51. The Prince

51

THE PRINCE

S o much of the fragmented memories suddenly made sense. The reason why he couldn't remember what his sister looked like even though he'd remembered them sparring with swords.

The tactile sensations of different fabrics against his skin. The absence of other people.

They had been covered from head to toe, veiled, and isolated.

"If relationships between gods and Kra-ell are forbidden, how did my sister and I come to be?"

The goddess smiled. "Love, I guess. Or maybe the rebellion of the young. Your mother was still just the princess when she became pregnant with you and was part of the resistance that tried to bring more equality to the Kra-ell. She worked closely with gods championing the Kra-ell cause, and she must have fallen in love with one of them. The birth of twins is extremely rare on Anumati and nearly unheard of among the Kra-ell, especially fraternal twins when one child is a female and the other a male. That alone cast suspicion on the newly crowned queen, but she was a clever female who spun a protective web around you. Taking advantage of the rarity of your twin births, she declared that you would both serve the Mother of All Life and consecrated you to the priesthood, effectively removing you from the public eye."

The goddess turned to look at Jade. "Am I doing your history justice so far?"

Jade inclined her head. "Yes, Clan Mother. But if you wish, I can take it from here."

The prince tensed. He did not want the cold Kra-ell female to tell him about their world. He wanted the gentle goddess to keep talking.

She must have sensed his wish and shook her head. "Thank you for the offer, Jade, but I will continue the story. If I get anything wrong, though, do not hesitate to correct me."

Jade's lips quirked up in an almost-there smile. "I would not dare, Clan Mother."

"Please do," the goddess said. "I do not want to provide our dear Cedric with the wrong information."

When Jade nodded, Annani turned back to him. "There are no male Kra-ell priests, but since the Kra-ell believe that twins share one soul, your mother proclaimed that by virtue of your sister, you would become a priest too. The advantages were clear. You were kept isolated in the temple, where the chief priestess of the Kra-ell ruled supreme and could protect you. You were never seen without your veils covering every inch of your body. Still, your mother could not do that forever, so she hatched a scheme to sneak you onto a settler ship bound for Earth."

"How could she have done that if we look like hybrids?" he asked. Annani looked at Jade. "You had a theory about that, right?"

Jade nodded. "I believe that you shrouded yourselves. Gods can make themselves look any way they want or even disappear from view. I believe that you shrouded yourselves to look like pureblooded Kra-ell." She shifted slightly in her chair. "I was in the next pod over when you and your sister arrived, and something about you looked familiar. As I mentioned before, I was on the queen's guard and saw you walking the palace gardens between the palace and the temple. You were always veiled, but I recognized your particular gait and bearing. There were other hints as well. All the other pods had three or four females and seventeen or sixteen males, which is the natural Kra-ell gender distribution. Your pod had an equal number of males and females. I don't know what your mother's plan was, but I assume she wanted you to find your father when you got to Earth."

This was so much information that he was struggling to organize it all in his head. "What happened to the other people in our pod?"

"None made it, regrettably," Kian said. "The Kra-ell cannot enter stasis without a stasis chamber. Gods can. The stasis chambers stopped working when the pod malfunctioned, and the Kra-ell perished. You and your sister remained in natural stasis and survived like that for thousands of years."

He must have misunderstood, or maybe the translation device had made a mistake.

"Thousands of years? Is that how long it takes to travel from Anumati to Earth?"

Kian shook his head. "Aru tells me that it takes approximately five hundred years, but the ship carrying the Kra-ell settlers was old, so it might have taken longer. Still, not that much longer. It either malfunctioned or was sabotaged, and it arrived seven thousand years later. The ship exploded over Earth but managed to expel some or all of the stasis pods. Some made it safely and opened, like Jade's, but most were lost. We found yours thanks to Syssi and Jasmine."

His head was spinning. "I do not understand. How could they have known where to look for us?"

Syssi smiled shyly. "I'm a seer, and I foresaw that Jasmine would be instrumental to finding your pod, and I was right. She has very unique talents none of us even dreamt about."

His heart swelled with pride even though he could not take credit for Jasmine's talent. "Jasmine is special. I knew that from the first moment I saw her."

Kian chuckled. "Which was earlier today. But you are right. You and your sister owe the woman your lives. The physician who was part of the rescue team says that you were both running out of time. A few more days or at most weeks, and you would have perished, even in stasis, because your chambers were sealed."

He didn't know what that meant, and he did not really care. All he could think about was that Jasmine had saved his and his sister's lives, and he owed her a life debt, which he would gladly spend the rest of his life repaying.

He had known her for mere hours, but already he could feel a bond between them. How apt therefore, that it was Jasmine who had named him upon his rebirth.