Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

Margaret picked up the carafe and warmed Isabel’s coffee. Isabel inspected Usan where he sat calmly across the table from her. “He gets it from you. You are his father,” she said quietly.

Margaret let out a little squeak of surprise and nearly dropped the carafe on the table. Usan smiled in a friendly manner. “Dear Margaret, I value your individuality and spirit probably more than you know. I would not have appeared in front of you, if I did not. But would it be all right if I speak to your charge privately for a few moments? I promise I will keep her safe, for I know as much as you how precious she is.”

Margaret looked defiant and then uncertain when she glanced at Isabel.

“It’ll be all right, Margaret,” Isabel assured. “I’m fine.”

“Well, I’ll be right outside the door if you should need me,” Margaret said, casting one final suspicious glance at Usan.

Usan chuckled after the door closed. “Delightful woman. But yes, to answer your question about Blaise’s relationship to me, he carries my genes, so I suppose you are right about me being a father to him. We have different ways of thinking about paternity on Magia.”

Isabel speared a nugget of fried potato on her fork, suddenly feeling ravenous. Usan’s arrival had been just what she needed to energize her, focus her. Her entire world had shifted, yet again. Vast horizons spread out before her. Anything was possible.

Anything.

“You are proud of Blaise, despite your offhand manner,” she said before devouring the potato.

“I suppose some of humanity’s values have rubbed off on me a tad bit over the past few centuries,” Usan admitted, making it sound as if he’d picked up a few native customs while on vacation.

She pointed her fork at him and gave him a severe glance. “You shouldn’t have told him he doesn’t have a soul. That was cruel of you. Of course, he possesses a soul.”

“I told him that centuries ago. It’s not my fault he insists upon clinging to that truth. I’ve told him repeatedly that the only constant in nature is change, but he refuses to believe it in this case. He can’t fathom that his suffering has done the impossible. The friction of his pain has created a unique, powerful soul. My experiment has been a success.”

Shocked coursed through her. “Your experiment… Wait…you cannot mean…”

“Our entire purpose in coming to this glorious, soul-infused planet was to create souls in the beings we’d made in our laboratories. The combination of the Earth’s spirit, our creation’s suffering, in addition to singular females, such as yourself,” he nodded toward her with a small smile, “have made the impossible…possible.”

“But why?” Isabel exclaimed. She saw the outlines of the truth from the information exchange they’d shared earlier. Instinctively she knew, however, that hearing him speak out loud these strange, otherworldly truths would help her to assimilate the knowledge. “Why would you undertake such an experiment? Why would you go to so much trouble over seven males?”

“We had to show the Empress that it could be done,” Usan replied sadly. “You live on such a vibrant, vitessence-rich planet that you don’t realize there are places in the universe that have become barren, soulless. We Magia have raped our fair homeland over the years—industrialization, chemical and nuclear pollution, the robbing of Magian’s once

bountiful resources. Taking, always taking, and never giving back, never respecting the gift of our unique world until the riches ran out. You humans are much as we were millennia ago, mistakenly believing that the earth’s energy is something that will always be there for the taking, not recognizing that the planet itself possesses a soul that no matter how mighty, how rich, can be depleted over time, extinguished, until the planet’s song is forever silenced. We were like children let loose in a room full of powerful weapons, willful and ignorant of the consequences of our actions.”

“Does Magia still exist?” Isabel asked, spellbound not only by Usan’s story, but his palpable sadness and regret while telling it.

“Yes, yes, it is there. A shell of what it once was. My race lives for a very, very long time, so it is still populated, but we have been unable to create our own progeny for thirty millennia and more.”

“The Magia are sterile?” Isabel asked intently.

“In the biological sense, yes. We could create life, but only in the laboratory. We Magia are excellent alchemists. Our skills for science and magic are embedded in our very genes. But around four millennia ago, our clones began to alter. We had not realized, you see, that Magia itself played a role in the development of a sentient being. When we’d strangled out the last vestiges of the planet’s soul, we deprived ourselves of the ability to make new life.”

“You could no longer make the clones in the laboratory?” Isabel asked.

“The clones still breathed, and walked and talked, but they were…different. Magians began to notice the difference. They became horrified by that difference. The Magian clones were lacking in a soul. They were called the Sevliss. We studied the phenomenon for a very, very long time, my brethren and I.”

“Your brethren? The others who watch over Saint and Blaise and the others?”

Usan nodded. “Yes. We are called the Council of Seven. We are leaders of sorts, on Magia, due to our special skills at alchemy. The Empress charged the Council with the monumental task of discovering how to create souls in our progeny.” Usan paused and lowered his head soberly. “We have had many unsuccessful trials. It was not until we came here, to your beautiful blue planet, that we first tasted success.”

Isabel shook her head, made temporarily speechless in her amazement.

“And your…” She began hesitantly, pointing at her incisors in order to refer to his sharp fangs as politely as possible. “Are the Magians drinkers of vitessence-rich fluids, as well?”

“Originally, no. When my race finally killed off fair Magia’s soul,” he said bitterly, “we were forced to combine our DNA with that of other creatures that could absorb vitessence in the manner of food. It was the only way we could maintain life. It seems strange, doesn’t it? That we willfully made ourselves into parasites? Such is the price we pay for our past sins.”

They both sat quietly for a moment, Usan lost in his thoughts and Isabel trying to make sense of all she’d learned in the past several minutes. She heard the knock at the door and called out to Margaret.

“Come in, Margaret. It’s all right.”