"I know." She held up a hand, silencing her son. "I know time is short. But this is the most difficult decision I have ever faced, and I cannot make it alone. I need a sign."
The room fell silent. Even Darius had stopped fussing, sensing the gravity of the moment.
Annani closed her eyes and tried to center herself. She reached for the calm that usually came so easily, the connection to something greater than herself that had guided her through countless crises over the millennia.
But the calm wouldn't come. Her thoughts were too chaotic, her heart too turbulent.
She tried to remember what Syssi had told her about her vision. There were people on the island worth saving. Syssi had seen two couples who might be somehow connected to the unfolding events. The Fates had shown them for a reason, perhaps just to point out that love was the strongest power in the universe, but it was also possible that they had a role to play in this.
The portal to another world they had shown Syssi, which was located on Mount Ararat, seemed unrelated to Khiann, but it was unlikely that the Fates had just randomly shown it to Syssi. The problem was that they had not explained the connection, and Annani could not begin to guess it.
She opened her eyes. "Syssi's vision showed her two human couples in love. I think the message was that love is the most important power in the universe and should be prioritized. Perhaps they were trying to tell me that I should choose Khiann above all other considerations. The portal on Mount Ararat leading to another world is more of a mystery, and I cannot imagine what it was trying to tell us."
"What does that have to do with Khiann?" Kalugal asked.
"Perhaps nothing." Annani shook her head. "Perhaps everything. The Fates rarely show us things without reason, but they also rarely make the meaning clear."
"So, what do we do?" Carol asked. "We can't just sit here and wait for divine inspiration while Losham chips away at that enclosure."
"No," Annani agreed. "We cannot."
But she couldn't bring herself to make the decision either.
Freeing Navuh would unleash his evil upon the world, and hoping for another chance to catch him was no plan. Thousands would die before they could recapture him, and untold more if the opportunity never came. All sacrificed so she could save her truelove mate.
Khiann would have done it for her. She knew that without a doubt, but then Khiann had not carried guilt for five thousand years for bringing about their people's demise and destroying the ancient world.
She had chosen love before and had broken her engagement to Mortdh to marry Khiann. Her actions had brought about the end of the era of the gods, and the consequences had continued rippling outward in waves of destruction that still had not stopped. Every death, every battle, every life ruined by the endless conflict could be traced back to her choice.
"I need more time," she said. "I need to think and to pray."
"How much time?" Kian asked.
"I do not know." She rose from her chair, her legs unsteady beneath her. "I will try to give you my answer by tomorrow."
28
MATTIE
"You're burning up." Mattie pressed her palm against Dimitri's forehead and winced at the heat radiating from his skin. "This is bad. This is really bad."
Dimitri's teeth chattered despite the blanket she'd pulled over him. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're the opposite of fine."
He'd started to develop a fever in the middle of the night, and she'd given him the one aspirin packet she'd found in the first aid kit, but it hadn't helped, and his fever had kept rising.
Remembering her grandma's remedies, Mattie had filled a pitcher with water from the sink and used a washcloth to cool Dimitri's head. The problem was that the water from the faucet wasn't cold, which was not surprising given that this was a tropical island.
"You need a doctor." She took the washcloth off his forehead, dunked it in the lukewarm water, wrung it out, and laid it across his forehead again.
"No doctors." He tried to push the cloth away, but his hand trembled too badly to make contact. "Get Petrov."
"He's not that kind of doctor."
"He will have to do. Others will ask too many questions."
Every instinct in her screamed that he needed medical attention and that whatever was happening to his body was beyond her ability to manage with wet cloths, but she also understood his fear.
