Strange memories, visions, sounds clicked in Callia’s brain. She saw smoke, fog, a burning light that looked as if it came from a ship. She heard voices calling, drawing her in, familiar ones from days gone by but which she couldn’t quite place. The scene was peaceful and she remembered wanting to go, had some uncontrollable urge to step onto that boat and sail through the murky waters to lands unknown. But in the background, growing louder by the second, had been another voice. A male voice. Zander’s voice.
I didn’t believe you. I never believed you. Why would I? I left you. Did you hear me, Callia? I left you when you needed me most. And I didn’t even look back.
A lump formed in Callia’s throat. Those words had been real. That voice had been his. He’d stirred emotions in her she’d kept buried for years. The same emotions he’d dug up in that cave when he called her a liar.
Transferable.
“He purposely made me angry so I’d force my pain out on him,” she muttered, staring across the room. Dear gods, she really could transfer her powers. That moment in the cave with Zander hadn’t been a fluke.
“Yeah,” Lena said. “And it worked. With you pushing most of the infection out, I was able to extract the rest. It explains your amazing scars. The force of our combined power is incredible. I only wish…”
“What?” Callia’s eyes darted up to Lena’s.
“I only wish you’d known about that when you got the other scars. The ones on your back.”
Callia’s chest went cold. Of course Lena would have seen the scars on her back. But Zander…“You didn’t tell Zander about them, did you?”
“No.” Lena crossed her arms. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?” Callia rose slowly to her feet.
Lena dropped her arms in a huff. “It’s really a moot point, don’t you think? We both know he saw them before.”
Oh, shit. Callia dropped her head into her hands. Oh…shit.
“Why are you so upset he saw them again?” Lena asked in a sharp tone. “You got them because of him.”
Callia rubbed both hands over her face. Oh, gods, he’d seen the one part of her she always kept covered. Knowing about the scars was one thing. Seeing them was something else entirely. “It was my choice,” she said quietly. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“No, I would understand.”
At the ice in Lena’s voice, Callia glanced up. Hatred and contempt creased the half-breed’s face. “My mother was Argolean, like you. Eighty-four years ago she was betrothed to an ándras she didn’t love. Her parents arranged the marriage because she was already a hundred years old and hadn’t found a mate yet. I guess you could say she had cold feet. She ran away, accessed one of the secret portals in the Aegis Mountains and came to the human realm. Where she met my father. A human. They fell in love and she got pregnant with me. But females in your realm aren’t safe anywhere, not even here.”
Secret portals? Callia had thought they were fiction.
“Her father tracked her down,” Lena went on. “My pappous. He found her, and he took her back. And he had her whipped, just like you. They called it a cleansing ritual, but there was no cleansing about it. It was punishment, clear and simple. Because she dared go against what the males of your world deem right.”
The bite in Lena’s voice made Callia swallow hard. She didn’t doubt the half-breed’s story. But she forced herself to ask the question burning on her tongue, even though a part of her already knew the answer. “What happened after?”
“She escaped again and went back to my father. I was born not long after.” Lena dropped her arms and glanced down at the bed. “They were on their way to this very colony when a group of Argolean males tracked them down. When my mother refused to go back with them, a fight erupted. They were both killed.”
Callia’s eyes slid closed. She eased to sit on the bed again. “How did you…?”
“Nick and a few of his soldiers came across the fight. They killed several of the males. The others ran off. He brought me here, to the colony, and a woman took me in. I was two weeks away from my second birthday, but I remember bits and pieces of that fight. Of my mother. And I remember the scars on her back, just like yours.”
Callia’s heart broke for Lena, but her own situation was so different. She shook her head, opened her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that happened. It’s horrible. You have to know that isn’t normal in my world.”
“Not normal?” Lena’s eyes grew wide. “Look at your back.”
Callia shook her head. “No one tracked me down or forced me to submit. It’s not like that anymore.”
Fire erupted in Lena’s dark eyes. She pointed toward the door. “That so-called guardian out there is responsible for the marks on your back. He’s here to take you back. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s not like that. He didn’t—”
“He did. I saw the guilt in his eyes. I saw the way you reacted when he whispered in your ear. And now he’s waiting until you’re healthy enough to take you back so he can punish you all over again. Well, I won’t let him. You’re not leaving here with—”
“He doesn’t know, Lena.” Callia pushed to her feet again, her own temper and voice rising. “He doesn’t know what happened to me because I never told him. It was my choice.” When Lena’s mouth snapped shut, Callia softened her voice. “Don’t you see? I could have stayed in the human world, but I chose not to. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my father. The cleansing ceremony…” She lifted her hands, dropped them. “It’s not practiced anymore. My father is one of the Twelve and I…I was betrothed to a future elder. My relationship with Zander—” She looked toward the door, swallowed the lump of remorse suddenly thick in her throat. “It hurt my father, in ways you—no one—can understand.”
She glanced back at Lena. “I knew what I was getting into with Zander from the very beginning. I made my own choices. Zander has his faults, but he’s not like your pappous. He’d never intentionally hurt a female. And if he’d known what I’d chosen, he never would have allowed it to happen. No matter how he felt about me at the end.”
“Then why?” Lena asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “Why would you let them do that to you?”
Callia looked down at her bare feet, her toes all but buried in the thick carpeting. What answer could she give that would make even a lick of sense? It hadn’t entirely been for her father, to save face, to restore his name within the Council. It hadn’t been so she could marry Loukas down the road either—that hadn’t even been a thought in her mind. Part of it had been…for her. Her power was all about balance, about restoring order to the body, but she couldn’t heal herself. And crazy as it sounded, physical pain, though it hurt, could do that. It could ease some of the anguish in her heart and give her something else to focus on. And in some small way, it had been a step toward making things right.
“Because,” she said softly, “I needed my own sense of peace.” She shook her head again. “I know you can’t understand that. But this was not his fault. It wasn’t ever his fault.”
Lena glanced toward the door, and though there was still disapproval in her eyes when she looked back to Callia again, at least there wasn’t contempt. “I’m protective. It’s in my nature.”
Callia kept her distance from people, primarily because she’d learned to keep things to herself, but this was the kind of female she could see herself being friends with. “It’s a good way to be. For a healer. But Zander’s not the enemy. He never was.”