Dark Princess: Shadows (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance #89)

56. Morelle

56

MORELLE

M orelle gratefully latched on to the conversation about visions and mysteries, hoping it would distract her from thinking about kissing Brandon.

She had no frame of reference for how to approach it and how it was done, which turned the urge into an obsession. The head priestess had only talked about the struggle for dominance that Kra-ell sex was all about, and kissing had not even been mentioned.

Biting was the norm, not kissing.

The gods had a softer approach to intimacy, but she hadn't been allowed to watch their vids except for those approved by the head priestess, and there had been no kissing in those. The same was true for literature.

All she had was pure instinct, and that instinct was whispering all kinds of crazy things that she was sure would send Brandon running away.

"You did the right thing, Mother," Kian said. "And by taking Ekin's tablet, you ensured that your father's work and Ekin's would continue, but you can't deny that you stole it."

"Fine." Annani hmphed. "I admit it. I stole the tablet and saved the world."

The revelation cast Annani in a fascinating new light. She wasn't purely good, as she had tried to portray herself in their previous conversations. There was a hint of darkness in her that made her a more effective leader, and Morelle liked her all the more for it.

It aligned perfectly with one of the central tenets of Kra-ell philosophy: good could not exist without evil, and evil could not exist without good. The Mother of All Life was both creator and destroyer, but the key was finding the proper balance.

The priestess had taught her and Ell-rom that good required just a touch of darkness to be truly effective, while evil needed a substantial amount of good to survive, or it would destroy itself. This was why good formed the majority and evil the minority. It was a natural law, one the priestesses were tasked with maintaining.

Disturbingly, though, what Annani had shared before about humans abducting young girls and women and selling them to be exploited in all kinds of unconscionable ways painted a picture far darker than anything Morelle had witnessed among the Kra-ell.

The Kra-ell were savage, and if left free to do as they pleased, they would kill each other off in endless duels and tribal battles, but they obeyed a strict code of honor and were not as depraved.

Humans might be physically weaker, but they lacked honor and were capable of greater cruelty. After what Morelle had heard, she resolved to be very cautious once she ventured among the humans. Brandon had promised to take her to the big city and to see the beach, but now she wasn't sure she wanted to be among people who could stoop so low.

"I was thinking…" Ell-rom's voice pulled her from her dark musings. "What if the woman Syssi saw in her vision wasn't Jasmine but her mother?"

Kian turned to him sharply. "Why would a vision about Khiann show Jasmine's mother?"

"Isn't she supposed to be dead?" Brandon added.

"That's why I think it might be her." Ell-rom shifted in his chair so he could address everyone. "Syssi asked whether Khiann was dead or in stasis. Instead of showing her that truth, maybe the vision revealed something about Jasmine's mother, who might not be dead and could somehow be instrumental in finding Khiann. I know that I'm reaching, but I've had a lot of time to think about it as I sat by Jasmine's bedside." He paused. "Her father never talked about her mother. Jasmine doesn't even know where she's buried or how she died, and it all feels suspicious. She wants to visit her father once she can thrall, and peek into his memories."

Morelle could respect that. It was personal, and Jasmine didn't want anyone looking into her father's head on her behalf.

Annani regarded her from the head of the table. "You seem to agree, Morelle. Should we follow Ell-rom's hunch that the woman in Syssi's vision was Jasmine's mother and not Jasmine herself?"

She set down her glass. "In my opinion, it's worth investigating. You have no other viable leads at the moment, so pursuing this will not delay other avenues of investigation, and if nothing else, it would provide Jasmine with closure. If she discovers that her mother was murdered, she will probably want to avenge her, as is her right."

Ell-rom cleared his throat. "This is not how things are done on Earth. Jasmine would not go after her mother's murderer in order to kill him."

Morelle regarded her brother with a raised brow, but she didn't say what was on her mind because she didn't know whether Ell-rom had told anyone about his ability. As Jasmine's mate, he could avenge her mother. It would be within his rights, and given what he could do, it would be as simple as wishing the death of the killer. But Ell-rom was soft, and his ability had terrified him since the first he learned of it.

"Yes, well." Annani turned to her son. "I assume Roni did a background check on Jasmine and found out who her mother was and what happened to her?"

Kian's expression tightened. "He found her name. Kyra Fazel. She came from Iran on a student visa in 1988 and a year later married Jasmine's father, Boris Orlov, dropped out of the university and changed her name to Kira Orlova. Roni tried tracing her family in Iran, but there isn't much to hack into there, so we don't know her history. There's no death record, so if she died, it wasn't in a hospital and wasn't reported. She also wasn't buried by any traditional means. She simply vanished from all records around the time of her supposed death." He refilled his wine. "We kept it quiet to avoid upsetting Jasmine. I planned to wait for her to go through her transition and get settled here before sharing this information with her."

"I appreciate that," Ell-rom said. "Jasmine has been under a lot of stress lately."

"What about her stepmother and stepbrothers?" Annani asked. "Did Boris divorce Kira in her absence?"

"Roni didn't check that." Kian drummed his fingers on the table. "Maybe I'll ask him to do it when he is done with his current project."

Morelle thought of the possibilities. "The mother might be alive. Perhaps she had a good reason to leave. Maybe there was a family emergency back home, and she couldn't return for some reason. Or she could have been murdered, and her body was hidden. Or she could have been taken. If she was as beautiful as Jasmine, she could have been targeted by those terrible humans who steal women and girls and sell them."

Kian's eyes narrowed at her, and then he turned to his mother. "What exactly have you been telling Morelle?"

Annani shrugged. "My sister wanted to know what we are about and what we do. Our important charity project has become a big part of our identity as a clan, so I started with that."

"It was very disturbing to hear," Morelle confirmed. "The Kra-ell society has many problems, but it is not depraved. Females are cherished and valued, and males die to protect them. The disregard for women's dignity and well-being on Earth is abhorrent."

Kian nodded his head. "It certainly is, but I don't want you to think that all humans are like that." He sighed. "We've worked very hard to change that, and we have succeeded in many places, but our enemies' influence over large portions of Earth is palpable, and things seem to have gotten worse lately." He looked at his mother. "But Annani, and by extension the clan, will never stop fighting for women."

Annani nodded. "Women. Life. Freedom."

Kian tilted his head. "I've heard that somewhere before."

"Of course, you have." Annani smiled. "It is the Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement's official motto, which was later adopted by Kurdish fighters. In their language, it rhymes: Jin, Jiyan, Azad?."

Kian turned to Brandon. "Is this our doing?"

Brandon shook his head. "It's a grassroots movement, but since it was influenced by the freedoms women enjoy in the West, then it is our doing in a roundabout way."

Morelle was really starting to dislike humans. "Why do human women need to fight for life and freedom? Isn't it their goddess-given right?"

"It is." Annani smiled sadly. "When the gods created humans, they made them easy to influence, so they could control them with very little effort. That weakness, or perhaps backdoor into their psyche, is exploited by bad players who manipulate them to their advantage."

Morelle felt her blood electrify, and not in a pleasant way. "How do we get to those bad players and eliminate them?"

Kian chuckled. "Welcome to my world, Morelle. Regrettably, there are too many of them and too few of us, and right now, it seems like the bad players have the upper hand, but not for long. In the end, good always triumphs over evil."