Destiny's Lovers Read Online Free

should think with pleasure and relief about dying. He knew
something was wrong, something was happening to his mind, yet
during those few moments when he clutched at the slippery surface
of the cliff, he, who loved life, almost succumbed to the
temptation to give up, to end everything. He was so incredibly
tired, and it would be so easy ... so easy…The lure was seductive
beyond all resistance.
    “Beloved.”
    Just as Reid began to allow the fingers of
one hand to loosen their hold on the rock, a familiar soft voice
sounded in his ear. Then, softer still, and now a murmuring inside
his head, the voice came again. “Beloved…come to me ... I will
help…come.”
    Somehow, he knew not how, the choice of
living or dying had been made for him, and in some deep recess of
his mind he gave thanks to the possessor of that gentle, insistent
voice. He did not really want to die, not before he had discovered
what lay ahead once he was off that star-blasted cliff and far away
from the abnormally dense forest. He wanted to find the owner of
the voice that had saved him.
    Gathering his last reserves of strength, he
began to climb again. He went upward so slowly, so painfully, that
when he finally reached the cleft in the rock, he had to crawl into
the cool shade and lie down for a while before he fully realized
where he was.
    He found himself face down on crumbled dead
leaves in what was not a niche at all, but a tunnel leading back
into the cliff. There was air blowing through it, sending the dead
leaves scurrying along the stone floor, a breeze that echoed a
woman’s whisper.
    “Beloved…come…”
    He saw a dim light far ahead. Wearily, Reid
dragged himself to his knees and began to crawl deeper into the
tunnel.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Janina lay on her bed in her room in the
temple, staring at the ceiling and trying to recall what she had
just dreamed. She remembered a face, dark and filled with pain,
seen for the second time. She had tried to touch him, to tell him
not to worry, that she would help him. She thought she had asked
him to help her, too, but she could not remember now what she had
wanted him to do for her. When she tried to think about it, the
dream faded away completely. Her feeling of loss was so strong that
she wanted to cry. She told herself her depression was one of the
after-effects of Tamat’s herbal potion, which had probably also
caused her strange dream.
    After her Test, she had slept for most of the
day. When she wakened near evening, Tamat told her all that had
happened and the decision that had been made about her position at
the temple. Sidra would rule after Tamat - Sidra who disliked
Janina - together with Osiyar, who loved no one. Her life would be
in their hands. Janina did not really care about not being High
Priestess. She had never wanted that burden. What distressed her
was the knowledge that she had failed Tamat.
    She told no one, not even Tamat, that she
remembered everything. She did not quite know why she kept silence,
except for a desire not to hurt Tamat any more than she already
had. She knew that a true priestess would not have remembered what
happened while she was in a potion-induced trance.
    She thought again about the man she had seen.
She could not get his unusual face out of her mind. She felt as
though she had known that stranger for all of her life, and yet she
had never met anyone who looked the least bit like him. No one in
Ruthlen had dark, curly hair or a large, slightly hooked nose. Nor
had she ever wanted to put her arms around any man who lived in the
village or the surrounding farmlands.
    Sighing over all the unanswered questions
that troubled her, Janina rolled out of her low bed and went to the
bathing room to perform her morning ablutions. Then, dressed in the
loose, untrimmed white robe of a scholar priestess, she entered
Tamat’s audience chamber.
    Sidra and Osiyar were there before her, both
of them facing Tamat. Their words to the elderly High Priestess
sounded to