Chapter 6

Tynan woke far less pleasantly than when Lishelle had been beside him.

He stretched, grimacing when his whole body zinged with painful tingles. Definitely not like the pleasurable shivers of her touch.

He swiveled his head against the hard, unfamiliar slab under him, wistfully wishing she might be right there…

And met her accusing dark stare.

Through a transparent wall that separated them. But at least she was there, sitting on the floor with her bright Thorkon gown pooled on the utilitarian gray floor. The oiled ringlets of her hair were twisted into thicker plaits, as if she’d been worrying at them.

The dreadful prickle in his body dissipated as they watched each other, to be replaced by a less physical and somehow more awful pain.

“I am not the criminal you seem to believe,” he said softly.

“You look exactly like him.” She angled the screen she’d been holding on her lap, showing him the images again. She’d been studying him—accusing him, judging him, damning him—while he lay there. “Blackworm. The Thorkon nobleman who kidnapped a dozen Earth women, killed…” She cut herself off with a loud gulp. “He said he did it to win back his dead consort from the realm of the gods. And you say you’re an Avatar of the God of Beloveds—”

“No,” he said. “I am the God of Beloveds.”

“Right. I’ve been reading about Tynan, the guy you’re named after—”

“Not named after. I am he.”

She blinked at him rapidly. “What?”

“I am Tynan, God of Beloveds.”

One last blink, and then she just stared, dark eyes wide and fixed.

Then she laughed.

She laughed so hard the device slid off her lap onto the floor with a clatter, and the images of the face that was his but not, thankfully, vanished.

The tears he’d seen before he was shot glossed her eyes, and she curled her knuckles over her lips as if to silence herself.

When her laughter eased, she dropped that tight-clenched fist into her lap, and her gaze was as hard as onyx. “A god? You weren’t that good in bed.”

“Wasn’t I?” he murmured. But he didn’t let his ire linger as he swung his feet to the deck and pushed himself upright on the hard platform that was serving as his prison bed.

Lishelle scrambled to her feet, obviously unwilling to let him loom over her, even if he was locked away. “We already know you were crazy, sending people into the black hole, talking about reviving ghosts from virtual particles and quantum physics. So don’t bother trying to act even crazier by pretending to think you’re a…a god.”

He paced slowly along the barrier between them, trying to work out the last spasms in his muscles. “It’s still not fully clear to me,” he admitted. “I remember… No, not remember, exactly. It was…a sensation. As if I were sleeping, dreaming. Then coming through the wormhole, feeling the pull from this side. When you told me about the wedding, I knew that’s what drew me. Beloveds, in need of my blessing.”

“You aren’t the God of Beloveds!” Her tone scaled higher. “You’re Blackworm.”

He ran his hands down his chest to settle on his hips. “I do seem to have his appearance.”

Her gaze followed his gesture, then snapped to his face with a guilty purse of her lips before she pivoted away. Had she been remembering her hands on his body?

“Lishelle,” he called. “Please. I’m not what you fear.”

When she halted, he held his breath. But though she twisted her head toward him so he could see her profile, she didn’t look at him. The second prayer, denied. “I was afraid of finding another guy I could…want to spend time with, knowing I’d be making myself vulnerable again. But since you’ll be doing time, I guess that won’t be a problem.”

She strode down the corridor—and though he pressed against the barrier—out of his line of sight.

“Lishelle.” He slapped his palms to the transparent wall between them, but she never looked back.

The cell was exactly three paces wide, not enough to relieve his edginess, though he walked it, repeatedly, until he was almost dizzy from the short expanse. Perhaps he should be grateful they hadn’t done to him what this body had apparently done to their friends. He slammed his fist into the wall again.

A disapproving tsk brought him whirling around. “Keep that up and we’ll have a good excuse to stun you again.”

He faced the Thorkon male—Nor—who had shot him. Beside Nor stood another male, dark where Nor was blond, but with a similar stamp to their features and set to their stance that proclaimed them brothers.

“I am Aelazar Amrazal Thorkonos, Duke of Azthronos, Blood Champion of Zalar, Avatar of Azjor, God of Oaths,” the newcomer said. “And I hear you were pretending to be a cleric for my wedding.”

“I am Tynan, Lord of the Lightlands, God of Beloveds.” Tynan smiled thinly. “And yes, I will still bless your union.”

“Didn’t ask you.” The duke strode closer, eyes narrowed.

“You don’t have to.” Tynan backed away to sit on the platform. “My blessing flows from the Lightlands to all beloveds. It falls on you like the light of stars.”

“Uh-huh.” The duke stopped in front of the cell wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “So how long have you been a god?”

“Raz,” Nor said in a warning tone.

The duke flicked one finger for silence. “My brother faced Blackworm in a fight on this very station not so long ago,” he said. “And I believe him when he says you could be that felon. If you’re going to convince me there’s more to your story, make it good.”

Tynan tilted his head. “I wasn’t just a story. I was a legend, even in my own time.”

“Your time?” Nor growled. “You mean one lunar cycle ago when you were trying to kill Trixie?”

Tynan eyed him irately. “That might’ve been this body, but it wasn’t…me. I can see you’re only half Thorkon”—he shifted his gaze to Raz—“but you must know our history. Back then, I was an arrogant young warlord with a hundred maidens vying for my eye. But I would have none of them except the one who could win me, body, soul, and galactic credits.” He grimaced. “Did I mention I was arrogant? And like many young lords, I needed the money.”

Raz quirked a wry smile. “I might be familiar,” he murmured.

Familiar with the problems of a young lord, or familiar with the history? Tynan wasn’t sure it mattered. Even has he spoke, the story, which he knew in his tongue, came alive in his memories, as if emerging from a stunned sleep. “To the hundred maidens fair, I set three tasks. I hid myself from them in the most distant parts of my kingdom and challenged them to find me. The ones who completed the task of the searching steps would arrive before me weary, their slippers worn thin as fog, sometimes with their soles bloodied.”

“The first invocation of beloveds: the Prayer of Steps Seeking,” Raz said.

“At the time, it wasn’t a prayer,” Tynan reminded him. “Just a young warlord’s idle whim. But that wasn’t enough for me. If they found me, I asked them to perform the ritual of pixberry tea, win a game of countip against me, and weave a traditional Thorkon robe by hand, in the most intricate geometric patterns.”

Nor snorted softly. “Typical idle nobleman. But I guess those were the skills of the women of your time.”

Tynan dropped his gaze. “And I made them do it blindfolded.”

“Larf-licker,” Nor said, though the insult lacked some heat.

Propping his elbows on his knees, Tynan letting his hands dangle between. “I told them they should need their eyes for nothing but me.”

That earned him eye rolls from both males in front of him. And rightly enough. Even as the memories emerged from the distant past, he found them to be strange, wavering things, like ghosts. Had that really been him? No wonder the duke and his brother doubted him.

Raz was silent, but Nor seemed reluctantly interested. “And how many of these paragons of Thorkon girlhood made the cut?”

“Three,” Tynan said. “So I set them one more task.”

“Oh my gods,” Nor exclaimed. “After all that? Really?”

“Wait for it,” Tynan advised him. “The three maidens arrived at my mountain stronghold. One was as pale as starlight. The second had hair like open flame. The third was as dark as the shadows between the stars and flames.” He laced his fingers together. “I could not decide between them.” From beneath his brows, he looked up at the other males. “So I took all three to my bed.”

Raz shook his head. “Oh, you poor idiot.”

Nor pursed his lips. “Well…” he drawled. “I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Tynan shook his head. “Your Grace has the right of it. Maidens of my time were not to be larfed with.” He sighed and leaned back with his shoulders against the cold, blank wall behind him. “One last task, I promised. Since they were riled by their aching fingers, burned from the hot tea and pierced by their blind weaving, this time I would be blindfolded. And I told them, the one of them that I could identify from their touch alone would be my bride.”

Nor barked out a sharp gust of laughter. “Fine. You convinced me. You’re a god. Only a god would be so arrogant.” He slanted a glance at his brother. “Not even a duke would go so far.”

“I was only a man then,” Tynan reminded him. “But it is not unknown for men to rate themselves more highly than the gods.”

“To their sorrow,” Raz said softly.

Tynan nodded. “That night—I called it the task of many fingers, but it would become the third invocation, the Prayer of the Touch At Last—they blindfolded me, they stripped me nude, they pleasured me until the moment before the suns rose…and then they slew me.”

Nor tucked his chin, grimacing in what seemed like unwilling sympathy. “Oh. Huh. I did not see that coming.”

“Neither did I,” Tynan said wryly. “What with the blindfold and all.”

Raz snorted. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t see they were goddesses?”

Tynan scowled at the duke. “Easy for you to say, since you know the legend after the fact.” He shrugged one shoulder. “In retrospect, it was rather obvious that they were inordinately beautiful. And probably a bit too accommodating considering what I’d put them through. They were goddesses of antiquity, who are always the least forgiving, you know. The girls I’d rejected so rudely had prayed to them, and they came to judge me for themselves. They tore my heart from my chest and deemed it wanting. As my mortal life ended, they decided that my punishment would be to forever watch others finding their beloveds and yet never touch my own.”

He looked down at his hands clenched on his thighs and only with great difficulty forced himself to slide them to the bench beneath him. The cold, hard slab was what he’d deserved.

When he finally glanced up, the other two males were looking not at him but down, as if they too were contemplating their fates in love.

Except when the duke raised his gaze, his dark eyes were hard. He gestured at the device strapped to his wrist. “Just received the results of the ident test we ran on the sample we took from you while you were unconscious. It—and the automatic retest—match the Blackworm sample on file with the penitentiary.”

Letting out a short, harsh breath, Nor shook his head. “Really? And I was just about to believe in gods.”

Tynan watched them, struck mute. Was it true? The device had shown him an image, tested his blood as the goddesses had tested him, and declared him a criminal.

“Nothing to say?” Nor took a menacing step toward the barrier between them. “You had a lot of words just a moment ago.”

Lishelle had accused him of the same. “Would more words change your mind?”

Nor glowered. “I saw you die once. I’d willingly watch it twice.”

Tynan leaned his head back against the wall behind him. “Apparently, it would be the third time.”

Though he sensed the other males filing out, he didn’t bother lifting his head to watch them go. What was he? A foolish young lord of legend? A murderous disgraced nobleman? A god cast out of the Lightlands?

The threads of his being felt strung out, thinning to nothingness as if being sucked into the black hole spinning somewhere outside. Which he suspected might be his fate again if the duke and his brother had their way.

And he wasn’t even sure he would stop them.