Foretold Read online

  She glanced up at him with a puzzled expression. Just then, Amber walked up to join them as Gabriel readied the weights, saving him from an embarrassing explanation.

  Because the sisters were triplets, they were all identical in appearance outside of their eye colors and, of course, their markings. But where Skye favored bright colors and feminine clothing like skirts and slippers, Amber usually wore darker or more neutral colors and pants or shorts with combat boots. Olivia was generally somewhere in between, favoring pastels and tanks with capris or flowing sundresses when they weren’t training.

  The differences didn’t end there, of course. Amber was highly skilled in all forms of combat. Her muscle tone was beautifully cut, her movements against an opponent inhumanly precise, intuitive and focused. She could best nearly anyone in hand-to-hand combat as well as with her sword, a gift that had been blessed by the elders and presented to her upon her transition to the Estilorian plane. In almost direct opposition to these abilities, she could also heal with just her touch and a thought. He personally respected her ability to lead as well as to cut to the heart of any matter, and had come to think of her as the perfect match for his leader.

  Olivia, on the other hand, was the least coordinated of her sisters. She had come to this plane in the weakest physical condition of each of them, having dedicated her time on the human plane to her studies. But she had easily turned her love of learning toward her lessons in defense these past months, and was now in excellent physical condition. Still, her skills lay in her ability to communicate with animals as well as her remarkable ability to hit a target with a bow and arrow. She could fire an arrow from any bow, but particularly the one gifted to her by the elders, and hit any target she could see. He had come to value her sharp intellect and sound judgment.

  And then there was Skye.

  He watched her face now as she chatted about Aurora’s cubs while Amber listened in her characteristic silence. There was such animation flashing across Skye’s features it was all but impossible not to react to it. Where her sisters were more reserved, she was anything but. Her lack of emotional control was both exhausting and invigorating.

  Like Amber, Skye had entered the Estilorian plane with a respectable amount of physical strength due to her years of dancing. That strength had only become more enhanced over these past months of intensive conditioning. She didn’t have nearly the focus and control to fight like Amber. But her endurance, flexibility and ability to think quickly made her excellent at evading attack. She had also grown quite skilled at using throwing weapons like darts and star blades, finding that they flew rather naturally from her hand if she just thought of them as an extension of her arm.

  Her most potent weapon, however, was her ability to command holy light. Only a being with an intrinsically pure spirit and absolute faith could wield such a powerful force. The fact was, he knew of no other Estilorian who could handle it as effectively as she did. While this rare ability did her little good against most Estilorians, it was the most effective weapon possible to exert against the evil Mercesti. If it hadn’t been for this ability, in point of fact, it would have been Skye who had suffered at the hands of the Mercesti several weeks ago rather than Olivia.

  This was a realization that frequently kept him awake at night.

  While her innate ability to bring forth holy light was a remarkable weapon, it also presented him with no end of challenges as her Gloresti. Her basic nature—the combination of traits that allowed her to bring forth that holy light—was so open and trusting that she bordered on naïve. She exhibited such unbridled enthusiasm for everything she undertook that she frequently placed herself in harm’s way without intending it. He had to constantly be on guard, rarely letting her out of his sight.

  He had never anticipated this when he had been selected by the elders to pair with Skye as her Gloresti. Certainly, he had known he would have to protect her from harm. But to find that the greatest risk to her was, well, her…that had proven unbelievably challenging and often frustrating.

  Just then, as they moved toward the benches and weights, she turned and tossed a laughing glance at him over her right shoulder, almost as though she knew his thoughts. The sparkle in her beautiful eyes made his breath catch. And when she paired the look with a curve of her full, heart-shaped lips, he had to force his gaze away to regain control of himself.

  And he knew then that however illogical it was, despite the difficulties she often presented, he wouldn’t ever change a thing about her.

  Chapter Three

  James and Olivia returned from their honeymoon the following day. Skye was in the middle of a four-way, hand-to-hand training session with Amber, Gabriel and Caleb in the courtyard when Olivia’s thought reached her.

  We’re here!

  The thought so surprised and thrilled Skye that she forgot about the training exercise and got a heavy boot to the hip for her inattention. Gasping at the painful contact, she followed the momentum of her body into a back shoulder roll, returning instantly to her feet. Catching Gabriel’s puzzled and slightly apologetic look, as he had been the one to hit her, she hurried to explain.

  “Sorry! Liv is here. And James, of course,” she explained a little breathlessly, rubbing her hip to ease the sting. “I got distracted. Can we go and see them?”

  “Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.

  Knowing that his concern was genuine, she smiled. He was every inch the human equivalent to a southern gentleman for all his centuries as the Gloresti elder. “I’m fine. Just a little bruise.”

  She saw Amber’s questioning look and waved her sister off. She’d be fine without healing.

  “They’ll go to Aurora first,” Skye said pointedly, already moving in that direction.

  “All right, all right,” Gabriel relented, returning her smile. “Let’s go. We won’t get anything accomplished now, anyway.”

  “Yay!”

  Turning, she hurried to the edge of the courtyard. The observers gathered there didn’t move aside as she thought they would. Indeed, she would have run right into them if Caleb hadn’t grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back.

  After muttering something indistinguishable under his breath, he snapped, “Move,” to the handful of males blocking the exit.

  They moved. Giving Caleb a grateful look, she continued out of the courtyard and then extended her wings to fly to Aurora’s paddock.

  She absolutely loved flying. Bringing forth her wings after assuming her Estilorian form had come very naturally to her, unlike for her sisters. The ability to control her flight, however, had been much more difficult. Now that she had been practicing for so many weeks, she was doing much better with it.

  It was kind of a shame, really. She had come to enjoy getting “rescued” by Caleb from her past failed attempts.

  Glancing beside her, she caught his gaze. His Gloresti dark blue wings were close enough to touch her nearly translucent light blue ones. While this would have been a problem for any other Estilorian, her wings had the ability to fade whenever something came into contact with them. Thus, his wings didn’t impact her flight at all. Still, she realized that he was focused intently on her in case she accidentally veered and he had to chase after her. It was almost humorous.

  Fortunately, they reached the paddock without incident. She spotted James first. He stood with his hands on his narrow hips, his muscular arms looking even more bronzed than they had before the honeymoon. He wore khaki pants and a dark green tank, revealing the light green and dark blue mark on his right bicep that identified him as Olivia’s avowed. His dark blond hair, worn in a choppy, artful cut around his handsome face, glinted in the sunlight.

  If judging from her human perspective, she might have pegged him as no more than about twenty human years in age, though he was closer to a full century like Caleb was. Much like her and her sisters, who looked their human age of eighteen, most Estilorians were quite youthful in appearance. The fact that Estilorians didn’t age contributed to
this, as did the fact that transitioning beings tended to assume Estilorian forms that represented the age in their human lifetime that they considered the most vital. Thus, generally speaking, the older an Estilorian was, the younger they might actually appear, since life expectancy was so much lower millennia ago. Gabriel, for example, looked about the same age as James and Caleb, at most just entering his twenties, yet he was thousands of years old.

  Crazy maybe. But she could admit that not aging physically would surely have its benefits as the centuries passed.

  She landed a few feet from James and returned the smile he flashed at her. Olivia’s husband had become very like a brother to her over the past few months. Hurrying forward, she threw her arms around him.

  “Welcome home!” she said enthusiastically, pulling back and adding, “Gosh, I’ve missed you guys!”

  “It’s good to be back,” he replied. Then he turned toward Caleb and held out his fist, waiting until Caleb tapped his own fist against it.

  “Glad to see you didn’t get yourself killed,” Caleb said by way of greeting, earning another good-humored smile from James.

  Gabriel and Amber landed then. As they greeted James, Skye turned and hurried into the paddock in search of Olivia. She found her middle sister on the ground in a copse of trees, kneeling beside Aurora and her two cubs.

  “Hi, Liv!” she said cheerfully, moving closer. She hesitated when she saw the unshed tears in Olivia’s eyes. “No, no…none of that now,” she said, understanding completely and immediately experiencing the same deep emotion out of empathy for her sister. Falling to her knees, she took Olivia’s hand and closed her eyes.

  Then she mentally revisited the experience of Aurora’s labor and delivery, allowing Olivia to feel as though she had been there. They were both crying by the time she was done.

  “Thanks, Skye,” she said.

  She gave Skye a hug and wiped her tears at the same time. Her light gold wedding ring with its green and blue stone winked from her left ring finger, reminding Skye that her sister’s emotions were now shared directly with James. Indeed, when she looked up, she spotted him now standing a few feet away. She was struck by the look he shared with Olivia. It was filled with a tenderness that he wouldn’t have been capable of several months ago. She smiled, incredibly happy for them both.

  “So, can I name one?” she asked eagerly, intentionally keeping the mood light.

  Olivia nodded, catching her gaze and grinning. “Actually, Aurora and Titan would like you and Amber to each name one of their cubs since you both attended the births.”

  Catching Amber’s surprised expression from where she stood beside Gabriel at the edge of the clearing, Skye clapped her hands excitedly. “Yay! Which one do you want to name?”

  “Uh, look, I can’t even think of names for my own kid yet,” Amber replied, bringing a hand instinctively to her waist and looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Oh, come on. It’ll be good practice,” Skye urged. “How about I take the girl and you take the boy? You don’t have to decide now. We can let them get a bit bigger first, show us their personalities.”

  Rolling her eyes and throwing her hands up in defeat, Amber relented.

  “All right, then,” Gabriel said with a laugh in his voice, rubbing a supportive hand along Amber’s arm as James moved forward to help Olivia to her feet. “I know the other elders want to meet with us as a group to discuss the plans regarding visiting each of the homelands. But I say we all escape to our rooms for the rest of the day and catch up.” Glancing at all of them, he grinned. “Any takers?”

  Sitting around the dining table in Gabriel and Amber’s room and sharing a meal prepared for them by the Lekwuesti, they caught up on the events of the past two weeks. James revealed that he could now hear the thoughts of animals when Olivia connected with them, since she could project her thoughts to him. They had experimented a bit in the woods surrounding the home of the Corgloresti elder, Ini-herit, who had been generous enough to loan them the use of his heavily enchanted home for their wedding ceremony and honeymoon.

  “That’s so cool,” Skye declared as she reached for another one of the soft rolls in the basket in the middle of the table. “I would love to know what animals are thinking.”

  “It’s interesting,” James agreed as he forked up a bite of the casserole on his plate. “Though most of them are merely thinking about the most basic things. Food, shelter, safety…that kind of thing.”

  “Any more luck controlling them?” Amber asked Olivia after sipping her orange juice.

  Shaking her head, Olivia responded, “So far I’ve only been successful with Aurora and Titan, and even they still have enough of their own consciousness to refuse me. It’s definitely not like it was with the wolves.”

  “Maybe it will develop more in time,” Gabriel suggested. He placed half of the roll he had just buttered on Amber’s plate.

  “Maybe.”

  Skye looked down at the roll in her own hand, fighting back a frown. The reminder of the incident on the human plane in which Amber had been attacked by wolves was the very darkest in her memory. Because of her, Amber had nearly died.

  When her burgeoning power had unexpectedly swept Skye and Gabriel off the ground during their travels on the way to where they transitioned from the human plane, it had left Amber alone to face a pack of wild wolves in the Alaskan wilderness. The wolves prevailed. Ultimately, Olivia had drawn upon her own abilities to command the wolves to leave, but by then Amber was in dire condition. And when Gabriel implored Skye for her help so he could get to Amber and help her heal, she had been so frightened and overwhelmed by the effect of her power that she had denied him. Only when he had grabbed her and jumped from the tree they had landed in, forcing her to either use her power or face death, had she found it in herself to take command of her abilities.

  The conversation ebbed and swelled around her as she tore her roll into pieces and relived that terrible and selfish memory. Then she felt another presence in her mind.

  Back to this, are you?

  It was the voice of her spirit guardian, Sky Tomaganuk. As the elder for the tribe to which she had transitioned as a baby on the human plane, he had been hugely respected by his people. His lamented death had occurred only days before Skye’s arrival in the care of a Corgloresti in human form. Thus, she had been immediately welcomed into the tribe and given the elder’s name as a way to continue his presence and heritage. Now, he served as a constant presence for her on the Estilorian plane, occasionally materializing in a visible spirit form in times of need.

  I’m sorry, Qel’a, she responded with her mind.

  I thought you had moved beyond this.

  I thought I had, too. But it probably doesn’t hurt to remind myself why I must work so hard. I’ll never let something like that happen again.

  “Skye?”

  Glancing up and catching Olivia’s curious gaze, she blinked. “Sorry. What?”

  Grinning, Olivia shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “You’ve pretty well destroyed that roll,” Amber observed dryly, nodding toward the mess on Skye’s plate.

  Blushing, she dropped the remnants in her hands. “Um, yeah. Guess I didn’t want it, after all.” She noticed Caleb studying her carefully, so she fixed a smile on her face. “So, did Amber tell you about her new maternity wardrobe?” she asked Olivia.

  That effectively turned the topic as well as Skye’s attention from her upsetting thoughts. They spent the rest of the afternoon in comfortable conversation, truly reflecting the family they had become. She was grateful for this time together, just the six of them. She knew it wouldn’t be this way much longer. They would all be traveling to the class homelands for a whirlwind tour before Amber’s pregnancy got too noticeable. Then she imagined Gabriel and Amber would return to their home for the baby’s birth. She hoped she, Olivia, James and Caleb would be invited to come along, but she certainly wasn’t going to assume so.

  And after that, she ha
d no idea where Olivia and James would end up, never mind herself and Caleb. It hadn’t been discussed at all in the past few months, so she really didn’t know what to expect. But she refused to dwell on it. As she had told Caleb, she simply had to believe that the future ahead was going to be bright and happy.

  She would have to make the best of whatever came.

  That evening, after Caleb and Skye had retired to their rooms and Amber and Olivia showered in their separate bathrooms, Gabriel knocked on the door to the bedroom beside his. James and Olivia would be sharing it now.

  James opened it with curiosity on his face. Gabriel imagined the surprise was greater because they could, after all, communicate quite easily with just their minds.

  But some conversations should just really be done in person.

  “I wanted to chat with you alone for a minute,” he explained when James just looked at him expectantly.

  “Sure. Come on in.” He opened the door and stepped back.

  Gabriel followed him in, leaving the door open. Then, getting right to the point, he asked, “So, how did everything go?”

  When he saw the color flush into James’ cheeks, he knew his point had been understood. And when the slow, wide smile spread across his face, he had all the answer he needed.

  Still, James responded, “It was absolutely incredible. Thanks again for the, uh, education ahead of time.”

  Struggling with his own discomfort, Gabriel nodded. Because Estilorians didn’t interact with each other in ways beyond friendship—and that only rarely—he had known that James would be completely in the dark about sex. As much as it discomfited him, he had taken it upon himself to shed some light on the subject with his young Gloresti before the wedding.

  “Actually,” James continued, now looking thoughtful, “I’ve wondered many times in the past two weeks why Estilorians stopped…”

  He trailed off. Gabriel knew what he meant, though. “Yeah. I’m sure that seems rather perplexing right now. You have to understand that the entire experience is greatly enhanced because of your particular connection to Olivia. Even without being avowed and able to share thoughts and feelings, the emotions of love and passion are usually necessary to enjoy sex, particularly for females.” He felt heat creeping into the back of his neck and wanted to sigh over the all-too-human reaction to such an intimate topic. Plowing gamely on, he said, “Over the centuries, when we lost touch with emotions, we lost the desire to connect with each other this way. And since Estilorians can’t reproduce, sex seemed to serve no real purpose.”