76. Jasmine

76

JASMINE

J asmine's heart ached with empathy for Annani long after the dinner had ended. She couldn't fathom the pain of losing the love of her life only to have hope rekindled after five thousand years.

She wanted to help the goddess, but doubt niggled in her mind. Syssi's vision hadn't actually confirmed that Khiann was alive. It had only shown her a desert landscape and a woman who might be Jasmine.

It could have been someone else.

The golden flakes in her eyes were uncommon, true, but were they really proof that the woman in Syssi's vision was her?

How much of foresight was influenced by the seer's own experiences and painted with colors familiar to her?

Syssi had said that the woman in the vision had been dressed in desert garb, her face wrapped in a scarf to pass as a man. What if it had been a man who was a little padded?

Desert clothes were usually loose, so a lot could be hidden under them, including breasts and wide hips, but also a big belly.

Still, even as the thought formed, Jasmine knew it was unlikely that Syssi was mistaken, which was bad news for Jasmine.

She really didn't want to travel to the desert. She hated heat, she hated dry air, and she hated places where women had to wear a disguise to move around freely.

The oppression of women depressed her, and she despised all places that perpetuated it. How long would it take for them to join the twenty-first century and start thinking of women as people and not as possessions?

Didn't they care for their mothers, their sisters, their daughters?

Still, she couldn't refuse the goddess, and not just because she was the Clan Mother. Annani was Ell-rom's sister and her future sister-in-law.

She felt like cackling madly at the absurdity of the thought, but life was stranger than fiction, and this was going to be her reality.

Well, there was no guarantee that she was a Dormant, and she still had to transition to become part of Ell-rom's life. Not that she worried too much about that. Deep down, she knew that she belonged in this world, which meant that she had godly genes.

But what if Syssi's vision had not been about Annani's lost mate but a snippet from some different, unrelated future?

It could have been a scene from a Perfect Match adventure, or it could have been a different desert and a different search. Some of the missing pods might have landed in the Gobi Desert, and what Jasmine had been wearing in the vision could have been a Chinese desert outfit.

The truth was that she would have preferred to look for the other missing pods because she was afraid of failing to find Khiann or, worse, finding something they all dreaded, like a beheaded skeleton.

A shiver ran through her at the thought.

"Are you cold?" Ell-rom asked.

"No, I'm just scared of finding that Khiann has been dead all along. Annani will be devastated." Jasmine sat down on the couch in their room. "I don't think I could bear it if she blamed me for it."

He sat down beside her and took her hand. "Annani is tough. She will not blame you for his death or even for failure to find him. All she expects from you is that you do your best."

She nodded. "I'll do a spread first thing tomorrow morning. See what the tarot tells me. Maybe they'll offer us some clarity." She glanced at Ell-rom, noting that he still carried tension in his shoulders that hadn't quite relaxed since the earlier discussion about child traffickers and pedophiles.

Given the glow in his eyes and the fully elongated fangs, it had been hard to miss the spike of anger he'd experienced.

"How are you feeling?" she asked. "Are you still upset?"

He arched a brow. "About what?"

"Are you still worried about earlier when we were discussing the traffickers?"

Ell-rom's expression tightened, confirming her suspicion. "I'm scared," he admitted. "I'm terrified of my mind lashing out at some random stranger and killing him. I don't know how this power works. Do I need to know the person to send a killing thought his way? What if I just project these killing waves, and random people die because of me?"

She shifted closer to him, her free hand coming up to cup his cheek. "That's highly unlikely," she said, trying to infuse her voice with a confidence she didn't entirely feel.

The truth was that they were in uncharted territory when it came to Ell-rom's abilities.

"I can't be sure of that." Ell-rom sounded miserable.

"Well, no one close around you has dropped dead," Jasmine pointed out, attempting to inject a note of levity into the conversation. "But if you want, I can check the news for any unexplained deaths in the area."

She'd meant it as a joke, a way to lighten the mood, but Ell-rom's expression remained serious. "Would it be reported so soon?"

"Unless your killing thoughts cause visible wounds, the death would look like it was from natural causes, and those don't get reported."

"Can you check just in case there is something? What if my thoughts can kill a bunch of people? Humans are much more fragile than Kra-ell. What killed one Kra-ell guard could kill several humans."

Jasmine blinked, taken aback by the urgency in his tone. It seemed like he had given his death brainwave a lot of thought.

"Of course." She reached for her phone. "If it'll help put your mind at ease, I can check right now."

As she began to scroll through local news sites, Jasmine was torn between contradicting emotions. On the one hand, she was touched by Ell-rom's concern for others and his determination not to cause harm. It was one of the many qualities that had drawn her to him. On the other hand, though, she worried about the toll this fear was taking on him, the way it seemed to be consuming his thoughts.

"Nothing unusual happened recently," she reported after a few moments of searching. "Just the regular news cycle. No mysterious death-ray deaths."

"Good." Ell-rom didn't find her wording amusing, but he looked relieved.

She set her phone aside and took both of his hands in hers. "I know that this power scares you. It's a huge responsibility, and there's still so much we don't understand about it, but you are one of the kindest, most compassionate people I've ever met. Your first instinct is always to protect, to help, and I don't believe for a second that you could accidentally harm innocent people."

"That guard didn't deserve to die for taunting Morelle and me."

"He was planning to expose your sister, which would have resulted in both your deaths. I'm glad that you killed him."

"But what if?—"

Jasmine cut him off. "No what-ifs. You can't let fear rule your life."

A smile tugged at the corners of Ell-rom's mouth. "I like it when you get like that. I find it very attractive."

"Oh, yeah?" She looked at him from under lowered lashes. "You like it when I boss you around?"

He shrugged. "Given what you've told me about my Kra-ell heritage, it shouldn't be all that surprising."