saga Book 5 (21 page)

“We don’t seem to have quite the same bonds
on Spurn. In general there are no long-term relationships,” Talina
said as she stared at the movie playing quietly on the huge
projector screen. “It must be my Walker side that ties me so
completely to Ladre.”

“Does that mean he doesn’t feel the same
way?” Ria’s lyrical tones floated around the large room.

Talina pursed her lips, before turning back
to her feet and attacking her toes with what I’d deem unnecessary
force. “I’m not sure. He says that he feels the tie and the bond
between us. But I can’t help wonder if it’s simply that there are
no other Spurns here.”

“Have you offered to send him back to
Spurn?” I asked, attempting to keep my voice gentle. “That might be
the truest test.”

The expression on her face just about broke
my heart. It was hurt and longing, and in her eyes was a love so
strong it was burning a hole through the foot she was glaring
at.

She sighed, her hands slowing and her
strokes of polish moving more precisely. “I haven’t asked him
directly, but I’m pretty sure he wants to go back.” Her voice
broke. “I haven’t been able to find the strength to let him
go.”

I opened my mouth to say something else – I
hoped a little less blunt and more reassuring this time – but she
continued before I could speak.

“In the end, it will be better to send him
home. That way he can really decide what he wants, and if he
chooses us, I’ll know that he’s in it for the long haul. That this
is as real to him as it is to me. So I should let him go.” She
dropped her head to rest on her raised knees, and her long emerald
hair surrounded her protectively. She was finished with her toes
now and handed Lucy the paint.

I reached out and snagged one of my arms
around her shoulder, trying not to kick our wet toenails. “It’ll be
okay, Talli, you’re special and Ladre sees that. Besides, you
always say he’s not like a normal Spurn. Maybe that’s because he
was born to love a beautiful half-Walker. It won’t take him long to
realize that Spurn is an awfully lonely world without you.”

“And if he doesn’t realize how awesome you
are,” Lucy growled, “I’ll kick his butt.”

“More like pixie-dust his ass. Hope he likes
to wear green glitter.” Fury lifted her chin in Lucy’s direction,
stirring her as usual.

Talina smiled at their antics, before
becoming solemn again. “I know. He just worries about the clans,
whether the Baroons are ruling fairly without him. How the Earons
are faring without Gladriel or … Raror.” Her voice broke over her
brother’s name. “Just all of the things a good leader
considers.”

And Ladre had been a good leader. Despite
the clan rivalries, he’d been liked and respected by most of the
inhabitants. But I was with Lucy. I’d be kicking him right in the
ass if he hurt Talina.

“I’m going to let him go.” Talina nodded her
head decisively a few times. “It’s the best thing in the end.” One
of her rare true smiles finally appeared. “But enough about me.
Let’s move on to something more positive.”

We were all
finished our toenails now, and Lucy jumped across to junk food and
gossip. I threw a handful of some sort of delicious mini
alamonlette chip cookies in my mouth before
almost spitting chunks of them across the room at Lucy’s next
question.

“So, Ria, is your mate going to be a member
of a pack on Regali? Can the animal-people be with … not pack?”

I tried to
contain my chuckles. Lucy was going to find herself strung up in a
bunch of vines soon.
And I already knew
the answer to this from my earlier conversation with the Regali
half-Walker.

Ria grinned,
her beautiful face
creasing in mirth,
although a slight pink mottled her cheeks at the question. “We have
mated pairs on Regali, but they stay within the specific packs, so
a leon only mates to another leon.” The smile dimmed slightly. “I
have no pack, and no other that’s like me, so I always believed I
would be alone. Which is not a problem.” She finished hastily.
“Being queen is more than enough to sustain me.”

“
But you’re
Walker. You could find your mate on First World or amongst the
other Walker clans,” I offered
, wanting
her to know that her disappearing-dream-man wasn’t her only option.
“There’s nothing like having a mate. Don’t give up so
easily.”

“You don’t have a mate, Abbs,” Fury bluntly
pointed out.

“Uh, that was rude, Fury,” Lucy snapped.
“Don’t make me pixie-dust your ass. You’ll look like a freaking
Christmas tree, all green and red.”

I cleared my throat, interrupting before war
or fire bombs broke out. “Yes, I know, but I see how it is for you
and Lucy. I can tell that a true mate completes you.”

Cerberus must have sensed my distress. He
dropped one of his heads onto my thigh, and the comfort was
instant.

“Well, I won’t give up then. Maybe my mate
is just around the corner.” Ria was genteel as always.

“We’ll have to introduce you to Lucas,” Lucy
grinned, “you two have a lot in common.”

Lucky I’d
finished the cookies, but I did almost snort quant
juice from my nose. Once I had stopped coughing
I spluttered my words at Lucy.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. What in the
world – besides exceptional physical genetics – do they have in
common?”

“Exceptional physical genetics?” Talina
furrowed her brow.

“
They’re
both hot as hell.” Lucy laughed. “Well … Lucas and Ria are royals,
they lead their people fairly, they even talk in the same
politically correct
phrases.”

Ria tilted her head as she examined her
already dry nails. “I feel that there couldn’t be a more disastrous
love match than two leaders from different worlds. We would forever
be torn apart or forced to choose between love and our people.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” The masculine voice
had us all spinning to face the doorway.

Cerberus was suddenly on his feet in front
of me, low growls filling the room and raising the hair on my
arms.

Lucas stood there, a grin on his handsome
features, although he looked a little unsure when he faced the
two-headed guard hound. He was dressed all in black, which set off
his icy blond hair and blue eyes. And he was sans crown at that
moment.

“Sorry to intrude. I dropped by hoping to
catch Abby between world-jumping.” His eyes scanned the room before
coming to rest on Ria. “I didn’t realize I was interrupting girl
time.”

And then, as if Lucy had preempted the
future again, something passed between the gazes of Lucas and
Ria.

“No,” the Regali half-Walker gasped, “it
can’t be you.”

Lucas fisted both hands into his hair. His
eyes widened as his features froze. “I … shit … I can’t believe
this,” he muttered, before taking a step toward her. “You can’t be
real. The dreams were not real; Abby’s the chosen Empress. This
makes no sense.”

“
Dreams?”
Lucy
interrupted.

Oh
, shit. Lucas was the man she’d
talked of.

My heart was
aching again, but for Ria this time. She looked like she was about
to cry. Damn, the more people I cared about, the more my emotions
were stretched ten ways.

Ria’s voice wavered as she crossed her arms
across her chest. “When I was younger my world was pretty harsh. My
mother was gone and I was trying to find my place among the packs.
I remember the first time, during my spiritual ventures, a young
boy appeared. When he visited me I wasn’t alone; there was another
just like me.”

“Sounds like she was sampling the calia
flowers,” Lucy murmured to me.

I elbowed her. At that point Cerberus must
have decided Lucas was no threat. He settled back into a sleeping
position, resting his head on his half pink-tipped paws.

“
Over the
years his appearance changed; we grew older together.” Ria stood
then, her masses of luscious hair falling to her calves.
“
I never thought he was real, and I never
realized how much I relied on those moments, until he stopped
arriving.” She stalked right up to the dumbstruck Emperor. “You
stopped once I became queen, as if you thought I no longer needed
you. I still needed you!” she practically shouted in his face,
before storming from the room.

Wow, I’d
rarely seen Ria worked up like that.
When
she’d told me about the spiritual dreams she’d been mostly sad. But
now … well, her anger was almost as extreme as her reaction when we
had found all of her dead and skinned pack members. Which told me
how strong her feelings were right now.

“Uh-oh, you have some explaining to do,
king-boy,” Lucy trilled. She fluttered in the air, sparkling dust
wafting from her.

“I think maybe you have some explaining to
do, Luce.” I reached out and yanked her out of the air. “You
totally predicted that and pretended like it was just a throwaway
comment.”

“I told you,” she twitched her lips, hiding
a smile, “I still have pixie powers of premonition. Some of my
visions were definitely my own. And now that my mind is protected,
I can sense what belongs to me and what is … other.”

Confused muttering erupted around the room.
We hadn’t told the girls yet that not all of Lucy’s visions had
been real. Having no choice now, Lucy quickly explained what she’d
learned about pixies and her new abilities. When she was finished,
I locked the shell-shocked emperor in my gaze.

“Back to you, Lucas, you also dreamed of
Ria?” I asked him as he crashed onto one of the squishy couches,
his head in his hands.

“I should go after her. I can’t sit here
while she’s upset,” he said, his voice muffled. “But I know this
can never work; I’ve always known that you were my chosen.” He
lifted his head and faced me. “I won’t do this to First World or to
you, Abby. You’ll be all alone.”

Uh, wait, what did he just say? The girls
were clearing their throats and trying not to look too closely at
each other. Great friends. They were about ten seconds from
laughing their butts off.

“I’m perfectly capable of finding a man.” I
flipped Lucas off. Yeah, he was the emperor, but he was also an
asshat. “And I have no interest in being your empress.”

The room exploded in laughter then. Lucy was
draped across Cerberus as her chest shook.

Lucas ignored my soon-to-be-ex-best-friends.
“Fate dictates differently. I’m the emperor; you’re the chosen
empress; there’s a connection between us,” he said.

“You’re wrong, Lucas.” Lucy pulled herself
up, her laughter more contained. “I see the path very clearly on
this and Ria’s your chosen. But there’s some truth to Abby being
the empress also. It’s now up to you to find the path where both of
these ‘destinies’ align.”

I narrowed
my eyes at her. Dammit, whose side was Lucy on? As if I didn’t have
enough to occupy my time, and she knew about Brace – he was my
future. There was no way I could rule Abernath as the
princep
’s mate and First World as the
empress. Talk about torn between love and your people. I’d be in
the same up-shit-creek-without-a-paddle-boat as Lucas and
Ria.

Suddenly Lucas’ face brightened. I narrowed
my eyes in suspicion. Why were his eyes so sparkly? Where had the
lines of stress gone? What was his scheming mind up to now? He met
my laser-beam eyes. I was giving him the glare of a century. He
smiled, just to be more annoying than usual.

“Could that work, Abby?” His voice was low.
“For the first time in the history of our rulers, could we have an
emperor and empress who ruled together, but were not romantically
linked?”

And his thoughts were suddenly very clear. I
rubbed my hands across my face, giving myself a moment to consider
his words. Shit. I wanted to protest, but his words resonated with
a ring of truth. On occasion I still had the dreams of First World;
the ones where I was the one to save the people. I’d never
mentioned it to anyone, not even Lucy, but in these dreams I was
the empress, and the ruling duo of me and Lucas worked. My more
practical and less privileged nature tempered Lucas and provided
the perfect ruling balance.

“Abby?” Lucy sidled closer.

I was lost in thought. I’d never noticed
before, but not one of the dream scenes involved anything romantic
or sexual with Lucas. We were often together, making decisions, but
we never touched or kissed. In my need to ignore these visions, I’d
not paid close enough attention to the facts being presented to
me.

“
I’m not
happy to admit this, but … I think you might be right, Lucas,” I
finally said. “We’re definitely not true mates;
I know that for a fact.” I held my hand up before he could
ask how. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a tie to First
World and its people.”

Lucy interrupted Lucas before he could
reply. “Not to change the subject or anything, but can anyone tell
me why when we first arrived on First World Brace’s fake dad … or
whoever that dude was, called this planet Grandier.” She pursed her
lips. “I’ve never heard anyone else use that name.”

Lucas chuckled. “Honestly the only ones I’ve
ever known to use the original name were my father and Deralick.”
He shook his head. “It’s always been First World and always will
be.”

I nodded my head. “This was the first world
in this star system. The name fits.”

The sound of a throat being cleared had us
turning to the doorway again. It was Josian. “Walkers have always
called it First World. I think it was one of the Emperors who
thought it needed a grander name … and from this Grandier was
born.” As always Walkers held the answers. Josian strolled into the
room. “I was just coming in to kick the Emperor out. I had strict
instructions that you girls were not to be disturbed.”