Page 18 of Dark Rover’s Luck (The Children Of The Gods #95)

18

KYRA

K yra sat at the island, cradling a steaming mug of coffee between her palms as her daughter sliced fruit for their breakfast.

"Did Fenella call you last night after her date with Din?" Kyra asked, taking a careful sip of her hot coffee.

Jasmine shook her head, her knife moving rhythmically through a ripe, juicy mango. "Not a peep. I was expecting at least a text, but nothing. Must have gone either really well or catastrophically bad."

"I'm betting on well," Kyra said. "She was trying to hide her excitement, but I could see right through it. She's at least intrigued, and she's willing to give him a chance."

"Can you imagine?" Jasmine placed the sliced mango on two plates, then reached for a bunch of grapes. "Carrying a torch for someone for half a century? That's dedication."

"Or obsession," Kyra countered, then softened. "Though I think in Din's case, it's the romantic kind. He didn't even know she was alive, and yet he hadn't forgotten her."

Jasmine paused with a bunch of grapes hanging from her hand. "I escorted her to the café to meet him, and there were definitely sparks between them." She chuckled. "The fact that she let me style her hair and apply her makeup in preparation for the date is telling. She even agreed to borrow a dress from me."

Kyra laughed. "Did she complain the entire time and try to make it look like she was doing you a favor?"

"No. She was quiet and introspective." Jasmine finished plucking the grapes from the bunch and placed them on the plates.

"I hope it works out for them." Kyra speared a piece of mango with her fork. "After everything she has been through, Fenella deserves her happy ending."

"We all do," Jasmine said, settling onto the stool beside Kyra with her own plate. "But we already got ours."

Kyra smiled at her daughter. "So true. I have Max, I have you, I have my sisters and their children safe in the village. I've never imagined having even a fraction of such good fortune."

Jasmine nodded solemnly while chewing on a piece of fruit.

"Max traded some highly coveted concert tickets he had for a dinner reservation at Callie's, so Din could take Fenella somewhere nice," Kyra said. "Secretly, I hoped they would decline so Max and I could go."

Jasmine lifted an eyebrow. "That was very nice of him. Getting a reservation at Callie's is almost as difficult as getting one at By Invitation Only , which is another exclusive restaurant that is not located in the village but belongs to a clan member. I've only eaten at Callie's once, and that was with Brandon pulling strings." She popped a grape into her mouth. "There is no menu, and you get what you get, but the food is divine. If you get a chance to go, don't pass it up."

"Max promised to take me there sometime," Kyra said. "After all the excitement dies down."

"So, never?" Jasmine teased. "According to Kian, we only enjoy small breaks between one emergency and the next, and his advice is to take full advantage of them while they last."

Kyra laughed, the ease of it still sounding unfamiliar to her own ears. Laughter had been a rarity during her years with the resistance. "Well, at least we have a respite now."

"Not for long." Jasmine leveled a pair of eyes on Kyra that were an exact replica of hers. "We need to find the Clan Mother's husband."

That was the actual purpose of their meeting this morning, but Kyra couldn't let the opportunity to have breakfast with her daughter slip by. These quiet moments with Jasmine were precious beyond measure. Twenty-three years of her daughter's life had been stolen from her, and Kyra treasured even the simplest interaction.

"I've been thinking about what the Clan Mother said about my pendant." Kyra set down her fork. "That she thinks it's a key to finding her husband." She touched the amber stone at her throat. "I don't trust it as I used to. It failed me during the mission."

"You keep saying that, but I don't think it's fair. It has guided you well far more times than it failed you, which makes me think that maybe it wasn't wrong. Maybe there was a good reason for it not warning you against contacting Soraya first. Who knows what would have been the unintended consequences of that choice?"

"Or maybe it's just a piece of amber with some symbols etched on it, and I've been ascribing it powers it doesn't have."

Jasmine shook her head, pushed her plate aside, and leaned forward. "It's a conduit for your natural intuitive abilities. It's like a prism, a focus point that helps you tap into something that's already inside you."

Kyra nodded. "The Clan Mother said something similar."

Jasmine stood up and walked to a bookshelf. "It's similar to how I use this." She lifted what looked like a polished wooden stick about eight inches long. "This is my scrying stick, and it's just a piece of a fallen branch, but it helps me focus my energy when I'm trying to locate something or someone." Jasmine returned to her seat, holding the stick out in front of her. "It doesn't always work, but maybe it will cooperate now that I want to demonstrate how I use it."

She closed her eyes, her fingers wrapped loosely around the wooden implement. For a moment, nothing happened, and then Kyra noticed that the stick in Jasmine's hand began to vibrate, gently at first, then with increasing intensity until it looked like it would leap from her grasp.

It was pointing straight at Kyra, or rather, her pendant.

"Your pendant," Jasmine said. Then the stick abruptly stopped vibrating, and Jasmine blinked. "It confirmed that it's crucial to finding Khiann."

"What just happened?" Kyra asked. "How did you do that?"

"I asked my stick to point me in the direction of Khiann, and I held his image in my mind. It pointed at you and your pendant."

Kyra suppressed a shiver. The same thing had happened to Syssi when she'd asked for guidance to find Khiann. The vision had shown her Kyra.

What if Khiann had died after all, and she was his reincarnation?

That thought was beyond disturbing, and not just because Kyra couldn't imagine herself as a male. The Clan Mother would be devastated.

"What does Khiann look like?" she asked, afraid of hearing that she shared some physical characteristics with the god.

"Gorgeous like you'd expect a god to be. The Clan Mother has a portrait of him that she commissioned from a forensic artist who drew it from her descriptions."

"I would like to see it." Kyra's hand closed around the pendant. "If this thing has any mystical powers, it would help if I could do what you just did and hold Khiann's image in my head when I'm asking it to find him."

She could also see whether the image evoked any sense of familiarity.

Kyra sincerely hoped that it wouldn't.

"I'll ask Ell-rom to ask his sister for a copy. I still don't feel chummy enough with the goddess to approach her directly."

"Where is he?" Kyra asked. "Is he still in bed?"

"Oh no." Jasmine waved a dismissive hand. "He and Morelle are training this morning."

By now, Kyra knew better than to ask what kind of training. Jasmine just clammed up every time she asked.

Instead, she returned to the issue at hand. "You seem very proficient with that stick. How did you get that good?"

"Practice. Lots and lots of practice." Jasmine placed the stick on the counter, letting out a breath. "I had to learn fast when I was searching for the Kra-ell stasis pods in the Himalayas."

"You still didn't tell me how you found Ell-rom and Morelle." Kyra leaned forward. "How did the whole thing even start? You owe me that story."

"It's a really long one," Jasmine said with a smile. "And we should focus on doing what we set out to do. Practice first. But when we take a break, I promise to tell you all about it."

"I'm even more curious now," Kyra said. "But you're right. We should practice first." She touched her pendant again. "So, how do we start?"

"Let's try something simple first," Jasmine suggested. "I want you to clear your mind and focus on the pendant. Don't think about what you want it to do or how it might work. Just feel its presence against your skin."

Kyra nodded and closed her eyes.

She took a deep breath, then another, letting her awareness narrow to the spot where the amber rested against her sternum. It felt warm, as it often did, but not with the intense heat that signaled danger.

"Good," Jasmine said. "Now, I want you to think of something you've lost or misplaced. Nothing significant, just a small item."

Kyra thought for a moment. "My hair clip. The silver one. I had it at dinner yesterday, but I couldn't find it this morning."

It was a worthless trinket, but she liked how it looked, so perhaps it had some value that way.

"Perfect," Jasmine said. "Keep your eyes closed and picture the clip. Remember its details—the shape, the weight of it, the texture. Now, while holding that image, ask yourself where it is. Not out loud, just in your mind."

Kyra did as instructed, visualizing the silver clip with its delicate filigree pattern. As she mentally formed the question of its whereabouts, she felt the pendant grow slightly warmer. Not hot, not a warning, but a gentle pulse of heat like a heartbeat.

"It's warming up," she murmured.

"That's good. Now follow that feeling. Let it guide your thoughts."

Images flickered through Kyra's mind—the bathroom counter, the bedside table, the floor under the bed. None of them felt right. Then suddenly, she saw the pocket of the jeans she'd worn yesterday, folded and draped over a chair in the bedroom.

"The pocket of my jeans," she said, opening her eyes. "Left front pocket. But that was nothing magical. I just focused and went over every possible place it could be until I figured out where I left it."

"That's the whole point." Jasmine smiled. "The pendant helped you focus your inner eye, so to speak."

It sounded like a bunch of nonsense to her, but right now, Jasmine was the authority on everything supernatural, so if she said it was the pendant that helped find the clip, Kyra was going to suspend her disbelief.

"How did it feel?" Jasmine asked. "Was it different from when the pendant warns you of danger?"

"It was more subtle." Kyra tried to articulate the difference. "When there's danger, it's like a sudden flare of heat. This was more like a gentle nudge in a certain direction."

"I think that's the key," Jasmine said. "The pendant reacts differently based on what you need from it. A warning is urgent, so it's intense. Finding something lost is less critical, so the response is gentler."

"But how would this help us find Khiann? I don't know where he is or even where to start looking for him. There is nothing for the pendant to focus on."

Jasmine picked up her scrying stick again, running her fingers along its smooth surface. "Maybe combining our abilities might help. My scrying is more targeted—I can search for specific things or people if I have a connection to them. Your pendant seems to respond to broader intuitions or dangers."

"What kind of connection would you need to find Khiann? Will his portrait help?"

"I doubt it. Ideally, I need something that belonged to him, or at least an object he touched, but I've already tried it with a piece of jewelry he'd gifted the Clan Mother and gotten nothing from it."

Kyra frowned, considering. "So, we're at a dead end?"

"We still have Syssi and her visions. She might give us another clue. Something clearer than what she's seen so far."

Jasmine handed the scrying stick to Kyra. "Here, hold this and see if you feel anything."

The moment Kyra's fingers wrapped around the wooden implement, she felt a strange resonance between it and her pendant. The amber stone grew warmer, and the stick seemed to vibrate ever so slightly in her grasp.

"They seem to be responding to each other," she said. "It's like they are saying hello through me because I'm touching them both at the same time."

Jasmine's eyes widened. "That's unusual. But since the stick is just a conduit for my powers, it might have absorbed some of them or is just responding to yours."

Before they could explore the phenomenon further, both of their phones chimed simultaneously with incoming messages.

Kyra put the stick on the counter to check her message.

"It's from Bridget," she said, reading the text. "She wants us to come to the clinic at ten-thirty."

Jasmine checked her own phone and nodded. "I got the same message. Any idea what it's about?"

Shaking her head, Kyra glanced at the time on her phone. "That's in less than half an hour." She looked up at her daughter. "It's a five-minute walk to the clinic, so it's not like we need to rush. I'm just worried what it might be about."

"Either way, we should get ready." Jasmine dried her hands on a kitchen towel. "We'll continue this later. And I promised to tell you all about my adventures in Tibet and how it all started." She smiled. "Perhaps the preamble is even more exciting than the search itself. I was kidnapped and trafficked to a cartel boss along with Margo, who later became one of my best friends."

Kyra gaped at her daughter. "You can't just drop something like that on me and not tell me the rest."

Jasmine laughed. "Fine. I'll tell you on the way."