Page 90 of Dark Princess: Shadows

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." Helooked 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, Azadî."

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."

57

BRANDON

Brandon liked Kian's optimism. A few days ago, he wouldn't have shared it, but now that Morelle was in his life, everything seemed a little brighter, and as her hand found his under the table and clasped it, he was surprised and delighted.

He turned to her and smiled, so mesmerized by her incredible blue eyes and the black lashes framing them that he found he had missed the first half of what the Clan Mother had just said.

"…Jasmine's father?" Annani asked. "He must know something."

"Please don't," Ell-rom interjected. "She is really adamant about doing it herself when she gains the ability to thrall. Edgar, the pilot she was briefly with, offered to question her father, but Jasmine prohibited him and me from doing that."

"It is not guaranteed that Jasmine will ever be able to thrall." Annani lifted her glass, and Ogidu rushed to fill it with more sparkling water. "Most transitioned Dormants cannot. It seemsthat it needs to be learned at a young age when the mind is still developing."

"I'm learning to thrall," Ell-rom said. "I'm even getting good at it."

"That's because you knew how to do it before you entered stasis and just forgot how." Kian glanced at Morelle. "Am I right?"

She nodded. "We both can thrall and shroud, and we are good. Otherwise, we couldn't have fooled all the gods in the spaceport into thinking that we looked like Kra-ell. Then again, it was possible that our mother was doing that. She walked with us most of the way." Morelle closed her eyes. "I wish I could have hugged her. I should have done that, even if it was risky. I didn't know that I would be traveling for seven thousand years, but I knew that I would never see her again. Well, not in the flesh anyway. She came to me in a dream."

"Oh, do tell." Annani leaned forward. "What did she say?"

Morelle squeezed Brandon's hand under the table. "She told me that I needed to wake up and that I needed to listen."

"Listen to what?" Ell-rom asked.

"The storyteller." She cast Brandon a smile. "She also said that life is worth living and that I should not keep wasting it in sleep or something to that effect. I don't remember her exact words."

Brandon had a feeling that she wasn't telling the whole truth, but it was her prerogative. She didn't need to disclose everything her mother had told her.

Kian glanced at his watch and then reached for his glass and refilled it with wine. "I'm glad that you chose to wake up and joinus, Morelle. But speaking of abilities, do you have any talents other than thralling and shrouding?"

Morelle's fingers closed almost painfully around Brandon's, and Ell-rom seemed to turn a shade paler.