"You boys want to go to the mountain and snowboard this afternoon?" I asked innocently.

"There's snowboarding?" Joey was already standing.

"We'll show you, if Dee can do without us," Galaxsan grinned.

"I can make do with Stellan," Dee agreed.

"Come on, we'll rent the equipment," Celestan offered before they all disappeared.

"Ask Teeg to contact me as soon as he gets in," Dee said. "Reah, I think you need that nap."

"Yeah, I was going to go back to the hammock as soon as the kitchen's cleaned up."

"I'll take care of that, go get some sleep," Mathilde smiled.

"Come on, shortness," Astralan pulled me off my barstool. "There's something you should consider before you marry that man," Astralan said as we walked toward the hammock.

"What's that?" I stopped and looked up at him. He and his brothers all had dark-brown hair and dark eyes. Enough to turn many a head, I knew. Franklin and the others had certainly been taken by Galaxsan and Celestan.

"That I saw you first," Astralan replied. I got a kiss from Teeg's number-one bodyguard warlock, who went one better, using power to settle both of us in the hammock. "Comfy?" Astralan's arm pulled me close so my cheek rested against his shoulder.

"I'm getting that way," I sighed and closed my eyes.

* * *

"Oh, no." Ilvan knew what was coming if the rest of them didn't. They'd landed inside Edan Desh's office at Desh's number two on Tulgalan. Edan's anger radiated off him as he flipped through record after record on a comp-vid.

"Reah's father, whom she still believes to be her brother, has gotten notice that Addah Desh, his father, may have discovered that he is siphoning funds away from the business. He is moving credits around to cover the missing amounts," Belen offered information, giving Ilvan a hard look. Ilvan quailed before those eyes, filled with stars as they were. Edan came to some sort of decision, slapped the comp-vid into a desk drawer and rose, trailing past his invisible audience and slamming the door behind him. Belen led the crowd out of the office behind Edan as he stalked through the busy kitchen, snatching up a heavy steel ladle as he walked.

Gavril drew back and stopped but Kifirin, who brought up the rear, forced him forward. Reah was there, her back turned to Edan Desh as she rolled out pastry at a table. Too short to reach the top comfortably at age ten, she stood on a short step stool to work. Her clothing didn't fit and hung loose about her, likely hand-me-downs from an older brother, her hair hung in a long braid down her back and she was completely focused on her work, using the wood pin to roll out a flaky crust.

The first hard blow from Edan's ladle hit her between the shoulders and she cried out, falling from the stool. He then proceeded to hit any part of her he could. Face, hands, back, ribs, legs. When she fell in the floor and curled up in a ball, the blows still rained down.

"I think she's dead," one of the kitchen helpers, never thinking to intervene, finally said.

"Really?" Edan snarled. Tossing the ladle into the nearby sink, Edan lifted a foot and stomped down on Reah's ankle, crushing it.

Kevis wanted to weep, kill Edan Desh and then weep again. Lissa was staring in horror at what she'd seen. Belen was rubbing her back again. This was very similar to the treatment Lissa had received at the hands of her stepfather. A younger Ilvan had stood on the other side of the table, watching Edan deal out his anger against a helpless child. "Call an ambulance," Ilvan said to one of the assistants.

Gavril watched, his anger seething as Reah was loaded onto a gurney and hauled to the nearest emergency facility. Belen got his company there as well. Edan showed up shortly after Reah arrived, pulling the head of surgery and the hospital administrator aside.

"Six months of free meals at Desh's, if you say this is an accident," he offered. Lissa cursed under her breath when both hospital employees agreed. Reah was treated for broken bones, her crushed ankle was reassembled using a surgery robot and then taken to a room while still unconscious. Bruises were everywhere, cracked and broken ribs were bandaged and casts were on the ankle and a wrist.

"She's only ten," Belen pointed out. "If you hadn't ordered an ambulance, Reah would have died." He looked again at Ilvan, who lowered his head before the god. "But before we leave, we'll go forward two days." Belen flashed them to the appropriate time. Reah's small body still lay on the hospital bed, unconscious. Two nurses walked in. Kevis drew in a breath. He knew one of them. Quite well, in fact.

"Who'll know?" she hissed. "Do you know how much we can get for natural hair this color? Do you?" A young Ceerah Kade pulled scissors from her pocket and proceeded to cut through Reah's long braid, right at the nape. Stuffing it inside a medical waste bag, Ceerah and her fellow conspirator walked out of Reah's room.

"Edan wouldn't pay for a haircut afterward," Ilvan's hands shook and he wouldn't look at anyone. "The hospital staff claimed her hair was cut so they could treat the head wound. It was crooked of course, and Reah was teased and mocked by her schoolmates and the kitchen staff before it grew out again."

"I want to kill you," Lok had a knife at Ilvan's throat. "And go back and kill that evil that was your brother. Do you see this?" Lok hauled Ilvan toward Reah's bed. "She's ten, for fuck's sake. And you stood there and let Edan beat her. Except you didn't turn out much different, did you? He stole from your father; you stole from her. Addah might not have missed the money. Reah did."

"I'm sorry," Ilvan whined. "I thought all of you were taking care of her. She had that house in Targis and everything."

"The house you helped yourself to?" Gavril was as angry as Lok, his eyes red, fangs out.

"She asked us not to harm you," Lissa said, standing before Ilvan and Radolf suddenly. "Radolf, how could you do this to her? How?"

"The spell Wylend placed wore off," Radolf sighed. "And I thought the same as Ilvan. That someone else was taking care of her. I wanted revenge against Wylend, but what can you do to the King of Karathia? I took my anger out on Reah. I see now that was a mistake. What are you going to do with us?" Radolf looked at Belen.

"I won't do anything," Belen replied. "But when you leave this life, you will choose your own form of punishment in the next one."

"That one," Kifirin pointed at Ceerah, who was back, checking the machines monitoring Reah's heartbeat and respiration, "that one will certainly suffer in her next life."

"I intend to see that she suffers in this one," Lendill hissed.

"And Reah can't even despise her father now," Kevis sighed helplessly. "She can't work through the anger, ever, because she can't be angry with a man who is no longer the one who fathered her. He wears the same likeness and she is powerless against that."

"It was a failed experiment," Kifirin admitted quietly. "I thought to give her a parent. That wasn't the one she needed. I also wasn't the one she needed."

"It's too late to take him back now. He's an important member of Karzac's team," Lissa pointed out.

"I know this," Kifirin said. "But his life will not be extended, as I thought to do at first. He will have to understand that."

Kevis left them all standing there, discussing the current Edan Desh. Approaching Reah's bed, he held out a hand. "Pretty girl," he whispered, touching her face, feeding her the slightest bit of healing power and repairing the damage a steel ladle had done to a small head.

"Not too much, just enough," Belen whispered at Kevis' side. Kevis nodded and went to the ankle after treating what could have been permanent brain injury. Bits of bone in the ankle fused together, reforming until there was only a clean break left. "Very good," Belen said, pulling Kevis away.

"We will go now," Belen announced, landing them inside Lissa's palace library. "Perhaps you should serve refreshments?" Belen told Lissa before folding away.

"Garde, you're not welcome here," Lissa snapped at him.

"Oh, he has sliced his own hand," Kifirin said. "Don't tell him to leave, avilepha. Or me, either. We will both bear the weight of our treatment of Reah."

"I'm going to a jewelry store," Aurelius moved away. "I'll get something to eat while I'm out."

"I'm coming with you," Gavril said. Lok, too, came along. Farzi and Nenzi, who'd mostly remained silent and troubled during the entire ordeal, nodded and slipped behind Gavril. Tory, Lendill and Ry, not to be left behind, joined the group.

Chapter 7

"Too gaudy." Lok shook his head at the huge diamond ring presented to him. "The cost isn't an issue," he assured the sales assistant, a bright young man who was hoping for his largest commission ever. Eight men stood inside the jewelry store, all determined to buy something.

"Something smaller and more tasteful," Ry agreed. "Reah won't wear anything that huge. She'll just use it the next time somebody needs medical treatment."

"At least she had something to use. I don't mind that a child's life was saved through the sale of a necklace," Aurelius said. "But I want to get a replacement. Today."

"This," Farzi and Nenzi were in total agreement. The gold and platinum had been etched in a snake scale pattern on the bracelet and necklace. It wasn't too thick, either, and both knew the set would be striking on Reah.

"Where are our rings?" Lendill asked Gavril.

"I have them at the palace," Gavril replied. "In her jewelry box. I was waiting to make sure she wanted them before returning them."

"Gav, she could have sold your ring by itself and had any life she wanted. You know the first things she asked that thieving woman about were her rings." Rylend referred to the woman Garde had hired to take Reah's place in the groves. The woman, with her husband, had taken Reah's things and burned what they thought to be trash. Those things had been important to Reah; she wouldn't have kept them if they weren't.