* * *
"Your mate is the Vampire Queen?" Larevik couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"You question me?" Kifirin leveled his gaze at Larevik. Smoke curled from Kifirin's nostrils. "She bears my claiming marks. If you hadn't had you head up your posterior, you would have seen them."
"But she was shouting at you," another of the High Demons ventured to say. He was terrified. Kifirin had stepped out of myth and into reality for him in the space of a few moments.
"Yes, she was." Kifirin smiled. "My little Queen is not frightened of me. Nor do I wish her to be."
"What do you want from us?" Gardevik asked. He'd seen Kifirin before, but that had been long ago, when Gardevik was very young.
"I want nothing from you. I want my mate. I want her love. Therefore, I will be traveling with you. Do you have objections?"
"No," Garde shook his head. This was Kifirin. He could do as he pleased. "But Niff has been working as my personal servant. He—she—has been cooking for us."
"I see you cut her hair." Kifirin wasn't pleased about that.
"Some of the commons did that," Garde huffed. "Without my permission."
"Did you punish them?" Kifirin asked.
"No. I just told them not to put their hands on—her—again, unless I requested it."
"Your brother has upset the Oracle, the Larentii and the Saa Thalarr," Kifirin said. "Because he wanted to wait a year to put up a memorial to my Lissa."
"We may have made a mistake," Garde lowered his eyes, afraid to admit his part in that decision.
"It will not be the first High Demon mistake," smoke curled from Kifirin's nostrils.
"Will you punish us for Lendevik's shortcomings?" Garde asked, raising his eyes to Kifirin again.
"You were all punished for Lendevik's blunders. Had the Oracle not come and shown me a path away from your destruction, your planet would have fallen. My mistake was in trusting Lendevik and the High Demons as a whole. That will not be repeated. I sacrificed my love in order for the High Demons to live."
* * *
"Yes, we now know how she is alive." Belen of the Nameless Ones had called Kiarra and Griffin to him. "And I admit; neither I nor any of my kind had anything to do with it. An unseen hand has performed this feat. One we do not direct."
"You can't tell us any more than that?" Griffin was an emotional wreck.
"No, but it will be revealed in time," Belen said gently. "I will tell you that at the present, she is very upset with both you and Kifirin. When Kifirin found her, acting as a cook and personal servant to Gardevik Rath on the Southern Continent, she shouted at him and slapped him. Twice, I believe."
"How else did you expect her to react?" Kiarra was standing, now, and angry. "None of these choices were hers. I might have done worse than a couple of slaps." Kiarra was ready to fold away and Belen didn't want her upset, too.
"Kiarra, please be patient with us," Belen said. "The conditions that have been presented to me by those above my kind are such that she cannot be taken back to the time she left. She must stay in this time and go forward from here. Many things depend upon this, and it may be very difficult for her. Kiarra, I would like for you and some of the others to do your best to explain things to her."
"What are we explaining? That she can't go back? That we rooted her out of her life for our convenience, and now friends and loved ones are long dead in the past, and we can't do anything about it?" Kiarra paced, vibrating with power and anger.
"This is the time she would have been reborn," Belen attempted to calm Kiarra. "Her life was given back to her without going through the rebirth. You will all know why, eventually."
"She would have been reborn this quickly?" Griffin was now interested.
"Yes. I cannot tell you more than that. You must do your best to make amends with your daughter, and we send our apologies to Amara; we know how much she wanted to be a mother. She will have to settle for being a stepmother."
"Lissa would have been born to us—to Amara and me?" Griffin was having difficulty breathing.
"Yes. It is better this way." Belen smiled. "Make things right with her, Oracle."
"Easier said than done," Griffin grumbled.
"Trust will never come easy to her again; you must deal with that," Belen agreed.
"Why couldn't we find Lissa by Looking?" Kiarra asked the question that bothered her most.
"None can find her by Looking. None lesser than myself, anyway," Belen replied. "Go now. You have much work to do."
* * *
"I called all of you here because most of you knew Lissa," Kiarra looked over the gathered Saa Thalarr and Spawn Hunters. Dragon had come, with Karzac. One of his mates, Grace, was also there, although she'd never met Lissa. She was Co-First with Dragon, and that position brought her to the meeting. Most of the others there had been vampire or werewolf and still retained vampire and werewolf abilities—those enhanced their capabilities as Saa Thalarr and Spawn Hunters. Wlodek was there. As was Radomir, Will, Russell, Brock, Stephan, Charles, Merrill, Weldon Harper, Martin Walters and his son, Mack. Pheligar and Adam Chessman had also come. They'd both met Lissa, although contact had been brief.
"What is going on?" Merrill and Adam both came to Kiarra. They, along with Pheligar, were Kiarra's mates and had known of her meeting with Belen of the Nameless Ones.
"Lissa has been found and she's alive," Kiarra sighed. "We don't have an explanation; Belen only said that instead of allowing her to be reborn, somebody decided to give her life back to her now. He said we'll all know why in time."
"She's alive?" Charles was standing in Kiarra's kitchen, and now he grabbed a chair at the island and sat down. He was a Spawn Hunter for the Saa Thalarr, but held a seat on the Vampire Council, and also worked as Flavio's Chief of Staff. Flavio was now Head of the Vampire Council; Wlodek resigned when the invitation came to join the Saa Thalarr.
"Where is she?" Wlodek asked.
"On Kifirin. Right now, Kifirin is attempting to repair their relationship. I'm not holding any hope on that at the moment," Kiarra said. "Belen says she can't be found by Looking—that none lesser than he can know where she is. I have no idea what that means."
"Is she going to come back and act as Queen again?" Merrill asked. Wlodek also wanted that question answered. He and Merrill were informed of Lissa's death three centuries before, and then the memories of her were removed from all of them. It was as if she hadn't existed, and that remained the same until Kifirin was attacked. The memories were returned to the Saa Thalarr and Spawn Hunters when Lissa gave her life to save all of them.