Chapter 26 #2
Olina staggered back against the tall cabinet.
She looked more surprised than in pain. She looked down at the knife sticking out of her stomach.
With a grunt of pain, she pulled it out, tossed it onto the table, then looked at her hand.
There was blood on it. She looked back at Aradella.
“You think you have harmed me? That you’ve ended me?
This is nothing.” Olina put both hands over the wound and muttered some words.
As Aradella watched, the wound closed. No more blood came out.
Olina looked at her. “Now I will do to you what I should have done years ago.” She raised her arms into the air and in an
instant, a fog came up from the floor and began to fill the room.
This is the end, Aradella thought. She stood upright, put her shoulders back, and stiffened her body in preparation. Visions of Mekos came
to her and she thought of what could have been—but would not happen now.
But in the next instant, the fog disappeared. There one second, gone the next. Olina put her arms down, her hands over the
wound. It was starting to ooze blood. “What have you done to me?” Her face showed her shock.
It took Aradella a moment to realize that maybe this wasn’t the end. Not for her, anyway. “You built a wall between me and
my home, but I made that space into a library. My friends brought me books, not about love but about plants.” Aradella paused to look at the blood that was growing under Olina’s clasped
hands. “That is the knife that I used to kill Valona. It still has her blood on it, and I wrapped it in the leaves of a plant
from her garden. She had three of them with a little fence around them.”
From the way Olina’s eyes widened, she knew about the plants. “Valona said they were her insurance against my mother.”
“I immediately recognized that plant. It’s from a place on Earth called the , and it’s name is . . .” She waved her
hand. “That doesn’t matter, but it translates as ‘go home.’ The theory is that the poison of the leaves allows you enough
time to go home before you die.” She watched as Olina, still showing her shock, slowly slid down the cabinet to sit on the
floor. More blood was coming from the stab wound. And with each second, Olina looked weaker. She might be able to heal the
cut but she couldn’t survive the poison. Or was Valona’s blood on the blade the death knell?
Suddenly, all the hate Aradella had felt for most of her life dissolved.
It was over! One of the women who had caused her so much pain was dying.
She sat down on the floor beside her enemy, not touching but close, and removed the medallion and held it.
“Is there anything you’d like to reveal before you leave this existence?
” Aradella raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you know something that could hurt the mother who never loved you. I assume she’s alive and safe somewhere. ”
Olina glared at the medallion. “So you found it. My mother was insane with anger that it was gone.”
Aradella opened the case and looked at the picture. “Tell me about it. Who is the beautiful woman?”
“My mother.”
It was hard to believe that the pretty woman could age into the old crone that was Urah, but then Aradella looked at the picture.
“This looks like you. I saw that it reminded me of someone. Do the stones mean something?”
Olina was getting weaker. “It’s a lock. I played with it when I was a child—until my mother caught me and took it away from
me. Start with the big one and push 3 7 1.”
Aradella pushed the stones in that order and a tiny door opened to show a picture of a man. She instantly recognized him.
When he’d disappeared, his picture was everywhere as people searched for him. “This is Haver Beyhan, Tanek’s grandfather.
Why is his picture with Urah’s?”
“She loved him. He was my father.”
It took Aradella moments to digest this information. She knew that Haver had not left his wife and family to be with Urah
and their child. It must have made Urah furious. “Is this why Urah destroyed the Homestead and killed Haver’s son?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t an Empyrean conspiracy?”
“No. It was about my father. He wanted nothing to do with us.” She gave a half smile at Aradella’s look of shock mixed with disbelief.
“So you don’t know everything as you think you do!
He and my mother were first in love as children.
They were to marry but he saw my mother do something he didn’t like, so he left her.
It was cruel of him as what she did was a small thing. What did a peasant child matter?”
Aradella didn’t want to imagine what horrible thing Urah had been caught doing. “But he did impregnate her.”
“A few drops of this and that and men are easy. I doubt that he remembered what happened either time.”
Aradella’s eyes widened. “Either time?”
“I have a brother, but my mother sent him away when he was a baby. For his protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“From me, of course.” Olina’s tone said she was proud of that. “I tried hard to kill the brat and I was making progress, so
she took him away. I’ve searched for him but I couldn’t find him or the key.”
Aradella drew in her breath. “What key?”
“I don’t know! But it’s something important. She thought it would protect him, but it didn’t.” Again, Olina gave a weak smile.
“The key does something on Empyrea and only he can use it. Without him, it’s useless.”
Aradella looked at the picture in the medallion. “Haver died in a cave,” she whispered.
Olina gave a nod of admiration that she knew that. “My mother only meant to kill him but she got one of his sons instead. He tried to hide from her but she found him. To be fair, she offered him their son,
Ramil, as a replacement for his other son, but he said no.” Olina shrugged. “He forced her to do what she did.”
“Meaning that she killed Haver in that cave.” Aradella spoke softy as she imagined the horror of the scene.
Olina nodded at the medallion. “That’s when she put his soul in there. It’s why she was so angry when that goat-man stole
it.”
With wide eyes, Aradella looked at the medallion. “His soul is in here?” she whispered.
“It’s an easy spell. Even a nothing like you could do it—7 7 7 will unlock it. I wanted to put his soul into one of my riding birds but I was kept from it. My mother—”
Olina gave Aradella a wide-eyed look then she said no more. Her head fell forward onto her chest and she was silent. That
her lifelong enemy was dead—at her hand—wasn’t something Aradella could quite comprehend. With her hand on the edge of the
table, she tried to stand, but her legs were wobbly.
Then, suddenly, Mekos was there. She smiled at him in a drunken way. “I did it again.” Then the room seemed to start turning
around rapidly.
Mekos caught her before she went down. Holding her in his arms, he looked at Davro. At their feet was Olina’s body. His eyes
were asking, What do I do about this?
“I will take care of this,” Davro said. With his thumb and a finger, he picked up the knife off the table, dropped it into
an empty jar and tightened the lid over it. He ran his disk down Aradella’s inert body. When he looked at his nephew, there
were tears in his eyes. “I never thought I’d see this. You are going to be a father to—” He swallowed. “To two babies.”
Mekos nodded, not really taking it in yet. “I want to take her home. May I borrow your little vehicle?”
“Gladly. Ian . . . ?”
“I think he’ll be all right.” Under Mekos’s shirt was Ian’s oval case and the little man was inside.
“May I visit you?” Davro asked.
“You are always welcome and we look forward to seeing you again. How do we get back to your house?”
Davro opened a door and they saw that the Spacer was waiting for them. “You don’t need to return. Everything you brought with
you is in there, plus a few gifts, and all the equipment Qip wants. I will come to you soon.”
Mekos placed the unconscious Aradella inside, then put Ian’s case near his blue chair.
“Thank you,” Mekos said to his uncle, then he got into the Spacer. It quickly rose and started flying away.
When Aradella woke, she wasn’t surprised to find herself in the snug little vehicle. Ian was in his chair and Mekos was leaning
back, looking at both of them. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“To Qip’s. We have some building materials to deliver to him. We put the biggest and heaviest pieces in that bag of yours.
Are you hungry?”
“No! In fact my stomach is dancing about, but after what happened, that’s understandable.” She looked at him. “Are you all
right? I didn’t want to do that alone but—”
He took her hand in his. “You and Ian are the heroes.”
She looked at the little man. “What did you do?”
“It was for my sister.”
She turned to Mekos. “Tell me!”
Ian made a gesture that Mekos could tell the story.
“Ian found Urah at a tavern near where her daughter was. He showed himself to her, then he taunted her.”
“Buzzing in her face? Wings against her ears?” Aradella asked. “That kind of thing?”
“I spit in her eye,” Ian said. “And I called her a few things.”
“She ran after him,” Mekos said. “Into one of those lifting rooms.”
“An elevator,” Aradella said.
“Yes. And when she reached the top, Ian was waiting for her.”
“She laughed at me,” Ian said. “She said she’d foreseen that a man would kill her and since I wasn’t one, she was safe.”
Aradella’s eyes widened. “That must have made you angry.”
“I laughed and said that no man would ever want her, then I flew backward.”
“He means,” Mekos said, “that she ran after him all the way off the building.”
“Oh,” Aradella said. “As in splat?”
“Exactly like that.”
It took Aradella a few moments to ingest all that had happened. “They are gone. Both of those evil women are gone. Now do
you think we’ll be forgiven?”
“Yes, I do. I think we’ll be welcomed home with enthusiasm.”
Aradella let out a sigh of relief. “Actually, I think I am hungry. You remember those tiny green fish we had at Qip’s?”
“The ones you refused to even try?”
“Yes. Those. Right now I could eat a bucket full of them.”
He smiled at her in a way that made her heart hurt. She knew why he was looking at her like that, but now was not the time
to talk of it. When they did speak of it, she wanted to be alone with him and far away from the lights of gaudy Empyrea.
She took his hand in hers and held it to her cheek.
“I love you,” he said softly. “With all my heart and soul, I love you.”
“Yes,” was all Aradella could say. “Yes.”
Beside them a board flashed.
See Mekos and Aradella fall in love.
What exactly did the lizard eat?
Plants hidden by a wall? What could they be? Find out all tonight!
The three in the Spacer ignored the signs as they held each other. Forever.
*****