Balance Of The Worlds (2 page)

She held her daughter close.

No one mattered to her more than the two infants she held against her breasts.

Her son slept, calm like he usually was, but her daughter watched the world with the wary eyes so like the god who had fathered her.

These children were all that she had longed for throughout the centuries.

Yet now that she had them, she would most likely be leaving them for longer than she cared to think about. Days, weeks perhaps. Possibly longer, depending on what she learned in the demon world. She kissed Dres’ small head, breathing in the scent of warm baby. Nella cooed, and Nelciana smiled. This little one was the very image of the grandmother she would never know. It was bittersweet, seeing her mother in the eyes and nose, the tiny pointed chin.

Bittersweetness made even more poignant with the knowledge of what was to come. Her eyes closed.

If she had her way, she would hold the babes forever. But her calling had been to birth the babes—nothing had been said about her actually seeing them into their adulthoods.

And too many women’s children were dependent upon her to see their worlds were kept safe. She was needed in the other world. Despite how much she wanted to stay with her babes.

Someone knocked on the nursery and Nelciana looked up. The girl wolf stood there. “You asked that I tell you when the next message arrived, my lady.”

“Thank you, Jordan.” She kissed Dres and Nella one more time each, then placed them in their beds. She forced herself to step away. To turn away before she scooped them up and just held on. Just let someone else go this night.

But by doing that, by avoiding the destiny the Laquazzeana Phaenna had laid out for her, she would effectively bring about the end of so many worlds. Eighteen realms, layered upon each other, would suffer if she did not step forth and follow the path the Four Fates had laid out before her.

Fear had her gut clenching so tightly she feared she would never breathe again.

Fate or the children she had never thought she would have?

“My lady?”

Nelciana looked at the girl wolf, wondering if it was time to tell her that she possessed a reborned soul. Told her that the soul was that of her sister Cadra.

How she longed to talk with her sisters just one more time.

To see Cadra’s soul in a once-human girl of no more than twenty or twenty-one was both exhilarating and painful. What would happen if the girl never learned of it? What would that mean for her? “Jordan, how many birth years have you passed?”

“Twenty-one last month.”

Twenty-one years. One more than Cadra before she had been consumed by the Dark Sorcerer’s flames. Perhaps it meant something that the girl had outlived the first soul.

Another knock came next, and Nelciana shook her head. Her people, this mismatch of Kinds and refugees who now gathered in her world of Levia as they awaited the fates of everything, knew exactly where to find her when they needed a guiding hand of a goddess.

It was another girl wolf this time, a close friend of Jordan’s. Brynnja had been born Lupoiux wolf though her family had been one that was lost. “My lady, you are needed in the Great Hall. A messenger has arrived from the Laquazzeana Eaudne. He says it is urgent.”

Nelciana took one more look at her babes as they slept.

Her destiny had just begun.

Something in his skin was itching.

Lothonos threw his head back and sought out those who mattered most to him. Just to check, to reassure…

His children’s souls were safe in Levia, as he had expected. With that of their mother watching over them. As he had also expected.

Nelciana, the goddess of Family, would never let a moment’s harm come to those infants. She was a beautiful mother, just as he’d known she would be.

He thought of her for a moment, wondering if she had recovered sufficiently from the birthing yet. She had given life to their daughter easily less than sixteen weeks before, but she had struggled greatly with their son. She was a goddess, and a strong one, at that, but it had taken her three days to bring his children both fully into the world. Three days he would never forget. He had expected her to deliver and recover quickly. But she hadn’t. It was just recently that her strength and health were returning.

He next sought one of the cousins for which he actually gave a damn.

Eiophon was busy fucking his goddess somewhere in the demon world of Relaklonos. Lothonos backed out quickly when his cousin paused in what he was doing and looked around as if he sensed Lothonos’ presence.

Besides, he wasn’t a voyeur. The last thing he wanted to see was his cousin’s ass. Now if Kennera had been on top, he might have watched a bit longer.

He had wondered many times how the blonde Evelanedean goddess would look without her clothing.

At least, he had wondered such until the last one hundred years when it had become apparent that Kennera was not the goddess upon whom his plan hinged.

And it made sense when he’d realized—he was the god of all things Logical, was he not? Did it not make the most sense that the God of Druids and the Goddess of Witches lay down to mate?

His followers, the Lothon Druids, had originated with refugees from Evalanedea who practiced the arts of Nelciana’s grandmother. Those witches had fathered the people who became Druids.

It was only when Nelciana had left her home world five thousand years earlier that the Nellana Witches had populated Gaia enough to be declared a Kind in their own right.

His Druids were of the same original Kind, but they had evolved. Changed for the better. That most of his followers were male and most of Nelciana’s were female was just a way of balance creating itself. Lothonos functioned well when things were balanced.

Yet something was wrong, something was telling his soul that he was needed. And soon.

Nelciana looked at the woman who had served her for more than fifty years. “Whin, go to my chambers. There is a bag there. It will be of a dark blue and a material you will not recognize. It is beneath the bed. Bring it, and quickly.”

“Yes, my lady.” Whin bowed and stepped away. Nelciana knew the woman, a witch who had sought her out decades ago to pledge her life, her gifts, and her sword to Nelciana could be trusted to do exactly as told.

She would be nowhere without Whin.

And that was why she would be chosen for the greatest task Nelciana had ever asked of anyone.

But Brynnja and Jordan had another. And it was to them she turned next.

“Come with me.” But first, the messenger, a demon from the tribe of Lothicano, was a favored of the Laquazzeana Phaenna. Laquazzeana—those more powerful than any of the nineteen worlds’ gods or goddesses. “Dell, return to the world of Phaenna wherever she be. Give her this message. Tell her the time for following the Four Destinies is upon us. I will meet with her on the morrow.”

After the male was gone, Nelciana turned to the two girls. They looked so young. But their souls…their souls were almost as old as Nelciana. “I will tell you a story, one you must listen to carefully. For I cannot tell it quickly enough. I do not have time to say it again. Brynnja—”

The girl with the long red hair and the eyes of deepest brown was fierce and strong. And the soul she possessed was one of the greatest Nellana warrior Witches of all time. “There were once seven. But some fell. It is because of their sacrifice that I—and the goddess Kennera—lived. But their souls have been reborn, save some who we never knew. Brynnja, you have one of those souls within you.”

“I am not a witch. I am a half-breed Lupoiux wolf who had the fortune to meet a goddess when I was in need of help.”

“You are of the middle of the seven. She was the wisest, for all that she was a fighter. I loved her, as I loved them all. We were age-mates, you see, and friends. And they died protecting us because we were of the ruling families and they were not. I have never forgotten that. I see Scyamiana in you. Do not discount that. For she is one my people now revere. It was she, and her sisters, who should have been goddesses. Not I.”

For she and Kennera had been vain and spoiled, pampered by their parents and others. Kennera had been so much more fortunate than Nelciana—her mother, at least, had made a point of knowing each of her children well. Nelciana’s mother was always so busy learning and growing the arts of her ancestresses. Pushed and driven by the power.

It had left little time for her twelve children.

“My lady?”

How she had hated to be addressed as such in those first years after they had fled Evalanedea. She hadn’t felt deserving of the title. She hadn’t appreciated the family she had had until she had lost it.

Every sibling gone.

It was only when Jordan had been sent to Levia as a refugee had she found even one of the souls she had tried so desperately to rebirth so many centuries—millennia—ago. She had given Nelciana so much hope. “Brynnja, you have so much within you. But it is your sword that I ask of you now. Jordan, you as well. You have a reborned soul, too. And I regret that I have not told you sooner, dear little sister. The soul you possess is of my sister, younger than you when the Dark Sorcerer took her. It is of your heart—and our bloodline—that I ask now.”

The girl was shaking, scared though she tried to hide it. “I—”

“Shhh. I know the two of you do not understand. And I am sorry. But…tonight…tonight I go. As do you, as well.”

“What?” Jordan was so terribly frightened, and Nelciana understood it. The girl had been taken by wolves on her way home from college classes one night—Brynnja’s brothers’ pack before they were judged and killed—bitten, and possibly abused. She had been so hurting when she arrived as a refugee with the rest of the Lupoiux wolves. Levia had healed her. Had given her a place where she could be safe and learn of what she had become.

Nelciana took each girl by the hand. “Jordan, take my babes. Take them far into the Levian lands. There will be a place for them there at their father’s manor. He keeps to himself, but he can protect them very well. Brynnja, take your sword. Protect them, as if they were your own. As Scyamiana would have. When the occasion comes, I know you will do just that.”

“But what about you?” the fierce girl wolf asked. “Where are you going?”

“My Fate is far from here, and it starts tonight. But I cannot do what I must if my children are not safe. So this…I ask this of you…and I know you will do me as I need, as I ask. And you will protect my babes from all who would harm them. Until I can return to them. I may be tonight—or it may be a year from now. This war comes, and because it was my mother’s it is now mine. To fight before the battle can become my daughter’s.”

***

It was a matter of simply walking out of the home that had been her for thousands of years. She didn’t let herself look back. If she thought of her babes for even a moment longer she would never be able to leave them. And then all would be lost.

“Are you sure this is where we should be, my lady?” Whin asked. “It is so dark.”

“It is. But I need to open the path or we will not arrive in Relaklonos in time for what it is I must do.”

“And just what is that?”

“To see this impostor for myself.” It couldn’t be true. Her sisters, they were dead. She had felt the moment they had each taken their last breaths. Moments permanently etched into her soul. “To see what had been learned.”

One of her sisters had been found, alive and whole. Never having fallen to the Dark Sorcerer all those millennia ago.

Impossible.

Yet the message had said that, sent to her by Eaudne’s hand. Nelanora lives.

It had been just as cryptic as it had been the day she had learned that Kennera’s brother and mother had survived the Dark Sorcerer’s attack.

She had longed to see for herself. Nelciana had been betrothed to that brother of her closest friend, after all. That he had survived had shaken her to her core.

If she had known that, she would have found him and made good on the oaths their parents had spoken for them so many years ago.

No. It had to be an impostor.

There was only one way she would ever know.

“Come. Hold my hand, Whin. We enter the demon world now.”

***

Lothonos knew the moment she left their world and entered another. It woke him from sleep and had him seeking. Why was the woman not where she was supposed to be? And why were their babes moving far from the protected walls of the castle that had stood for so long?

What was that goddess about?

He had not expected her to leave their children so quickly. What was she about, and why was she in the demon world? Had something occurred? It must have, to pull her from her duties. And where were the babes being taken?

He needed no help moving his body from its current location to that of the babes’. He had strengths he had never shared with anyone. Moving beyond space and time was just one of them. His babes slept, cuddled close to two Lupoiux females. One watched the night around them. She was full of fear, but her sword was strong and true, though he sensed she was less than thirty in Gaian years.

This was who she had entrusted his children to? It defied logic, didn’t it?

He formed himself within the circle of their camp. “Explain yourselves.”

He found a point at his chest as the wolf Brynnja turned toward him. He pushed the knife aside, carelessly. “Stay your blade, girl. Tell me, why do you carry my babes so far from their mother?”

He saw the loyalty in their hearts, and that was all that had him not taking his babes back to where they belonged.

No, if his babes were not with their mother, then it was with good reason.

These two would not betray the Goddess of Family. “Speak.”