Chosen (The Warrior Chronicles #1)(61)

Halfway through her door she froze, sucking in a familiar masculine smell she hadn’t realized she recognized. Lying on her bed with one arm thrown over his face and the other resting on his flat stomach was none other than Cayan. He was in his normal blue uniform but his shoes were off and set neatly beside the bed. His large feet hung slightly off the end.

“What are you doing here?” Her words sounded like a hasty release of breath.

He lifted his arm away, revealing his clear blue eyes with their dark blue rim surrounded by a tired red. Seeing her, he sat up slowly, moving as though he was a hundred years old. “I needed a place to rest without disturbance and without being in a hospital room.”

“What about Lucius?”

“He’s entertaining a young lady. And he judges. Then lectures.”

Having the city’s hub in her room without the proper control over her power was bordering on disastrous. Plus…what about privacy? She didn’t need much, nor did she have many possessions, but having someone lying in her bed who wasn’t a lover was a bit…awkward. Her personal things, such as they were, were out in the open. He needed to know a few things about her, sure, but those were historical in nature so as to arm himself and his city with knowledge of what would come. There was absolutely no need for him to know the color of her undergarments, or how she liked her weapons stowed, or… how sometimes she wasn’t the most tidy of people. That stuff was embarrassing and bordering on intimate. It was stuff to share with people close to you, not a city leader, handsome army Captain, and serious pain in the ass.

She crossed to the single chair opposite the bed and sat. This room had a closet, a dresser for the few clothes she had, her bed, a tiny table with candle supplies, and the chair she currently sat in. Through a door to her right was the tiny kitchen: not much more than a sink, stove, and small table. There was no place in her living quarters to entertain a non-naked guest. And despite his near perfect form, she absolutely did not want this man na**d anywhere near her person. Only bad things could happen.

“Why did that happen?” Cayan asked with a grave look into her silent mental turmoil. The space issue apparently wasn’t playing hell on his nerves.

All Shanti could do was shake her head. She didn’t know. And it scared her. It was so much power. Too much. She didn’t know how to control it, and it was still pinging in her body, dancing around like skeletons in an earthquake, waiting to be used. She didn’t even have to open her awareness to feel the minds around her anymore. She didn’t have to try to clutch them. Those minds were hers; they were just on loan to their owners.

“Did you ask the prisoner?” Cayan asked, settling back down and throwing his arm over his tired eyes.

“Yes. He just repeated what he said before. If I find a mate, my power will increase. Mate is not wife. Or manwife—I forget the term Junice used.“

“Husband.”

“Mate is…the power’s mate. The other half. I’m not sure if it has to be in a man’s body, but it sounded like it. It’s time for you to tell me what you know. But maybe…outside…”

“It’s time for you to show me what you know. Teach me.”

“I’ve shown you a portion. So far this is all one-sided.” Should she mention moving outside again? Was he not uncomfortable? Because she was uncomfortable.

Cayan scratched his head then wiggled deeper into the mattress. “The power comes from the Ancient’s. The Old Blood. No matter your belief system, there were a People who walked this land at the beginning. Every religion talks of them. They were the dawning of human kind. To them, power was another sense. Touch, see, hear, taste, smell, perceive. No one knows where they originated, or even if they were a myth.

“Then, as humankind grew, the trail of the Old Blood got weaker. With each generation it got weaker still. In some places it vanished entirely. That is because the bounty of the blood is passed from mother to child. The sex of the child is unimportant, but the Gifts, as you call them, are in linage with the mother.” He paused for a second, letting that sink in.

“So spreading your seed to a city full of people won’t matter? You’ll sire large, strong men, but none with Gifts?”

“That’s what the stories say. I have nothing written on this, of course. This is all from my grandmother’s diaries, left for me when I was born. She died shortly after. As did my mother.”

Barely suppressed emotion colored his words, but he hid it within the deep rumble of his voice. He wasn’t hiding the flashes of pain from his mind, though. He hadn’t known his mother, not in any real way. Unlike Shanti, who at least had vague memories from her youth, Cayan only had a longing.

“Then you are right, I would’ve regretted killing you,” Shanti said quietly.

A crease formed between his eyebrows. “The bounty bestowed can come in many forms. You are probably an expert on that, from what you’ve said. Your people were isolated; the blood stayed strong. Mothers passed it to daughters who had daughters who stayed within the land to continue to pass it on. Various gifts were bestowed, all in partial potency, until you showed up and got a full blast.”

“Why don’t more of your people have it? And how come you didn’t know you had it?”

“My great-great-grandmother was of the Old Blood. She was a wanderer—not originally from this area. Met my great-great-grandfather on one of her travels and fell in love. She decided to settle in. It’s from her this information, and my Gift, is passed down. Since her, I come from a line of daughters, each having only one child, until me. I am the first boy. And while each mother tried constantly for more children, they only had one to term. It is another reason the blood has nearly disappeared from the land. Fertility. I was told that women with the Old Blood have a harder time bringing a baby to term. She did not know why…but it sounds like your people had the concentration to figure it out…”