7. Annani
ANNANI
T he last time Annani had visited Navuh, he had been lying in the hospital bed. This time he was sitting in a padded chair that was a new addition to his clinic room, and he was reading a book, propped and supported, with a blanket across his lap.
He lifted his head as they entered, his dark eyes cold and ancient, and the surprise on his face lasted only a split second before he schooled it into his usual arrogant and slightly mocking expression.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of a royal visit?"
He looked better than he had the last time.
His skin color had improved, but he was still very thin.
He had always been slim, but no one had ever mistaken him for anything other than the apex predator he was.
He might not have been burly or overtly physically aggressive, but then the brutes were never the most dangerous ones.
It was males like Navuh, clever, calculating, and completely lacking a moral code or empathy, who were truly dangerous.
Then again, knowing what she knew about trafficking and what some who called themselves human did to women and children, Navuh was far from the worst. He was bent on world domination, and many had died on the altar of his ambition, but there were far worse demons walking this Earth than this ancient being.
Those who thrived on the blood and suffering of the defenseless and the fragile for no other reason than their own sadistic pleasure.
"How are you feeling, Navuh?" Annani gathered her long skirt and sat in the chair that Kian had pulled out for her.
"As well as can be expected." He waved a hand over his immobile legs and then put the book on the rolling table beside him. "I'm still waiting for the recovery Doctor Bridget has promised."
"It will take time," Annani said. "Injuries like yours take months to heal. You need to be patient."
"Indeed." He folded his hands in his lap. "So, what brings you here today? I'm sure it wasn't worry for my well-being."
"No." She smiled. "I cannot say that it was. I came to give you an update."
He tilted his head, his dark penetrating eyes boring into hers. "No, you came to gloat. I can see it on your face. You were never good at hiding your emotions. I could always read you like an open book."
"I doubt that." She rearranged the folds of her gown over her legs.
"Perhaps that was true when I was a girl of seventeen, but I am no longer that girl.
Now I am an ancient goddess who has mourned her one truelove mate for five thousand years while you knew he was alive and kept him hidden in stasis in the basement of your mansion. "
He shrugged. "I could not have held him there for five thousand years because that mansion is only a hundred years old, give or take a few years. I moved him there only recently."
"Oh, I know. Khiann and his companions were hidden in the harem complex before it was flooded, and before that, they traveled with you from one compound to another. I am well aware of the history of those chests."
Something passed over his eyes, indicating that he was starting to realize where she was going with this. "Areana told you?"
She was not going to get Areana in trouble with him.
"Tamira and some of the other harem ladies remembered your soldiers removing chests from the flooded harem while they were still saving people from drowning."
He smiled. "Would you rather I had left your beloved underwater? Locked inside a sealed chest he couldn't open?"
Annani could not help the involuntary shiver. "No. Thank you for pulling him out."
Navuh had not expected her to thank him, and for a moment, his face was frozen, but then he inclined his head. "You are welcome. I saved your husband. If not for me, he would still be buried below the sands, and you would never have found him. You should be thankful."
She leaned forward. "You could have revived him. You could have told me that you had him and demanded your price. I would have paid anything."
"Apparently not. You were not willing to trade my freedom for him, which, to be honest, was most disappointing and not just because it didn't serve my interests.
The greatest love story of the ancient world turned out to be not so great after all.
He must not mean that much to you if you were not willing to set your enemy free in exchange for his life. "
Navuh was aggravating her on purpose, she knew that, but his barbs found purchase, nonetheless. Would Khiann think that she did not love him enough because she had refused to let Navuh go free in exchange for his location?
"I did not let you go because I did not need you to find Khiann." Something moved behind Navuh's eyes. He controlled it almost at once, but she saw it, the small flare of recalculation, and she continued before he could speak. "I have Khiann and his four companions."
He arched a brow, looking skeptical. "You do?"
"They are on their way to me now." She held his gaze. "The thing you stole from me is mine again."
"You infiltrated my island."
"Yes," she said without elaborating.
His cold eyes were unreadable, and Annani felt the anger rise beneath her composure, the grief and the fury of five thousand years.
Navuh saw it because he never missed anything, but she schooled her expression and looked at him, cold and victorious.
"Your island paid a heavy price," Kian said.
"We deployed an electromagnetic pulse, and every system on the island is dead—comms, surveillance, power—all of it.
We also brought down the cross-island tunnel with missiles, so the two sides of the island are separated.
It will be a very long time before the Brotherhood digs itself out of what we did to it in the span of one hour.
Your people will be in the dark for a long while, blind and crippled, trying to understand what hit them. "
Navuh did not look nearly as fazed as Annani had expected him to be.
He shifted his gaze to Kian, and the strategist surfaced, calculating even now.
"You had an aircraft over the island, and pulses, and missiles. Why didn't you simply bomb the island and be done with the Brotherhood? Destroy it completely? It is what I would have done in your place had our positions been reversed."
"I do not doubt it," Annani said. "But that is precisely the difference between us.
We are not the Brotherhood. We do not slaughter thousands of innocents to be rid of the enemy.
There are captives on that island who never chose their captivity, and servants who never chose their masters, and children who chose nothing at all.
We do not murder them for the crime of being in your power.
" Her chin lifted. "We took what we came for.
We did what we had to do to take it, no more, no less.
And then we left the rest of them alive, which is a mercy you would never have shown us. "